Chapter 4 – First Steps
Owen turned out to be younger than I'd expected maybe thirty, nothing about him that made you nervous. He sat down on the wooden chair without asking, flipped open his notebook, and looked at me. The Eevee jumped onto the bed and curled up like it lived there. I sat on the far edge of the mattress and waited.
"So," Owen said. "Mara's report says she found you on Route 201 around eleven last night. No Pokémon, no gear, disoriented." He looked up. "How are you feeling this morning?"
"Better," I said. "Fine."
"Good." He wrote something down. "Can you tell me what happened? How you ended up out there?"
I'd been turning that question over since the knock at dawn. "Not really. One moment I was somewhere I recognized. The next I wasn't. I woke up in the forest with no idea how I got there."
Owen nodded, writing again. Not judging, just filing. "No ID? No Trainer Card?"
"Nothing."
"Family we can contact?"
I looked at the Eevee, still asleep, sides rising and falling. "No. There's no one."
He tapped his pen against the notebook. "Okay. Without ID or a Trainer license you can't stay in Sinnoh long term. Can't work, can't travel between routes without a registered Pokémon, most facilities are off limits." He leaned back. "Straightforward option: Professor Rowan's lab is two minutes from here. He registers new Trainers, issues IDs, gets you into the system. Basic assessment, standard for everyone."
"And if I do that I'm legal?"
"You're legal."
Three seconds of thinking. That was all it took ID, a reason to exist here, something to hand someone if they asked who I was. "Okay. I'll go."
He smiled. "Tell them Owen sent you. They'll know what to do." The Eevee slipped off the bed the moment he stood, padded after him without being asked. Owen paused at the door. "Good luck, Ryan."
Then he was gone. I sat in the quiet room for a moment, then straightened my jacket and left.
Sandgem Town looked completely different in daylight.
Narrow streets, low buildings, shutters thrown open. Clean in the way small towns near water tend to be clean salt air doing half the work. I walked slowly and tried not to look like someone seeing all of this for the first time.
I mostly failed.
A Starly landed right in front of me, pecked at something, and left without acknowledging my existence. Fair enough. A woman walked past with a Luxray at her heels, not even glancing at it, the way you don't glance at your own shadow. Two Bidoof waddled along a garden wall. An old man sat on a bench with a Slowpoke draped across his lap, both of them asleep.
I kept walking.
Then I heard it a sharp crack, something hitting the ground hard. I turned.
Small park just off the street, trees around the edges, dusty clearing in the middle. Two trainers, fifteen meters apart, a Luxio and a Machop between them moving fast. The Luxio had sparks crawling along its fur. The Machop had its feet planted and wasn't moving back.
I stopped.
On a screen I'd seen battles a hundred times. This was different. The trainers called out commands and the Pokémon filled the rest in themselves — adjusting, reading each other, doing things nobody had told them to do. The Machop ducked under a Spark, got its arms around the Luxio, and threw it. The Luxio twisted in the air, landed on its feet, skidded back. Panting. Its trainer said one word. It charged again.
Nobody on the benches reacted. Just a Tuesday morning.
Within a minute the Machop's legs went. It went down slowly, tried once to get up, and then just lay there, chest moving. Its trainer walked over and crouched beside it, said something quiet. The other trainer recalled her Luxio with a nod. That was it.
I turned away and kept going.
The lab was a low building set back from the street, trimmed garden out front, tall grass in neat rows along the walkway. I could see the sign from the corner. I stopped there longer than I needed to.
Inside: an assessment, a registration, an ID with my name on it. The first concrete thing in a day that had otherwise been entirely made of problems I didn't have answers to yet.
The forest last night. Pine needles under my palms. No idea which way anything was.
Home wasn't a direction anymore. I knew that. It had stopped being a direction sometime on a quiet street a few days ago and I hadn't caught up to it yet.
I walked to the door and knocked.