“We’re here. Striaton City,” he said.


    Truth be told, they might have already entered the City a couple of minutes ago, its presence creeping as the forest thinned into a field and the dirt path they walked all these miles on turned stone.


    “Exactly day 14,” Yuewen said, raising her phone into the sky for reception. “As I calculated.”


    He snorted. “You never said shit about fourteen days.”


    “I thought it. In my inner monologue.”


    “And you said walking with Rocky would slow us down. See? Just as I planned.”


    “You didn’t plan shit. You just got knocked out and slowed our pace down by half. Though, you started picking up speed the last week. That’s the only reason we’re here at this timing. Okay?”


    “Your Pidove flew away for half a day… I think it was mad, because you didn’t give her enough attention.”


    She blushed and shoved her phone back into her jeans, bringing out a pen and a paper instead. She began writing on the upheld paper, cursing as the pen occasionally tore through the sheet.


    “It’s not that… It just gets mad that I wasn’t feeding it. Okay? I think she went out and ate one of your caterpie friends…”


    “Anyways.” He tore away the paper from Yuewen. It was in cursive, so he couldn’t immediately read it. He shoved it back into her jacket. “We’re here. Striaton City. Finally.”


    Wooden, arching trellises marked the end of the stony path that was only with them for minutes instead of weeks. They were mahogany, more red than brown, and with it being filled with spiraling, clingy vines. It gave off an impressive sense of history and significance as they walked through. Mostly, he was just relieved. And hungry for some real food.


    They entered what could be considered a town square? It was square shaped, at least, with a fountain in the middle, but the square was patched with freshly trimmed grass and benches and pleasant bushes galore and on its sides were small ponds, the lightly blue shimmered under the rising sun.


    “This is probably where most of our colleagues hung out, huh.”


    “I guess… Hey, whatcha doing with that paper again? Don’t walk and write.”


    She dodged his swipe, holding it high in the air where he couldn’t reach. He stopped reaching immediately. He hoped that she walked straight into a pond or something.


    “I’m writing my budget out. We should start thinking about buying in bulk again for us and our Pokemon this time.: She cleared her throat. “If we walked approximately at the pace we have in the last three days, then we should be able to get to Nacrene City-”


    “Don’t worry about money. My parents gave me a shit ton.”


    “How much?”


    “A shit ton.”


    They were entering the true city now. Forget all the grass and the watery scenery. These were the tourist traps he wanted to be ensnared in.


    “Give me a number, man. It might seem like a lot, but in a couple months, we’re gonna need to find employment. And besides, I still got to worry about my money.”


    The smell hit first. It wasn''t anything in specific. It was the combination, the concoction of dozens of depthful scents, fading into this aurora that smelt even better as he closed his eyes. They lined the streets - both sides - as far as the eye could see, as fast as the feet could walk. Glowing neon signs of Galar, the dancing mascots of Aloha, the humbling presentation of those sliding door places with heated floors that you would find in Kanto, it was dizzying from the first decision; whether to go left or right, nevermind choosing exactly which restaurant they wanted to go to.


    “Don’t be such a sad sack,” he said, exhaling for the first time since. “I got enough money for the sixth gym at least- for the both of us. Come on, it’s not like it’s my money anyways.”


    “I hate everything you represent right now.”


    “Touchè. That’s French, right?” He wacked her back, almost sending her face-first into the cemented street. She really had absolutely terrible balance, stumbling this way and that like a newborn girafarig. “Right or left. Your choice. Don’t be mad.”


    “Right.” They turned right in unison. “And I’m not mad. In fact, you suggesting that I would be mad is the only thing making me mad. What do you think I am? Some typical woman-”


    He reached up and blocked her eyes, causing her to shut up.


    “Right or left again?”


    “...Left.”


    “Now choose a number. From 1 to uh… like 20?”


    “21.”


    “Okay. Let’s eat some real food.”


    “That felt inhumane,” she said. Their steps echoed lazily, returned by only a couple others that paced, looking for an early breakfast as well. He even saw a couple restaurants opening real time, their owners'' old locals stretching and yawning as they flipped signs and let out advertising Pokemon dressed in logos and slogans.


    “My bad. But think of it this way. It might be destiny afterall.”


    They arrived at the restaurant at the very end of the street. It was stubbornly rectangular with plastic-like, green outlines, heavy on the eyes with an orange signboard right beneath, printing in bold letters: The Monkey King. Yet, instead of having an “o”, there was a fainted face of a Pokemon that he didn’t recognize, dead eyes, tongue sticking out, and decapitated, a bloody red lining the bottom of its neck. And even worse, beneath, was a poorly drawn poster of “Creamy Mushroom” hamburg that, simply put, looked like mold was growing out of and dripped with mustardy lines of piss.


    “Say. Let’s actually not eat here. Come on, we haven’t eaten anything real in weeks…”


    Yuewen smiled sweetly.


    “It’s destiny, right? Oh, sweet prince, please lead me into our fates together. Your treat, of course.”


    They entered, small bells ringing to indicate that they had arrived.


    -.-.-


    It was a fever dream inside. He suspected that any unexpecting trainers who made it past the front door would revolve out like clockwork the moment they said the interior. Plates from yesterday or even further back laid forgotten, the dim lights unable to hide the rotting walls, bits of paint tearing off. Worst of all, they seemed to go all out on their branding of decapitated Pokemon, their bloody heads cartoonishly planted on stakes and even, as an extravagant centerpiece, their headless bodies being strung up on cross surrounding a cauldron as their head-plentiful friends chanted, statues depicted dancing behind masks. It was grainy and grim, like they were abandoned on an island and were reduced to eating each other.


    “Welcome. To The Monkey King. Seat for two? Actually, that’s a bit of a rhetorical question. We don’t have any seats for two.” The waiter laughed pleasantly.


    He and she glanced at each other. He nodded first. She nodded second. But just before they were going to leave, two arms were thrown around their shoulders. One for her, one for him.


    “It’s a threesome; hey, which one of you is the top, which is the bottom? Hm?”


    There was a scary woman between them. Long, black hair streamed down to her chest, each individual strand gleaming with deliberation. She wore a tight sleeveless t-shirt with the word “DEATHLESS” written across it and had tight jeans, culminating onto a button onto her scarily-thin waist. The worst of it was her eyes. They stared straight ahead, but Helmet knew that he was under her vision. With just one eye, at her peripheral vision, she was staring into his soul, her wide, black pupil, never moving position throughout blinking. He couldn’t move.


    “Or are you both bottoms? Hmmmm? Doesn’t that make me the ‘S’?”


    “I - I don’t swing that way, okay?” Yuewen was the first break out of the spell. She ducked under the woman’s grip and pushed her glasses upwards.


    “Oh? But I never said anything about that… Come back, over here.” Obediently, Yuewen was forced under the woman’s arms again. “Jeremy. Table for 3.”


    “Certainly.” The waiter bowed and smiled pleasantly. “May I suggest the table in the middle? It’s great for hotpots.”


    “We know that’s the only table open, you broke fucker.


    “Certainly. This way, please.”


    The moment the waiter turned, she kicked his ass. She did it with perfect form. The waiter fell to his knees, shaking. She laughed and suddenly their feet moved as one, she dragging him along, the side of his head pushed up against her…


    Before he knew what was happening, he was sitting on top of a decapitated head planted on top of a stake. It was soft like a pillow. He wanted to glance sideways at Yuewen, but the scary lady was in between, still staring outwards, and a thousand yard gaze. He gulped. Were they gonna eat out of this giant cauldron? It seemed to smell like it had been used a thousand times before and only had recently been cleaned.


    “Give us the Moomoo beef special.”


    “Certainly.”


    Again? But I’ve been eating Moomoo beef for the last two weeks. He wanted to complain, but at this point, he was too scared-roused to do anything about it. She was still pushed up against him.


    Not a minute later, the waiter returned. He could hear the footsteps. He looked up. In one hand, he was holding a giant pot of water that looked like it weighed a ton. On the other hand, he held up a wholeass miltank. This guy is not human. He stood up to leave, but she pushed him down. For the first time, she turned her head and stared him down with both eyes - and a smile. Of course, she had a scary smile, her full set of perfectly white teeth revealed in a grin.


    “Hey,” Yuewen said, voice trembling. “What do you think you’re doing with that miltank?”


    “Cooking it, madam.”


    “But it’s clearly not-”


    The waiter poured the water into the cauldron first. It was boiling. He shoved in the miltank next. Before Yuewen could say anything else, he placed a metal lid on top of the cauldron. And sent out a Pokemon.


    “Charizard.”


    “Charizard. Use overheat.”


    The searing heat flew inches before him, the intensity of the blast steaming his face with great intensity, as he fought, the natural instinct to close his eyes and the sharp instinct of survival that caused his eyes to jut open. At that moment, he began to sob uncontrollably.


    A couple seconds later it was all over. He wiped the tears from his eyes and glanced to the side. The scary lady was leaning back with no backrest, arms still loosely around them, looking slightly bored. She had a dumb expression on her face. Ah, she’s hungry. Well, I’m pretty hungry too. He turned, apprehensive of the end result.


    “Thank you for the meal,” she said, clapping her hands together, finally letting go of their shoulders.


    Bits of meat surfaced from the steaming pot, the color and shape completely unrecognizable. They were practically roasted black, the sear so complete that it only left the barest of that raw juice within. Around half of it looked edible.


    “Let’s dig in,” the scary lady said, scooping a hunk of meat out the hotpot.


    He poked a piece of meat with his finger. Even before touching it, by the rising steam, he knew that he would be almost too hot to handle. Like catching carp out of a river, he seized the largest, chunkiest bone he could manage, the marrow steaming onto his hand, almost losing balance on his stool as he swang. He let go, if only for a second, to wipe his hand off his jacket. Then, he clapped his hands together.


    “Thank you for the meal.”


    -.-.-


    At some point, it became a competition. A point of pride. He ate and ate and ate. The tips of his fingers melted from the heat. The depths of his throat burnt, crying for water that wasn’t half steaming coming down. His stomach and his heart expanded, the only thing keeping what was inside, side, sheer determination and grit, the steadfast attitude of a man seeing everything slip away from him.


    “Ahaha. Are you done already? I said I’d give you a reward if you won’t, didn''t I?” She pushed her chest forwards and licked her lips.


    He was truly, completely and utterly, done with women. He lay lifeless, sitting in a curled up ball, trying not to throw up. He was having a good time eating heartily, as hard as he could, so how did it come to this? She, with the skinniest waist he had ever seen… Did he just not hunger enough? Not want it enough?


    “There, there. Good boy,” she said, patting his head. “You did your best.”


    If he was a normal person, this would be weird. But he was destined for unnormal fates, so this was fine?


    As he was being petted, he felt a great disturbance in his left arm. It was being puppeteered, a delicate touch guiding it through the motions. He glanced up. He was signing the bill for tonight’s dinner.


    “Hey,” Yuewen hissed. She was standing behind him, holding his left arm down, not having eaten a single piece of meat. “What do you think you’re doing?”


    “Paying for the meal…”


    “She was the one that ordered it. Common courtesy dicatest that she should be the one paying? Besides, I didn’t even eat anything and-” She held out the receipt and pushed against his eyes so that he couldn’t even read it anymore. “This shit is way too expensive to not be a scam.”


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    “What?” He groaned, tearing the piece of paper off his face like it was a bug. “It’s my money, isn’t it? I can spend it however I want. Besides, it’s like, if I’m not treating you, I’m treating her instead.” He did a weird flippy-swappy gesture with his hands, but didn’t quite think that he communicated anything legible. He groaned again.


    “You can’t. I won’t allow it.” She crumbled to the receipt to ball under the pleasant smile of Jeremy the waiter who stood awkwardly waiting for the bill. She turned on the scary lady, pointing a very rude finger towards her. “You. How dare you try to take advantage of the working class like this. We- we’re not doing volunteer work here. If you want to eat a whole Miltank with your bare hands like a crazy person, that’s fine, but at least pay half like a normal worker of society. That’s still too much money lost…” She smothered the flimsy paper in her palm, tearing it into shreds. She pushed her hand to her forehead like she was on the verge of losing it all. “How could you spend more than half our spending on a meal?”


    “That sentence… no make sense.”


    The scary lady pushed him over. He tipped from his decapitated stool and landed on the filthy floor, the filth of it reminding him of memories he never had before, that of falling in brave battle and drowning in a puddle of his own piss and blood.


    “Okay? What do you suggest we do instead? He lost.”


    “Lost what? Dignity? Self-awareness? Pride of a human-being?”


    “Lost the Journey to The Best.” She kicked him lightly, if only to drive in the point that he was a loser. She must have seen by Yuewen’s expression that the point hadn’t hit home yet. “I ate more miltank than him. Twenty-four percent more if judging on sheer body mass alone. Therefore, he has to pay for it all. That’s The Monkey King special, baby. It might have been a challenge if you decided to eat anything at all.” She burped. She even controlled the timing of her burps to perfection. What a scary lady.


    “Was there such a challenge?” He groaned from under the table, but there was no table, just a steaming cauldron of beef before him. “I would have eaten more if I knew.” He lied. He almost threw up, right then and there.


    “Eh? Are you serious? You were eating that shit for fun? That literally steaming heap of dogshit?” Jeremy smiled pleasantly in the corner. “Of course, there’s money involved.”


    “It’s just a matter of pride.”


    She laughed, in that silly little way that reminded him of Yuewen’s laugh, breathy and gleeful. “Read the shirt, buddy. Deathless. There’s no loss in pride from losing to me.” She reached down to awkwardly ruffle his hair from all the way up there.


    “Hey. Don’t touch him like that.” Yuewen separated them, practically kicking him aside. He was sick and tired of the abuse… “He’s… Just, we don’t have the budget or time for this type of altercation. Is there anything we can do to, I dunno, prevent this financial loss?”


    They glanced at Jeremy all at once. Jeremy cleared his throat. “Ladies, this is the only purchase that has been made in this restaurant in the past month. For some stretches, we don’t get any purchase for months… Now-” He reached out and gently unfurled Yuewen’s fist and found the largest shred of paper remaining. “Will you please sign here and hand over the only thing that separates me from being a waiter and being a janitor?”


    To be honest, judging from the floor up, he thought a place with this few customers would rather benefit from having a janitor than a waiter, but he kept those thoughts to himself.


    “Hey, hey, don’t be rude, Jeremy. You know that I’m your most loyal customer. So how about it? I have an idea.”


    Jeremy cursed silently about idiotic trainers and how ‘he only got the crazy ones’. He then smiled pleasantly. “Go on.”


    “You know that old cat around town? The one with a bit of a bounty on it? I mean, it doesn’t come close to the price of a Journey to the Best special, but think about the reputation. The folks in the commercial district might even tolerate having such an unsanitary, disgusting rundown sack for a couple more years if you play your cards right.”


    “True…” Jeremey considered. “I have noticed Ms. Jenkins and Mrs. Jenny has been giving me strange looks lately. And even old Mr. Jacob has been giving the cold shoulder. But I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to shut this place down.”


    “A-anyways, she, my young disciple, will go catch that old cat by the end of tonight. And everything that starts well will end well.”


    “What’s in it for you?” Jeremy shot her a suspicious look.


    “My good looks? My good karma? My intuition?”


    Time seemed to slow in the silence. The scary lady looked really fucking scary. There was sadism in those unbroken, unflinching eyes, turning, turning, turning, but not moving at all, black holes of emotions.


    “... Come on, man. Let’s find this cat or whatever.” Yuewen offered him a hand up.


    “Oh and of course, you gotta do this challenge by yourself.” She offered a hand beside Yuewen. He took the scary ladies’ hands. Again, they were surprisingly delicate. He wondered what she did for a living. “Your poor darling here had to do his by himself, oh yes, you did.”


    “No way. Keep your hands off him.”


    “But why? He’s so interesting.”


    He threw up right then and there, puking the remains of an inside-out Pokemon alongside with a small bone that might have been part of the ribcage.


    He was so going to kill himself when this was all over.


    -.-.-


    The Striaton alleyways spun their courses so completely and intricate that they held streets and ‘restaurants’ of their own, except of instead of smelling like an all-you-can-eat buffet, each hotspot was instead a dumpster where wild pokemon, glaring as they passed with sullen, hungry eyes. As if they expected them to dump more garbage into their green, metal treasure chest and were considering stalking them when they didn’t, like they were keeping all the good stuff for themselves. One look from Leah, however, and they were left alone.


    He wished he could have kept his fantasy from when he was searching the Dream Circuit and thought of all the places he wanted to eat at Striaton. He had an entire 2-week plan, where he would eat at 3 restaurants a day and cover the forty-two places that he had wanted to eat at the most. Yet, now, he was digging up trash and squeezing sideways through tight walls to go to places where he didn’t even imagine existed.


    This too, can be considered an adventure, he thought as he poked through trash bags with a stick he had found in the middle of the alleyway, only half submerged in garbage juice.


    All he wanted to do was get to the nearest Pokemon center and start training for the gym, yet, if Yuewen said that she wanted to poke through garbage, there was nothing he could do but listen to her. He could only blame his own weakness. He wondered, if he was strong, if he was some young, cocky, shot-out-of-a-gun with a Pikachu, what would become of him when he left her on the very first day, walking and walking without breaks, without sleep, only a grin plastered across his face and dream burning in his heart.


    Does this mean his dream has partly been extinguished?


    That he would only make it halfway? Collapsed, starting line, finish line, the crowd, the competition all gone from sight, only leaving him, alone, dead, like so many others, in the midst of nowhere, sinking into nothingness...


    “Yuewen, do you have a plan? I want to do something, y’know. Direct my energy towards chasing my dreams. You were the one that insisted on me helping right? Should I be doing anything right now?”


    “I do have a plan.” She turned and glared at him, her spectacles drooping down her nose. “Just shut up and follow me.”


    “Will it really be worth it? This sacrifice of self?” He muttered, continuing to poke at the garbage. He tried to sound sarcastic, but it ended up feeling really dry.


    Yuewen sighed. “No, it won’t. Yes, it will. How am I supposed to know? Maybe you’ll learn something. Maybe it’s all for nought. We’ll be walking in circles, chasing our own tails. Dreams are just dreams after all. You still gotta live. Life is life.”


    He glanced to his side, having found nothing of note. Yuewen seemed to have found one and was noting it down, dutifully noting it down in one of those spare pieces of paper that she always seemed to have. He should get her a real notebook for her birthday or something.


    They began making distance again, Yuewen muttering something about having surveyed and sampled about thirty-three percent of all backlogs. It was nostalgic, walking alongside her. It reminded him of just yesterday.


    “You know who you remind me of?” He said, poking some brand-new, super exclusive pieces of trash.


    “Your mother?”


    “Nah.”


    “Huh. I thought the flow of the conversation was going that way.”


    “My mother actually loves me. The person I’m thinking of is a real bitch.”


    She drove an elbow down onto his skull. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”


    “You literally just hit me.”


    “That doesn’t count.”


    Gaslighting… Abuse… He barely kept those words within.


    “The person I’m thinking of… I hardly knew her. She hardly knew me. But she wanted me to be miserable.”


    “Your mother?”


    “No, what? But maybe she should have? It’s not everyone who would be willing to send their own son out to the same field of monsters that almost killed him. Is there something wrong with her? Wrong with me? Maybe I should be more miserable. Because, lately, when I look behind me, I see shadows. And they haunt me, shifting right beyond my sight, creeping closer in the darkness. And one day, I think when I finally feel comfortable not to look back - that’s when it’ll strike and I’ll be.... Stuck again. In the darkness.”


    Beside her, he can feel her hesitating, and could feel the creep wrapping her face. His breath suddenly began heavy, as he felt his insides knitting in a knot. What he could was focus on his breathing and try to slow down, but the more he focused on it, the more that the heavier it got, the more aware he got, and the more he told himself to calm down, the more he panicked and the faster he breathed and the less he could control it and the more desperate he became and he was breathing so fast, so fast and he couldn’t stop-


    “I’m sorry.” She hugged him from behind from the waist. The blood left his head and he was breathing steady again. “Are you okay with garbage hands? Because right now, I have garbage hands.”


    “It’s-it’s okay. I’m okay.” He gulped. “Okay, let’s find this cat. Because I’m okay now.”


    “Even if you’re not okay, it’s okay?” Her hands left his waist. Gently, like she was afraid of leaving. Like he could still feel her touch. “Because beyond all this, your mother still loves you right? Your father, too?”


    “Guess so.”


    “O-kay. Let’s do this shit then.”


    -.-.-


    The purrloin, as evidenced as its intense understanding of human structures, is likely motivated by luxury with a history of being a housepet.


    The purrloin, with its sleek, purple coat, untouched by the filth and the grime of the alleyways, arched its back and hissed at him. Its eyes darted left and right, noting its escape routes, whilst also keeping a close eye on his actions. As delicate as he could, he raised his arm to his side, holding it quite still.


    It feels comfortable in places with many escape routes as understood by looking through dumpsters and noting where the most recent stolen restaurant items were thrown away, half eaten with clear Pokemon teeth marks upon it. I have marked areas where it will most likely be hiding. We’ll split up and stalk these areas in hopes of finding it.


    He hoped Pidove saw his signal. The few days he spent traveling with it, he didn’t learn much as she was always flying high above them. For being just a pidove, it sure liked flying, soaring above them, looking down on them like ants. If she was only half as reliable as Rocky, however, the next part of their plan should be well in motion as he stalled.


    Judging by its pickiness in eating and its pattern of only stealing the most valuable food items, the purrloin is likely to be haughty in nature and seek to push past you should you try to trap it. Be prepared for aggressive movements.


    As he stood his distance of around twenty paces, the purrloin bolted. Three steps left, three steps right. He threw his pokeball right before a thin opening in the alleyway, where they would have to squeeze through, but the purrloin could dash in between. The purrloin jolted, sliding to a stop. Rocky now stood in between where it wanted to go, guarding it with a bloodthirsty determination, as fierce as a gyarados.


    Likely to be a teen with connections to other teenage cats in the area, judging by its metabolism and its frequency of attack. It could be using additional thefts to bribe other purrloin for safety and security. Do not let it communicate.


    “Purr-”


    “HELMMMMMEEEEEEEEEET,” he screamed. If she didn’t know where exactly he was, she would know now. He grinned, crouching down, prepared to tackle it wherever it tried to run. They might not even need her in the plan.


    If you are first to make contact with Purrloin, you will need me to come to you. Do not try to catch Purrloin by yourself. You are physically weak.


    “Come at me,” he said, slapping his hands onto the ground, his blood pumping.


    It tried to dart between his legs. He dropped to his knees and blocked it as one would block a hockey puck, causing it to suddenly dart to the left. He flinched and accidentally dove to the right, but just as it all seemed to be over, it sprung right back into his arms. He held the purrloin tight to his chest, whirling around and laughing as it hissed and clawed at his face. Now what?


    He wrestled with it for a bit further, jerking his head just beyond its sharp claws one too many times before deciding it wasn’t worth dying for. He threw the Pokemon back at the wall where it came from, causing it to yowl, flip over three times like a pancake before landing upright, and spitting.


    When truly cornered or when feeling threatened, the purrloin will showcase aggressive behaviour involving the move double team. Try not to make it feel completely threatened as this will be hard to deal with. But if you fuck up, as you do, you can predict this behaviour as happening after it stands up on two feet, bipedally.


    It paced, each paw step soft, but deliberate. It was just unnatural, watching this Pokemon sway and plod like a human, so that he couldn’t tear his gaze from it. And before he knew it, he was seeing double, triple, quadruple. Each step it took left a sort of echo behind it and as the purrloin took one step left and on step right again, the zigzag made the echoes overlap upon each other, until all he could see was a blurring, trippy, outline, present, past, and future, crashing all onto itself.


    Suddenly, it dashed, moving ever so slowly like it was ten frames per second in real life. And like a laggy piece of shit, one second it was in front of him, the next, it teleported behind, slipping right through his legs. Cheating bastard.


    The purrloins’ victims all share key attributes. One, they are usually women. Two, they are usually screamy and emotional. Three, it will basically target anyone weak-looking with a scratch if only to safely create a diversion. These characteristics are consistent during its thevery over the past year.


    “You’re not getting away,” he proclaimed, sprinting at full force towards the quickly bounding feline, his knees raised so much higher than normal, yet it was a vain attempt. The purrloin, having made a clean break, was back on four legs again, practically flying away from him before he could even begin to accelerate.


    “I will, uh, definitely catch you. At any moment now,” he said, somewhat out of breath. Even if he would never catch it in a million years, it was important to make the purrloin feel threatened, like there was a massive threat hurtling towards it, full of muscle mass and adrenaline.


    He chucked his Pokeball towards a sidepath again, trying to keep the Purrloin on course. Rocky appeared again, stoic as a stone wall. On the other side, a pidove subtly fluttered its way to block the other alternative routes as well. Yet the Purrloin didn’t seem to be interested in detours, simply just wanting to dash down the wide alleyway as quickly as possible. Which was perfect for their purposes…


    Around the corner, came an unsuspecting, innocent-looking, squirmish little girl who looked and acted like a little wuss, reminding him of the girls he used to play with back at school, who at the sight of the rushing purrloin flinched back and squealed, crossing her arms and legs as if that would somehow protect her from the pest. The purrloin pounced at its prey.


    Look, the most vital piece of this puzzle will be… your caterpie. That’s our ace-in-our-hole. Yes, your precious. little caterpie. She sighed. Anyways, Pidove will carry Caterpie''s Pokeball as we split up to search for Purrloin. Whoever makes first contact with Purrloin will just try to stall as long as possible and makes sure that purrloin runs straight into the second person, where-


    “Caught ya,” Yuewen said, slowly untangling herself with a grin. Before her, laid strewn a hasty web, its wet string still shimmering in the evening sky, only as wide as around a fifth of the whole alleyway, being present just before Yuewen, nowhere else. And Purrloin had just dove headfirst into the web, its claws having gotten soft from only scratching unsuspecting women. It wasn’t a true street Pokemon. Not really. Its limbs flailed within the web, a sense of confusion must be washing over, as it jerked and tangled, unable to comprehend a world where it tells its body to do one thing and the opposite happens, until you lose individual control of all your limbs all together. He knew the feeling. Add to the fact that Caterpie wasn’t done quite yet, slithering out of a pile of discarded trash, shooting new strings upon the Purrloin’s ankles and wrists, solidifying its doom.


    “It’s my turn now,” she said, taking a few steps back and winding up her body. “This is my Yuewen punch.”


    She galloped forwards and threw an overhand that went from as far back as she could reach with very lanky arms, to a follow through that kept all momentum over her head until it landed square onto the Purrloin’s skull.


    It was O-koed. Knocked out in one hit.


    Yuewen stared at her fists like she was discovering a part of herself that she never knew existed, mouth practically agape. “Am I… Actually secretly super strong?”


    He strolled up to her and knocked her head with an empty Pokeball, doing so several times whilst he had the chance. “I saw you trip halfway through your swinging motion. You just got lucky that it somehow made that punch stronger. A one in a million connection.”


    She stared at him stupidly until she suddenly broke down laughing in that weird, untethered way that she sometimes did when acting like a dumbass. “A one in a lifetime connection, huh? Maybe it just is.”


    Annoying and perplexed, feeling like there was an inside joke he wasn’t getting, he knocked the Pokeball hard on her head so that it split open. “Here. This one’s yours. For getting me my caterpie and everything. Plus, it kinda seems like your vibe.”


    “What do you mean by that?” she said as she caught the Purrloin in the Pokeball.


    “It means that you’re a gorilla. A female gorilla.”


    “Bitch. I am not a female gorilla. I’m more of a meowth. A cute, baby meowth.” She purred softly, holding her two hands up like paws.


    “Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe you are.”


    “Wait, no. That was a joke. A joke. I’m not actually a…”


    “Not a… ?


    “I’m… not a cute, baby meowth.” Her pale cheeks held a nice rosy colour before she covered her face in shame, partially hiding behind the Pokeball he just gave her.


    “Meow,” he purred before dashing away, an angry gorilla chasing after him.


    Hey…  I don’t know what you’ve been through. But it sounds rough. Like some shit that no one should go through. Much less some kid. But that’s how it is sometimes. The evilest shit always happens to the people that deserve it least. That’s what makes it so evil. And guess what? That evil, that bullshit that we go through. That’s what makes heroes. That’s what makes us everything we are.


    If I had to go through everything again, I would still choose this path. Two years too late, with you, traveling for a shitty dream that will probably come and go. I don’t think of failing though. I don’t really think of achieving it either. It’s beyond our reach right now.


    This is the life we choose to live. And I’ll be here for you. For now. And you’ll be here for me. For now. Life is so much more than its peaks. Life is about finding that bullshit at the bottom of the barrel that can sustain you, for just one more day, and everything in between.


    Me and you. And everything that’s in between.