[M] Let's F* the Sun!

Chapter One: vs. What’s His Face

“Oh, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Dane Ramone, day manager of the Quick Mart #10344 in South Goldenrod, did not give a shit about the scandalized gasp from the elderly customer in front of him. In fact, he gave almost no shits. If one could give the inverse of a shit—a negashit, if you will—he would give that.

To be fair, it had already been a long day for him. Putting it another way, Dane Ramone was not supposed to be there that day. That wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence; it seemed as if every time he was supposed to have a day off, Reggie Fitzgerald’s car would break down, Mattie Lawson would have a test she had forgotten about, or Cooper Sinclair would just be straight-up so braindead hungover that Dane would be pretty certain that the disease he’d cited as his excuse of the day didn’t actually exist. Yet despite all of the misadventures the other employees of Quick Mart #10344 went through, Dane’s boss, store owner Rob Lee, basically had his number on speed dial … and probably also his balls in a vice, if a person were to ask any of Dane’s friends.

So there he was, in a convenience store just like any of the thousands of others in that godforsaken city, six and a half hours into a seven-hour shift on one of the two days he had off that week, facing down the angry stares of an indignant geriatric with frankly questionable tastes in places to get weekly groceries. But honestly, if you asked him? It was worth it. Because he did not have the patience or energy to deal with the smug face that strolled right in through the sliding glass doors at that very moment.

That smug face belonged to Smithy, eternal slacker and line cook of Happy’s Diner three blocks over. Smithy was also not supposed to be there, but unlike Dane, he wasn’t getting paid. Or, at least, he wasn’t getting paid in anything but some sort of twisted delight that also happened to serve karmic justice to his best friend for possibly committing genocide in a past life. That was Dane’s theory, anyway.

“Dane Ramone!” Smithy boomed. “Good afternoon to you! And you as well, Mrs. Weatherby.”

The elderly customer eyed him, then yanked her plastic bag full of cheap bread and dubious eggs off the plywood-and-glass counter and shuffled away. Smithy gave her a curious look as he slid past her and leaned against the counter in her place.

“I told you to stop visiting me at work,” Dane growled. “You’re a distraction.”

With a quirk of an eyebrow, Smithy replied, “A distraction, eh?”

“Every time you’re in here, all you ever do is bother the customers”—Dane jabbed a thumb into his chest for emphasis—“and keep me from doing my job by pulling stupid shit I have to clean up.”

Smithy propped his chin up in mock fascination. “Is that any way to treat your civil life partner?”

Mrs. Oswald gasped again. Her mouth was open, and in her eyes, the fire of righteousness burned. It almost looked as if she was about to say something, but only a handful of syllables tumbled out of her wrinkled lips as the doors whirred open behind her. With one last huff, she turned on her heel and stomped out. And that, as far as Dane was concerned, was one less problem to worry about.

Smithy, on the other hand, had the last word as usual. He cupped a hand around his mouth and, a little louder than necessary, shouted, “See you later, Mrs. Weatherby! Hope the doctor can get that stick out of your ass!”

Dane narrowed his eyes as Smithy faced him with a broad smile.

“So,” Smithy said. “How you doin’?”

“This is what I mean. You mess with the customers.” Dane picked up a pen from the counter and began noting down stock. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to complain, and it’s going to be my head on a pike.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Smithy replied. “What’s the worst that’ll happen? What, you get fired? You’re too good for this place anyway.”

Dane scowled at the clipboard. “Don’t start.”

“I’m serious,” Smithy said. “You’ve been working here since we were in high school. You’re twenty-four now. That’s nine years working at a shitty knock-off 7-11.”

Dane looked up. He slapped the pen against the board and gave Smithy a steady warning glare and nothing more.

“What?” Smithy reared back, holding onto the counter with his fingertips. “It’s true. Nine years is way too long in a shithole like this.”

“Oh yeah?” Dane picked the pen up again. His voice was low. Almost defeated—and not because he was admitting Smithy was right. It was because he damn well knew Smithy wouldn’t stop. “At least the shithole pays me.”

“Could get paid more.”

“Doing what?” Dane scoffed. “Let me guess. Go back to school? Get a degree? End up right back here, thousands of dollars in debt? No thanks.”

“Nah. I’ve got another option in mind.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

Smithy took something out of his pocket and smacked it onto the counter. Behind him, the doors whirred opened and closed, but that wasn’t the first thing Dane saw when he looked up.

The poké ball that was on the counter took precedence, to be honest.

“What’s this?” Dane asked, jabbing the pen at the object.

“Well, see, there are these magical creatures called pokémon—”

Dane screwed his face up at Smithy. “I know what pokémon are, you dick. Why are you shoving one in my face?”

“Oh.”

Smithy grabbed a lighter from a plastic fish bowl on the counter. He tapped the butt against the counter twice, then the head, then the butt again. Back and forth his fingers went as he continued.

And yes, it annoyed the piss out of Dane.

“Beat the champion, and you’ll get enough cash to do whatever you want,” Smithy said. “Go to school. Quit your job and become a gym leader. Or blow your winnings on hookers and end up right back here after a tumultuous but spiritually enlightening journey of personal growth. Whatever floats your boat.”

With another shake of his head, Dane went back to the inventory list. “I’m not a trainer.”

“So here’s your first step,” Smithy replied, pointing to the ball.

“I’d rather not have my ass routinely kicked by ten-year-olds just so I can get my first badge.” Dane looked up and tilted his head in a nod of mock gratitude. “Thanks.”

“Well…” Smithy bobbed his head back and forth, as if weighing his options for what to say next. “I’m not saying you have to earn badges. Or fight kids. I mean, one of them’s a kid, but she’s a fluke, so—”

“No.”

Smithy stopped. Dane glared at him and tapped his pen impatiently on the counter.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Smithy asked.

In response, Dane lifted his head just enough to give Smithy the darkest glare he could muster. “I mean whatever brand-new scheme you have cooking up, I want no part of it, so count me out.”

“What?”

Smithy jumped over the counter, sliding into place next to Dane as the latter shouted and dodged.

“C’mon man!” Smithy said. He swiped the ball off the counter and pushed it towards Dane. “It’s for your own good!”

“Bullshit,” Dane replied.

“What, like I don’t ever do anything for you?”

Dane slapped the clipboard against the counter. “Without a catch?”

At that, Smithy held up his hands, palms out, as if to stop Dane’s accusation dead in its tracks. “Whoa there! No catch.”

“No catch,” Dane repeated flatly.

“None whatsoever,” Smithy replied. “Just call this deal Pinocchio because there are no strings attached. Swear on my mother’s grave.” He placed his free hand on his heart and held the one holding the poké ball aloft.

In the short silence that followed, Dane glanced at the ball, then settled his eyes back on Smithy. Slowly, smoothly, as he let Smithy’s words work their way deep into his mind, Dane narrowed his eyes. And then, after as agonizingly long a period as he could draw out, he finally spoke.

“Your mother’s still alive, asshole.”

Dane shoved past Smithy and flipped the counter gate up, clipboard still in hand. Behind him, Smith rolled his head back in exasperation.

“Dane,” he whined. “Come on.”

“No,” Dane replied.

Although Dane refused to look at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw Smithy motion dramatically to the ball, which he had placed back on the counter.

“You know how hard it was to score a starter like this?” Smithy asked.

“No, and given that it’s you, I don’t want to know.”

Dane crossed the wide space between the checkout counter and slush machines to enter the rows of aisles. His hand, still holding the pen, roamed the stacks of salted peanuts and cheap chips and other heart attacks waiting to happen. In the process, he ignored everything around him, including Smithy and especially the customer at the other end of the aisle. Smithy was just there to piss him off, and the customer was deciding between insultingly terrible snack foods. But Dane knew Smithy and the retail business long enough to understand how this all worked. If he ignored the both of them long enough, they would both eventually go away.

Or, at least, the tiny, distant optimist in Dane thought this. The realist that composed the majority of his being, however, knew better when it came to Smithy.

“Hey! Dane! C’mon!”

Ah, there he was. Using all of the will he had to ignore Smithy, Dane tapped a pen on a dusty row of vienna sausages. He knew somebody needed to clean this place; clearly, Garrison, the night manager, was slacking off on his duties yet again. Granted, he could dust them himself, maybe. If he cared. Or if he was paid something a little more respectable than what he got as a day manager.

“Dane! C’mon!”

He stalked down another aisle, passing by the customer along the way. Amigo, that particular Quick Mart’s bodega torracat, lazed atop a tower of six-pack toilet paper packages. She (as the staff found out via a mishap involving a feral tomcat persian) opened her golden eyes halfway, purred, and flopped over, extending a paw to Dane. He shoved at her shoulder enough to count the packages beneath her, then continued on his way.

“Dane, hear me out!”

“Dane Ramone!”

Dane froze. Smithy, who had followed him down the aisle and into the next, froze. Even Amigo froze. The only one who didn’t freeze was the customer, who then appeared as if by an unheard cue, from around the corner. He tossed his long, red hair out of his gray eyes and grinned wide. Planting one of his boots forward, he lifted a rough hand to point directly at Dane. A totodile crawled out of the hood of his black sweatshirt, balanced on the customer’s arm, and hissed.

“Dane Ramone,” the customer barked. “I’m Marcus Silver, rank thirteen. On behalf of the Johto Trainers’ Association, consider your challenge accepted!”



“What the fuck?” Dane sighed.

The totodile leapt at him, claws extended. Dane yelped and stumbled backwards, narrowly missing the reptile. It crashed into the dingy tiles instead, spreading a spider web of cracks across the already worn vinyl.

“What the fuck?!” Dane cried. “Amigo—”

He looked back in time to see the torracat’s tail disappear around the corner of the next aisle over. Smithy watched it go, then looked up at Dane with wide eyes and a helpless shrug.

“Oh, you piece of shit,” Dane yelled. “Ow! Fuck!”

As soon as the totodile ripped through the leg of his jeans, Dane punted it back to its trainer, then stumbled away, grabbing Smithy as he went.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Dane snapped. He shoved Smithy into the next aisle. “Five second explanation, right now!”

“Uh … issued a challenge in your name to the GTA?” Smithy replied quickly. He punctuated this statement with a pair of jazz hands. “Surprise?”

“You did what?!”

Marcus appeared at the end of the aisle. “Hey! Summon your first pokémon and battle me like a man!”

“Give me a minute!” Dane shouted.

He yanked Smithy around in time to block the totodile’s next attack, so instead of tackling his chest, it slammed into Smithy’s stomach, sending them both sprawling into the floor.

“I didn’t issue the challenge!” Dane protested. “I have no pokémon; this is all a big misunderstanding. So could you please take your pokémon and leave before I have to call the cops?!”

Marcus hesitated, his eyes shifting from side to side. “But … I just accepted your challenge. You-you can’t just back out now!”

“I didn’t issue a challenge!” Dane shouted again. Then, he shouted for a third time—colorfully, in this case, as the totodile had connected with and clawed at his back.

“Listen,” Marcus said, “I came all this way through the Underground to fight you. You know how long it took me?!”

Truly, Dane didn’t care. He couldn’t even begin to care; he was too busy throwing Marcus’s totodile into the shelves. The reptile bounced off and tumbled onto the floor, and a rain of cans followed shortly behind. Taking this as a prompt, Dane scooped cans of chicken noodle soup off the shelf next to him and started chucking them at any flash of blue that crawled out from beneath the pile of minestrone and tomato.

“Two hours!” Marcus yelled. “It took me two hours to—”

Before he could finish, Dane whipped around and shot a can at his head. Marcus yelped and dodged, giving Dane the perfect amount of time to bolt out of the aisle. Without even a beat of hesitation, Dane shot to and over the counter, then ducked beneath it to reach for the bat he knew his boss kept there. Instead, he found Amigo, who hissed and snapped a paw at his arm. Shouting another string of obscenities, Dane bolted upright, held his hand, and stumbled backwards until his back slammed into the shelves of cigarettes behind him.

And there was Marcus, standing across the room with his battered totodile back on his shoulder. He grinned, and his totodile hissed, and on instinct, Dane shifted his hand to the counter. His fingers brushed plastic—the poké ball Smithy had left him.

“And now,” Marcus said, “to defend the honor of the illustrious Johto Trainers’ Association, I will—”

“Go fuck yourself!”

With that outburst, Dane threw the poké ball at Marcus. He had intended on hitting him with it, but it didn’t quite make the gap. Rather, it burst open halfway to Marcus’s head. There was a blinding light, a high-pitched squeal, a thud, a shout, a bang … and then nothing. It all happened so quickly that Dane couldn’t process it, but the next thing he knew, he was staring at Marcus, out cold on the floor. Above him, the cherry slush machine was sitting broken, with a totodile sticking halfway out of the window in its tank, and on the ground between Dane and this mess was the most logical culprit behind that short second of chaos: a cyndaquil. It squatted there, on the tiles, in the middle of the room, where it preened as if everything around it was perfectly in order.

And then, there was Smithy, strolling out from between two aisles with a half-eaten stick of beef jerky in his hand. He surveyed the scene briefly—Marcus, the totodile, the destruction, and the cyndaquil—and then, he put his other hand on his hip and whistled.

“Jeeeeeesus, Ramone,” he said. “I knew you had it in you, but kicking the shit out of a guy in one hit?” Smithy tore a piece of jerky off with his front teeth and continued while chewing on it. “You’ll be ready for Goldman in no time.”

The name snapped Dane out of his stupor, and he shuddered and cast a numb look onto Smithy. “What?”

“Haven’t you heard the news?” Smithy said. “Our old buddy, Max Goldman? Just won the World Championship. He said he’s celebrating by coming back to Goldenrod to kick your face in.”

Dane stared at Smithy. He stared at Smithy for a long while. With all the speed and urgency of molasses flowing down a hot street, those words that had fallen so casually out of Smithy’s mouth sank into Dane’s brain and took root. They grew like a weeds to overrun thoughts like “is that guy dead,” “how do we dispose of a body,” “that slush machine is coming out of my paycheck,” “I am definitely fired,” and “I am definitely dead” to become the foremost thought in his mind.

Max Goldman. The third trainer who had left Goldenrod the year Dane and Smithy tried their hands at badge journeys. The only trainer who didn’t eventually come back.

The nerd Dane had, upon encouragement from Smithy, beaten into the ground with his own starter all those years ago.

Maxwell Goldman was finally coming home. And he was coming straight for Dane.

And that thought, as far as Dane was concerned, had only one appropriate response.

“SHIT.”

---

Author's Notes:

I've been looking forward to this one! 'Avenbrooke Blues' was good, and I was interested in seeing that basic concept (Clerks, but there's a bunch of magic animals) translated into something longer-form. And it doesn't disappoint! Like on a technical level, it's a really solid opening: it's tightly paced; all the new information we need to process the world is introduced as and when we need it, in just the quantities that we need; it immediately hits its stride and tells us exactly what we have to look forward to. And it's fun, honestly. As in, there's visible pleasure in the way it handles itself, its own irreverence, which very neatly prevents it from sliding over the line from amusing to annoying.

And, well, it's these two assholes again. :V They just work really well, and part of that's their antecedents (of which more in a bit), but also, they very quickly come to occupy physical space and establish their own set of gestural languages. Smithy leaning back from the counter while gripping it with his fingers; the endless variations Dane can wring from the humble look of warning – there are so many of these little details, and they add up to a strong sense of personality really quickly. It's elegant and economical, and like, we only get a short way into the story before we feel like we've been reading these two for ages. It's an excellent foundation, and it's also one that will be really interesting to see altered as we see more of Dane and Smithy's characters, and get a stronger sense of the interiority behind the banter.

Speaking of their antecedents: there's an interesting thing that fic (or any story derived from another story, I guess) does where it kind of implies a reading/critique of its source material in the ways it builds upon and differs from it. Like when you write a fic, you take some pre-existing materials and you cobble them together in ways the original makers never intended, a sort of bricolage type thing, I suppose; you review as much as you reproduce, in the same way as a good cover of a song transforms and translates as much as it copies. And what I think I'm trying to get at, in the most long-winded way possible, is that it'll be cool to see what your take on this … genre (is that the word I want? I'm gonna go with it, this paragraph is long enough already) becomes as it develops. Because it could clearly go in a whole bunch of different directions, even within the limits of what this first chapter establishes it's going to be, and honestly, I'm here for all of them. :V

I think if I had any critiques at this early stage, it'd be that on occasion, some of the longer and more involved sentences get a bit too long and involved? Like this one:



There's like this stacking effect here, where we keep thinking we're at the end of the sentence only to find there's another clause yet, each of which takes us on a fairly large conceptual jump forwards (we start with Smithy not getting paid and end with putative genocide), and there isn't much punctuation to guide us either; it's kind of a mouthful, and it gets a little bit caught up on itself and the flow suffers. But like, that's pretty much it! When this style works, it works, and for the most part, it absolutely works. There were just a few moments here and there where I lost the thread.

Anyway, that's all vague and unhelpful, here are some more specific things that I noted down while I was reading:



I have to say, this threw me a little; at first I had the impression it was from Steven's POV because he initially appears to be the main subject of the first sentence and from then on the subject's only referred to as 'he', but then it turns out that we're following Maxwell instead. I don't know if that's just me, or if there's an actual lack of clarity there? I reread it just now and can't decide, but perhaps I'm being influenced by the fact that I now know that 'his estimation' is Maxwell's estimation, idk.



I don't think 'open' should have the -ed on the end here.



'Smithy' is missing a Y here.



Either the A or the S should be deleted here.

That's all! As I said, I've been looking forward to this. Now I've had a taste of it, I'm looking forward to the rest even more. :>

Replies:

---

Chapter Two: vs. Number 12

A recap of Dane Ramone’s life so far (now that it was set to end soon):

Dane Ramone had never been anything special. He was born to two perfectly normal parents in a perfectly normal neighborhood of the only city in Johto worth mentioning. He had a perfectly normal little sister who had gone off to a perfectly normal college to study something perfectly normal (18th century Kalosean literature, but close enough). Dane himself had attended perfectly normal institutions up until high school, only to graduate and get a perfectly normal job at a perfectly normal convenience store. Overall, Dane Ramone strove to be so average and unremarkable in everything he did that everyone in his life, from teachers to ex-partners, barely remembered his name by the time he had left their lives for the humble respectability of a retail position and a cheap apartment.

The most ambitious thing he had ever done, besides apply for a job at the Quick Mart, was attempt a trainer’s journey. But that barely counted because everyone went on a trainer’s journey at one point of their lives or another, and anyway, he didn’t get far. He lost to Goldenrod’s own gym, lost at the National Park’s bug-catching contest, and lost to several likewise novice trainers before handing his sister his starter and resigning himself to a life of mediocrity right there in Goldenrod City.

And in one evening, he wound up with a pokémon at his side, an unknown number of trainers after his blood, and a broken slushy machine. And he was probably going to get fired for that last one. Even if he did bribe his relief into telling the night manager that a drunk customer did it.

“I hate you,” he said as he walked out of the Quick Mart.

Smithy dropped Marcus’s totodile onto Marcus’s chest. Marcus, meanwhile, was lying in a still-unconscious heap, this time in a pile of garbage on the curb outside the store.

“What?” Smithy asked.

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Dane said. “You? Signing me up for—what the fuck is the Johto whatever-it-was?”

“Johto Trainers’ Association,” Smithy replied. He wrapped an arm around Dane’s shoulders and started leading him away from the Quick Mart. “You really shoulda stayed a trainer, or you’d know about them.”

Dane gave him a withering look. He nearly shrugged Smithy off but found he was just too tired to do it. “Yeah, well, I had better things to do. Being a trainer doesn’t pay the bills.”

“Au contraire,” Smithy replied. “It doesn’t pay for shitty trainers.”

“Which I am,” Dane said.

Smithy waggled a finger. “Ah-ah. You have potential. You just had the wrong starter back then. I mean, who starts with a horsea?”

“My sister.”

Smithy stopped, pulling away from Dane briefly. Then, bobbing his head back and forth, he frowned.

“Okay. So it wasn’t for you,” Smithy said. He continued onward, leading Dane along the way. “Look, point is, you won against a ranked trainer in one hit. That’s not a fluke.”

“I threw a shelf at him first,” Dane responded dryly. “Anyway, where the fuck did you get a cyndaquil, and what the fuck did you sign me up for?”

“Uh, well…” Smithy rubbed the back of his neck. “You know Banks?”

Dane stopped dead in his tracks and swiveled his head towards Smithy. Yeah, he knew about Banks. He just never had the pleasure of meeting them. But oh, he had heard of Banks. A lot. From Smithy.

“Your pot dealer?” Dane said incredulously.

“Yeah.” Smithy’s tone made it clear he didn’t think throwing his pot dealer into the story was a big deal. “Banks has connections.”

“With who? The yakuza?”

“Can’t say.” Smithy pinched his fingers together and drew them across his lips. “Sworn to secrecy. Relax, though. It’s all legit.”

Dane opened his mouth, but Smithy held up a finger.

“Would I lie to you?” he asked.

And Dane shut his mouth. He had a point, sad to say. Smithy was many things, asshole included, but a liar he was not. Never, in all the ten-plus years he and Dane had known each other, had Smithy lied to Dane. Smithy was less a lying person and more of a shenanigans person, really. Big difference.

Smithy motioned for Dane to follow him, and he did, falling into step slightly behind his friend as they crossed a street. Some part of Dane’s tired brain realized then that he wasn’t sure where they were going on that fine summer night. The rest of his asshole monkey brain decided to focus more on Smithy’s ongoing story than the fact that maybe this was a bad thing.

“So anyway, Banks and I still follow the league news, unlike some people in present company,” Smithy continued, “and when we saw what Goldman said, we put our heads together and came up with something. Banks supplies you with pokémon—whatever’s available—free of charge for the time being. You battle the ranked trainers to get ready, then you take on Goldman. Any pokémon that doesn’t quite make the cut for you, Banks’ll sell off or send back to the aforementioned connections. Slightly used, slightly trained stuff’s in demand right now, so everyone wins there. But where good ol’ Banks and I might win is with the bet. If you win against Goldman, you’ll keep your team … so long as you tell the media where you got those top-notch pokémon. Banks gets free advertising for an upcoming, perfectly legitimate start in professional pokémon breeding. I, meanwhile, get to be Banks’s business partner and supplier of wild stock—if I accept that offer, anyway. Could be on the table for you too.”

Dane looked at him, head cocked. Noticing the silence, Smithy glanced at Dane, then whipped his head back around, not even slightly unnerved by his friend’s lack of expression.

“‘What happens if I lose?’ Glad you asked!” Smithy continued. “If, on the off-chance you lose, you walk away. But then I have to pay for it by spending a week selling weed for Banks. Outside the Quick Mart. Where your bosses know me.”

“Fuck off.”

Smithy shrugged. “Those are the terms.”


“No, I mean where the fuck do you get off thinking this’ll launch a career for you?” Dane asked. “And more importantly, why the fuck do you think I’d be okay with you using me as a business opportunity?”

“Because…” Smithy pulled Dane a little closer, only for Dane to shrug him off at last. “People are talking, man. They’re treating it like an exhibition match. Media’s speculating already on who you are. This is a match against a champion, bro. People will hear what you have to say—if you win. And Banks? Banks wants something better than … than this.”

Smithy swept his free arm outward to indicate the entirety of Goldenrod City, and Dane … frankly thought that was a compelling excuse to be desperate. He would never admit it, though.

“Couldn’t you have, I don’t know. Just advertised on Facebook or something?” Dane asked.

Smithy smiled broadly and patted Dane’s shoulder. “Oh, Dane, Dane, Dane…” He looked dead into his friend’s eyes. “No.”

And with that, he pulled away, leading Dane down the neon-lit streets of Goldenrod.

“Hey!” Dane shouted. “Asshole!”

He jogged the next few steps to catch up with Smithy’s, and still the guy didn’t stop. He didn’t even acknowledge Dane.

“So, what? You agreed to all of this without asking me?” Dane said.

“Well … sort of,” Smithy replied. “I just cooked that all up to get Banks to give you free pokémon. Cooked up my part of it too. All of it’s pretty much a lie designed to get Banks to pull some strings for us because you sure as hell don’t have time to get your own pokémon otherwise. So as far as good ol’ Banksy is concerned, I just want a piece of that breeding pie.” He paused, bowed his head to think about those last few words, then shook his head. “It’ll work, though. I wasn’t kidding about the media and how crazy they’re going over this. Just tell them what Banks wants you to say, and Banks’ll be happy. Real simple—don’t worry.”

“Oh yeah?” Dane barked skeptically. “Then what’s your part in this?”

Smithy shrugged. “My best friend doesn’t get his teeth kicked in by a champion. What more do you want from me?”

They walked in silence for a while as that percolated in Dane’s head. They passed crowded restaurants and even more crowded bars, passed the soft light of Luigi’s Pizzeria and the deep bass of the 151 Night Club, and Dane slowly admitted that, yeah, everything Smithy told him … just sounded like Smithy. Including the convoluted excuse for defending him.

But that still didn’t mean Dane wasn’t pissed.

“Fine,” he said. “But what the fuck is that whole challenge all about?”

Smithy fixed his eyes on a line of bars. “I told you. Johto Trainers’ Association. They’re the topmost trainers in the region, ranked by skill, from one to whatever. Challenge the top ones, the Gilded kids, and you got yourself a gauntlet of twelve trainers who’ll help your pokémon get to peak perfection. Better than the gyms. Less of a challenge than the Elite Four. Orrrrr it was the best I could think of to get you trained up in a short amount of time.” He shrugged. “Who knows when Goldman’ll be here?”

“And these trainers will get here first?”

Smithy nodded. “Most of ‘em are already in town. They’re itching to battle a champion’s rival and all.”

Dane thumbed over his shoulder. “So they’ll show up at work?! My house?! Did you tell them where I live?!”

Immediately, Smithy held up his hands. “Whoa! Relax! No, I’m arranging the battles on your behalf. All of it’s going to be safely away from everything that matters.”

“Then what about that guy?!”

“That guy?” Smithy glanced over his shoulder. “Oh. The asshole? I dunno. Probably some low-ranked dick training to take on on non-low-ranked dicks with the hope of becoming another non-low-ranked dick. That’s kinda how it works and all.”

“You’re kidding.”

Smithy shook his head. “No idea who that fucker was.”

“Then how did he find me?!” Dane demanded.

“I dunno. Maybe he was following me? I know a lot of these guys, you know.”

Dane shook his head and stared at Smith incredulously. “You asshole.”

“What? At least you got to test out your cyndaquil.” Smithy motioned to the pockets of Dane’s baggy cargo pants. “You’ll want to name the little guy, by the way. It’s tradition.”

Dane nearly said he didn’t give a flying fuck about tradition, but then he realized that would be contributing to a mind-numbing discussion he just barely wanted to have in the first place. So instead, he shook his head, taking his eyes off Smithy for the first time since they had left the Quick Mart.

And that’s when his asshole monkey brain noticed a key detail in this entire situation.


“Hold up,” he said. “My apartment’s the other way. The fuck are you taking me?”

“I am not taking you anywhere,” Smithy said. “You are following me to tacos, which is convenient because I was just gonna pick up your first opponent and take him to you.” He shoved his hands into his jean pockets. “Now I don’t have to leave my tacos to get you to battle.”

“Whoa, whoa. Wait.” Dane smacked the back of his hand into Smithy’s chest. “First off, tacos?”

“I’m hungry. Fuck off.”

“Fine. Whatever. Have your fucking tacos. Second, you want me to battle again? I just battled a guy.”

Smithy blinked. “So?”

“So can you just slow down? What if I don’t want to battle tonight? What if my cyndaquil doesn’t?”

“Relax,” Smithy said, starting forward again. “Trust me, your cyndaquil wants to battle. And as for you, we’re trying to cram in as many battles as possible before Goldman gets here, remember?”

Although Dane would never admit it for fear of encouraging Smithy, the guy had a point again. So he sighed, bowing his head away from his companion. Smithy grinned like a sneasel on a baby pidgey, then motioned forward.

“C’mon. It’s over here,” he said. And he led Dane down one more block, right to a familiar place.

See, Dane knew Smithy. He knew Smithy for most of his life—basically since kindergarten. And if there was one thing, one earthly pleasure that Dane knew Smithy liked more than weed, it was tacos. So somehow, it only struck him as slightly odd that Smithy led him to the second-best taco place in South Goldenrod, La Taqueria.

Dane could smell the beef tips and onions for a block before they got there, and he could hear the chatter of the crowds and bass of the music well before he saw the facade. But going inside, past the yellow painted door and into the crowded, dimly-lit interior, was an experience. It wasn’t just the second-best taco place in South Goldenrod; it was also the bougiest.

To put it another way, it was not, as one might expect, a Mexican-themed taco restaurant. It was more themed like a trendy hipster bar, with a bar made of reclaimed wood and stocked full of whiskey and artisanal tequila in the center of the room. Surrounding this display were “rustic” wooden booths, each already crammed full of, bluntly put, rich kids who may or may not have been instagramming at that very moment.

It was not, in other words, Smithy’s kind of scene, tacos or no tacos. And yet there they were, in the second-best, trendiest, most hipster taco joint in South Goldenrod, an overworked, scruffy-looking washout in two-day-old cargo pants and Smithy…

“Yo! Miyazaki! Taco me, motherfucker!”

…who was an experience.

“Smithy? Hey, man!”

A young man emerged from a set of tables, tucking a pad and pencil into the pocket of his half-apron. He tossed his long, blue hair out of his black eyes and raised a hand, which Smithy smacked, grabbed, and used to yank him closer. One hearty pat on his back and a “what’s up, fucker” later, and Miyazaki turned a broad smile to Dane.

“Dane, this is Hayato Miyazaki,” Smithy said. “Miyazaki, meet Dane Ramone.”

“Charmed,” Dane said blandly.

“Dane Ramone,” Hayato breathed. He extended a hand to Dane. “So you’re Goldman’s target. Must admit, you’re milder than I thought you’d be.”

With his eyes steadying as intense a glare as he could muster onto Hayato, Dane grasped the man’s hand and pumped it once. “Milder? What do you mean by that?”

It took all his willpower to avoid pointing out that Miyazaki himself looked like a hipster rehash of any given member from a 90s boy band. That is to say, he was the most generic hipster Dane had set eyes on. That night. Which was still saying something.

“Oh! Well.” Hayato pulled his hand away and motioned to Smithy. “Your friend built you up to be this huge team-killer. Said you were—what were the words? ‘A challenge worth taking.’”

Dane made a mental note to murder Smithy in his sleep for his birthday.

Miyazaki tossed his head, sending his long, blue hair out of his eyes. “Anyway, so I’m guessing you’re my opponent tonight? Cool. Give me a few and meet me outside, and you’ll get your battle.”

And with that, he walked away. Dane lingered for a few seconds where he was before turning his eyes to Smithy. He was about to tell his friend off, but he stopped, interrupted by Smithy holding up an order card and a pencil.

“You want anything?” Smithy asked, as nonchalantly as humanly possible for someone who had just sold off his best friend.



Barely ten minutes and a bag full of the most expensive tacos in South Goldenrod later, Dane and Smithy stood outside La Taqueria, backs to the wall. Smithy was busy scarfing down tacos, apparently oblivious to the fact that sauce and fillings were dribbling all over his fingers and onto the ground. Dane tried his hardest not to look at him, if only because he had hoped to eat sometime that day. Sure, it wasn’t going to be the second-best tacos in South Goldenrod, but fuck it—cup o’ ramen and a can of tuna was a perfectly valid meal.

Besides, Dane was too busy being lost in thought. Playing with his cyndaquil’s poké ball. Coming up with strategies. Smithy wouldn’t tell him what was on Miyazaki’s team because of course he wouldn’t, but he did assure Dane that, unlike Marcus, Miyazaki was a proper opponent—one with actual talent, who deserved his ranking. Dane made another mental note to murder Smithy in his sleep, in other words, and in between mental guesses about what Miyazaki trained, he thought about ways he would murder Smithy.

Smithy must have told Miyazaki Dane wasn’t much of a trainer. That was the point of the challenge, right? And if these battles were organized by Smithy, then Miyazaki would plan accordingly, ahead of time—meaning his pokémon couldn’t possibly be that tough. Maybe equivalent to the team a gym leader would use if they knew their trainer had only just started out.

Maybe he could kill Smithy by choking him with his bare hands? Nah. Took too long.

On the other hand, maybe Miyazaki hadn’t thought to plan ahead, or Smithy had lied about what Dane’s team was like. So what would he do if Miyazaki brought in a high-leveled pokémon? The Johto Trainers’ Whatever were supposed to be the strongest trainers in the region, right? And there wouldn’t be a reason for a guy who worked at a taco place to not pick up what he always grabbed before work, yeah? Which meant he’d grab the same team as always. Right? Besides, when would a guy who worked at a taco place have time to get a completely new, low-leveled team?

So no choking. Stabbing? In the face? No, that would leave way too much evidence. Unless he burned Smithy’s sheets.

Either way, though, what could he do with a cyndaquil?

What did that cyndaquil know? It was a starter, so it couldn’t know that many moves, right? Tackle, Leer, maybe Smokescreen? It would be awesome if it knew Ember, but it didn’t bother with that in that battle against what’s-his-face. Then again, what’s-his-face was using a totodile, so of course a cyndaquil wouldn’t think to use a fire-type technique.

Oh! What if he set Smithy’s apartment on fire?

“Sorry about that!”

Dane snapped out of his daze as Miyazaki emerged from La Taqueria. With a broad smile, he walked backwards, motioning for Dane to follow, until he stood in a wide, open spot of sidewalk.

“So, Dane Ramone,” he said. “Are you ready?”



“Okay, Poppo! Let’s go!”

In a motion too fast for Dane to track, Miyazaki pulled a poké ball from seemingly
nowhere and tossed it into the space between himself and Dane. A burst of white light shot onto their battlefield, then swirled upwards to hover in mid-air. Dane braced himself, mentally ticking through the possibilities of what it could be. Mismagius? Charizard? Togekiss? Really pissed-off beedrill?

And as the creature flicked the white light from its brown-tipped wings and pinwheeled through the light of a streetlamp, Dane could finally see the first pokémon one of the best trainers in Johto had sent out against him.

Pidgey. It was a pidgey.

Dane guffawed. He couldn’t help it, especially given that he had let himself get worked up over a pidgey of all things, but more than that, he guffawed at this pidgey because … it was a pidgey. Come on.

“Oh, is that it?” he said as he slowly drew his cyndaquil’s ball from a pocket. “Here I thought—HOLY FUCK.”

The curse was because the little feathered rat shot directly at his head with more speed and force than he was expecting for still-breathing fried chicken. Instinctively, he dove to the side, whipping his cyndaquil’s ball towards the pidgey as he went. The ball cracked open in his hand, and with a second cry and the mightiest roar he had ever heard from a two-foot-tall echidna, his cyndaquil materialized on the sidewalk.

“Fuck, fuck…” Dane shook both his head and his hands in frantic thought. “I don’t know—Reaper!”

The cyndaquil swiveled its tiny head towards Dane, just in time to see him dodge another dive-bomb from the pidgey.

“Do something!” Dane cried.

Tilting its head, the newly christened Reaper looked at its opponent, still spiraling in the air around Dane.

And then it opened its tiny snout and spat out a ball of fire the size of its head with accuracy that impressed and—given his proximity to the pidgey—relieved Dane. The pidgey fell with a thump onto the pavement, having been swallowed whole in flames. And in the ensuing seconds, the air reeked of burnt feathers and cooked chicken.

“Holy fuck,” Dane breathed.

“Holy fuck!” Smithy barked through a mouthful of taco.

“Hooooooooly fuuuuuuuck,” Miyazaki agreed. He nodded to Smithy. “Man, you said he was good, but you hadn’t mentioned he was that good. Guess I oughta switch up my strategies.”

Miyazaki withdrew his crispy pidgey from the sidewalk and tossed out his next pokémon. Like Miyazaki’s pidgey, this pokémon swirled upwards and overhead, pinwheeling like an acrobat over Dane. Unlike Miyazaki’s pidgey, though, this one was bigger. Faster. And slightly redder.

Or it was a pidgeotto, in other words.

“Aw, fuck,” Dane muttered. “Reaper, you think you can handle this one?”

His cyndaquil tilted its long nose at the sky. Dane couldn’t see its eyes through its signature squint, but somehow, he knew they were glinting. Reaper lifted itself higher onto its haunches, stretching its nose skyward as a long squeak rippled from its throat.

And then, a glow overtook its tiny body. It shifted where it stood, form melting and flowing upwards and outwards, like water bursting out of a glass. At last, it bucked its head, shrugging the light off its tiny body, and there, right where a cyndaquil had stood barely five seconds ago, was a quilava.

A quilava. Dane had only been a trainer for an hour, and his pokémon had already evolved.

Dane whirled around, throwing Smithy a questioning look, to which Smithy replied by jerking his head in a vaguely approving manner and lifting another taco in salute. And Dane wanted to respond. He wanted to ask where the everloving hell Banks had gotten a cyndaquil like this one. But the problem was a burst of air slammed his back, and he heard the distinct wham of a quilava slamming against a newspaper box.

Swiveling back around on his heels, Dane saw Reaper climb, with some difficulty, onto the half-smashed-in box. It snarled, fire dancing across its lips, and it glared hard at the bird still corkscrewing overhead. Opening its mouth wide, Reaper shot a volley of fire at the pidgeotto just as large and just as brilliant as the one it had shot as a cyndaquil. The attack arced, sailing through the air until it passed neatly beneath the pidgeotto’s feet and came crashing down onto a parked car a few feet away. Instantly, the car’s alarm blared to life, as if it was desperate to contribute to Dane’s impending humiliation.

The pidgeotto clapped its wings together and sent down a gust of wind that knocked Reaper clear off the box it stood on. It squealed as it crashed onto the pavement, before scrambling onto its paws and growling at the still-unscathed bird.

“It’s too high,” Smithy said through another mouthful of taco.

Dane glared over his shoulder. “No shit, Sherlock!”

Smithy shook his head, then spared one of his fingers from holding a taco long enough to point skyward. “You gotta figure out how to get higher.”

Now, Dane? Dane wasn’t a moron. In fact, had he gone to college he … well, actually, he didn’t know how he would finish that sentence, hence why he didn’t go to college. But the point was that one thing he was good at was basic problem solving. Some called it MacGuyvering. Smithy liked to call it “putting bullshit together via practical application of dumb shit until something miraculously works,” and frankly, Dane liked that description.

Which was why he decided to take the lazy way out, just as Smithy suggested.

“Reaper!” he called as he dashed to the blaring car. “Use this as a boost!”

He crouched down, cupping his hands together to encourage his quilava to run. And run it did after a short hesitation. It ran right where Dane hoped it would: bouncing onto his hands, then the hood of the car, then up onto the roof, and finally into the air. Miyazaki’s pidgeotto squawked and swooped, frantically trying to gain enough air to escape the quilava. Behind it, Reaper opened its mouth, and Dane sat back and watched.

Fire filled Reaper’s mouth, curling past its blunt teeth and around its snout. Fire burst through the air, whorling into a ball between Reaper and the pidgeotto. Fire grew, expanding larger and larger until it was the size of Reaper’s chest. And fire struck, consuming the pidgeotto’s lower half before passing right through and fizzling into nothing.

Reaper landed with a thump onto the car’s roof. Miyazaki’s pidgeotto, meanwhile, landed somewhat less gracefully onto the car’s trunk. It flailed as it flopped onto the sidewalk, talons leaving deep scratches as it went, and once it landed, it flipped over and fluttered frantically at ankle height. Every last feather of its lower half was burned off, save for one on its tail, which smoldered the longer the pidgeotto moved. And the smell?

Dane decided maybe he wouldn’t have fried chicken any time soon, to put it lightly.

“That’s enough!”

To Dane’s surprise, the pidgeotto vanished from the field. He looked up to see Miyazaki stride forward, a hand on his hip and the other extended to Dane.

“Not bad for a supposed rookie,” Miyazaki said. “You sure you’re new? ‘Cause Smithy insisted you’d only have one pokémon, so here I thought you wouldn’t know the ropes.”

“I went through a phase,” Dane mumbled with a half-shrug. “It was a fluke. Reaper did most of the work.”

“By the way,” Smithy said as he slid into place beside Dane. “Reaper?”

Dane scratched his nose. “It’s for the peppers.”

“Near compliment rescinded,” Smithy said, sliding away again.

Raising his eyebrows, Miyazaki continued, “Anyway, you handled your pokémon well, and the idea of using a car to get a little higher…?”

“Wouldn’t have thought of it if Smithy hadn’t said anything,” Dane replied. “Hey, what’s with all this anyway? All this pep talk and all. Didn’t I cook two of your birds?”

“They’ll live,” Miyazaki responded with a half-shrug. “As for the pep talk, I’m … you know. Kinda training to be a gym leader.”

Dane gave him an odd look. “Doesn’t Johto already have a—”

Miyazaki’s face instantly hardened. “Not if I don’t kick his lily-white emo ass.”

Dane decided not to finish that question. Or ask the many others on his mind. It was probably for the best.

Granted, he had already thought that before the car alarm abruptly stopped. But the car alarm stopping was certainly a help. Largely because, in the next instant, he heard a voice bark from La Taqueria.

“HEY! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU PRICKS DO TO MY CAR?!”

“Oh shit,” Smithy said.

And with a motion to his quilava to get off the six-foot-seven pissed-off Marine’s car, Dane bolted after Miyazaki and Smithy, and the three of them (four, if one counted Reaper) sprinted down the street and into the Goldenrod night.

---

Author's Notes:

This is really fun! I haven’t ever read Nuzlockes except for this and ES so I kept trying to establish the timeline/route as the game plays it out but I really like that you’ve found a cool way to mix it up and not make it a typical journey fic that follows the standard formula. I’ve never read Scott Pilgrim but I like the style that is clearly inspired by it. You have great characterizations in both Dane and Smithy (which can I say those also both great names that I feel like fit both characters really well! I love when character names just feel so in-tune with their character’s personalities. Those two are my favorite parts of this fic so far.

I am super excited to see where they go as this progresses, both as a pair and within Johto (or Goldenrod if this doesn’t leave the city at any point).