“So….” I opened up the rather awkward conversation, Robin regarded my hesitation curiously.

“I kind of need a toilet break.” Before she had too much time to ponder dangerous concepts for her fragile head, I added some counter ideas as insurance to dissuade her from thinking about things too much:

“I don’t think it’s okay to barge into other people’s houses to ask to exploit their toilets, not that it seemed like most of these houses had much in the way of ablution facilities. Guess the place is a little on the rural side.” I chuckled nervously.

Robin frowned, “I guess you’re right.”

“So I think I’m going to go take care of business over there in the forest...”

Robin laughed awkwardly, “I’ll wait here for you then.” And she leaned over the fence that bounded the river and seemed to chill out while she watched the water flowing.

I climbed over the white picket fence on the opposite side of the road and entered the forest.

I needed to take a dump, so I wanted to go further in for a myriad of concerns. One, I did not want anybody noticing the smell. Two I did not want anyone stepping in it, not that anyone would probably ever jump the fence in this world, and that actually might be kind of funny now that I think about it. Three, I did not want anyone seeing me, especially not Robin, while I’m busy squatting down.

As I moved deeper into the forest, I noticed something was strange. The leaves covering the floor, were somehow dryer, or perhaps a little more ‘dead’. The grass lost its green luster and thinned out. Even the trees seemed to wither and dry up a bit.

Curios about the surreal change in essence of the scenery, I ventured a little further than I originally intended to. The deeper I went, the more the world seemed to ‘die’ a little. At some point, the hairs on my arms started to stand on end and I felt a deep chill run down my spine.

There was a deep sense of wrongness to this place. Like it shouldn’t be here, it’s very existence was somehow an offense to reality itself, that it had wronged the gods and was tempting their divine ire. Or perhaps it was myself that felt wrong. My very presence or being that was begging to be smite.

I was not supposed to be here.

I could feel it in every cell in my being.

Fuck this! I’m out!

I ran.

I ran back until the haunting feelings left me the fuck alone and the scenery returned mostly to normal.

I checked back the whole time to make sure that nothing had followed me or something. My imagination was running a mile a moment thanks to how deeply unsettled I was feeling.

Once I caught a glimpse of the town, I realised I had veered a little of course. That was dangerous, you could get really lost in the forest like that. And risk running even deeper into whatever the fuck was or was not out there.

I adjusted my course and went back a little deeper into the ‘safe’ part of the forest to make sure I was not visible to anyone and then went about my ‘business’.

I unfortunately did not have any toilet paper, the pokeshops did not seem to sell such ‘luxuries’, so I had to make do with wiping my arse with leaves. A profoundly ineffective and uncomfortable experience.

I had not bothered to dig a hole or anything like that for my excrement, nor did I intend to cover it up, I did not wish to spare the time, I seriously wanted to get the fuck out of this forest ASAP. The steaming pile of dung would have to serve as fertilizer for some passing Bellsprout for all I cared.

Sigh. I needed to seriously take a bath some time.

Robin and myself, continued on our journey once more. The only remaining way to go that didn’t involve hopping fences, I was now even less confident in hopping now, was the bridge that led out of town.

We passed through a row of small bushes on either side that formed the walkway leading towards the bridge. The bushes on the left side were lined by a flower patching containing yellow daisies. The house in front of it belonged to the berry guy if I remembered correctly, but why was he growing daisies? Probably the only flower sprite they had or something.

And of course, Gary came running to ‘meet’ me, his perfect fucking hair didn’t even move an inch while he ran.

“Gary: Yo! Ben!”

“You’re still struggling along back here?”

Yes Gary, unfortunately I can’t teleport around the game and receive pokemon and levels for free from the great gaming void the way you do.

“I’m doing great! I caught a bunch of strong and smart pokemon!”

“Here, let me see what you caught, Ben!”

This guy as usual just whipped out his first pokemon, I don’t even think he noticed Robin standing next to me. She just raised an eyebrow at the commotion, somewhat used to the strange challenges I received by now.

The first pokemon Gary sent out was a level 17 Pidgeotto. Damn garry, you not fuckin around here are you? And he has four pokemon total to throw at me, the rest likely being even higher level.

I brought out my now level 15 Magikarp and decided to see how effective his tackle attack would be, just in case. It was as expected incredibly useless with his non-existent attack stat. In exchange Pidgeotto took away like two thirds of his health with a lucky crit.

I immediately swapped him out for Nidoking. Pidgeotto got a quick attack in but it didn’t do much. He also got another quick attack in before I was able to throw my rock tomb at him. The super effective rock type move took away most of his health. One more rock tomb took him out for good, giving my two ‘learning’ pokemon the XP.

Either Pidgetto didn’t use another quick attack or the speed drop from the first rock tomb took its toll, because he went down without getting another attack off.

Gary then pulled out a level 16 Abra and I of course switched back to my Magikarp. I couldn’t remember if Abra had any decent attacks aside from teleport, but I did remember him being low on defence, so I decided to try my luck, first healing up Magikarp with a potion and seeing what Abra would do.

My hunch was correct. Abra kept trying to teleport, but in a forced trainer battle like this, he could not, it always failed. Magikarp just kept pummeling Abra with tackle until he was out and earned the full XP for the fight, nice.

Gary switched to his level 15 Rattata. Ew! How common of you Gary. I immediately swapped Magikarp out for Nidoking. Rattata lowered his defense with tailwhip.

Of course, Rattata was a normal type, so that meant: Megapunch! Unfortunately it fell just short of killing him and Rattata got my health into the yellow with Quick attack.

I decided to play it safe and use my super health potion to fill Nidoking back up. I didn't want to risk him fainting before the fight was done, I needed these guys to catch up to Bulby and did not want to dilute the valuable XP points any further by bringing Bulby into it.

Filling up cost me another quick attack, but Rattata ended up poisoning himself on Nidokings automated barb defense and went down after one more quick attack.

Next was Gary’s level 18 charmander. I switched out Magikarp and then Nidoking once more and received a very ineffective ember attack. Nidokings defenses were good and his part ground type, even better for this. Charmanders repeated embers would basically do nothing to me. Two Rock tombs later and he was finished.

“Hey! Take it easy! You won already!”

“Hey, guess what? I went to Bill’s and got him to show me his rare pokemon.”

“That added a lot of pages to my pokedex!”

“After all, Bill’s world famous as a pokemanic.”

Oh seriously fuck Bill already! I really don’t care about this dude.

“He invented the pokemon storage system on PC, too.”

“Since you’re using his system, you should go thank him.”

“Well, I better get rolling! Smell ya later!”

With that he turned and ran off, still not even noticing Robin.

I just sighed.

“Who was that?” Robin finally asked now that the commotion had died down.

“That- was a rare breed of foot fungus that goes by the name of Gary. A terrible thing to contract I assure you.“

She just gave me a confused look, so I decided to clarify.

“He’s my self-proclaimed rival, except he’s the only one that sees it that way.”

“Oooooh.” Her mouth formed the round sound, as she looked into the distance with an expression of pity on her face.

Man, sucks to be you Gary.

And speaking of the devil, the overgrown rattata on two legs came running back. “Oh, yeah, right.”

“I feel sorry for you. No, really. You’re always plodding behind me.”

I just shared a look with Robin. What an impressive mental fortitude.

“So here, I’ll give you a little present as a favor.”

I received a fame checker from him.

“A chatty gossip like you… That thing’s perfect.”

“I don’t need it because I don’t give a hoot about others.”

Yes we already know this.

“All right, this time I really am gone. Smell ya!”

Except, this time he froze before running off. “Who’s this?” He asked with a look of suspicion.

Finally! Dear god, how wrapped in his own world is this kid!

I motioned towards Robin with one hand, “This is Robin”

Robin put on a big smile and gave him a little wave.

“She’s my girlfriend.”

Robin froze, hand still mid air and her smile became a little more constrained.

“G- G- G- G- G- G- G- G- Girlfriend!?” Gary was doing some kind of robotic sign language with his hand motions, his vocal cords seem to have failed him entirely. I think I broke him, to be honest.

I glanced over to Robin, to see if I could get a read on her, I wanted to push the joke a little further if I could. She still wasn’t responding, but was now watching me expectantly.

Oh? What a good sport this girl is.

Gary began retreating, fumbling over his own steps. “T- Th- this isn’t over! I’ll find a girlfriend of my own!” And with that, he broke into a full on run for his life.

“Don’t worry Gary, I’m sure you’ll get there someday!” I shouted after him. Although honestly, fat chance that creep ever get’s a girlfriend that isn’t a Jynx.

Once Gary was out of sight, I noticed Robin walking over to me with deliberate steps and an unreadable expression. I instinctively took a few nervous steps back, feeling like I was about to get bitch slapped for using her in my grandstanding. I stopped when I realised that I was backed up against the row of bushes and had nowhere else to run.

Robin leaned in close towards me. She brushed her hair behind her left ear and put on an incredibly charming smile. “So I hear I’m your girlfriend now” She was clearly trying to hide her smugness.

So that’s how it is. Thought I was going to get beaten for misusing her like that, but she's actually amused. The cute ‘oh how i want to look charming for my boyfriend’ act, was just her trying to tease me.

To her I’m a little kid and she must be oh so confident in her pretty teenage looks, ruffling my adolescent feathers for a bit of fun and a little bit of payback.

Of course in reality I’m older than her, but she doesn’t need to know that. Not moving my face away from hers much, I leaned back over the bushes and plucked one of the yellow daisies.

As I reached over, bringing my face even closer to hers and carefully inserted the flower into the hair she had just brushed back for extra cuteness, adding some of my own.

Smiling I whispered to her, “You don‘t seem too opposed to the idea. I mean you’ll get no complaint from me, you are a very pretty girl.”

No matter how difficult, I did not break gaze or distance and was rewarded with the facade of the ‘more experienced girl teasing a young boy’ crumbling completely. Her face turned a bright scarlet red before she immediately turned away and retreated a bit.

I laughed.

Walking past her and towards the bridge, I added, “You should keep the flower, it looks good on you.”

I faintly heard her mumbling under her breath, “Who’s sexually harassing who here exactly?”

I laughed even harder. Who knew she was such a mischievous girl.