I woke up early the next morning to get ready for my mission. I admired myself as I had a shower. A handsome figure reflected off the running water and the glass pane. Golden hair, sky-blue eyes, completely different from my previous Asian heritage, though I still retained the faint scar just above my right eye.
15-years old and my abs was already showing. Something which I did not have in my previous life as I was lazy and hated sports. It's also why I quit CCF (Combined Cadet Forces) and DofE (Duke of Edinburgh) as soon as I could.
Once I was done admiring my well-sculpted body and handsome face like the budding narcissist I was, not that I'll admit it, I quickly got dressed and left the barracks. I grabbed some food from the cafeteria to take away and ate everything on my way to District 5 except the fruit pot, which I saved for lunch. I rushed over to the train station and boarded a magnet train. It did not take long for me to reach the nearest station in the district to the park.
District Five was the commercial district of the city state of Fiore. Although every district in the city had some shops, this district was filled with malls, supermarkets, and many restaurants. There was only one large public park in the district located in the centre which I made to with half an hour to spare. I had a habit of arriving early and rarely did I come in late. Punctuality was drilled into me since young.
I walked around for a bit until I found the guard station, where five trainers were talking to each other. One of the trainers standing in front of the station had spotted me as she made herself known.
"Morning," she said. "You must be Trainer Dexter. I'm Trainer Jessica. I'm the shift leader for our shift."
"I am," I told her.
"You're here early," she said. "Good. I wanted to speak to you before our shift started."
I nodded and was motioned to follow her. As we started walking deeper into the park, I took note of the landscape we passed by.
The park was mostly low trimmed lawns with trees and park branches spread out. There was a branched path that wound around and through the park for people to walk on and a good-sized pond in the centre of the park.
"This is a guard patrol mission," she began. "That means our missions consist of constantly patrolling this park looking for any wild Pokémon that may have made it into the city state. Unfortunately, the wall can't keep out every single Pokémon. Some of them do manage to sneak in and make it far into the city state. Most of them are smaller Pokémon that a D-rank trainer can handle with ease. Our primary objective is to protect any civilians that are in the park. Taking out any wild Pokémon is secondary to civilian safety. Any questions so far?"
I shook my head.
"Park guard patrols are always made up of at least three trainers," she continued. "Two of the trainers are either D-rank or C-rank. The third is always either a C-rank or B-rank who oversees the shift. I'm a C-rank trainer and am therefore in charge of this shift since I outrank you and the other trainer in our shift."
"If the third trainer can be a B-rank, that means that your mission is C-Rank. I thought that these guard missions were all D-rank?" I asked.
"Mine is a supervisory mission," she explained. "It's my job to keep track of my subordinates and take care of any issues you can't handle yourselves. I'll spend most of the shift in the guard station manning the radio and the park's intercom system. You and the other trainer will mostly be walking around keeping an eye on things. Understand?"
I nodded.
"You're lucky," she said. "This is a fairly easy mission. The morning shifts usually see little action. The night shifts usually encounter wild Pokémon at least once in each shift. There are usually very little civilians moving through the park at this time of the day. This will be a good way to ease you into missions."
"Should I have my Pokémon out during the shift?"
She shook her head. "No. This is a civilian park. Unless we run into any wild Pokémon, it's best not to have our own out. We don't want to terrify anyone who decides to come here to relax."
"Understood."
She glanced at a watch on her wrist for some time. "Let's head back," she said. "Our shift starts in a couple of minutes."
"Alright," I said.
We made it back to the guard station just before the shift change. Three of the trainers whished us luck and headed out of the park. That left Jessica, another D-rank trainer a couple of years older than me who introduced himself as Peter, and me. Jessica gave us each a handheld radio from the guard station and told us to begin patrolling together for a bit before splitting up. She then went back into the station as we set off.
Peter had very little to say to me. He made it clear that it was not his choice to be a trainer and he remained at D-rank by choice despite being an active trainer for three years. We didn't say much in the end, which was fine by me. An hour later, Jessica radioed us to patrol separately.
I continued walking on the path through the park on my own for the next couple hours. There were only a handful of civilians around and most of them gave me a wide berth when they saw my trainer arm badge. Every 30 minutes I had to report in about the current situation, which were all no problems. So far, I had not caught any sights of wild Pokémon.
At noon, Jessica told Peter to take a break. After he was done, it was my turn. I watched as the civilians wandered in and out, taking note of the red-brownish leaves and crispy air of Autumn while sitting on a nearby bench, satiating my hunger with the fruit pot I saved this morning.
My break finished and I began patrolling the park again. I was glad that the shift was almost over with no issues. Only a few seconds later, a panicked scream came from the other end of the park.
"Starlys!"
I spun and ran in the direction of the scream. There were some civilians running away from the area I was running to. As I was running, I heard Peter over the radio reporting to Jessica about the incident and that he was en route. Once he was done, I told Jessica that I was en route as well. A moment later, and an alarm sound I heard Jessica's voice echoing throughout the park.
"Attention citizens!" she said, "Wild Pokémon have been spotted at the vicinity. All civilians are to immediately evacuate the park. Please exit the park quickly and calmly."
I finally reached the area of disturbance and came onto a scene of total mayhem. There was a flock of about a dozen or so Starlys in this area of the park. Some of the Starlys had a family of three pinned down and were hitting them with a mix of Growls and Wing Attacks.
The rest were focusing their attacks on Peter who had gotten to the scene before me. He had two Pokémon next to him doing to take down the Starlys which I recognised as a Shellos and a Dwebble. The Shellos was knocking down the Starlys with Water Pulse while the Dwebble crushed them with a Rock Blast. Since most of the Starlys were keeping the other trainer busy, I went to deal with the ones still focusing on the family.
"Zatanna, Synin!" I called out.
They both appeared in front of me and quickly spotted the problem. They stood poised, ready for my commands. I pointed to the Starlys still winging at the family, "Zatanna! Hone Claws, Fury Swipe, take them down! Synin, clip their wings!"
They both took off at once.
Zatanna used the trees as a foothold before bringing down the closest Starly to her. In mid-air, the Starly frantically pecked, squirming against its ambush predator. By the time Zatanna reached the ground, it lied limp, feathers pierced and ruffled from her lethal claws cloaked in Dark energy. Quickly, she blurred, leaving afterimages as she now became the focus of their aerial attacks.
With Synin, he attacked the weaker Starlys first, lashing out Fury Attacks here and there. Once we were far enough, I gave him the go ahead at throwing sticks and pebbles at them now that the family was a safe distance away.
However, after a while, the Starlys retreated higher into the air and away from the trees, out of Zatanna's reach. Synin, despite his daily morning training, was also beginning to tire out. Type moves usually took a drain on their energy reserves.
"Thunder Wave!" a voice cried out.
Dozens of small bolts of electricity flew at the Starlys. Somehow, Synin did not get hit as the Starlys fell on to the ground paralyzed, not even when the first was followed up by a couple more Thunder Waves, paralyzing the rest of the flock. As such, I prioritised protecting the family, but I did glance briefly towards the direction that the Thunder Wave had come from.
It was a Pachirisu with Jessica standing slightly behind it, poised with confidence and seriousness, somewhat attractive but not enough to distract me.
***
With Jessica's help we were able to take down the rest of the flock until they thought enough were enough and flew away. Soon after, the paramedics arrived, and we helped put the more seriously injured parents on the stretchers. As soon as the family was set within the ambulance, the paramedics drove to the nearest hospital.
Jessica congratulated us for doing a 'good job' and after talking with Peter, lead me back to the guard station to obtain cleaning up supplies. Before leaving, I asked permission for both Zatanna and Synin to feed on the corpses.
"Help yourselves," I said, "You've both earned it."
They immediately teared and ripped out flesh from a fresh corpse.
Once we were out of earshot, Jessica lectured me on how I had handled the situation by making the civilians the number one priority. She was surprised and impressed that I caught two Pokémon during my Ordeal and that they were working well together not so soon after passing my D-rank exam.
However, through her I had realised that I was lacking in long-range attacks as even, Synin, a Flying type Pokémon, had no real long-range attacks yet. Sand-Attack didn't really count since it wasn't applicable everywhere as Jessica had mentioned. She suggested to me a few attacks which my Pokémon might be able to learn with more training such as Snarl, Air Slash and Swift. In hindsight, I should have known due to heavy exposure in my first life as well as the amount of gaming experience I had, which wasn't much considering I was just a casual player.
"I didn't think about that," I admitted. "You're right. I wasn't prepared. I should have made sure that both my Pokémon were able to deal with different situations."
"No real harm done," she said. "It's just something for you to consider before accepting your next mission. Like I said, your handling of the situation far exceeded my expectations. Especially since it hasn't been long since your Ordeal."
"Thanks," I said.
After alerting the other stations south of us of the remaining Starlys and taking out large garbage bags plus shovels from a closet, we went back to the spot where the dead Starlys were.
Peter was just standing there watching Synin preen his feathers and Zatanna eat a Starly.
"That's her third one," he told me. "Any more and she won't be able to move."
"No more for you," I told Zatanna whose ears drooped and began eating more slowly.
Perhaps, I should have named her Bonney instead?
We began shovelling the corpses into the garbage bags as she was finishing up. Once we were done, I recalled Zatanna and Synin and tossed the filled bags into the dumpsters with Peter while Jessica returned the supplies back to the station.
The rest of the day went smoothly and once 2PM came, we handed over our radios and said goodbye to each other. Peter immediately took off while Jessica and I walked to the station
"So," she began. "What did you think of your first mission?"
"Not really what I expected," I answered. "Except for the incident of the Starlys, it was pretty easy. Are all D-rank missions like this?"
"More or less," she said. "For the most part D-ranks are low risk missions. Most of them are simple guard missions where we must patrol a certain part of Cheshire and keep the civilians safe. Normally we only deal with low level Pokémon like those Starlys. If any stronger Pokémon had made it this far into the city state, I would have handled it. If it was too hard for me to handle, we would have sent an emergency call for a higher rank trainer to come deal with it."
"I assume dealing with wild Pokémon is a common occurrence?" I queried.
"Not every mission," she said. "There have been days where I've gone through a D-rank mission without encountering a single wild Pokémon. The gate and wall guards usually take care of any before they enter the city state. It's mainly small, sneaky or Flying Pokémon that make it past them that we have to deal with this far in."
"That's good to know," I said.
"Wait until you reach C-rank," she continued. "I normally only take on one C-rank every couple of weeks or so. D-ranks may pay less but I'm less likely to be killed on one. It's almost a given that you will run into wild Pokémon out on a C-rank, even the ones you have to complete within the city state."
"Schneider did tell me that not all missions you take within the city state were D-rank," I remarked. "What kind of C-rank missions are normally available to take within the city state?"
"The sewer missions," she answered promptly. "This is a fairly large city state and there is a large network of sewer tunnels underneath. The sewer company has to go regularly down into the sewers to perform maintenance. Problem is that wild Pokémon can easily enter sewers from the pipelines that remove waste from the city state. There are almost daily mission requests for trainers to escort sewer workers into the sewers to protect them while they work. Once a week, they request several trainers to go down and clear out as many wild Pokémon as they can, but these are B-rank mission."
"Huh," I said. "What about C-rank missions outside the wall?"
"There are many different kinds of C-rank missions you can take outside the wall," she said. "There are escort missions where you guard workers such as woodcutters and miners while they collect materials that can't be produced within the city state. There are missions where you, yourself, are required to go out and collect something from the wilds. There are even Pokémon catching missions."
"Pokémon catching missions?"
She nodded. "There are some wild Pokémon that have other various uses either for the city state or for the private sector. I had one such mission a couple of months ago. I accepted a mission from a leatherworker to go out and capture some Stantler. The mission called for me to capture a minimum of three Stantler. After that, each additional Stantler would earn me a bonus pay. I brought in seven, so I earned the $150 standard pay for completing the mission plus $30 for the rest."
"So, you made $270 on one C-rank mission," I said. "That doesn't seem much though?"
She scowled. "The leatherworker most likely sold the Stantler meat to a butcher once he finished skinning them. Exotic foods cost more than food produced within the city state. He most likely made back what he paid me for the mission plus interest."
Guess that answers the question then.
We continued walking in silence. Once we reached the station, she spoke up again. "I have some errands to run before I head over to collect my pay," she said. "Just take a magnet train to the mission office in central district. Talk to a teller there to report your mission complete. They will deposit your pay directly into your trainer account."
"Alright," I said.
"It was nice meeting you, Dexter," she said. "I hope we can work another shift together someday. Good luck with your other missions. Just remember what we talked about earlier about your Pokémon's attacks."
"I will," I responded. "Thanks for all your help today. I hope we can work together again too. Bye."
"Goodbye," she said and walked away.
I boarded a magnet train and headed to the mission office to report my completed mission. As I was sitting in the train, I kept thinking about Jessica's advice and the group training session I had in mind.