To Live is to Dream (Sinnoh Pokemon Trainer Quest) (2024)

"Pokemon are a seriously hardy bunch! As you already know, a good night's rest is enough to get even the toughest poisons or paralyzing agents out of a Pokemon's system—even those that've been knocked unconscious," one of the rangers begins to lecture when you bring up your desire to be better at keeping your Pokemon healthy without being in easy reach of any Pokemon Center. "But I get your worry, since this is the number one reason why so many kids end up stuck for so long in the Eterna Forest—running out of Antidotes pretty much forces you to go at a Shuckle's pace since your Pokemon won't be able to last long without you needing to rest every couple hundred of steps, and that's before getting lost! I don't think you should be too concerned about that, though—having your Magnemite lead the way should blunt the worst of what those little buggers in the forest love to throw at kids like you. But hey, better to be prepared than cocky, so..."

The rangers helpfully provide you with a number of tips for helping soothe the discomfort of a resting Pokemon that's been poisoned or paralyzed, informing you of a number of plants and herbs that would take the edge off of the status conditions. It wouldn't be enough to nullify the status conditions, but giving an ailing Pokemon useful herbs, extra nutritious food, and additional hydration all stacks when it comes to speeding up how long a Pokemon needs to rest before their body naturally rids itself of any status condition—and also keeps them more comfortable!

This also serves as your first foray into combining your budding knowledge of plants with your still-developing knowledge of Pokemon care, though making sure your poisoned Pokemon eat extra goosefoots or whatever is a far cry from getting out a mortar and pestle and making your own Heal Powders. Still, it's a start!

You have gained a sizable amount of progress in taking your Novice Caretaker Profession Trait to the next level.
Continue to raise your Foraging and Caretaker Profession Traits in tandem to unlock special herbal remedy-related actions one day!

"Tracking? That's a darn good idea for the forest, and not just for looking for rarer Pokemon or avoiding aggressive packs!" the female ranger in crutches comments with a little laugh. "Okay, me and Manectric'll stay behind—you lot head out to give her a demo."

"Gladly!" one of her coworkers replies, before jumping up and walking out with his fellows and gesturing at you to follow him with a wink. "It's a good excuse to stretch our legs, so thanks!"

You're not sure what to feel about the implication that these veteran rangers were using you to get around their orders to rest, but you, Nathan, and your partners still follow the other three rangers and their partners out of the police station—thankfully, they don't push as far as heading to the nearest route and only lead you into the forested sections around the Floaroma Meadows. What follows is interesting—because a part of your brief introduction to wilderness tracking was taking what you've already sort of picked up already back home from hanging out with Old Jubilife's wild Pokemon and adapting those lessons to places of grasses, bushes, discarded branches, and dead leaves rather than cracked concrete and asphalt, even if it was often just you relying on your perceptive talents. You already know how to track down Pokemon and people in a general sense, but specialized for an urban setting—it was how you'd found Sparkplug all the way at the very beginning of your adventures...though when a ranger comments in surprise about how good at this you were for a beginner after you successfully identify claw marks off the side of a tree before Nathan can even think of looking there, you, uh, freeze up for a moment—you try to play it down from then on so as to hopefully not invite any weird questions about where a kid from Jubilife might have learned this sort of skill already.

But the rangers don't just help you expand on what you already know—they also teach you how to sort through traces of passing according to specific species and types of Pokemon, show you just how clumsily humans tend to walk around the wilds to make it easy to track their steps, and most importantly of all...give you tips on how to backtrack.

"You know what's the number one way to not get lost? Learning how to retrace your own steps," a veteran ranger cheerfully explains. "Don't rely on breadcrumbs or yarn in the forest, alright?"

"...do other kids actually do that?"

"Oh, you have no idea!" the man laughs.

You have gained a new Profession Trait!

Profession: Novice Tracker

Tracking is an incredibly important skill for any trainer wanting to navigate around the worst of the wilderness, as it not only covers finding rarer or specific kinds of Pokemon, being able to see the signs of dangerous or aggressive Pokemon species in an area for avoidance purposes, or even following the traces of other humans who might be around, but general navigation due to the simple application of this skill when it comes to retracing one's steps.

Currently, you're not too used to tracking in the wilds and are most knowledgeable when it comes to doing so in forested areas, but this still certainly makes finding Pokemon and people a lot easier now that you know what signs you're supposed to be looking for when in the wilderness and not a city—and you're very good at looking for signs due to your keen senses and sharp eyes...

---

You thought you understood how this 'home-cooked meals' thing worked by now—every lunch, Nathan's grandma would prepare a few hearty and filing dishes in stupidly huge amounts, often insisting that you add more and more to your plate and necessitating a polite back and forth of 'seriously ma'am, it's alright' and 'no, you're practically skin and bones!' every time to the point that it's become routine for you. Afterwards, the food would either reappear at dinner as leftovers or end up used for an entirely new dish—no ingredients were wasted, but because Nathan's grandma seems to be fond of going beyond classic Sinnoh cuisine of noodle soups, grilled fish, fried tofu, curries, and rice sprinkled with furikake into stuff like pastas and risottos full of tomatoes, cheeses, and cream, you never felt like you were always eating the same stuff every day. The retired woman had once mentioned that she'd spent a stint as a cook for a Saizeriya—a casual foreign-style restaurant chain that you'd seen around Jubilife—in her youth, which you'd always felt was an interesting factoid...

But after she ropes in her husband to help her in the kitchen (which you've NEVER seen her do before) and apparently spends the whole afternoon cooking up a storm, you realize that Nathan's grandma had been hiding her full abilities as a cook from you when you see the fully laid out dinner table before you.

There's a friggin' salad. There's multiple appetizers—a giant plate full of fried mozzarella sticks, curry potato fries, and imitation chicken fingers. There's...WHERE THE HELL DID SHE GET CLAMS?! THERE'S MULTIPLE PASTAS AND HOMEMADE PIZZAS AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT CHEESY DEEP-DISH LOOKING THING IS CALLED—

(A lasagna. You find out that it's called a lasagna.)

Just seeing this all spread across the entire dining table that's become so familiar to you is enough to make your eyes pop out, as you have no clue how the crazed old woman was expecting only four people and four Pokemon to finish all of this in one sitting even with Coro being here to vacuum things up like the giant mouth that the Spheal was. But the most ridiculous part of this 'proper goodbye dinner' that she'd promised, the devious act that you'd never expected out of someone as wholesome and inoffensive as Nathan's grandmother...

...is the fact that she'd already pre-filled your plate in advance—and only YOURS.

"Surprise—I thought we'd also celebrate your Contest win at the same time! And since you did so well, I prepared even more than usual...and I don't do this very often, so you'd better not waste a single portion on your plate..."

Is...is she threatening you? Is that false-cheery tone an attempt at being intimidating? Are you genuinely being threatened by a kindly old lady just because she thinks you aren't eating enough?!

Being who you are, you find this situation so confusing that you have to be prodded into your seat after several seconds of just staring at it all. The coziness of the atmosphere and the deliciousness of the good food soon get you to relax and get pulled along into the warm discussion about your time spent at Floaroma Town and how you've enjoyed your stay, but it never quite detracts from the sheer unreality and 'what the fuck' nature of being presented with enough food to fill up a long table and being threatened to be forced to eat it all.

Little did you know that the pleasantly homey atmosphere wasn't going to last through the entirety of dinner—and the reason for that was going to start off so very innocuously...

---

"How on earth did you even think of making entirely brand new moves?!"

It's a question that you'd unfortunately already been expecting over the past several minutes of conversation. Nathan's grandma had gotten sidetracked while raving over your Contest performance again, and you had made the mistake of directly naming the move that Maynot had used to bounce around as 'Toon Up'—resulting in a resurgence of the shock and surprise that you'd initially gotten out of everyone in town after revealing the best tricks that your team had up your sleeve when Mrs. Lilly had put two and two together and Mr. Lilly had been reminded of what you'd done.

You shift bashfully under the awed expressions of the old couple, doing your best not to blush from the renewed and entirely new senses of wonder from the old man and old woman respectively. You are not appreciative of how Nathan was smirking at your clear embarrassment his seating place across you, and even less of the amusement coming off of your partners and Cherubi as they remain out of your line of sight. You can hear your friend's snarky tone without him saying a single word: 'Yes, Mal—please explain to everybody at the dinner table just how flippin' ridiculous you are.'

You bet that you'd actually find him thinking it if you tried to poke through the top of his mind right now, too—you are so tempted to lean over and sock his smug mug lightly in the jaw.

That there doesn't seem to be any real way for you to downplay what you've done has been well driven into you by now, and considering that you've gotten to know just how decent Nathan's grandparents were over the last two weeks, you decide that you might as well face the music and tell some people other than your close friends most of the details for once. Besides, you do kind of owe Nathan's grandpa for one of them...he deserves to know about how he'd helped you out. "Er...okay, but please don't spread it around," you begin, taking in a steadying breath. "So, the first time...was an accident."

Your recounting of what you'd accomplished in a burst of whimsy at the Canalave Gym brings the old couple into another level of astonishment. "In one afternoon?!" Nathan's grandma nearly shrieks. "Accidentally?!"

"I-I didn't know...me and Sparkplug were just playing around with Magnet Bomb," you mumble in a completely helpless tone. "I wasn't really thinkin' about it—we were just having fun messing around like we always try to do, and it came out like that. But since it happened, and I knew that we could do it, so we just...did it again."

You gingerly rub the side of your face as the absurdity of what you've just said really sinks in, but what can you do? That was the truth—you'd become a supposed 'genius' move inventor by complete accident. Would you have made as many new moves as your team had by now if Magne-Mines hadn't happened? Probably not, but considering your tendency to experiment, you certainly would've stumbled into a custom move eventually. Just this much has already rendered Nathan's grandparents completely speechless, and Nathan was starting to suck in his mouth like he'd accidentally licked a lemon while radiating pure hilarity at his grandparents' and your distress...

"So Toon Up was the first time that we did it, like, on purpose," you tell them, trying not to fidget. "And it worked! So I knew by then that we could do it as long as I had some inspiration—so again, with Coronet Crash...uh, we made that one after you showed me those League matches, sir. There was a lot of cool ice moves shown in there, so it gave me a lot of ideas—me and Coro put it together the day after for the battle..."

"I'm sorry?" Nathan's grandpa actually whispers. "Are you meaning to tell me that you made that giant explosion of a move in a DAY?"

You cringe. "It wasn't...it's not that...it's actually kinda—OI, STOP LAUGHING!"

By this point, your half-Floaroman friend was now outright wheezing. "I-I'm sorry, it's j-just—your f-faces..."

You glare at him. "Okay, fine—let's talk instead about Toon Up and how I'm not the only one who made it!"

"Maaaaaaaaal—"

"Face it, you aren't gonna wiggle outta this," you snap as the spiky-haired boy starts whining again, not noticing the suddenly confused expressions on the retired couple's faces. "All the kids in town know already—"

"—but it's not truuuueee—"

"Come on, stupid—we were working on fairy-type energy together the whole time before that too! I was even using your notes!"

How many times have you already rehashed the same argument since your shared achievement? You don't know, but you also don't care—the full story comes out in bits and pieces as you and your friend stubbornly bicker once more, but in reverse. Nathan gave you inspiration for the name, even coming up with the specific scenario that you needed—yes, you came up with the bones of the story at first, but still! And before that was figuring out why you even needed the story, doing research on experiments on fairy energy together, him knowing all the fairy-type moves for you to reference from and having done all the groundwork at first in the first place all from his notes in that book—

"—that book?"

The words cut through the exasperated haze that the two of you had both fallen into—you blink, suddenly remembering that you weren't alone at the table. Nathan's grandfather and grandmother regard the two of you with wide eyes showing off bewilderment of a completely different kind—the unknowing kind...

Oh crap— "Shoot, they didn't know?" you whisper at your friend's suddenly frozen form. "I'm so sorry, I—"

"No, no—they did know! I..." The boy turns his head to face them. "I-I showed you, um...before, Gramps. I told you all about it with Gran."

"You...wait, when was this again?" mutters the old woman.

"It was...last summer, wasn't it?" Nathan's grandpa responds, hesitantly. "When he was still going on about becoming a fairy specialist..."

Here is what you witness from Nathan's reaction to just these three spoken sentences on the surface—his face flickers, his posture slumps slightly in his seat, and his eyes crease in acceptance before the battle-happy boy seems to return to his normal self. But you possess more than just eyes; you could literally feel each faltering word and unsure sentence bring your friend lower and lower; the chains that you and him had worked so hard to dismiss appearing once again in a moment—all because his grandparents had mostly forgotten about him showing off something that he'd been so passionate about.

Just like that, the atmosphere suddenly goes from cozy to immensely uncomfortable—but it thankfully doesn't take long for the next twist to occur.

"It's...I'm..." Nathan catches your eye for a moment before his expression suddenly firms up again. "I...I'm still on about it—I just hadn't brought it up in a while, but hey—me and Mal worked out a lot about fairy-type energy, and we made a whole new move to prove it!"

"W-wait—"

"Yeah, I finally got step one done!" Nathan suddenly asserts with that returning twinkle in his eye, and you can't help but grin with him as you feel that bright energy spark back to life despite the shock of his grandparents. "Step one on the plan to become Jubilife's first gym leader!"

The old woman's mouth opens and closes like a Magikarp. "You...you're still..."

"Of course I'm still on it—I just knew that everybody was sick of hearin' it!" Nathan laughs, but you sense a slight spike of pain behind that statement to go with the renewed determination. "But this is it—I finally know how I'm gonna pull it off! Nothing's gonna stop me and Cherubi from tearin' up a storm next year!"

"Wait, b-but—" Nathan's grandpa coughs and stammers, lines of worry etched across his forehead. You weren't quite as tuned into Nathan's grandparents as well as you were with your friend, but you can read them easily—they're both completely taken aback. They hadn't expected this...and it doesn't take you much more of seeing their reactions to Nathan continuing his spiel to realize that they never did.

"Me and Cherubi are gonna come out swingin' on my journey with two or three or maybe a whole lot more fairy-type moves than a Cherubi should know!" your friend explains excitedly. "Since Mal helped me figure out how fairy-type energy works, all I gotta do is study all the fairy-type moves and figure out which ones Cherubi'll have a knack for! We've got one whole year's headstart—it's perfect!"

"Listen, I-I know that you have big dreams, but you have to understand, move tutoring isn't all that easy—" Nathan's grandpa tries to say in a warning tone, but Nathan only rolls his eyes.

"Hey, Cherubi—jump off your seat for a sec!" Your friend calls out to an already intent Cherubi as he boldly pushes himself off his chair. As the grass-type Pokemon reaches his side, the two share a nod. "Ready, set, go—TOON UP!"

A familiar aura and bounce nearly slams the Pokemon into the ceiling—the old couple's jaws go slack. The boy gives his grandparents no time to rest—he's already sitting back down, continuing to bull rush through all the chains thrown in his way—

"Move tutoring's super hard, but it's doable! Anyway, I gotta get as far as I can in the gym challenge and save the showiest battle for Wake after buildin' up some heat—"

"N-Nathan, most children can't go as far as the second gym for a reason since they start taking you seriously at the third—"

"—well, it doesn't matter if I win or lose cuz' everybody'll see a buddin' fairy-type specialist at TEN. We'll already be makin' a name early, standing out—"

"—becoming an ace trainer is more than just being famous for something like—"

"—that's why I already planned my route!" Nathan declares. "I'm gonna build up my stable early, passin' by all the places in Sinnoh with fairy types and Pokemon that can learn fairy moves! You might think it's weird, but Flint's the perfect model to follow—"

"—Flint's from a gym dynasty—"

"—but all that means is I gotta grow my stable slowly and focus on move tutorin' over TMs!" the boy cheerfully declares. "Which I was gonna need to do anyway since fairy-type TM coverage sucks, but hey—I already know how it works!"

They never expected this—this is what you realize upon seeing the dawning horror on his grandparents' faces as the back and forth steadily continues. You recall what Nathan said about his grandparents' reaction to his dreams—that they thought it was 'kiddie' stuff—and you watch the shift in their perception play out in real time as they truly listen to every word that he says. The old couple never realized that Nathan was this serious about his dream and that he'd ever pass the first obstacle in his path, thinking that he would either forget after stumbling and move on to have the life that they expected him to live—but now that Nathan had, now that he's been emboldened, they're horrified...because they don't believe that he can pass the others unharmed.

You don't understand—are they blind? You can tell that they're frightened for him, but they're trying so hard to push him back down! Can't they see what it's doing to your friend? It's a battle, a struggle, a fight playing out on an emotional level—Nathan's renewed hopes and dreams struggling against the disbelief of his family...

But every obstacle has an answer, every possible footfall has a measured response—even the threat of political fallout or notoriety doesn't take your amazing friend down at all, and you're so happy to see it. But neither is Nathan able to convince the old couple about the innate sense of possibility or limitlessness of his potential future—you can feel the thoughts running through their mind even without actively trying to hear them, thinking that Nathan just didn't fully grasp the difficulty, the hardship, the dangers...

But he does—they just so badly don't want him to go through what they consider suffering for no point, so they can't believe it.

You've been forced into silence with the rest of the Pokemon at the table as much as you want to speak up or say something...you have been the unwitting instigator of a confrontation that has been forced early, and the guilt of causing it saps at your nerve. You feel something biting at your brain, a tenseness about to snap, electricity in the air...

"I know you think it's impossible," Nathan finally declares, standing up again as Cherubi puffs up proudly with him. "But I've got all the notes to say that it isn't! And even if more come up that I hadn't thought about, that's okay—I've got my whole life ahead of me to do it!"

"But how many years would you be spending on doing all of this? It can take decades for an ace to reach the top, there's so much luck and politics involved in becoming a gym leader, and you want to force the opening of an entirely new one?! It's not...it's not feasible, not for normal—" Nathan's grandpa almost seems like he's about to cry out of frustration. "You stubborn boy—not everyone can reach the right level of skill without decades of punishment or do the impossible at a snap! Not everyone can be Maylene or your friend—"

...what?

"What?"

You feel it land before you hear it—Nathan's voice comes out in a sudden whisper as your friend recoils like he's been stung. But so taken in his desperation, his beloved grandfather doesn't notice—he simply keeps talking.

"—your friend is special. She's going places—you and the other children in town have been given a look at some truly special talents, and both girls were amazing to witness! But you can't compare yourself to these two; you have to keep your goals measured, Nathan—you shouldn't expect things to be as easy for you as things are for her! Maybe she helped you with fairy energy at first, making that move, and tutoring Cherubi, but you can't expect her to always be there to fight your battles for you! You aren't going to be able to force yourself to keep up with her—that's just foolishn—"

"You're wrong."

This time, it's less that a switch has been flicked and more that a line has been crossed. As Nathan reels at being skewered so thoroughly through one of his greatest worries, you stand yourself. Your wooden chair clatters as you kick it back and force your hands on the table.

"First of all," you grit out through narrowed eyes, staring down your shocked hosts and trying your best to maintain a veneer of respect despite how ticked off you now were. "Nathan did Cherubi's tutoring all by himself. Second...I don't think you understand Nathan at all."

Please vote by plan. Pick as many options as you wish. The order of selected options is immensely important.

[ ] Point out just how much Nathan clearly loves doing all of this supposed 'work,' of striving for his dream. This is when he's at his best, when he has his magic, when he's at his happiest—and isn't that what they want for him, for him to be happy?

[ ] What's so bad about Nathan's dream? What's so bad about the life Nathan wants to go for? They've pointed out all the bad stuff about trying to become a type specialist, ace trainer, and more with as little backing as he has—but there's fun to it too, isn't there?

[ ] Go into greater detail on what fairy-type energy manipulation entails and what Nathan did to get Cherubi to learn Toon Up. You have your own talents, but Nathan clearly has his—and they're blind if they can't recognize that.

[ ] Ask them why they don't want Nathan to have any say over his life. One day, Nathan is going to be grown-up—are they going to continue standing in his way if he's just as resolute then? Because all his hard work and his research proves that he really, really wants this for himself—they should respect that.

Earnestly plead to them about what they've been doing to Nathan by denying his dream and his capabilities and showing off how little they believe in him. They want to protect him, but they're hurting him. (Option locked.)

[ ] Plead? You shouldn't plead—you should make it bite. Tell these two exactly what they've been doing to Nathan and make the lesson sink in properly. Guilt trip them hard.

[ ] There's more you can possibly say. (Write-in option, subject to QM veto.)

[ ] (Special Option) There's a problem with Nathan's backing and lack of resources? No...no, there isn't going to be any problem with that at all—because he's going to have Sinnoh's newest Champion right behind him. (For the very first time since the beginning of your adventures, make a very specific and serious declaration straight from the heart.)

---

Okay, so seeing as I think I'm going to have a lot to expand on for the shopping list (in-universe, let's just say that Mal getting another windfall of money has gotten her to be less laser-focused on only the basics), I'm going to do a shopping subvote with no prose tomorrow instead to go with however this bit of story turns out.

Have this to ponder over! I'm very sure that the results of this very uncomfortable conversation will have absolutely no consequences on Nathan's continuing character development and general circumstances even as he goes back to being a minor, out-of-focus side character after you leave Floaroma Town.

There will be a one hour voting moratorium put in place upon the posting of this update. You aren't supposed to vote until after an hour passes from the posting of this update. There's a banner with a countdown at the top and bottom of the thread, so please pay attention.