all rights go to megadeth425 he never finished this so I will and make some parts longer for lack of detail
…
“Adam, turn off your alarm!”
The shout, and subsequent fist colliding with my jaw shook me from my slumber, making me painfully aware of the loud rock music coming from my alarm clock and the angry girl at my bedside. The music was so loud I was a little worried by the fact it had time to wake up my sister and have her storm into my room, ready for violence, before it even registered for me. I’d always been a heavy sleeper when it came to alarms, but at that volume, I may as well have been in a coma for all the good it did.
“The sun isn’t even up yet!” she shouted.
I shrugged, sitting up and pressing my hand to my jaw, whose delayed reaction to the impact finally hit me with a sharp pain. For a thirteen year-old, she had a damn good right hook. “Sorry. Slept through the alarm.” I reached over and killed the music, the ensuing silence leaving a slight buzz in my ears.
She groaned. “Not fair. I don’t want to wake up every day because your stupid music is loud.”
“It’s okay. You’re sort of like one of those clocks that have a bird pop out at the top of the hour. Only shriller and more irritating. And punchier.” I rolled off the bed in the direction opposite her and staggered a little.
“Don’t do it again!” She stamped her foot on the way out. Amy was a compact little brat at times, though that was mostly coloured by our trite sibling grudge. She was a bit shorter than she should have been for her age, all wiry and feisty. Her neck-length brown hair was completely dishevelled, which added to the frustration on her face as she made it clear to me on her way out of the room that she was unhappy. Oh, no, whatever would I do?
With that wonderful wake-up call done, I slipped into the shower, letting the hot water soothe my sore jaw. There was no reason for a little girl to be that strong, dammit She didn’t even look like she should have been that strong, being so stringy. And furthermore, nobody should have been so violent just because they woke up to too-loud Thin Lizzy. Such a wake-up should have earned me a thank-you, since I could think of no finer way to start a day. Hell, even after the punch, my first day at work was looking brighter for it.
A few months out of school, I needed work. I wasn’t ready to go off to Veilstone for further education, worried I’d end up forty and hating myself because I was forced to pick a career path at eighteen. So instead, I pulled some strings with some family friends, and got a vacant spot at the local Pokemon daycare, funny enough because the last person quit so they could move to Veilstone for school. Convenience was a wonderful thing. The old couple that ran the place since before my parents were even born knew most of the families in Solaceon, a town large enough to be on a map but too small to be of any interest to people. We were a couple of hicks and a pitchfork as far as some people were concerned, the daycare being the only thing to keep people from just biking up the main road and ignoring the town. I didn’t blame them.
After the hot water began to run cold, I cut the shower and stepped out to look at myself in the mirror. There were traces of black under my blue eyes, expressing my hatred for being awake better than any words could. Shoulder-length brown hair lay matted on my head, wet and uncooperative. “So I get the appearance of a partying college student with none of the partying?” I asked myself as I pulled out the blow-dryer. “What a rip off.” My hand-eye coordination wasn’t the best at the crack of fucking dawn, but I did a good enough job at not fucking up the process of drying my hair that work felt a little less daunting.
Rounding down the stairs, I found Purrloin blocking the way, staring up at me with nothing but the usual self-entitled frown. Prissy little thing she was, always demanding attention and convinced she was in charge. Only when I assured her I’d refill her bowl did she move out of the way. She led the charge into the kitchen, where I found her bowl mostly full.
“Really?” I groaned, turning my gaze to her. She looked up at me with a stern countenance. Son of a bitch, she was serious. She wasn’t a big eater, but she apparently demanded a full bowl. For the sole purpose of being allowed to leave-she had tried to barricade the door before-I poured her the food, and she gleefully ignored me. After lingering on her with an incredulous look for a minute, I went to the fridge, grabbed a leftover pizza slice from the night before, and headed toward the door, completely ignored by the cat Pokemon happily eating.
My work would primarily be physical; hauling things around, dishing out food, that sort of stuff. Because of that, I kept my clothing simple; jeans and an Aerodactylsmith shirt, along with a pair of boots. Opening the door, a blast of cold autumn air smacked me in the face, so I added my jacket to the ensemble, pulling it off the hanger beside the door and stepping out into the world and my first day of work.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t fuck it up too badly.
…
The sun had barely started to peek out of the sky when I arrived at the daycare, just on the edge of the town by Route 210. The wind kept up, whipping my hair in my face the whole way, the cold all around me forcing my hands into my pockets in an attempt to keep warm. I was a creature of the cold by habit, but fuck it, I was too tired for that shit. Horror set in when I arrived to find people there. No, not only there. Awake. My grand physical display had been fifteen minutes of curse-laden walking and I was ready to call it a day.
“Good to see you, Adam.” said an old man as I stepped in to the daycare building. Robert, the daycare owner, was a man of visible experience. His face wasn’t aged so much as weathered from years of doing all sorts of things, accumulating experiences and stories I could barely fathom. He had “settled down” decades ago, and even at his age, headed management of the region’s largest daycare with his wife. I suspected if his back hadn’t given up, he wouldn’t have hired kids to do the lifting. His crown of grey hair still had rebellious bits of brown refuse to give in. His face seemed serene and kind, though the undercurrent of experience made him rather formidable to look at. “It’s not too early for you, is it?”
“Oh no,” I replied, patting down my hair after the wind messed it up. “I love waking up before the birds. How can I call myself a member of a dominant species if I let them get the day started before me?”
A sigh from behind me damn-near made me jump, just because of how tired I still was. “Still a joker, I see.” A slight woman with a bit of a forward curve to her came in through the door. Where Robert was the cool old man with stories to tell, his wife Elaine looked like she had a batch of cookies in the oven just waiting for someone to eat. And usually, she did. The lines in her face were accentuated by a constant smile, and after the initial shock of her faded, her voice seemed very warm, alleviating some of the fall chill. Her hair was a uniform white, tied up in a bun that really let the age in her face show.
I shrugged. “Some things don’t change.”
“Clearly. Usually I’d ask about the family, but time’s a-wasting; breakfast is soon. Go out back, Bill and Angie will show you the ropes, and around lunch we can do the usual pleasantries.”
With a nod and a word of thanks, I went through the back door to the yard. The main building of the daycare was small, little more than an office and a small waiting room; in fact, it was a converted garage. Past the counter where some files, a computer, and Robert sat, an open doorway led to the actual daycare, a massive ranch-type thing, big enough for as many Pokemon as we could reasonably expect to have all the room they needed. Years of expanding and good business had been kind to the place, making it the biggest in Sinnoh, and quite the spacious place. Pokemon, for as far as they eye can see, rested or just began to wake from their slumber, while several night creatures cursed the vile day star and scampered into a small forested section for shade. I rather much wanted to join them.
Instead, I decided to not ruin my first day on the job and went straight to the storage house. If it was a shed, it was the largest I’d ever seen. A short distance from the house, it doubled as a break room for the workers. Inside, I found a nice mini-fridge, a table surrounded by chairs, a television, a water cooler. “Not too bad,” I muttered, only afterwards noticing my company.
First, I noticed the girl, because she was sort of familiar. Just from seeing her around town the past few years, I merely knew of Angie. She was the granddaughter of the daycare couple, and… Damn. There were more than a few nights where she had the starring role in my ‘dreams’, but believe me, there was a reason. At just under six feet, her body was long and solid. Far from being sinewy, her length only gave her curves more room to entice with. A pair of light blue jeans held to her long legs tightly, and the fact she sat down and hid that gorgeous ass from the world was a crime. A thick blue sweater did little to hide her large breasts, whose outline inside them was enough for blind people to spot. There was always a brightness to her face and a wide smile. She wore her red hair long, though it was tied up into a loose bun for the sake of keeping it out of the way, even if it curled like mad.
Sitting opposite her was someone I’d never seen before. A fit guy about as old as Angie sat with the kind of smile on his face that looked like everything amused him. His hair was blond and long enough that it wasn’t certain if he was trying to grow it out or just between haircuts. He wore an open, red flannel shirt over an Aron Maiden t-shirt. It went without saying at this point, but he wore jeans and boots. We all did. That was just the work uniform. He had some definition to his body, which told me he’d been at this at least long enough to get some tone. “Sweet, Aerodactylsmith!”
When he spoke, I knew all I needed to. There was a certain indescribable softness to his voice; not breathy, but just kind of empty. Like a slacker fifteen years out of cultural relevance. There was only one way to respond to him after that.
“Whoa! Ted! You’re alive!”
“No man, I’m Bill!” He spent a moment staring at me longer than most people would, before turning to Angie. “Can you believe this guy?”
Oh damn, he was actually named Bill? That was all kinds of creepy, considering how he turned out. “I uh, I didn’t-sorry. You just reminded me of someone from a movie.”(he puts a lot of things off pokemon world that isnt real this is one)
“Bogus, man. I thought you were, like, a psychic Pokemon. But a person. Y’know?”
“Not really.”
Angie stepped in at that point, rising to her feet and forcing me to fight off every hot-blooded male urge to ogle those hips. “My grandparents told me about you, Adam. If they were right, then you should do just fine here.” She reached out a hand, and we traded grips. Her voice had a slight tinge of accent to it, one that would have placed her on a ranch in far more rural town than Solaceon. (he also messed up on her speech later on and made her too country) “Don’t mind Bill. He can get pretty nonsensical sometimes, but he’s a good guy. And smarter than he looks.”
“Not hard to be,” I muttered quietly enough for Angie to not hear me. Much louder, I said, “So, we’ll be every shift together?”
She nodded. “We handle meals, do some regular maintenance, sometimes one of us covers the desk during lunch, and the rest of the time, we kill in here. Long as everything’s taken care of, our days can get pretty lazy. Come on, we’ll show you how to handle breakfast.”
Angie started walking, and I followed after her with Bill coming up behind us. I made a note of keeping enough distance to look at her ass because, hey, it was really good. It was a reverent interest, nothing more. The massive ‘shed’ had an entrance leading to the break room and the much larger storage place. It had all the things a shed should, like tools, spare lengths of fence, and wooden boards. The majority of space, though, was occupied by large bags of Pokemon food; tons of them. A week’s supply, at least. For the roughly twenty Pokemon there temporarily, and about ten others there long-term, it was quite the amount. Angie handed me a bag, and I almost toppled over from the weight of it. All she gave me was, “You’ll get used to it.” She picked up a bag herself and headed out, Bill coming by to grab a bag of his own.
I swallowed my complaints. The surprise of the weight was the biggest thing, and I was able to carry it just fine. The only lamentable part of it all was that it meant I couldn’t check Angie out on the way there.
We came upon the first of three troughs, which still had lingering pellets or whatever of Pokemon food. Angie rested one of the bags on the side of the trough and pulled a large knife from her belt. “Usually, we do these ourselves, but we’ll do them together today, just to make sure you get it.” She pressed the blade to the bag with one hand as she leaned it toward the trough with the other. In one quick motion, she pulled the knife across the bag and, keeping her other hand firm, pellets began to pour out quickly into the trough. At first, they made dull thuds against the wood as they spilled out slowly, but she brought the hand down and tipped it closer, causing a veritable flood to rush out, sounding not unlike when I refilled Purrloin’s bowl, though on a bigger scale.
She kept that up until the bag got really light and the flow ebbed, eventually grabbing it and holding the burlap bag upside-down to ensure every last bit came out. The noise had attracted nearby Pokemon, just waking up and ready to start feeding. They dashed over to the bin and began to fight for a position even as Angie poured. She gave the bag one flourish of her wrist and stepped back, more Pokemon filling the space and the line shortening because of it.
“And that’s how you do it. Think you’ve got it?”
I nodded. “Looks straightforward enough.”
“Good. Then you’ll do yours, and if you mess up, you get to do Bill’s. Let’s go.”
She led me a good distance to the next trough, and handed me the knife. The bag wobbled a bit as I set it on the edge, but it didn’t go too badly from there. Once I got the bag open, it put up less resistance, and I could feel it under my hands, pouring out noisily into the trough. Pokemon swarmed, and it was a much more satisfying feeling than just pouring food for Purrloin. For one, they seemed grateful that I was bringer of the food. Purrloin would have just dug in, knowing it was her right and I was merely a servant.
After I gave the bag a flourish much less glamourous than Angie’s, I turned to the sound of a whimper. A Chikorita (leef type) had been left last by the natural order, as on three sides, a Mightyena, Umbreon, and Espeon nibbled on the food. She sat there, patiently waiting for them to finish, unwilling to ask for any food. My gaze fell to the trough, and I wondered if there’d even be any left, as the Arcanine behind Mightyena looked hungrier than anyone would like to be. She was so small, had nothing to assert herself with, and just let that be how it worked.
Feeling intensely bad for her, I scooped up a handful of the hand and knelt down beside the Chikorita, bringing my hand to her. “Here.”
“Chik?” She looked at the hand, then at me, apprehensively. Only after a few gestures with my hand did she lean forward and start eating the pellets out of my hand. She kept an eye on me, though it grew less stern as time went. When she ate the last pellet, she had what appeared to be a small smile on her face. I reached forward and scratched the back of her neck-a trick I learned from Purrloin-and the smile grew. “Chika,” she cooed as her head pushed against my wrist.
“She likes you,” Angie said. ” you have to do the next trough.”
“But I didn’t mess up.”
“No, but you’re doing it anyway. C’mon.”
…
After feeding, a few rounds of poker, and plenty of sleepy silence, Angie brought me to the desk so I could learn the computer stuff. Processing a single Pokemon involved tons of computer stuff, logging species, checking for any specific accommodations, registering trainer IDs, payment… It wasn’t complicated so much as just wrought with steps. Angie showed me one, then I handled the next few, and we were just in time to be saddled with another hour of it when Elaine finished cooking lunch.
Nobody was walking through the doors, so Angie and I just sat and killed time.
“So, Chikorita’s sure taken a shine to you. She’s pretty distant to me and Bill.” she muttered, leaning back against the wall, her feet up on the desk.
“I guess. I shouldn’t get too attached, though. That’s got to be one of the problems about the job; once their trainer comes back, they’re gone.”
“It is. But not with Chikorita. It’s another one of the sad things you see on this job. Pokemon left here tend to breed if there’s a compatible Pokemon, and most times there are. Heck, some trainers leave them here for it. Not all of them want the eggs, though. We give them to trainers when we can, find nice homes for them. But that’s not always easy. Chikorita’s been here a few months now, and nobody’s ever wanted to take her home. Until someone does, we take care of her, make sure she’s okay.”
I sat forward a little at the thought. “Interesting, so maybe one day I could-“
I was cut off by the side door opening and Elaine stepping out. “Thank you so much for the extra break. Here, I have some leftovers. There was a lot, so you can take some home for your mom and sister, Adam.”
“Thanks,” I nodded, taking the bag she handed me and standing up.
“Bye, gram.”
The walk to the break shed wasn’t long, but I was hungry, and the distance seemed a lot more daunting because of it. When we got there, I flung the door open and burst in, intent on devouring that sandwich.
Instead, I found Bill naked and sitting in a chair with a Rattata in his lap moaning and it was clear what they were up to.
“What the fuck?” I shouted, dropping the bag. I could hear the container pop open, and the food had surely spilled, but I couldn’t take my horrified gaze off of the blond and his debauchery.