Welcome back to another chapter my deariers
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The humidity had turned the air into a physical weight.
It sat heavy in Alex's lungs, tasting of mold and wet earth.
They had been moving for three hours.
The jungle was unrelenting.
Every step was a negotiation with tangles of vines, slick mud, and the constant, prickly sensation of being watched.
"Rest," Alex wheezed, signaling to a cluster of grey rocks beneath the canopy of a massive fern.
The Nidoran stopped instantly.
It didn't complain.
It sat on its haunches, its ears swiveling like radar dishes, scanning the perimeter.
It was tired, Alex could see the tremor in its legs but its paranoia was stronger than its exhaustion.
Alex slid down against the cold stone, wincing as his makeshift bandage dug into his bruised ribs.
He felt lightheaded.
The adrenaline from the Rattata kill had faded, leaving behind a hollow hunger and a throbbing headache.
He closed his eyes.
He needed to understand this world.
Not the wiki version or the anime version he knew from Earth, but the visceral reality of this body.
He let his mind drift, reaching into the dark corners of the brain that didn't belong to him.
Accessing Memory File: Alex Hales (Original)
The images didn't come like a movie.
They came like sensory overload.
Smell of Burning plastic and sewage,
The scent of District 8 of viridian city.
The constant coughing of his mother.
The roar of police hovercars flying overhead, patrolling the Citizen Zones, never landing in the slums.
He saw a memory of himself...skinny, twelve years old standing outside a glass barrier.
On the other side was a Pokémon Center.
It was gleaming white, clean, air-conditioned.
Inside, he saw a girl his age holding a bruised Bulbasaur.
A Nurse Joy was smiling, healing it with a machine that hummed with pink light.
The original Alex had banged on the glass, begging.
His mother was sick.
She didn't have a Pokémon, she had pneumonia.
But the Chansey at the door had just looked at him with sad eyes and pointed to the sign: CITIZENS ONLY.
He remembered the day she died.
It wasn't dramatic.
She just stopped breathing because they couldn't afford a 200-poké-dollar antibiotic.
He remembered the rage.
It wasn't the hot, fiery rage of an anime protagonist.
It was a cold, hardening cement in his gut.
Then, the recruitment poster.
TEAM ROCKET: OPPORTUNITY INITIATIVE.
"Does the League ignore you?
Do you want power?
Do you want to Matter?"
It was a trap.
Everyone knew it was a trap.
But it was the only ladder that reached the bottom of the pit.
Alex opened his eyes, gasping as if he had been underwater.
The headache pulsed behind his eyes.
"So that's it," he whispered, wiping sweat from his mask.
He wasn't just fighting for survival.
He was fighting a class war.
The League wasn't the benevolent government of the anime; it was an exclusionary regime.
If you weren't a Citizen, you were livestock. And Team Rocket, for all its evil, was the only organization that weaponized the livestock.
"No wonder you signed up," Alex muttered to the ghost of the boy whose body he was wearing.
"You wanted to burn it all down
You poor child, no one should go through what you had to, rest in piece my friend."
The Nidoran made a low, clicking sound in its throat.
Alex looked up.
The Pokémon was staring at a patch of tall grass about ten meters away.
The purple spikes on its back were bristling.
"Target?" Alex whispered.
The Nidoran nodded once.
Alex pushed himself up, the memories of District 8 fading into the background.
He pulled the knife.
"Show me."
He crept forward, peering through the foliage.
It was an Oddish.
It was walking,waddling, really through the underbrush.
Its blue body was round and shiny, and the leaves on its head were vibrant green.
[ Pokémon: Oddish ]
[ Level: 4 ]
[ Aptitude: Green (Light) ]
[ Status: Grazing ]
"Grass/Poison," Alex analyzed.
"It has absorb,Acid and Maybe Stun Spore."
He looked at the Nidoran.
"It's slow. But if it releases powder, we're in trouble.
We don't have Antidotes or Paralyze Heals."
The Nidoran scraped its claws against the dirt.
It wanted to go.
"Flank it," Alex commanded softly.
"Don't charge straight in.
Hit it from the side.
Knock it over so it can't aim the leaves."
The Nidoran moved.
It was learning.
It didn't rush in a straight line this time.
It used the cover of the ferns, circling wide. The Hustle ability made it twitchy, but it was controlling the urge to sprint.
The Oddish paused, sensing something.
It turned, its beady red eyes widening.
Now.
The Nidoran burst from the cover.
"Peck!" Alex ordered.
The Nidoran leaped, its horn glowing.
But instead of aiming for the body, it aimed low.
It slammed into the Oddish, knocking the round Pokémon onto its back.
The Oddish squealed, its legs flailing in the air.
It tried to release a cloud of purple powder, Poison Powder , but the angle was wrong. The powder drifted harmlessly into the dirt.
The Nidoran didn't hesitate.
It struck again and again.
The violence was quick.
Efficient.
[ Enemy Defeated]
[ XP Gained ]
The Nidoran panted, standing over the defeated plant.
It looked back at Alex, expecting praise.
"Good," Alex said, stepping out of the bushes.
"Clean kill."
He knelt down.
This was the part he hated, but the memories of District 8 made it easier.
He wasn't butchering a cute creature; he was harvesting survival.
He carefully cut the leaves from the Oddish's head.
They were thick, waxy, and smelled of potent herbs.
Oddish Leaves.
Used for making basic potions and herbal teas, Valuable.
He wrapped them in a piece of cloth and shoved them into his pocket next to the Rattata tail.
"That's enough for now," Alex said, checking his watch.
[ Time: 04:15 PM ]
The sun was starting to dip.
In the jungle, twilight meant death.
The nocturnal predators...Zubats, Spinaraks, Gastlys would be waking up soon.
"We need to get to the Outpost," Alex said. "We need to see what this trash is worth."
They moved north, following the digital compass on the watch.
The terrain grew rockier, the vegetation thinning out as they approached the designated "Safe Zone."
An hour later, they saw it.
It wasn't a town.
It was a bunker.
A slab of grey concrete jutted out of the side of a cliff, surrounded by heavy repeating turrets and floodlights.
There was no door, just a heavy steel shutter and a reinforced glass window.
A camera swiveled to track them as they approached.
Alex felt his heart rate spike.
He adjusted his mask.
"Stay close," he told the Nidoran.
"Don't attack unless I say so."
He walked up to the window.
There were other recruits hanging around...some nursing injuries, others counting points on their watches.
They all wore masks or hoods.
No one spoke.
The atmosphere was one of mutual distrust.
Alex stepped up to the glass.
Behind it sat a bored-looking grunt in a full tactical uniform, reading a magazine.
The grunt didn't look up. "ID."
Alex held up his wrist.
The scanner beeped.
[ ID: 4491 (Ares) ]
"What do you want, 4491?" the grunt asked, finally glancing at him.
His eyes flicked to the Nidoran, then dismissed it.
"Exchange," Alex said, his voice flat.
He reached into his pockets and pulled out his day's haul.
One Rattata tail.
Four Oddish leaves.
He also placed the empty Pokéball he had taken from the dead boy on the counter tray.
The grunt looked at the pile of gore and leaves with disdain.
He pressed a button, and the tray rotated into the bunker.
"Rattata tail, Common 2 Points," the grunt droned.
"Oddish leaves, Fresh 4 Points total."
"Used Pokéball.
Bio-locked to user 3902.
We can scrub it, but I'm charging a fee.
Net value: 20 Points."
Alex's hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"26 points?" he asked. "That's it?"
"Take it or leave it," the grunt said, bored. "You want to haggle?
Go to a market in Saffron.
Oh wait, you can't."
The reality of the economy hit Alex harder than the kick to his ribs.
A human life, the boy he had killed netted him 20 points for the ball.
The effort of hunting all afternoon netted him 6 points.
A single Potion cost 50 Points.
He was starving.
He was injured.
And he was broke.
"I'll take the points," Alex said.
Ding
[ Current Balance: 126 Points ]
"I need to buy," Alex said quickly.
"Menu's on the screen," the grunt gestured.
Alex scanned the list.
* Potion: 50 pts
* Antidote: 50 pts
* Pokéball: 200 pts
* Rations (1 Day): 5 pts
* Clean Bandages: 10 pts
* Fresh Water: 2 pts
He did the mental math.
He needed to heal his wrist and ribs, but he couldn't afford the Potion.
He needed to feed the Nidoran to keep its loyalty.
He needed to eat to keep his strength.
"Give me five days of rations," Alex said. "Two bottles of water.
And the bandages."
Total: 39 Points.
"Transaction complete," the grunt said.
The tray rotated back out, carrying grey bricks of food, plastic bottles, and a roll of white gauze.
Alex grabbed the items and shoved them into his inventory quickly, paranoid that the other recruits lurking nearby might try something.
He turned to leave.
"Hey," the grunt called out.
Alex stopped, hand drifting to his knife.
"That Nidoran," the grunt said, looking through the glass.
"It's a runt.
But it's got a nasty look in its eye.
Keep it fed.
If it gets hungry enough, it'll eat you."
Alex looked down at the Nidoran.
The Pokémon was staring at the grunt with unblinking red eyes, a low growl vibrating in its throat.
"I know," Alex said.
He walked away from the light of the bunker, back into the shadows of the tree line.
They found a small crevice between two boulders about a hundred meters from the Safe Zone.
It wasn't comfortable, but the turrets of the base offered a sphere of protection against the larger predators.
Alex sat down and unwrapped a ration block.
He broke it in half, tossing the larger piece to the Nidoran.
"Eat," Alex whispered.
"I spent good money on that."
The Nidoran ate ravenously.
Alex chewed his portion slowly.
126 minus 39... he had 87 points left.
He was still in the hole.
He looked at the Nidoran.
"We need bigger game," Alex said into the darkness.
"Rattatas and Oddishes aren't going to cut it.
We're starving to death slowly at this rate."
The Nidoran looked up, licking the crumbs from its muzzle.
"Tomorrow," Alex said, his voice hardening, channeling the memories of the boy who had watched his mother die.
"Tomorrow we stop scavenging.
We start hunting properly."
He leaned his head back against the rock. The mask stayed on.
Authors Note:-
Well that's chapter 8
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
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