Chapter 9 - Chapter 9 : Knowledge is power

When i woke up and looked my phone it was 7 am

'i sleept for about 4 hours'

i couldnt sleep much last night with the primeape attack and it took me almost an hour to get to sleep when i looked around i found slowpoke beside me still sleeping and when i looked in front of me i found that hoothoot had woken up sometime in the middle of the night and he was just stareing at me blinking every few seconds while moveing his head slightly side to side, a good thing over camping in the pokemon world is the fact that there are no bugs that make a noise near your ears makeing it imposible to sleep, sure there are beedrils and scyther out there but i prefer that over the little annoyers that were the ones back on earth.

Since slowpoke was sleeping i decided to start training with Hoothoot in speed starting with a jog in the trees and a dodgeing training throwing rocks at him

'slowpoke can't dodge but hoothoot can'

so while i waited for slowpoke to wake up i searched information in my phone about the mankey line and i found that because of his ferocity, they are typically considered to be dumb beasts; in reality, they are nothing of the sort. As far as non-psychic pokemon go, pokemon neurology has demonstrated convincingly that Mankey possess brains nearly as developed and intelligent as humans. It is commonly thought that the combination of a self-aware brain and a body which can only run, punch, and repeat its name creates a great deal of frustration which drives Mankey to rage against everything in sight.

'i did not expect that'

another thing i discovered is that fighting style doesnt come form humans but instead comes from pokemon and humans adapted and although a curious fun fact didnt tell me much about how to deal with them, it did tell me their reasons so next time a more calm aproach is the way to go.

When i looked back at the time it was 8:30 and the sun was riseing and slowpoke had woken up so i decided to take the tent and put a bowl of food for everyone before we kept going and with hoothoot on my shoulder and slowpoke by my side we started walking again.

The next few days where really quiet compared to our first day which was mostly training ,eating and sleeping with a few battles against the passing trainer (makeing me about 130$) or a wild pokemon and thankfully this time there wasnt any primeape that came out of the woods so overall it was really good.

when i got to safron city i had one berry left and that was only because we found a pond where slowpoke fished enough to keep him and hoothoot full for the rest of the day, meanwhile i was out of food for myself so i already knew where to go.

The poke center although it has free healing, a room costs 50$ the day , so i entered the room and did the thing that i was needing the most at that point, when i entered the shower and the hot water was hitting my skin i felt the life came back to my body since i smelled really bad and i already got enough bad looks when i entered while others looked at me in understanding.

When i finally got confortable the thinking started like everytime

'i have 300$ left and the travel from here to any if the other 3 big citys take a little bit over a week and i didnt have the money to travel to the next city, so im stuck here for the time being, although i came here for the options i don't think it was pretty smart after all, the gyms around me are either a plant type which destroys slowpoke, an electric type which destroys both of my pokemon and a psychic one that by all means should make slowpoke and hoothoot look like amateurs so i was in a hard spot to be which meant it was time to train and battle a bunch.

it's easy to forget that it still was the first two weeks of the season so most trainers just started and those natives of safron that lost their first gym battle would still be here since it takes two weeks to battle again so i had a few days to win what i consider free exp and money and im in need of both so this is perfect'

when i left the shower with a plan on my mind i went down to the battle arena and started asking people for battles with a little wager of 50$ each and when they saw that i only had a hoothoot and a slowpoke they accepted thinking that would be an easy fight and that was there first and last mistake.

After a 2 weeks i maneged to make 3000$ which if you deduct 700$ for my room and 400$ for food a week for my pokemon and i it left me with 1500$ worth of profit so i had a total of 1800$ and by that point most trainers knew to not fight against me so battles were being less profit overall and stronger trainers where appearing so i did a strategic retreat and stopped going to the battle arena every day, but the gains where still there and that could be seen with the new speed of hoothoot and how i made slowpoke learn water pulse that although couldnt be charged like water gun since it required precision, but instead i could make him launch multiple water pulse at once in the spand of a few seconds and now we could make 10 teleports when we pushed our limits.

While watching the news on my phone an article appeared about an inteview of blue oak getting his first badge in pewter city.

'wait, what? he got his pokemon two weeks ago and if math isnt failing me that means that means that he faced brock as soon as he got to pewter and he beat him? i trained a whole month and barely scraped a victory against misty and this guy beat brock in two weeks?'

to say i found myself shocked would be an understatement i clarely needed to step up my game if i wanted to win in the conference because at this speed i would be left in the dust by red and blue in no time and i would not allow that so we went back to the wild and started the training as soon as i got there, i read about bird and hoothoot training so i had an idea about what to do although slowpoke was a whole new problem, he was barely used in the competitive scene since he was outclased by alakazam and statmie in speed and attack so one of the main advice given to slowpoke users was to not have a slowpoke and evolve it as soon as posible and where slowbro only had decent above average defense so a special attacker was the solucion and the reverse problem applies for slowking although he shows a higher inteligence than slowbro but the king's rock costed 10000$ which was cheeper than most evolution items since it wasnt really used and even if you did, you would still need a shellder so it only solved a part of the puzzle that was slowkings evolution so slowbro was usually the way to go but even then there was a problem, slowbro's tail could be cut mid battle and since slowpoke was one of the only pokemon to devolve it was the usual counter to fighting a slowbro so even if it was the most common evolucion, slowking was most viable option although he could devolve too, there usually wasn't any reason to do so and unlike the tail the only way for a slowking to go back to slowpoke would be if the shellder decides to let go of slowbros head but i didnt have the money to buy a king's rock so it all went down to the fact that either in one of slowpokes fishing spots a shellder bites or i get the money for a kings rock and then i find a shellder so for now all i could do is train with what i had now and discard evolution as a method for a quick power up so training it is.

i allowed myself to spend a little bit and bought a red jacket that would make Marty McFly feel like claiming copyright and some running shoes since my foot were killing me with the ones i had at the moment while this new ones cushon my steps, and when you walk for hours every day that adds up so i say it was a solid investment although the 500$ cost said otherwise and now i was left with 1300$ . The next week i maneged to make hoothoot learn extrasensory and slowpoke learend psychic and slack off

'sleeping all day has his benfits in the end'

During training when we grew bored or tired i would go to the pokecenter and get 1 or 2 battles at random times of the day being enough to allow me to live the way i was doing but not getting any profits so in terms of money i was just like last week with the added that my pokemon grew stronger.

Today it was raining, i looked at my phone and it was 1pm so i looked at the window and decided to go to the kitchen of the poke center since i was fealing hungry, so with a hoothoot on my head and a slowpoke right beside me we started walking down stairs and found that today the center was more full than usual

'guess the nearby trainers decided to go all here because of the rain'

i smiled a little because of that

'new free exp'

so i decided to go eat something and then started looking at everyones belts

'my limit are 3 pokemon now'

you see, the number of pokemon in everyones belts doesn't necesarly indicate strength but it does mean you have the money to take care of that many pokemon and the more pokemon you have the higher the stakes since you need the money to make sure everyone eats therefore its more likely that the one with six pokemon is stronger that the one with two, either that or he is rich, but i didnt wanna risk it so i went with a low pokemon rule and it works really well, so there is no need to change it and when people see you have a slowpoke and a hoothoot on your team since i have them out when possible they usually accept so it was a battle day and after a 5 wins i looked down to find hoothoot inside my jacket while we where waiting for slowpoke to heal from the last battle against a voltorb

'that ass used explosion with his last pokemon even when i still had hoothoot thats just being a dick'

overall i made 365$ leaving me at 1665$. So we waited for 40 minutes and i got slowpoke back so i smiled at nurse joy and said thank you

'even after being here for 3 weeks thats all i say to her every time, i need to be a little bit more social since i doubt that asking for a battle counts'

so i throw slowpokes ball and then catch it .

The system of throwing the ball is rather smart since it was created so that the pokeball would only open at a certain level of speed instead of the obvious button that actually works to make them smaller so that those that do not use a belt like me would not have a problem of the button being pushed at random times and make your pokemon appear inside your backpack or bag like it is my case.

it kept raining so i returned hoothoot since he isn't a fan of water and hates baths as much as a cat and decided to go out with slowpoke since i knew he would enjoy it.

i wasnt the only one that thought that since you could see a bunch of people with his psyducks or poliwags jumping on the rain although they all had an umbrella that i lacked so i went to the nearest store and bought one for 10$ even if by that point i was really soaked, so i decided that slowpoke would be the guide this time and i followed him to a coffee shop where we bought an chocolate ice cream for slowpoke and some weed tea that i discovered that hoothoot liked to drink while i asked for an ice coffee with cream.

"excuse me do you mind if i take a picture of your hoothoot? i think its really cute the way he drinks his tea"

i blinked for a few seconds procesing that information and answerd

"sure no problem"

and then kept drinking while she started takeing pictures from different angles she thanked me and went to an empty seat to order whatever she liked

"well hoothoot you are quite a charmer arent you?"

he puffed what seemed like a pround face so i started petting him and went back to my drink and when we ended it was still raining and it was 4pm so i decided that i wasn't gonna train for today and instead we went back to my room and watched a movie with slowpoke by my side in a range of petting while hoothoot stayed inside my jacket at range of my other hand so i started petting him with 2 fingers and he seemed to purr like a cat, from the outside you could only see his eyes which i thought was pretty cute so we stayed and watched a couple movies and the news that talked about some criminals stealing peoples pokemon

'team rocket, do i really wanna stop them? i know that they would be stopped some time this year so there wasnt any reason and besides'

i looked down and found my pokemon enjoying themselfs with the movies and slowly falling sleep

'i dont wanna lose them, let someone else take the matter from my hands'

and with that we stayed another hour more till the clock marked 8 pm so i turned the tv off and we went to sleep