“I don’t May, Why does it matter who I think is the strongest” Heath blurted in annoyance.

“Sure, if I didn’t have amnesia this discussion would be fun but I am busy” Heath looked away asMay quickly became quiet, forgetting who she was talking to while Vanessa looked Crestfallen at his words. She looked sullen as she looked at May who face had the hint of regret, telling her that his words were wrong.

“Heath, she forgot. You know we’re just trying to get to know you.” Vanessa shyly offered. Heath saw that she looked like she was stepping on nails with the situation and felt a pang of regret out of the outburst.

‘I should just lie and base it on the information I do have’

“May, ugh I know your trying to be nice but your pushiness for to answer those types are hard when the memory bank isn’t intact completely. My memory is slowly coming back for somethings and all I kind of remember from my memory is that Volkner and Raiden are extremely strong for gym leaders. If I’m right they would be at the strength of at least Elite four members.” Heath mumbled. Both of the girl’s mood lifted slightly causing the conversation to continue.

“Why those two?” Both of the girls asked rhetorically.

“Well from some information I found online. There was Volkner, has enough strength to rival an Elite four Member Flint and Raiden is as strong as the champion in the Galar Region.” Heath explained.

The three of them remained quiet for some time after or more accurate Vanessa and May had girl talk while Heath sat there pretending to not be awkward while on his PokéGear. He found out his claims weren’t wrong and in fact Volkner and Raiden were in many people’s top 10 hardest gyms to challenged followed by people like Nessa, Blaine and the Genesis member Lt. Surge. Heath also found there a shit ton of gym leaders he wasn’t aware of and many if not a good percentage of them had completely different schemes like, instead of being based on types, some of them just had philosophies and gimmicks. Heath then remembered the mission he wanted to do the next day and remembered that he could order things and it would be an instant delivery with shipping technology similar to SSD’s.

Heath decided his presence wasn’t mandatory anymore, decided to sneak out of their presence without them knowing, quickly going upstairs and closed the door.

“Finally,” Heath sighed. His stomach start growling due to his hunger but not wanting to go back down there he just decided to drink some water and called it a day. Sitting on a chair in his room, he took out the paper from earlier where he wrote down all of things he wanted to take when Heath suddenly gets a call. He sees the caller ID and immediately thinks

“What does the professor want?” Heath commented out loud before answering the call.

“Hello?”

“Yeah Heath, what are you doing for the next couple of days?” Birch asked. Heath thought about his Beedrill mission before responding.

“I’m probably going on a mission that would leave me in the middle of nowhere in the forest near Oldale” Heath replied.

“Great! Cause I have news. I need someone to pick up someone and I feel like you are the perfect candidate for the job. You see Norman, the new and incoming gym leader of Petal burg is visiting but being new to Hoenn, he was wondering I could see him a guide of sort. He’ll pay you for your troubles and you don’t have to escort him back.” Birch explained.

“Why is he visiting Little Root?”

‘I know the answer but I need to not seem hasty in agreeing’ Heath thought.

“Cause that’s where his family is going to reside for his inauguration as Gym Leader. You must’ve heard that Brendan, his son is going to be starting his journey soon. Norman decided that the both of them wanted a place where it isn’t full of reporters, so they chose the Coziest part of Hoenn.”

“But I thought-”

“I don’t have much time to explain as I have to plan for another visitor coming soon. He will expect you there within a week. Should I tell him that you agreed?” Birch asked hurriedly.

“I don’t have much of a choice now do I?” Heath chided.

“Nope” Birch answered, and Heath heard a clicked coming from his PokéGear. The call was cut and suddenly ended, causing Heath to lay down on Piplup on the bed and sighing as he laid on the penguin who refused to move out of the way. Piplup squirmed his way out of under his trainer before relaxing himself. A bunch of notifications from his PokéGear was heard and when Heath checked his eyes widened.

[Escort Quest: Pave the Way

Quest Details: Norman, one of the new Gym Leaders of this tropical regions wants to be taken to Little Root. Bring Him here Safely.

Reward: 1 Random Technical Machine, 80,000K Pokédollars]

‘A TM, at least I get something out of this and the money would be nice too’ Heath grumbled like a child, before contemplating about taking a nap but not wanting to waste most of the day and be unproductive. He decided to look at pokémon he would potentially want on his team while laying down.

[Meanwhile]

“I have done it”

“WHO DARES CHALLENGE ME”

A Beedrill is looking up at the sky valiantly as it buzzes around a mound of cold dead carcasses. They were made up of Beedrill, Kakuna, and Weedle. From all ages and in a variety of conditions. The Pokémon around him looked at him with respect but also a hint of fear. None of them imposed on his will and most were too in shock to actually do anything but instinctually fly. All of the fear-stricken Pokémon looked up at what seemed to be a god. The way it’s Pincers swayed on its side and the amount of exposed organs and dried fluids detailing the amount of time that had passed. The scene for most would be out of a terrifying nightmare, even for Beedrill it was a little scary. The Beedrill laid its eyes on a pair of Beedrill who were especially quiet.

“Look at what you left in the forest to be eaten and wasted on pride. No help, No reason besides just being weak and fragile. But when I look at you now, the only thing I see is the lack of integrity.” The Beedrill buzzed. And then it flapped it’s wings slightly harder floating slightly higher than it was before. “I am now the rightful Monarch of this nest. Anyone who imposes me may do so now or they will be kill immediately when they decide to at another point. I have killed the previous Monarch’s family. So now the only choice you have in getting stronger is struggling.” The new Beedrill announced.

There was going to be some changes to their territory.

[Back to the daily scheduled programming]

‘I guess I will have to do the Beedrill mission later.’ Heath thought as he banged his fist on his desk.

‘Who would’ve thought that the mission would be reevaluated to a B class mission? I don’t even know if there reside any Intermediate Class trainers anywhere around Little Root or Oldale so how would any do this?’ Heath sighed.

Unlike what Heath initially thought what would happen, a couple of days has passed since and as he was packing for the short journey and adventure to Oldale. He was going to go earlier but before he exited his apartment, a chime from his PokéGear rung out and the screen lit causing a notification to appear. Heath checked it said the mission was no longer available to do safely. Heath had refused to believe the notification and checked why and it turned out the Beedrill have started to invade other Native and Ancient pokémon territories and they have been successful in most of their raid attempts. Heath was confused to the sudden development but having little choice, he decided to just head to Oldale town.

“Guts let’s go” Heath barked slightly pissed off and Guts, the Farfetch’d slowly stood up from its sitting position.

‘While it’s a good thing he uses Focus Energy as training every day, but it’s annoying that he acts like a monk most of the time’ Heath sighed. He patted Piplup who was already on his head asleep and continued to walk downstairs directly leading outside of the lab. He didn’t want to disturb Birch who was working on something top secret. Heath looked around his surroundings and when he saw the sunrise he smiled.

‘This world is something else’ Heath thought. With Guts in his pokéballs and Piplup on his head Heath decided to go and start his Journey to Oldale town. He walked through the town quickly without talking to anymore and instead of going into the forest path like he usually did. Heath strolled through the already beaten path that looked similar to that of the gen 3 games. Heath never took this route before, but he liked the atmosphere the forest gave and all of the serenity, warmness, and tranquility he extracted from it.

Heath would go and peacefully travel for the forest until midday where he would take a break to do a variety of things but mostly focus on resting. Piplup, Guts and himself would eat lunch to their heart’s content and there afterwards Heath would continue his trek through the forest with Piplup until the sun slowly faded and the lightly that adorned his periphery faded. The path started to merge with the rest of the quickly treacherously looking forest, which looked straight out of a nightmare role playing game. Heath would find a clearing to stay safe and would allow him to rest and got bed. He would quickly try to make a fire and after a couple of attempts he succeeded and all of them sat around the fire absorbing its warmth before sleeping.

This continued for several days and during this time Heath would battle the occasional pokémon and find a bunch of items like berries but also left over pokéballs that were empty from trainers failed attempts. Even with the growing surplus of pokéballs Heath chose to not catch any pokémon in order to reserve his Pokémon’s food supply but with running into so many pokémon he had to battle them when they would not reason with him. Leading to Guts leveling up from this as Heath wanted to increase his level the most out of the two of them.

Besides battling, walking, sleeping, eating, and reserving energy nothing unusual would happen in leading days on the road. Quickly, the serene forest surrounding him in all directions soon thinned as dirt had soon turned into gravel, which then turned into cobblestone. Heath looked up slowly and saw tall buildings sparely in the background with random sized buildings that decorated in the fore and middle ground. Concrete was the most common material he saw while bricks taking over some of the visibly old building. This is when he saw a lady in a blue dress shirt and skirt with a hat leaning on a pole looking at her PokéGear. He decided to walk over to her as he did, Heath thought

‘What the hell am I looking at. It’s like I’m back in New York. Am I- is this- Oldale town?’ Heath contemplated as he walked into the entrance of the city and looked around. He saw slight peeks of Oldale and one thing resounded in Heath’s mind. Oldale was nothing like the games, it was a fully integrated city. Heath soon spotted an Officer and going up to her, he asked.

“Officer? Are you busy-y??”

“Yes while it may not look it and it may not seem busy but I’m currently up to something important.” The officer explains but Heath isn’t dissuaded and continues.

“Is this Oldale Town?”

The lady in blue turned around and Heath couldn’t help but recognize her as Officer Jenny.

‘So I guess it is true?’ Heath thinks as he stares as the Jenny. He noted that she was in the usual outfit but her face was a lot more serious than Heath would have suspected.

“Look kid, I’m not on duty to play games, yes the current place we’re at is Oldale Town soon to be Oldale City but you didn’t hear that from me. Now if you have any more questions, go back to where you came from or go to one of the Pokémon Centers around the city.” Officer Jenny quickly explained before getting on her Motorcycle and riding off but before she got out ear shot, Heath heard.

“Stop being so distracted kid, I know I’m cute. Don’t let me see around again” The officer warned with her voice fading away. Heath was completely stunned.

“All I did was ask her a couple of questions and I’m already on her bad side. She’s not even that cute. How troublesome…” Heath grumbled before strolling inside of the city deciding to not stand around looking like a weirdo. People around him looked at him a little weird for talking to himself but Heath ignored them and tried to find the closest Pokémon Center like Jenny advise. Not being confident in the direction he was headed; Heath quickly asked some people who didn’t look too busy for directions and they seemed happy enough to give it to him.

‘With directions and a lot of things to do now that I’m in a city. I should quickly find where we are going to be staying for the night.’

Heath, now walking in the right direction soon found himself in front of the Pokémon Center and the first thing Heath spotted was the iconic roof that was red, that was also sporting a pokéball in the center the building. Below that everything looked to be normal and not having any reason to stop their Heath enter and could immediately smell the potions and berries around the place. He looked around Heath noticed that unlike the outside, the inside of the pokémon center was spacious and it was equipped with multiple rooms and even a café.

In front of him was a couple of trainers in line while the Nurse who Heath also recognized to be Nurse Joy was happily treating all of them. He looked up and saw the directions of the multiple rooms laid out all over the facility but when he saw a sign Heath was surprised that the building had 4 floors. Most of them being used for hotel rooms but there was a battling arena, a computer room, a conference room, and other compartments. Heath went up to the counter where he saw the beautiful nurse talking to people about their pokémon and giving out some tips.

“Excuse me?”

“If you are waiting for your pokémon to be ready, you must get in the line next to you. If you need assistance, tips or guides on how to take better pokémon either look it up or go to the school down the street” Nurse Joy smiled as she explained.

“I just wanted a map or directory of the city?”

“Just look it up on your PokéGear” A random person called out.

‘I, feel stupid’ Heath thought and thanked Joy and the random stranger deciding to take a seat in the lobby full of a bustling spirit and obnoxiously loud trainers. Heath started to recognize the Pokémon Center as a type of mall instead of just a hospital with the amount of traffic going through the place. He browsed his PokéGear and found the map on all of the facilities in Oldale town.

‘A pokémon shop, A couple of different shops, A few Pokémon Centers, Several Hotels, and even a Park but it’s on the other side of the city. Route 102 is still towards west of the city while route 103 leading to 110 is still North.’ Heath observed. He thought about what to do for the next 2 days and decided.

‘First things first I want to get some sleep on an actual bed and then tomorrow I want to go to a Pokémon Shop to see what Pokémon they are selling. Then hopefully battle or visit other shops’ Heath then got a room which Birch had reserved for by the time he gave him this assignment. It wasn’t a big room thought it looked nice fashion with a couch, a desk, and a decently sized bed. After looking around Heath quickly went to bed.