Chương 3: 1.3 Liftoff

Liftoff 1. 3 April 2015 I thought they were rats at first but the bite marks were far too large to have come from any normal rodent. Just then, I heard Rocket begin to growl lowly. It wasn't the affectionate chuff or sarcastic bark I was familiar with but the kind of growl that sent goosebumps standing on my arms. It meant we weren't alone.

"Paw!" I heard a shout before the darkened store lit up with electricity.

"Shit!" I yelled as I dove behind a shelf.

"Rocket, to me!" He yipped and blurred to my side as I lambasted myself for dropping my guard. My crossbow rose into the air as I crouched behind a metal shelf. I spotted our attackers in short order. They were… pikachu…? They looked like the iconic series mascot, or at least some kind of fanart of one come to life. They had burnt-orange fur instead of yellow, except their forepaws which were cream colored. Instead of pikachu's zigzag tail, theirs were short but bushy, giving them a feathered look.

It didn't take a genius to guess that they were electric types but the fact that I'd never seen them before opened a pit of worry in my stomach.

"Pawmo!" one yelled, sending what I guessed was a Thunder Shock towards our position. Rocket jumped aside only for the second… pawmo… to charge forward, its hands glowing white with some kind of attack. I couldn't see much else because the close proximity of the electric attack in a dark area sent spots dancing across my vision. I took cues from my partner and dove away from the shelf as another burst sent electric arcs dancing along the metal frame.

"Fuck!" I grabbed whatever I could reach from the nearest stand and chucked it at the yellow rat. It turned out to be a tube of toothpaste, solid enough to fly straight but not enough to hurt. The rat dodged out of the way and readied another bolt towards me. I couldn't dodge in time. It struck my stomach with what felt like the force of a baseball bat, sendling me through the glass window of the store. I couldn't breathe, never mind yell in pain. My winter layers were ablaze, set on fire by the electrical attack.

I wheezed and tried to catch my breath as my mind reasserted itself. Then I felt the fire on my chest. Synthetic polymers were great for waterproofing, not so much for preventing electrical fires. I tried to pat it out but only got a shock of pain for my trouble. My extremities were still trembling with residual static. With a grunt of pain, I rolled over onto my front and put out the fire with my body. Whatever the hell those things were called, they seemingly had no interest in chasing me out here.

That gave me a few precious seconds to think. They were probably some kind of mouse pokemon. Maybe the backup generator had been on for a bit before they came to eat the electricity. Pokemon did that, right? And then, maybe they saw the frozen food aisle, saw a source of easy calories, and decided to build their nest here. I grunted in pain as I got to my hands and knees. My limbs were still trembling but I couldn't let Rocket do all the work.

The other one with the glowing paws made me think those things were as dangerous in close combat, maybe even a fighting type if we were unlucky. Rocket would give as good as he got but I didn't like his chances outnumbered. My crossbow bolt had fallen out when I rolled so I notched another and took aim. Inside was a bloodbath. The rat that closed with Rocket was a mess of weeping lesions and splattered little droplets of blood with every hop and dodge.

Though Rocket seemingly came out ahead in that exchange, I could see one of his eyes swollen shut and the telltale marks of electrical burns along some of his length.

"Oone!" he yelped as a Thunder Shock from the second pika-clone struck his side. I quickly took aim and fired. The trembling in my hands spoiled my aim somewhat and only managed to strike the oversized rat along the side, nowhere near anything important.

"Paw!" it howled in pain. This time, it had no intention of chasing me off its nest; there was murder in its little, beady eyes. It squeaked out a battle cry and charged me even as I cried out, "Rocket, Pin Missile! Get them both out here!"

"Pawmo!" I barely dodged out of the way of a Thunder Shock, though it was more of a semi-controlled collapse than a roll. The creature then glowed a shimmering white before charging me. I barely had the time to recognize the telltale glow of Quick Attack before a foot-tall rodent jumped me. Looking back, it'd be a moment of pure shame and humiliation but it felt like a life or death battle at the time, because it was.

I, Shane Hayes, grown-ass man, got bodied by a rat that couldn't have weighed more than fifteen pounds. We threw hands and I lost badly. It was faster than me. It was more agile than me. Hell, it might have been physically stronger than me. If only for my brutalized pride if nothing else, I was sure as hell going to call this thing a fighting type. Every one of its little fists that landed came with a paralyzing jolt like the worst sort of static.

Eventually, I gave up trying to directly strike the thing and settled for swiping with my bowie knife to try and keep it at bay. Then I lucked out. A desperate backhand caught it on the same side as where my bolt was sticking out of and it let out a screech of pain. I took the chance to toss it to the ground and collapse forward knee-first. Poke-magic be damned, weight was weight. I landed with all my weight focused on its little hip and I felt the mouse's bones give way. Broken? Popped out of socket?

It didn't matter.

"Paw!" it shrieked as I jammed my bowie knife in its throat. I killed a pokemon… I didn't have time to think further because Rocket then burst through another window. He skidded along the frozen gravel and bristled before launching a salvo of Pin Missiles towards the hole he'd made, just in time to catch the second pika-clone bodily as it tried to give chase.

"Pawmo!" I heard another cry of pain. The sharpened hairs failed to pierce anything important. If anything, it just seemed to piss off the little menace further. It then saw the corpse of its mate on the floor and lost it.

"PawMO!" I hurriedly dug around for another bolt even as I dove to the side. I glanced back and my eyes widened in panic at just how close the bolt had come to striking the gas pump.

"Dig and stay!" Rocket looked confused for a moment before obeying anyway. For my part, I bolted the fuck away from the pumps. It tried to strike me with a few more Thunder Shocks but failed to hit. Was it blinded by anger? Or was its partner the better ranged combatant? Didn't matter, I just tried to put as much distance between me and it as possible. The return bolt I fired likewise went wide. Then, I started to circle around the pumps until they were between me and the rat.

It yelled something before using Quick Attack to close the gap. Its little fists sparked with electricity as it leapt into the air, easily clearing almost fifty feet of distance with that final leap. I stopped running. I grabbed my crossbow by the grooved rail with both hands and swung for the fences. Its little fists met the stock of the bow and heavily dented the metal stock before it was punted clear across the lot with as much force as it had lunged.

I barely had time to gauge the trajectory and dive to the floor with my hands over my head before an enormous explosion rocked the area. Hot air blew over me. I could have sworn at least one piece of debris whizzed past my ear at bullet speeds. For a moment, my world became white as my abused senses tried to make sense of the abrupt chaos. As my ears rang with self-imposed tinnitus, I could only hope Rocket took the order to stay underground. Then, slowly, the trembling stopped and I tried to reassert myself.

I stood on shaky feet and stumbled towards the gas station.

"Rocket?" I called.

"You there, bud?"

"Lin," I heard him bark. I looked around to find him with his head just barely poking out of the ground. He stared at what used to be the pumps, still burning and releasing acrid smoke into the sky, then back at me with the biggest look of confusion I'd ever seen on his face.

"Gas pumps. They go boom," I answered his unasked question matter-of-factly.

"Lin," he chuffed in annoyance. He then leapt from his hole and took a bite out of my arm.

"Ow! What the fuck, Rocket!" I cried. I didn't have the strength to dislodge a seventy pound ferret and collapsed back to the ground. He mounted me and stared me down with a piercing glare.

"Lin-linoone! Lin!" I frowned, trying to make heads or tails of what he was saying.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you beforehand," I guessed.

"It wasn't like I expected it to explode… Okay, I did, but only after I realized those rat things were electric types."

"Lin," he growled, thoroughly unimpressed.

"At first, I told you to get it outside so you could use Dig since electric types are weak to ground type moves. But then I realized that if you kept fighting, one of its stray attacks might ignite the fuel inside the pumps."

"Lin."

"And I couldn't shoot it. And I couldn't outrun it even if we wanted to leave. So I got as much ground as I could and made it kill itself." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Linoone," he barked. He snapped his teeth in annoyance, ears flattened to his skull. I wasn't an animal behaviorist but I knew what that meant.

"I'm sorry, Rocket," I said honestly.

"I panicked. I saw the sparks and realized just how bad things could get so I did the first thing that came to mind. I couldn't think of any other way to keep you safe and we were already outside."

"Lin…" I ran my fingers through his fur, first just behind the ears in that spot he liked then down his back. I spoke soothingly, trying my best to calm the agitated pokemon.

"I'm sorry I put myself in danger. I'm sorry I couldn't think of a better plan. I'm sorry I told you to take the fight outside."

"Lin… oone…"

"I'm not a trainer," I admitted shamelessly. It was sinking in just how different a real battle was from "competitive pokemon." The two really were night and day.

"I'm not used to fighting. I'm not a commander. I've never had to think of tactics like that."

"Lin," he chuffed, nuzzling his snout into my neck.

"I'll be better. I'll fuck up a lot but I'll learn," I promised him.

"I'm sorry for worrying you."

"Oone…" With one last face lick, he got off me.

"Yeah, I know. I played a really stupid game." I looked down at my jacket, so much burnt tatters now.

"And somehow won really stupid prize while simultaneously avoiding the stupidest prize of all."

"Lin."

"Well, we just murdered the residents so we may as well figure out what else we can get from the store." So saying, I gave the gas fire a wide berth and made my way back inside. There, I started to pack as much frozen food into my backpack when I noticed a problem: I'd evaded the bulk of the explosion, but my oversized backpack had not. It wasn't entirely unusable, but there were tears and rips in it from bits of shrapnel. Seeing it gave me a good idea of just how close a call that had been.

Rocket eyed the torn up backpack and then sent me a knowing glance.

"Yeah, I know, I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world."

"Lin." He looked like he wanted to chastise me more, maybe take another chomp at my arm, then froze.

"Rocket?"

"Linoone!" He barked, before diving towards the backrooms. There was a loud squeak of pain, the zap of electricity, and then a final, shrill squeak of something dying. I hurried to the back to see what he'd found. There, inside an opened safe, was a crude nest made of the office chair cushion, a handful of beanies, and torn up toilet paper. Rocket sat inside with the mangled body of another of those rats.

No, looking closely, I could see that it was much smaller, maybe two-thirds the size of what were likely its parents. Its fur was also darker and had a slightly different body shape. Maybe a pre-evolution?

"Rocket, did you just kill their child?" I asked, mildly horrified.

"Lin," he let out a dismissive snort.

"I mean, yeah, it probably wouldn't have survived on its own and its parents tried to kill us but… and… you're eating it… Rocket!"

"Lin?" he asked, as if to say, "What'd you expect me to do with it?"

"We could have take it with us," I tried, but my heart wasn't in it. The whole near-death experience put me off of any electric types, certainly anything that looked like a pika-clone. And just that thought alone was disquieting. If, for some Arceus-damned reason, the pokemon world was merging with my own, it stood to reason that the pokemon world existed before as more than just the figment of Tajiri's imagination. It was a world with its own natural laws, society, and technology.

And now, here was proof that the pokemon world had its own diverse ecosystem, biodiversity that game developers couldn't possibly describe in detail within the confines of the medium. Just how many pokemon were out there that we knew nothing about? It reinforced in me the value of caution, of information. I was suddenly glad for having skipped the two dungeons we'd rats almost killed me; I didn't fancy my chances.

"Linoone," he growled as he continued to tear the rat carcass apart. When he saw me looking, he huffed and chomped down on one hind limb, tearing the entire chunk off. He dropped it at my feet with a doggy grin that definitely didn't belong on such a bloodied muzzle.

"Lin?"

"I'm… I'm good. You enjoy your mean, bud," I said, feeling a little green.

"I'm going to sort our supplies. In the end, we didn't stay long. Even if the town was completely empty of human life, which I wasn't positive about, the explosion would have drawn its share of attention from nearby pokemon looking for easy prey. They weren't nearly as skittish as native animals. I left the country store with food, a new beanie, and a few hygiene and luxury items like toothpaste and toilet paper. Thank god for toilet paper. After that, we retreated back to the treeline.

We hiked a ways from the gas station so we could steer clear of any unwanted attention. Then, when I'd spent an hour doing my best to erase our tracks, I noticed another problem: It was fucking cold. Zipping up my jacket was meaningless thanks to the scorched hole in the front where that first Thunder Shock had landed. I even tried unraveling my sleeping bag and using it as a parka of sorts but it made moving my hands too difficult and didn't do as much for the wind chill as I would have liked.

We stayed away from Sierraville for a full day, just to see if the explosion had attracted any attention. We were lucky; the most we saw were a handful of rattata and bird pokemon peck around. I saw a large noctowl snatch a blackened body out from the burning wreck of the gas pump but that was the worst of it. That knowledge gave me the courage to go back to the town proper. And this time, we made sure to keep alert for pokemon as well as humans.

The two of us spent the day after combing through the different storefronts for useful items. We found a jacket to replace the one that got torn up and even a little doggie sweater that would have fit Rocket had he not eviscerated it like it'd killed his mother. Apparently, sweaters were for humans, not linoone. We learned early on not to look for edible things like dried fruits in restaurants; they just didn't stock that sort of fare.

Ironically enough, other than the hot pockets at the country store, there was a real shortfall in the amount of food we could source. Spices though, those we weren't in short supply of. Rocket built up a real liking for peppery and smoky foods from the things I managed to cook up with my limited skill in the area. Just about the best thing I managed to find in the restaurants was coffee. Rocket looked utterly lost as to its significance but I knew brown gold when I saw it.

Sure, we had to murder a small flock of zubat living in the coffee shop to get it, but it was worth it! Rocket got snacks; I got coffee. Win, win in my book. I grunted and strained against the crossbow as we walked towards the ranger station. That pika-clone had done a real number on it and me landing on it while trying to avoid the exploding pump didn't exactly do it any favors.

The spine of the bow was fine and the string was only a little frayed, but the stock was thoroughly bent where I'd used it to punt the electric rat into the pump. I'd been trying to bend the metal back into shape for the past few days with little success. Unfortunately, it was little better than a club the way it was now, the groove and latch for the bolt did not work right. I'd either need to straighten it out or get a new bow.

The ranger station had been last on my list of places to check out initially because I gauged it as the most likely place for people to stay holed up, if they stayed at all. Now, I was hoping that there was a ranged weapon inside that could replace my bow, though I wasn't optimistic. Ranged weapons and the element of surprise were one of the few ways a human could rival a weaker pokemon. Why the hell would they leave one behind?

After thoroughly scoping out the exterior again just to be safe, we broke in through the back window. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Maybe some kind of weapons storage and ammo depot with a gun range in the basement? No, the National Forest Service was full of capable men and women, but they weren't that hardcore. The ranger station was in reality just a house with the living room remodeled into an information desk.

Maps of trailheads, floodplains, and other geographically valuable information littered the desk, as did advertisements for adventure hikes, birdwatching tours, and similar. The rest of the house was equally mundane. There was a room with two bunk beds and two desks, another room with an office, and a kitchen which contained some dried noodles I happily included in my bag. The real rewards were found in a supply cabinet in the basement and the main desk in the office.

In the supply cabinet, I found a ranger's jacket and pants, alongside a pair of boots that were only slightly bigger than my own. There was also a nice hatchet I added to my hip; it'd do far more good than a bowie knife. Lastly, I managed to discover a first aid kit that had been left behind with some pain medication and heating pads I used to soothe my bruised ribs. I headed back upstairs and into the office, where I found a note waiting for me.

Atop the note, and what initially drew my eye, was a six shot revolver and speed loader, fully loaded. The note read: Stranger, I'm going to assume you're in good health if you've managed to get yourself to Sierraville somehow. You're probably some backpacker or camper who stuck around a little too long and that's great. You'll have noticed by now that there ain't no one here to welcome you.

March 12th, a rep from Truckee down south came by and told us they were all gathering in Carnelian Bay, off the shore of Lake Tahoe, to make a bigger town. We all gotta stick together and there weren't more than sixty people in this little pitstop anyway so we packed up and decided to join them. They used to have some 16, 000 people but a good half of them left and a whole lot happened. Something about a snore-lax? Don't know, not a problem anymore.

They want to join up with the Carnelian Bay crowd and make a proper town along the lake coast. I figure they'll have a few thousand people there, big enough to call themselves a town and small enough to feel homey. They've got some rock monsters they're calling graveler to make a wall and keep out all the hostile wildlife. Got some other pokemons or whatever they are for security and such. Tahoe's always been good for fish too and there are crops that can grow in the cold.

Our only doctor's also joined us if you're in a situation where that matters to you. I won't sit here and tell you it's gonna be easy living but it'll be safe and that's more than most can ask for nowadays. I can't rightly make another man's decision for him, but now you know where we've gone. I figure we'll always have space for a man who can make his way through the wild. Had no rifles to spare, moving sixty people forty miles in heavy snow ain't easy, but I'm leaving my spare handgun.

If you're a good shot, you can grab some game and make your way. If you're not, well, last shot's for you. Best of luck, Thomas E. Swanson I read the note once, then again for good measure. It was simultaneously enlightening and alarming. A snorlax? Here? I knew very little about the bear-like behemoths but the little I knew said they ate a lot and were obscenely powerful.

There were tales of snorlax causing food shortages even in the pokemon world because even an entire town working together wasn't enough to drive one off. I knew for certain that Rocket and I wouldn't even inconvenience a creature like that. Hell, I doubted the gas explosion a few days prior would have done more than piss it off.

How sixteen thousand people could shrink to just a few thousand, why they'd suddenly decided to band together and wall off a small settlement with lake access, the picture was coming together and it wasn't one I liked. And yet… The town did admittedly have promise. It sounded like they were planning a community rather than being drowned in a tide of refugees, which was more than Bend could say.

Planned crops, lake for fish, walls, trained pokemon, it might be what I'd been looking for, somewhere to hole up and wait out the nuclear winter. I read the letter out loud a third time. Rocket lounged on the ranger's office chair, one eye open and lightly dozing. I knew from the way his ear flicked back and forth that he was listening. When I finished, he let out a low whine.

"What do you think?" I asked him. We were partners; I had no interest in going to a place like that without my backup.

"You think this is a good idea? Tahoe's about twelve hour's walk. Three days of hiking if the snow's still as bad as he says it was."

"Linoone… Lin?"

"I don't know either. But it's either go there or hang around the forest where there's been a snorlax encounter already."

"Linoone." The wide-eyed look of fear told me he knew exactly what a snorlax was. Not for the first time, I wondered just where pokemon came from and how they interacted with each other before all this.

"So we go?"

"Lin."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Carnelian Bay it is." Author's Note Was tossing a lightning-rat into a gas pump a good idea? No. Was it survivable? Arguably not. But rule of cool so meh. I guess this ends the pilot? Sure, let's call it that. I wanted to explore a dungeon but I think I've done all the things I needed to set the stage. Edit: Wait, did I ever say the MC's name? Hahaha, that's hilarious in hindsight. Thank you for reading.

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