Getting out was easier than it should have been.
Gastly scouted ahead, slipping through walls and coming back with a look that meant clear. No words needed.
They avoided most of the police without incident.
Most.
One officer near the exit had a Kadabra at his side. The Kadabra's eyes moved to Eric immediately, sharp, the kind of awareness that made your skin prickle. Eric went very still.
The officer looked at him. Took in the worn clothes, the wrapped ribs, the general state of someone who'd had a bad few weeks. Then his gaze moved on. He was neither helping or stopping Eric for some reason.
Eric didn't understand but didn't dwell on it at the moment.
He walked past him at a normal pace and didn't breathe properly until he reached the forest and the trees closed around him.
---
The forest was dark and dense and smelled like wet earth and there was a weird static in the air that he couldn't identify. The entire area has a charge to it.
He had Gastly sweep the area twice before he let himself sit down, back against a tree, and finally looked at the blue screen that had been hovering at the edge of his vision since the corridor.
Pokémon: Gastly
Gender: Male
Level: 5
Type: Ghost/Poison
Ability: Levitate
Held Item: None
Potential: Deep Blue
Moves: Lick, Hypnosis, Confuse Ray, Astonish, Disable, Clear smog, Toxic.
Look at that. He got a system of his own.
Eric then focussed on the potential tab, and another window popped up.
Grades:
Grey - Bad
Orange - normal
Yellow - Decent
Green - Good
Blue - Great
Purple - Superior
Gold - Supreme
Black - Legendary
The system didn't do anything. It acted like a better Pokedex than anything.
Great Potential huh.
Eric looked at Gastly who was floating beside him. A fresh level 5 starter with great potential… was lady lucky finally with him?
Of course, potential alone meant nothing. There were many people with great potential back in Earth that didn't do well in life. Potential without someone pushing it was just a number.
But it was a better number than he'd expected, and right now he'd take it.
"Alright," he said. "We're not wasting time. While I rest, you train."
"Try using Confuse Ray in that direction. let's see it."
Three glowing yellow orbs formed in front of Gastly. Took about three seconds. Then they drifted toward the rock Eric had pointed at, and covered the ten meter distance in about two seconds.
Too slow. Eric thought. Against any moving target, this would never hit in this state.
"Next, try Clear smog!"
This move was a bit faster, taking about 2.5 seconds.
A pale mist burst out and swallowed the rock whole. It was faster than the confuse ray, and had a wide area of effect.
When it cleared, the rock surface was faintly corroded.
Eric nodded slowly.
Clear Smog was the one they'd work on first. The forest was full of Normal types and Ghost type moves like lick did nothing to them, which meant in a practical fight right now Clear Smog was basically their only real option.
Gastly had other moves, but Clear Smog was reliable, had range, and the wide spread made it harder to dodge completely
Eric also wondered how Gastly understood him. How did Pokemon moves work exactly? There was no answer so he dropped it.
"Keep using it, and take an interval of one minute after each round. In that minute, reflect on the feeling you got when you used the move. Understand what's happening in your body, then make the process faster. Also, stop when you're tired, we don't know when we'll get attacked here."
Gastly got to work without argument.
Eric leaned back against the tree and thought about things he probably should have thought about earlier, like the fact that he was a sixteen year old with cracked ribs and no money, sitting alone in a wild forest in a world he knew mostly from a children's anime.
The realistic part of his brain offered several observations about how badly this could go.
He told that part to shut up. It was accurate, but it wasn't useful.
He also noticed, somewhere around minute fifteen, that his ribs hurt less than they should. He flexed his hand, pressed it against the wrapped injury. Tender, but the sharp constant pain from earlier had dulled significantly.
He hadn't eaten anything. Hadn't slept properly. And he was healing noticeably faster than he ever had on Earth.
Looks like even Human biology was different in this world.
---
After about 30 minutes, Gastly had made noticeable improvements.
The time went down from 2.5s to 2.3.
It sounded small, but actually made a lot of difference. This progress was good.
"Let's take a break now. About 30 minutes. In the meantime, let's go look for food."
Gastly didn't need to eat, the ghost type energy in the surroundings was enough. But berries would speed up his recovery, making his training a lot more efficient. Eric's stomach had also been making increasingly pointed commentary for the last hour.
They didn't have to go far. They found an Oran berry tree twenty meters in, with no Pokémon visible around it.
"Why is lady luck so kind to me today?"
But then, Gastly quickly moved in front of him, agitated.
Something rustled in the bush besides the tree.
It came out running, low, fast, aimed directly at Eric with the kind of single-minded focus that meant it had already decided he was a threat.
It was a small purple rat. A Rattata.
"Clear Smog, watch its movement while you charge."
Eric was already moving. He dropped into a crouch, grabbed a thick stick off the ground, and stepped sideways.
Fifteen meters.
Gastly was building the charge. Two and a half seconds felt like ten.
7 meters.
Eric kept moving laterally, getting out of the direct line so the smog had a clear path.
Clear Smog released, the pale mist spread wide, and the Rattata threw itself lef to dodge. It wasn't fast enough to completely dodge, and was caught at the edge of it.
The mist clung to its fur and it flinched, slowing for just a second, enough for Eric to throw the Pokéball.
He didn't care if it was caught. He just wanted to use the chance to gain distance.
He immediately moved behind Gastly.
"Ready another one. Fire if it breaks out."
The ball spun. One rotation, two, three–
Rattata burst out.
"Now."
It was a direct hit this time. Rattata screamed as his body was fully covered by the poisonous smog, and then stumbled back. Its whole body felt like it was burning.
Rattata got up but its movements were off, sluggish, the kind of thing that happened when everything hurt at once.
It looked at Eric, then at Gastly, and made his decision.
It ran away.
Eric watched it disappear into the undergrowth.
Then he exhaled.
"That," he said, "was almost embarrassing."
Gastly looked at him.
"I almost got taken out by a Rattata on day one. That can never happen again, you understand? Neither of us can afford to be slow." He looked at his hand, still gripping the stick. "I need to train too. Not just you."
That thought had been forming for a while. In the anime, trainers stood at the back and called moves. This was not the anime. In a real world, in a real forest, with real things trying to hurt him, standing still in the back was how you died. He'd almost proven that fifteen seconds ago.
He had Gastly do a proper sweep of the area before they went near the tree.
The Oran berries were there, undisturbed. Eric ate two and stored away the rest.
Gastly took one and Eric watched the faint exhaustion around his edges ease slightly.
Good.
He sat back down against a different tree, berry in hand, and looked up through the canopy. Dark sky. No stars visible through the leaves.
He had a Pokémon with Great tier potential.
He had a bag with some supplies.
He had a forest around him with no plan and no destination.
He also had a system, a body healing faster than it should, and the very clear knowledge that the League police back at that base had a Kadabra that had looked directly at him and said nothing.
That last part bothered him more than the Rattata had.
Why?
He turned it over in his head. The officer had seen him, seen the state of him, and let him walk. That wasn't standard. Either the officer had more on his mind and couldn't be bothered, or–
Or he had made a call.
Eric didn't know which. Didn't know if it mattered yet.
He looked at Gastly, who had settled nearby, watching the trees with those steady eyes.
"Thirty minute break," Eric said. "Then we keep moving. We need to find somewhere to sleep that isn't just an open forest."
He paused.
"And tomorrow we figure out where we're actually going."
That was the real problem, sitting quietly underneath everything else. Escaping the base was the first step. He'd done it. But escape to what? He was an orphan in a world he half-knew from a game, with five Pokéballs, some potions, a little cash, and a level five Gastly.
The goal was clear: get strong. Strong enough that none of what came before could ever happen again.
He will figure it out. He always had, even when the options were terrible.
He closed his eyes, just for a minute, and listened to the forest as he took out another Oran berry and ate it.