[DM] Chapter 3: The Pokémon Professor (Patreon)

Chapter 3: The Pokémon Professor

The journey from Viridian City to Pallet Town was a little under four hours by foot, and it was only made longer for Danny by the worry that the swarm of Spearow that had harassed Ash and Pikachu in episode one of the original series might take notice of him and Sylveon and take offense. It wasn’t the most rational fear, perhaps, but it swirled in Danny’s chest all the same, and it seemed very reasonable indeed to think that any number of different pokémon could spy them making that journey and decide to pick a fight.

Sylveon wasn’t Pikachu, after all. He had no idea how well she’d been trained by her real trainer, but the one thing he was certain of was that she wouldn’t have a Thunder that could catch the entire flock at once. 

Fortunately, Danny did have something he could distract himself with as he walked; namely, he could puzzle out which continuity he had been dropped into, because that would be kind of important to how things shook out for both him and the world in general.

Probably not the games, he thought, and he felt a bit silly for not realizing it earlier. After all, he’d woken up in the care of a Team Rocket run hospital and was greeted by Giovanni himself, and then Giovanni had gone on to talk about the events of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald in the Hoenn region and his worries that Sinnoh would be a repeat.

That shouldn’t have been possible. “Not unless this is some kind of timeline mash-up,” Danny muttered.

“Vee?” Sylveon asked. Danny shook his head.

“It’s nothing. Just thinking aloud. Don’t worry about it.”

Her gaze lingered on him for a few seconds longer, and then she accepted his answer without further question.

It wasn’t that Giovanni couldn’t be concerned about things happening in Hoenn and Sinnoh and across the world, it was that the timing didn’t work for the games as long as they all happened sequentially instead of concurrently. After all, Giovanni was defeated in Gen 1 — Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow or Fire Red and Leaf Green, depending on when and where you played it — and disbanded Team Rocket after Red beat him in the Viridian gym. 

As far as Danny knew, that happened in Pokémon Origins, too. 

And then, in Gen 2, the remnants of Team Rocket disbanded after that generation’s protagonist beat…whichever executive took over after Giovanni. Danny couldn’t remember a name, only the line about disbanding Team Rocket the way Giovanni had. 

So. Unless this was some kind of twisted timeline mash-up where the events of Gen 1 hadn’t happened yet even though Gen 3 already had and Gen 4 was kicking off, that meant this probably wasn’t the games’ timeline and probably wasn’t the Origins timeline. 

“That means the anime or…Adventures?” Danny wondered, glancing up at the sky as though the answer might be written in the clouds. He huffed a sigh. “I never read Adventures, though.”

Which meant he knew nothing about it, except that the protagonists from the games were also the main characters of the manga. Danny would be flying almost completely blind without any idea what to expect, except that Cyrus and Team Galactic were trying to summon Palkia and Dialga to remake the world…or something like that. Was that still something that happened in the manga?

“Guess I’d better hope it’s the anime,” he concluded grimly.

And if it was, maybe he didn’t have to do anything at all. He could just let Ash Ketchum and his friends go off and do Chosen One stuff to save the world. Danny could sit back from the sidelines and string Giovanni along with the occasional report about Galactic’s movements in Sinnoh, planning all the while how he would get out from under Rocket’s thumb. 

If Domino let him get away with it, at least. He wasn’t sure yet how he was going to slip the leash she would be putting around his neck the instant he showed up in Pallet Town, let alone how to slide out of the noose Giovanni was waiting to tighten. The man just had too many connections and Danny didn’t have the kind of resources to thwart them.

The sky didn’t provide an answer, and neither did the world around him. The road only offered him a straight line to Pallet Town and to the seasoned spy who was waiting there for him. Sylveon, ignorant of his thoughts and even less able to do anything about them than he was, kept walking along as though nothing was wrong.

Another thought brought Danny up short and sent a shiver of dread down his spine.

If this was the anime timeline, how deep into it was he? How long did he have to actually try and do something before it all went to shit? Was this the very beginning, and he now had weeks or months or maybe even the better part of a year to figure things out, or was this the endgame, and Galactic could kick off their plans any day now without Danny being any the wiser?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, not until he stumbled across something that would give him some kind of…landmark he could use to distinguish the events around it.

There wasn’t anything he could do about it right now anyway. The only thing he could do was hope for the best and bank on the idea that whoever or whatever had dragged him into this world hadn’t dragged him in so he could be smushed into a space-time blob less than a month after he arrived.

The road gave him no answers, and neither did the forest. The sun inched across the sky above him, but the trees and the shrubs seemed to keep going on forever without any sign of stopping. The beaten path, at least, remained easily visible and was worn down enough that he wouldn’t get lost as long as he kept following it.

Abruptly, Sylveon tensed beside him and stopped, spreading her legs as her tail raised and she bared her teeth. Danny, sensing something was wrong, stopped, too, and then he took a few steps back so that Sylveon was in front of him far enough that he wouldn’t get caught up in…whatever was about to happen.

The bushes rustled. A moment later, a small, purple-furred thing the size of a chihuahua rushed out onto the dirt road and put itself in front of them, falling into a posture much like Sylveon’s. For an instant, Danny saw the curled tail and the oversized buck teeth and struggled to wrap his mind around what he was seeing, and then it clicked and he realized what it was.

A Rattata.

Immediately, Danny felt silly. Of course. It was one of the most common species out there, and in both the games and the anime, it had shown up on Route 1. 

The Rattata hissed, and Sylveon responded with a threatening growl. Was it expecting a battle? Did it want to be captured? He didn’t have any poké balls on him, so that wasn’t happening. Or was this a territory thing, and it was trying to tell them to leave or face the consequences? With that aggressive posture, it was hard to tell.

Could he convince it to leave and go away or —

No, this was actually good, Danny realized. He could use this as an opportunity to find out how strong Sylveon was in a relatively low stakes battle against a pokémon that was relatively weak. This was the starter zone, after all, the first place trainers went after getting their first pokémon in Pallet Town in both the games and the anime. 

Even if Sylveon turned out to be weaker than he expected, she should still be strong enough to handle a single Rattata.

“Alright,” said Danny. “Looks like he’s not going to let us pass without a fight. Ready for our first pokémon battle together, Sylveon?”

“Vee!” Sylveon answered, and he might have been imagining it, but Danny thought there was eagerness in her voice.

Rattata decided to take the initiative rather than wait for Danny and Sylveon to work out a plan of attack, because its body abruptly began to glow with a pale, white light, and then, just as suddenly, it seemed to teleport back and forth across the road in a zigzagging pattern. Every time, it ate up ground between itself and Sylveon, and Danny had only fractions of a second to realize what it was: Quick Attack.

“Dodge!” 

The word wasn’t even all the way out of his mouth before Sylveon herself was in motion, and she zipped out of the way a bare instant before Rattata barreled through the spot she’d been occupying. Danny leapt back to get out of the way, but Rattata paid him no mind and performed an immediate u-turn. The glow around its body had only just faded before it returned again, and then he zipped back off, zigzagging in a seemingly random pattern — to throw off Sylveon and make her misjudge where it would come from.

Clever, for a wild Pokémon. Did Rattata even learn Quick Attack that easily and that early? Or was this some kind of older, more experienced Rattata? Maybe it had been released by its own trainer, or maybe it had been taught by its parents.

Not important. Battle first.

What moves would a Sylveon know? Obviously, this wasn’t the games, so it was more than four, but Danny wasn’t sure what she would have learned with her previous trainer. Had he taught her any Fairy moves? It was pointless to guess. Better to go with what an Eevee would have known before evolving, and any Eevee worth her salt would have known a couple of basics.

“Sand Attack!”

With expert grace, Sylveon danced out of the path of Rattata’s Quick Attack a second time, and as it turned back around to her, she presented her hind legs and kicked at the ground. Danny’s eyebrows almost touched his hairline when the hard-packed earth dissolved into fine particles like sand and went flying into Rattata’s face.

Rattata recoiled, hissing and shaking its head as it squeezed its eyes closed. It retreated a few steps and blinked blearily, squinting and flinching against the dirt in its eyes, and bared its teeth threateningly. 

“Tackle!” 

Sylveon was in motion immediately; she turned on the balls of her feet and dashed forward, running towards Rattata. At the last few steps, she lowered her head, led with her shoulder, and threw the entire weight of her body at the Pokémon that was about a third her size. She collided with a thud, and Rattata tumbled, rolling several feet until it came to a stop. After a moment, it climbed back to its feet and hissed, glaring through narrowed eyes.

It was probably realizing now how outmatched it was. A normal animal would probably have retreated by now, but Rattata refused and maintained a defensive posture. Was it really expecting him to try and catch it, or was this just a matter of a kind of pride that came with the human-like intellect most pokémon seemed to have?

Either way, it seemed like Rattata wasn’t going to back down, so the only way to get through safely was to knock Rattata out of the fight. Fine. That should be easy enough.

“Tackle again!” Danny ordered. 

Sylveon followed without question; her legs bent, muscles coiled, and then she threw herself towards Rattata a second time. Rattata, who must have realized what was coming, tried to leap to the side and out of the way, but it was too slow. Sylveon’s shoulder slammed into its left flank and caught the hip instead of the chest or shoulder, and Rattata spun off, tumbling again.

It wasn’t as heavy a blow as the last one, but Rattata struggled just as much to push itself back to its feet. Its legs quivered and shook, and although it stood, it looked like it was one stiff breeze away from collapsing. 

Stiff wind. Sylveon was supposed to learn a Fairy move after evolving, although Danny remembered it changing from game to game. In Gen 6 and 7, it was —

“Almost! Finish it off with Fairy Wind, Sylveon!”

For an instant, Danny was a child again as the words left his lips, and Sylveon whipped her ribbon-like feelers around. A gust began to pick up, and flickering streamers of bright, pink light swirled around her as it gained speed and strength. Rattata, unable to move, could only resist being pulled in by the growing vortex.

And then something went catastrophically wrong. Danny wasn’t sure exactly what or why it happened, but between one moment and the next, the swirling wind grew out of control. The streamers of pink energy slipped loose and lashed out — one struck Rattata and sent it flying back into the underbrush from whence it came, others smashed into trees and ripped leaves from their branches, and one came straight for Danny.

There was no time to get out of the way. The only thing he could do was throw his arms up in front of his face to protect himself, right before it hit.

The sensation was…hard to describe. Danny remembered once when he was younger, back in middle school, how a storm had come through near the end of the school day. The winds as he waited for his dad to pick him up had been so strong that it felt like they would have held him up even if he tried to fall over, like a physical force so powerful it could lift him up and sweep him away if he jumped.

Sylveon’s Fairy Wind was like that, only more. The streamer of pink power flowed over and around his limbs like water, but it struck like a hammer blow. There was no resisting it — it pushed him off his feet and carried him backwards, and for a brief moment, he hung in the air, weightless, before his shoulder came down on the ground. Hard.

Danny did his best to roll with the momentum, but the sudden twinge of his wound stole the breath from his lungs, and reflex pulled him into a ball as he gasped for air. He tumbled one more time, banging his knee against the ground, and came to a stop, curled up around the throbbing pain that seemed to pierce straight through him.

For what felt like an eternity, the entirety of Danny’s world narrowed down to the mutinous throb in his chest as he struggled to remind his lungs how to breathe. What happened to Rattata, he didn’t know, and there wasn’t even space to think about it just then.

“Vee! Syl-vee veon!”

“I-I’m…” Danny wheezed. He couldn’t get the words out.

“Veeee!”

A soft, warm, fleshy feeler cradled his head gently, and then a rush of energy hit Danny like a zap of lightning. Soothing heat surged through his body and eventually settled on his wound, on his shoulder, and on the ache that had started to form in a stripe along where that stream of wind had slammed into him. Slowly, the pain began to melt away, and Danny suddenly found it much easier to suck down air. 

It took maybe ten or fifteen seconds before the pain had faded into something barely noticeable, and carefully, Danny unwound himself. He probed gingerly at the spot where that fateful bullet had passed through his chest, and although it protested immediately, it was not anywhere near as bad as it had been. 

As he pulled himself back to his feet, Sylveon scrambled back several steps, hesitant. 

“Thanks,” he said. “That…that helped a lot, actually.”

She didn’t seem to react to that, and Danny wasn’t sure why. When he looked past her and to the swirling pattern she had accidentally carved into the dirt road, he grimaced. “We’re going to have to work on that, it looks like.”

He might as well have kicked her for how hard she flinched away from him.

“I-I mean, at least you got Rattata with it,” he rushed to say. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

Not to her, it wasn’t, or so it seemed. Danny didn’t understand why she was taking it so hard. Sure, she’d hit him with that, too, completely on accident, and maybe that was partly his fault for letting his own excitement get away from him when it would have been safer to stick with the basic moves any Eevee would know, but if her previous trainer had abandoned her before she learned how to properly use Fairy type moves, that was hardly her fault.

It was just an accident. The most violent accident he’d ever had with an animal, including that one time he’d been bitten trying to calm down a hysterical dog — Zeus — when he tried to escape the shelter, but still an accident.

Obviously, she wasn’t thinking of it that way.

Danny sighed and looked back to the site of the battle. Rattata was nowhere to be seen; either it had been knocked out by that Fairy Wind, or it had run away to lick its wounds. 

“Let’s just…keep going towards Pallet Town, okay?” he suggested. Sylveon nodded meekly.

And so they went back to walking. The afternoon sun in the sky above them inched towards the horizon, but they weren’t accosted by another pokémon again after Rattata. Danny noticed several in the trees, watching the two of them, but whether it was his age or the fact he was walking with a Sylveon — technically a final evolution form — they decided not to bother them.

The entire time, Sylveon remained timid and glum. She didn’t speak, she barely looked anywhere except the ground under her feet, and even the billowing feelers that flowed around her drooped to match her mood.

Danny had no idea how to lift it. For whatever reason, she was taking the whole thing really hard, and something told him that an anemic attempt at a joke wouldn’t help the situation much. He might have tried giving her a hug, but she seemed scared of the idea of even touching him again. He might make it worse.

Finally, at the top of another hill, they looked down and found Pallet Town. More like a village than a town, it stretched out through the valley in gentle, rolling slopes and grassy fields. Here and there, buildings jutted up out of the ground as lone monuments to civilization, each of them humble and each of them painted shades of white. The only exception to this was a monolith that stood at the top of another hill, a large thing that looked like a cross between a barn and a factory with a towering windmill looming over it from behind. Oak’s laboratory.

Danny took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned to Sylveon and crouched down so that he was closer to her level. “Hey.”

She winced. 

“Listen,” said Danny, “I know you feel like you screwed up and I know it’s bothering you, and I wish I knew how to make you feel better about it, but I don’t. Cats and dogs and…and hamsters aren’t pokémon, so I can’t just toss a stick around a few times to get your mind off of it. But this —” he gestured down the hill towards the collection of houses and fields — “is Pallet Town. Giovanni’s pet spy Domino is here, and we have to at least pretend we can work together if we want to get out of this. Okay?”

Sylveon gave him a miserable nod. “Vee.”

Danny straightened and held in the sigh that wanted to heave out of his mouth. He nodded, as much to himself as to Sylveon. “Okay. Then let’s get going.”

They began the journey down the dirt road that led to Pallet Town, the afternoon sun warming their backs. The breeze was gentle and just cool enough to keep the heat off, and it brushed over the grass growing in the fields that stretched out from the forest they had just exited. Every step brought with it a strange kind of nostalgia for a life Danny had never lived, a wistful feeling of familiarity for a place he had never been to, except through a television screen or a video game. 

Everything felt more vivid than it had back then. The grass, the leaves on the trees, the packed earth beneath his shoes — the real colors were less vibrant, less saturated than they ever had been when this was all just a show, and yet they were somehow more alive for it. The greens were darker, the browns were grayer, and the soil was not that particular shade of yellow that he had seen when he watched Ash Ketchum walk this very same path, but there was a life to them that could not exist under the auspices of animation budgets and release deadlines. When his shoe scuffed the path beneath him, a small cloud of dust kicked up. When the wind put on a little burst of strength, the leaves in the trees rustled and fluttered in undulating waves.

The houses stood out all the more for it. Pallet Town was small and spread out, far more so than any suburbs or any properly developed town Danny had ever known, but the people seemed all the more dedicated to maintaining their homes. The white picket fences all looked freshly painted. The roofs were done in bright colors — oranges, reds, magentas — instead of the charcoal gray that was more familiar. The sloped slats that made up the siding were clean and clear as though they had been recently washed.

It looked like something that had been printed on a postcard, and yet, as he got closer, the imperfections began to show. The mailboxes that were caked in mud at the bottom. The windows streaked with the remains of the most recent rain. The hedges that had gotten just a little bit wilder and could probably stand to be trimmed soon.

There were even people out and about. Mostly, they seemed middle-aged, or closer to it than Danny was, at least, because their kids had all already gone off to have their adventures out in the world. They stopped only briefly to watch Danny as he went, marking his presence before deciding he wasn’t any of their business.

I’m in Ash Ketchum’s home town, Danny realized, and it hit him like a sledgehammer. His head filled with a floaty, weightless feeling, almost like he was watching a dream. Ten-year-old Danny had wanted so badly to come here and receive a pokémon from Professor Oak. Ten-year-old Danny had played those games and imagined walking this road the other way around, out to Viridian, where his journey awaited. Ten-year-old Danny had never wanted anything more than to cross the entirety of Kanto, catching all of his favorite pokémon along the way, and return to challenge the Elite Four and the champion on the Indigo Plateau.

And now it was real. Now, he was ten years older, and he was walking to Oak’s lab to get himself registered as a pokémon trainer and receive his first pokémon — except he wasn’t. He was here to meet Domino, Giovanni’s most trusted covert operative, and board a ferry that would take him to Sinnoh. He was here to cuff himself to a criminal for the sake of protecting one man’s ambition from an organization that could threaten it, all because the alternative would mean ruining his life.

Abruptly, Danny’s chest went cold and he returned to Earth. The floaty feeling in his head vanished. The smile that had crept up on his face fell. This wasn’t a dream, however much it might have looked like one. This was a nightmare, only worse, because this wasn’t something he could just wake up from in a cold sweat. This was something he had to live through.

Realization crystallized in Danny’s head.

Unless he could get to Professor Oak first. The idea should have come to him sooner — of course, if he wanted to escape Team Rocket, the simplest and quickest answer would be to find Professor Oak and explain as much as he could to the man. Drop a few names, talk about “Sammy’s” trip through time, something that only Oak himself and Ash should know about. That ought to convince him that Danny was at least better informed than he had any right to be, and that might be enough to get his foot in the door and explain the rest.

Danny began picking up his pace. He stopped gawking at the scenery and focused entirely on the observatory in the distance. 

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “New plan. I just have to reach Professor Oak before I run into Domino.”

“Vee?” Sylveon asked.

Danny gave her a quick, tight smile. “We might be able to get out of this whole thing without having to do Team Rocket’s bidding. We just have to talk to Professor Oak. He should be able to help us.”

She didn’t seem entirely convinced, but she nodded and increased her own pace to match his. As the sun drew steadily closer towards the horizon, they cut through the rest of the town, ignoring anyone and anything else around them, and made a beeline towards the lab. Danny wanted to run, but running would just draw attention, and he had no idea where Domino was lurking to report to Giovanni, so the last thing he needed was to cause enough of a fuss with anyone to make himself easier to find.

In the back of his head, Danny had the weird thought that one of the houses he was passing belonged to Ash, where Delia and her Mr. Mime were going about their daily lives as though the world hadn’t just come close to ending and her son hadn’t been involved in stopping it again. That alone was so bizarrely surreal that he might have laughed in different circumstances.

At last, they reached the small stream that cut through the town and the wooden bridge that crossed it, and on the other side, there was the wrought iron gate that served to guard the stairs that led up to Oak’s lab. The gate was open, meaning there was nothing stopping Danny from taking those steps two at a time just so he could reach the top faster, and then, there it was, the front door, the only thing standing between him and the promise of freedom and safety, because if anyone would have the connections to get Giovanni off his back, it would be Professor Oak.

Danny knocked and waited breathlessly. Hope swelled like a balloon in his chest. In just a moment, he would be as close to home free as he could get.

Footsteps approached from the other side, clipped and unhurried on the floor, and then the doorknob jiggled. A smile began to pull at Danny’s mouth, completely unbidden, only to vanish when the door opened and the face that stared back at him wasn’t Professor Oak. It wasn’t even Tracy Sketchit. It was a complete stranger, a man some years older than Danny, with a severe expression, neatly styled dark hair, and a pair of square-framed glasses that sat just slightly low on his nose so that he was forced to look down through them.

“Can I help you?” the stranger asked, voice low and grim.

“I, uh…” The words refused to come out of Danny’s mouth. Everything he’d prepared to say vanished, and his tongue floundered around what to replace it with. “I-I’m here to, um, t-to see Prof…Professor Oak? There’s, um, there’s something I…”

Another set of footsteps approached quickly from down the hallway. “Just a moment!” a more familiar voice called. “I’m here, I’m here!”

A few seconds later, an even older man appeared, hair long gone gray and face lined with wrinkles, but with thick, dark eyebrows. The labcoat, red button-up shirt, and tan slacks were practically iconic. He came to a stop beside the stranger, huffing a little.

“Goodness me,” he said. “I suppose if I needed any further evidence that hiring another assistant was a good idea, you just gave me all of it! You made it to the front door before I could even get up off my chair! Remind me to thank Giovanni for the idea later, Christopher.”

Danny’s heart jumped in his chest. Giovanni had suggested this guy’s hiring? Oh no. No, no.

“Of course, Professor. I’ll schedule it in your day planner,” said the stranger, the so-named Christopher.

Had he even managed to predict —

“So!” said Oak, turning to Danny. “How can I help you, young man?”

“Oh!” Danny stumbled over the words. “I, um, you’re, I mean, I-I’m scheduled to get on the ferry in a few days and…” Danny slid his backpack around and unzipped one of the pockets to fish around for the ticket. Belatedly, he forgot he hadn’t even given his name. “Oh, uh, I’m Danny, by the way, D-Danny Ashcroft —”

Oak’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline and recognition lit up in his eyes. “Oh yes! Of course, Danny, yes, I’ve been expecting you!” 

Danny froze. “You…you have?”

“Of course I have!” Oak said warmly. “Come in, come in, no sense in standing out there the whole time!” To his assistant, he said, “Christopher, could I trouble you to put on another cup of tea? I’m afraid Tracey is running an errand right now, and I need to see to our guest.”

Christopher the assistant gave a short nod, little more than a respectful dip of his head. “Of course, Professor. I’ll see to it shortly.”

He spared Danny another glance with that intense stare of his, and then he turned and went further into the lab, disappearing somewhere around the corner.

Oak shook his head. “Far too serious, that boy,” he said, watching his assistant leave. “I’ve told him several times now… Well, he’ll lighten up someday, I’m sure.” He turned back to Danny. “Come in, Danny, please. Your girlfriend is waiting for you in the lobby.”

Danny made it one step inside and nearly stumbled. “My girlfriend?” Belatedly, he tried to pretend he knew what Oak was talking about and added, “She’s already here?”

“Vee?” said Sylveon as she cast a look up at him, like she couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her.

Oak’s eyes passed onto Sylveon, and his eyebrows jumped briefly again. Later on, Danny would think that he must have wanted to ask so many questions about her right then and there, but chose to hold his tongue out of courtesy.

“Yes,” Oak said, smiling. “She told quite the harrowing tale of your recent accident. An extraordinary string of bad luck to run into a Beedrill out in Viridian Forest, especially without a pokémon of your own for protection, but I suppose that’s balanced out by having the extraordinary luck of being rescued by a Sylveon, of all pokémon. Frankly, something like that could have ended a lot worse for you than it did.”

The last bit came out like a scolding. Danny could do nothing except admit, “It definitely could have,” knowing that they were talking about two entirely different events.

“Well,” Oak’s eyes found Sylveon again for just a second, “as long as you learned something from it. Come, come, mustn’t keep your girlfriend waiting, eh?”

“No, I guess not,” Danny agreed.

An accident with a Beedrill in Viridian Forest? That was supposed to be his cover? Not that it wasn’t realistic and not that it didn’t neatly explain his wound, but what else had she told Oak, and if his cover story had already been decided, why hadn’t anyone told him what it was supposed to be? Was this another test of his ability to maintain the secrecy of his connection to Team Rocket? A test of his ability to adapt under pressure without knowing anything? His ability to gather information without making it obvious?

Oak led the way into the laboratory, which was really more like a house with a lab built on top of it, and Danny asked, a little clumsily, “So, um, what else has she told you about me?”

“Nothing too embarrassing,” Oak assured him. “Just a little bit about how you met when she moved to Viridian a few years ago from Kalos and helped her find her way around the city. She said that you talked about always wanting to go on a Pokémon journey, but your mother’s poor health kept  you home until she passed recently, so now the two of you are ready to go out and see the world together. My condolences, by the way.”

“Ah, thank you,” Danny said automatically, before his mind could think about it. “So, um, she…told you all of that, did she?”

Oak nodded. “She did. Oh, don’t be too hard on her, though. I asked her what brought her to Pallet Town, and, well, she was so excited about going to Sinnoh that I don’t think she realized exactly how much she told me.”

Or she had established her cover so completely with a man who could vouch for her that Danny would come off as petty over an argument or something if he tried to explain exactly who she was and what they were to each other. No wonder Giovanni considered her one of his top agents.

They reached a door, halfway ajar, and Oak pushed it the rest of the way open, announcing, “Dominique, my dear, I’ve brought your boyfriend! It was him at the door a minute ago!”

And there on the couch was Domino, looking almost nothing like Domino, but for the blonde hair and the eyes like violets. She looked up at them, hands cradling a mug of tea, and the smile that broke out on her face was so convincing that Danny almost believed they had been together for years.

“Danny!” she said brightly. “There you are! I thought you might have gotten lost!”

“I, uh, just got into town,” Danny said, unsure of what else to say.

Domino set her mug of tea down, stood, and hurried around the table so that she could rush over and throw herself into his arms. Danny was so surprised that he didn’t know what to do, at first.

“Missed you!” she proclaimed loudly, and then she planted a kiss on each cheek and pulled him in tighter. Into his ear, she growled, “Play along and call me Demi. Don’t forget what’s at stake here, got it?”

Awkwardly, Danny hugged her back, just as much as he could get away with to sell the story, because what else could he do?

Domino gave a sudden, theatrical gasp. “Oh, I didn’t hurt you, did I? Is your wound acting up?”

“It’s…fine,” Danny said. 

Domino smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Good.”

Thankfully, she let go of him, but only so she could bend down and coo at Sylveon. “And this is the heroine of the hour again! You don’t have any idea how thankful I am that you came to his rescue, Sylveon!”

Sylveon, perhaps able to sense what was going on at that moment, backed away, hackles raised, and growled. Domino took it in stride and heaved out a sigh as she stood back up.

“Still feeling possessive, huh?” she said, sounding honestly disappointed. “That’s okay. We’ll work on it later.”

She gave Danny another smile, another smile so convincing that the only tell was the cold glint in her eyes, and then she took one of Danny’s hands and pulled him back towards the couch, where he realized her intentions too late to resist. He had no idea what it looked like from the outside, but she nearly yanked his arm out of its socket forcing him to sit next to her, and a visibly displeased Sylveon stiffly stood next to his other arm.

Oak watched them with only the smallest of furrows to his brow, and then he took a seat on the couch opposite of them. Another mug of tea sat on the table between them within easy reach.

“So,” he said, “I realize it might be a bit insensitive to ask, but a Sylveon is quite the rare pokémon, and I might not get a chance like this for years. Would you mind telling me the circumstances of her evolution?”

Danny blinked. “Oh. Well, um…” He glanced at Sylveon as though she could provide him an answer, but she was still just as stiff and staring straight ahead. “To be honest, I don’t have any idea when or how it happened. I…only met her during the…the accident, so I’ve been assuming her trainer abandoned her.”

Sylveon flinched so hard she jerked into the side of the couch. Danny wasn’t the only one to notice. The furrow in Oak’s brow became deeper.

“You say she was abandoned,” Oak said, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “Not released? Legally, there’s quite a difference.”

Danny could only shrug. He tried not to think about the very pretty — and more importantly, very dangerous — woman sitting next to him with a grip on his hand that she could very easily use to deliver quite a bit of pain if he said the wrong thing.

“We never found her poké ball,” said Danny, “and every other poké ball doesn’t work, so…”

“She’s technically still registered to her former trainer,” Oak concluded, humming.

“The poor girl was so disappointed,” Domino simpered, and Sylveon flinched again. “But no one has reported a missing Sylveon and there’s no way to get a trainer ID number without her poké ball, so no matter how much she wants to, she can’t officially be Danny’s.”

Danny seemed to be the only one to hear the high, keening whine that Sylveon didn’t quite manage to strangle in her throat.

“And the Pokémon Center wasn’t willing to look after her until her trainer could be located?” asked Oak.

“It seemed kinder to bring her along,” said Domino, and she leaned over to give Sylveon another of those smiles. “She stayed outside Danny’s room the entire time he was in the hospital for that Beedrill sting, so it looks like she’s adopted him.”

It was actually kind of impressive how neatly Domino had woven the whole story together, Danny could not help thinking. Everything had been carefully constructed to make the actual evidence fit so that no one could poke holes in it.

“Strange, for a Sylveon,” said Oak, frowning a little. “My grandson had the luck to raise an Umbreon, so I’m quite familiar with the sort of attachment that goes into those particular branches of an Eevee’s evolution. It’s quite incredible that a Sylveon would choose to attach itself to another aside from its beloved trainer…unless, of course, something truly unfortunate happened.”

This time, there was no flinch, but Sylveon’s ribbons twitched so hard they were nearly vibrating. The only way her emotions could have been clearer was if they were literally thrashing about wildly.

Dominion leaned into Danny’s shoulder, and she took the hand she was already holding with both of hers now. Danny tried not to stiffen. “We didn’t see anything like that, but…if those Beedrill were willing to attack Danny, too…”

Oak’s mouth pulled into a grim line. “Yes, well, that is one of the dangers of being a pokémon trainer. One experienced enough to have a Sylveon should probably have known better than to disturb a Beedrill nest…unless, of course, they’ve been expanding their territory. I’m sure Giovanni is looking into the matter quite thoroughly.”

Danny grimaced. Thoroughly enough to know this is all bullshit and Domino’s tongue should be browner than a pile of Tauros —

“Oh,” said Oak suddenly. “If you don’t have Sylveon’s poké ball, that would technically mean she can’t be your starter pokémon, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not a problem, is it?” Domino asked, very convincingly worried.

Oak shook his head. “Not really, no. It’s something of a tradition for a certain cabal of new trainers to receive their starter pokémon here from me, but the vast majority of trainers are simply children who befriended a wild pokémon and registered it as their starter when they received their certification or those who took the family companion along with them when they left to begin their journey. There’s no rule that says you have to have an officially recognized breed of starter at the very moment you set out, but, well, one of my prospective trainers this year backed out at the last minute and I happen to have an extra left over.”

Oak took a sip of his tea. “Ordinarily,” he said, “I would simply keep it here until next year, when the next cabal of trainers comes for their own starters, but in the interest of seeing the last of this year’s cohort find a good home… If you’re interested, Danny, I’m perfectly willing to see if he would like to go with you.”

Despite himself, despite the circumstances, Danny’s heart did a happy little leap inside of his chest. “Are…you sure about that?” he asked. “This… This isn’t exactly the normal kind of situation.”

Some part of him knew he should have said no immediately. He and Sylveon were already caught up in all of this with no way out, not yet, and adding another pokémon to the mix would just pull someone else into the snare Team Rocket had around his neck. But some part of him wanted the pokémon journey he wasn’t able to have as a kid, back when this was all pixels on a screen, and the essential start of that journey needed a starter pokémon. There was nothing more classic to it than receiving one from Professor Oak.

Oak smiled, and with a grunt, levered himself back out of his seat. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Just as he reached the door, it swung open to reveal the grim figure of Christopher carrying a tray with a teapot and a steaming mug of tea. Oak stepped aside to let him pass, said, “Thank you, Christopher. Leave the tray, would you? That tea is excellent and I think I’ll have another cup of it.”

“Of course, sir,” said Christopher, and as Oak left to go retrieve the starter he was planning to give to Danny, Christopher came over to the table, set the steaming mug in front of Danny, and then, with an intense, silent stare that seemed to see straight into Danny’s soul, he set the tray with its teapot down, too. He lingered for a moment longer, adjusted his glasses with one finger, and then left without another word.

Only once they were alone again did Domino break character. “Not bad,” she said, and all warmth was gone from her tone. “Your acting is a little flat and awkward and Sylveon over there is trying her hardest to give us away, but overall, I don’t think he suspects anything.”

“Vee,” Sylveon bit out. It had the same venom as “fuck you.”

“Excuse me for not knowing my cover story until Professor Oak literally came to the door,” Danny said lowly.

She huffed something that might one day have grown up into a snort. “At least you knew better than to try and tell him what was really going on. If you tried to blow my cover, I had a sob story lined up about how abusive and controlling you were and how you wouldn’t accept me wanting to break things off. How I thought you might have changed after getting stung by that Beedrill, but you’re just as much of an asshole as you were after your mom took a turn for the worse.”

Danny’s heart skipped a beat. The worst part was, he could picture it with ease, because he’d already figured something like that was in play, and Domino was a good enough actress that she could probably pull it off convincingly enough to get Oak on her side. Giovanni would disavow him in an instant and make good on his threats, and then Danny would be up shit creek without even the courtesy of a paddle.

“Yeah,” Danny said lamely. It was all he could come up with.

Sylveon hissed at her, and for a second, she reminded Danny of… But no. Not even the same world, let alone the same species.

The instant the sound of approaching footsteps echoed from outside the door, Domino attached herself to Danny again, smiling like the supportive girlfriend she wasn’t. Danny had to suppress a full-body flinch and smooth his expression out so they looked natural, and he wasn’t sure how successful he was. Successful enough, apparently, that when the door opened and Oak stepped back into the room, he saw them both, smiled, then held up a single, ordinary poké ball.

“Here he is,” he announced. “Are you ready to meet him, Danny?”

Danny nodded. If it would get him away from Domino, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have offered his right arm. “Sure.”

Oak stepped to the side and gestured to the open floor, and Danny got up, disentangled himself from Domino — whose grip lingered just long enough to sell the illusion — and went over to that spot. The fear lingering in his chest didn’t fade, but the excitement he couldn’t help that was rising alongside it started to smother it. His heart thudded in his chest. Which of them would it be? Squirtle? Bulbasaur? Or had Oak gotten another rarity, another unusual pokémon, like Ash’s Pikachu or Gary’s Eevee?

“Don’t be surprised if he’s a little skittish,” said Oak. “I’ve done my best to reassure him that he wasn’t left behind through any fault of his own, but his species is known to be a bit emotionally volatile, especially in the later evolutionary forms.”

Volatile? Like Gible or Deino? 

“I understand,” said Danny, thinking of the dogs and cats at the shelter who were so mistrustful that they wouldn’t even eat with someone else in the room.

“All right, then.” Oak gently tossed the poké ball up into the air. “Come on out and say hello!”

Midair, the poké ball snapped open with its characteristic pop and disgorged a mass of bright, white light. That light fell immediately to the ground and began resolving itself into a shape, vaguely humanoid, but too small to reach higher than Danny’s waist. A tail stretched out behind it, a pair of short arms jutted out of the main body, and the top morphed into a rounded, slightly reptilian head.

The light faded into scaly orange skin, a cream-colored belly, clawed hands and feet. A flickering orange flame burned on the tip of the tail. A Charmander.

“Char!” he introduced himself.

“Charmander, this is Danny,” Oak said. “Danny, this is Charmander.”

Charmander turned back to Oak. “Charmander?”

Oak smiled down at him. “Yes, this is the trainer I told you about.”

Charmander turned back to Danny again, eyes narrowing a little and shoulders tensing. “Char…” he said uncertainly.

It felt almost like a dream, looking at the little guy. Squirtle and Bulbasaur were more competitive, especially in the earlier sections of the Kanto games, but Charmander had always had a special place in Danny’s heart. What little boy would say no to a pet dragon?

And now that very same creature was staring at Danny nervously, trying to get his measure and trying to decide how trustworthy Danny was. Charmander wasn’t a cat or a dog. He wasn’t a normal animal at all. Danny knelt down anyway and put himself closer to Charmander’s level, the same way he had with Sylveon, because some things had to be universal, right? He gave Charmander a gentle smile, and in a soft voice, said, “Hey. I know this isn’t the way things normally go, but I’m about to start my pokémon journey, and I could use a friend, one who doesn’t mind learning with me as we go. What do you say, Charmander? Think that can be you?”

“Char…”

Charmander looked back to Oak again.

“It’s your choice, Charmander,” Oak told him gently. “If you’d prefer to wait for a younger trainer, then you can stay here until next year. You don’t have to go with Danny just because he’s here now and needs a starter pokémon.”

“Char…” Charmander looked down to the floor for a moment, like he was really thinking the decision through, and then, his head swung back up, expression firm and decided, and he took a step closer to Danny and stuck out one stubby arm. “Char! Charmander!”

Careful of the tiny paw and claws, Danny took it with his own hand. “Glad to have you.”

“Excellent!” said Oak, and he tossed Charmander’s poké ball over to Danny, who caught it more on reflex than anything else. A thin, high-pitched sound came from somewhere nearby, like a teakettle threatening to boil over, but Oak didn’t seem to hear it at all. “I’ll draw up all the paperwork and have everything arranged in time for you to board the ferry. You are, officially, Charmander’s trainer now, Danny. I expect you to take good care of him.”

The poké ball suddenly felt like a lead weight in Danny’s hand. He clutched it tighter. “Of course.”

This wasn’t going to be anything like the games at all, was it? Poffins and food and supplements weren’t just gameplay mechanics anymore to raise Charmander’s stats, they were real concerns about the physical needs of a living creature. Creatures, because the same thing was something he would have to worry about with Sylveon and any other pokémon he caught, too, wasn’t it? He was going to have to figure out how to feed all of them and get them all exercise on the road in the middle of Sinnoh with no civilization in sight for miles.

“Oh dear,” Oak said suddenly, and when Danny followed his gaze, he saw the lashing ribbons that were swirling about wildly over the arm of the couch where Domino was sitting. “It seems she’s a lot more attached to you than I expected, Danny. I wouldn’t have thought a Sylveon of all pokémon would choose another trainer so quickly after being abandoned, but it seems I was quite wrong about that.”

That teakettle sound, Danny realized. Oh. He’d gotten so caught up in living the dream of being a pokémon trainer that he’d completely forgotten to even think about how Sylveon would feel about having another one on the team with him, taking “her” spot as his starter. A flash of irritation chased it. Her spot, like it belonged to her by dint of the fact that she’d claimed it without thinking about how anyone else might feel about it. Her spot, because she looked at Danny and saw something he wasn’t, and she just kept putting him into the shape that belonged to someone else, no matter how he tried to tell her he couldn’t fit it.

Oak sighed. “Well, I don’t envy you, Danny. Pokémon that evolve through emotional components with their trainers tend to be the most difficult to handle. I’m afraid you have your work cut out for you.”

“I’m sure he can handle it, Professor,” Domino said sweetly. “Danny’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for.”

What a backhanded compliment. Bitch.

“With you there to lend him a hand, I’m sure he will,” said Oak. “Now. Much as I’d like to ask more questions about Sylveon, I’m sure you have better things to do than getting pestered by an old man with too much curiosity, so unless you have something else you’d like to ask me about…”

A thought suddenly occurred to Danny, and his mouth pulled into a tight grimace. “Just, um, one other thing, Professor?”

“Yes?” Oak said.

“The ferry doesn’t leave for another three days, right?” Danny asked. “So, um, I…didn’t see any inns or anything like that on my way over. Where do…Demi and me stay until then?”

Oak blinked, nonplussed. “Ah. Yes, that is a bit of a problem, isn’t it?” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I suppose there’s enough room here at the lab, if you don’t mind staying here for a few days.” A smile broke out on his face. “In fact, yes, that’s a wonderful idea! Plenty of time for you to learn about the Charmander line’s specific dietary and activity needs! Oh, why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

“You really don’t mind if we stay, Professor?” Domino asked with what sounded like honest concern.

Oak’s smile just got broader. “Not at all, not at all! The more the merrier!”

Danny did his best to keep his own smile fixed. “That’s great!”

Now he just had to make sure Domino didn’t run off with any of the rare pokémon being kept here by trainers like Ash and Gary. Somehow, he knew, she would manage to blame it on him if she got caught.

What's this? A DM update at the same time as a Hereafter chapter? And it's almost 9000 words long? Will wonders never cease?

Danny is still trying to get his bearings, and Sylveon isn't making it much easier on him, and Domino is actually incredibly competent at her job, who would have thought?

Danny and Sylveon also have a long ways to go before they reach an understanding, which isn't helped by the fact that one of them literally can't speak a language the other understands, but they'll get there. Eventually. Don't worry too much, though. I said things will start to go right for Danny soon-ish, and next chapter is the ferry ride, where Domino and Giovanni's plans hit a little bit of a snag...