The Type Specialist

I finished placing the Potion on the shelf and turned to shout at Marty.

“Hey Marty! I’m done restocking the Potions. I’ll be in the back if you need me.”

“Yes, yes,” He shouted back, “Go enjoy my laptop. Mew knows you’ve made use of it.”

Marty waved me off and I walked past the front counter to enter the back room. I sat in my usual position on the couch and opened up his laptop. Honestly, after agreeing to Marty’s job proposal I didn’t expect to be able to use his laptop so often.

Working at the Pokémart had been extremely lax for a job. The store itself looked and acted like a mix of a 711 and a Walmart. It was located right on the edge of a residential section of Olivine so most of the products were marketed towards home life rather than trainers. We didn’t get many customers, since the majority of trainers shopped at Pokémarts closer to Pokémon Centers in the center of the city. Most of our customers were locals, but every so often we would get a trainer or two still taking on the Gym Challenge in Johto.

Marty’s laptop finished booting up and I launched the internet browsing app dubbed the “Pokénet.” Despite its horribly clichéd name, it functioned similarly to the internet of my old world. There weren’t any primary sites like social media for people to congregate on, nor did it have a Wikipedia or YouTube equivalent. However, it did have forums dedicated to Pokémon Types as well as an official Pokémon League website that hosted recordings of battles from previous Conferences.

I typed in the address of a forum dedicated to generalist trainers in the Johto region. I browsed the inane recent threads with subjects like “MY FURRET WON’T EVOLVE INTO SENTRET'' or “ZUBAT SHOULD BE SOUND TYPE.” Most of these threads were just mindless nonsense or complete conspiracy theories, but that was frequently the case for threads on the generalist forums. If I had wanted useful advice, I would have visited a more actively moderated forum like the forums dedicated to specific Pokémon Types. At the moment I just wanted entertainment, my job was informative enough.

My job at the Pokémart had seriously helped me acclimate to the Pokémon world. Working with Pokémon trainers and owners, as well as the numerous brands and products targeting Pokémon, allowed me to gain insight on how the world worked and get a grasp on its culture. Everyone here was far kinder and more helpful than in my old world, and everything revolved around Pokémon. The vast majority of customers worked at businesses that in one way or another, worked for or with Pokémon.

Remembering a conversation I had earlier in the day, I went to use the search function of the generalist forum. I typed in the relevant keywords and hit enter and the site slowly combed through its archives to find the threads I wanted. It wasn’t often I needed to specifically search something up, but the gap in my knowledge from earlier was too big to simply ask.

Marty was kind enough to give me a low-down of how things worked around here. I blamed cultural ignorance for any of my misunderstandings and he was more than happy enough to answer questions I had. I restricted my questions to the topics I dubbed “nonessential” and solely corrected any large gaps in my knowledge through the computer. Marty answered any question I asked and even gave me advice like which products in the Mart were essentially scams and which Pokémon food brands were worth buying. When he didn’t have the answers I sought, he introduced me to some of our customers who had lived as advanced Pokémon Trainers.

The conversation that revealed a large gap in my knowledge was with one such advanced Trainer. Old Man Harvey was an experienced trainer that retired to Olivine to be able to enjoy the sea breeze. I called him “Old Man Harvey” intentionally, since that was what he essentially demanded to be called. His grandson started to call him that when his grandson became a teenager, and now he refused to respond to anyone that didn’t grant him the title of “Old Man.”

Old Man Harvey told me a story from back when he was a trainer, much in the same way an old man wistfully told stories of how much harder the old days were. He spoke about how he had to earn every Gym Badge in the region through Gym Leader battles, and didn’t have the option to go through any “easy-peasy” Gym Trials. I nodded along with that point, pretending that I understood exactly what a “Gym Trial” was and wasn’t just going to look it up later.

The search finished and the site gave me a list of threads that discussed Gym Trials. I selected the one that seemed most relevant and scrolled through it, skimming the replies. A series of comments discussing the number of badges earned caught my eye.

The users, choosing to post under anonymous pseudonyms, had argued with one another about what was most impressive. A small section of their page long argument revealed what I wanted to know.