Unfortunately, the trek back to Solaceon Town was rather painful. Not for any physical reasons, my body had gotten pretty used to walking long distances by now, but because it felt like the entire trip up to Celestic Town had been a waste.

  Sure, I had gotten some information about Volo and some dirt on Cynthia, but otherwise…

  “Well.” I told Zetian, who was happily buzzing along beside me as we walked. “At least I know that I don’t want to settle down in Celestic Town. It’s nice, but too rural - even for me.”

  In a little bit of good news, I had actually heard back from my accountants. A while back I had the idea that, with the money I had gotten from the bounties on Maxie and Archie, I might actually be able to buy a house.

  I’d reached out to Professor Rowan, who’d then reached out to some people he knew, and got me in contact with a well-respected financial group.

  With their help, and a couple years of saving and careful spending, they were relatively confident that they could actually manage to help me not just buy a house, but also have enough left over for an early retirement.

  Which was big. In my previous life, my “retirement plans” had been hoping to find a bag full of money that had been left behind in a public park from a mafia deal or something.

  I had been thinking about trying to find a home in Celestic Town, since I knew it was small and quiet, but after having been there it was a little too small and quiet. Jubilife City was too fast paced, not to mention probably way too expensive even with the money I had in my savings, but hopefully there was a good middle ground somewhere.

  “Maybe Sandgem? It’s a little on the smaller side, but it might work.” I asked Zetian, who danced a small mid-air jig.

  “Oh that’s right! You’ve never been to Sandgem Town, have you? That was before I met you…”

  I frowned as we kept walking. “I’d like to show you more of Sinnoh, I think. You, Jira, Kōjin, and Venus. I’m not quite ready to settle down, not just yet, but I am glad we’re going slower than we were with the boys.”

  She buzzed some more.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what she was saying, while Zetian was smart she wasn’t at the “communicating deep ideas” stage that some Pokémon were. But she still could communicate basic concepts like emotions and interests, which was good enough for most ‘conversations.’

  “Well, I still think that-”

  I was cut off by the distant sound of an engine, and I turned to see a small cloud of dust making its way down the road.

  “...Huh.” I said, as the distant form of a truck began to clear a small hill. “You don’t see that everyday.”

  The pickup wasn’t one of the ones I was used to seeing back on Earth. In fact, I hadn’t seen any large pickups like a Ford or a Dodge. Instead, the truck that came shuddering to a halt on the side of the road in response to my outstretched thumb was small and cute, a Kei truck.

  I’d lived in a small-ish farming town before moving to the big city, and in general I’d noted that there were two kinds of trucks. The ones used by actual working-class people, with splattered mud and dirt and plenty of scratches, and those used by city-folk who wanted to pretend like they were more rural than they actually were. Those trucks were clean and spotless, and with an unscratched bed that told you they’d never actually hauled anything besides their groceries back from the store.

  This truck, as small and cute as it was, was clearly part of the former category. There was mud all over the tires and a tall stack of wooden boxes lashed down in the bed.

  The window rolled down, and a woman peered over at me. She had dark, vaguely purple hair done up in a messy bun, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was sitting on the dash of the truck.

  “Y’all lost?” She had a more rural accent than many of the people I’d met so far.

  I shook my head.

  “No, just looking for a ride.”

  She turned and looked back the way I came.

  “You comin’ from Celestic Town?”

  “Yup. Went there to visit, see the sights.”

  The woman chuckled, and I shrugged wryly. “Learned my lesson there. Professor Carolina was out of town.”

  “Long way for nothin’, huh?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “Where’re you heading?”

  “Back to Solaceon Town. From there to Hearthome.”

  She thought for a long moment, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

  “Luckily for you, I’m heading over to Hearthome. If I give you a ride, you won’t do anything funny, will ya?”

  I crossed my heart. “You have my word.”

  She sighed, then reached over and unlocked the door. “Hop on in.”

  Smiling, I recalled Zetian, and hopped in.

  “Thanks. The name’s Alina.”

  “Aoi, nice to meetcha.”

  She waited until I was buckled in, and then got the truck moving.

  “Ahh.” I sighed after a moment. “Been a while since I’ve been in a car. Walking is nice and all, great for your health, but sometimes it’s nice to take a load off.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Aoi chuckled. “I hear ya. You a Trainer?”

  I waggled my hand. “Sort of? I was, for a while, but now I’m just trying to see the sights.”

  “Not from around here then.”

  “You could tell?”

  She smirked, and I relaxed a little more into the seat. If this was my old world, I would likely have just let her keep driving by. Taking chances as a hitchhiker was, well, Chancey.

  But in my new home, it was a lot safer, and people were generally nicer than on Earth. That didn’t mean my hand wasn’t laying close to my Poké Balls, just in case, but I wasn’t as on-edge as I would have been.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” I said after a couple minutes of companionable silence. “What are you hauling?”

  “Hm? Oh, all sorts of things, really. Mostly milk and cabbages.”

  “Cabbages?”

  “Mmhm. We got a farm off the road a little ways, outside of Celestic. Not the biggest, but we make do.”

  I nodded. During our travels, I’d seen a large number of farms like that spread all across Sinnoh. There weren’t as many big, factory farms like on Earth, instead it seemed like Sinnoh got most of its food from small family farms.

  “Nice.”

  Aoi shrugged. “It’s a living.”

  “Do you have any Pokémon then?”

  She smiled, and patted her leather belt where two Friend Balls were resting.

  “Not as many as one of you fancy Trainers. Got the family’s Miltank, and an old Glameow that eventually decided to let me catch him after living in our barn for the past few years. You?”

  “You saw Zetian, she’s my Vespiquen.”

  Aoi nodded. “I know a couple farms with Vespiquen living nearby. They’re not officially caught, but the farmers have worked out a deal with them. Honey in exchange for security or more trees, that kinda stuff.”

  “Huh, good to know.”

  “Sorry, you were saying?”

  “Right. Also have Venus, an Umbreon, and Kōjin is a Growlithe.” I decided to leave out the part about him being a Hisuian variant. “And Jira is a Larvitar.”

  Whistling, Aoi shook her head. “You Trainers. Always have the most interesting Pokémon. Where in the world did you find a Larvitar?”

  “It’s a bit of a long story.”

  She gestured out at the road ahead of us. “Got a couple hours ‘till we get to Hearthome City.”

  I started, then shook my head and laughed. “I’ve been walking so much, I really have forgotten how nice it is to drive. It would have taken me days, if not more to make it there. Alright, I suppose I have time then. So my friends and I were taking a bit of a detour on a little place called Iron Island…”

  /^\

  “Hey, you.” I blinked and yawned, stretching. “You’re finally awake.”

  I looked around in confusion. The sun was setting and I was in… a truck?

  A flush warmed my face as I looked over to see Aoi smiling as she nudged me awake.

  “We’re here.”

  “Huh? Did I…”

  “Yeah, you fell asleep. Don’t worry, I didn’t go rifling through your pockets or anything weird.” Aoi gestured to Venus on my lap, who I’d let out an hour or two into the drive so she could have the experience of being in a car.

  “Your little bodyguard there would have stopped me.”

  Venus opened one red eye, looking rather uninterested in the entire affair.

  “I’m sorry.” I groaned and rubbed my eyes. “Seriously, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it. Anyways, we’re here: Hearthome City.”

  We were still driving through the outlying suburbs, but I could see the tall buildings of Hearthome before us.

  “Wow.” I murmured, nose almost pressed up against the window.

  “You should have seen me the first time I drove in.” Aoi chuckled. “Was rubbernecking around like a real country bumpkin and ran into a streetlight.”

  “Were you okay?”

  “Oh I was fine, just a bit shaken. The truck on the other hand came off worse. My pa almost tanned my hide something fierce, until he realized that he could use the insurance money to get a new truck.”

  She patted the console of the little pickup. “That’s how we ended up with this one here. It still took him a couple years before he let me drive again! Anyways, is there anywhere in particular you want me to drop you off?”

  I thought for a moment, then shrugged. “The Pokémon Center?”

  “Which one?”

  “Uhh…”

  “How ‘bout I drop you off at the one near the restaurant? It’s not the biggest, but you can get a taxi or something there.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We drove in silence for a little bit longer, and I stared out of the window at the city passing by. I’d never been on the opposite side, actually driving through a city instead of just walking it, and the feeling was very different.

  Most cities in Sinnoh had a couple of bigger main streets where cars could drive, but also had countless smaller side paths that a car or bus couldn’t pass through, or even whole neighborhoods that were blocked off for pedestrians only.

  It was a very different feeling than the car-centric cultures of Earth, and even in a car I could still feel how the priorities here were the complete opposite of places like my old home.

  For a brief moment I wondered if Unova really was more like America, including a bigger focus on the cars. I couldn’t imagine that being the case, but it was still interesting to think about, and not for the first time I wondered just how close the different cultures on this world were different than on Earth.

  And then, in a flash of self-reflection, I realized that I didn’t know what this planet was called. I’d been living here for months, and not once had I ever actually looked up what they called the planet. Was it still ‘Earth’?

  Earth was, in all honesty, a fairly boring name for a planet. Might as well have called it ‘Dirt.’ But did the people in the Pokémon World have our same lack of imagination when it came to the name?

  I was interrupted from my musings by the truck pulling up to the curb of the Pokémon Center.

  “Well, here we are.” Aoi said.

  “Thanks.” I hesitated for a second, then reached into my bag and pulled out my wallet.

  Venus grumbled at the movement, hopping down into the footwell of the truck. “I have some cash here for gas-”

  Aoi shook her head with a smile. “Nah, you don’t gotta pay. I was heading this way anyways, you didn’t make me go out of my way or anything.”

  “Are you sure? That’s awfully kind of you, I can spare some cash and-”

  “No no no, I insist. The conversation and company was payment enough. It gets boring on these long drives sometimes.”

  “I…”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  I sighed, and put my wallet back. “Thank you, Aoi. You saved me a lot of time and energy in getting here. I appreciate it a lot.”

  “Aw shucks.” She rubbed the back of her head. “You're gonna make me blush.”

  We laughed for a moment, and then she reached over and gave me a slightly awkward one-armed hug.

  “Take care of yourself now, you hear? You seem like good people, so don’t get in trouble.”

  “You too. Got a phone?”

  She fished out an older flip phone. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, I know it’s a bit out of date compared to those newer ones but-”

  I smiled and pulled out my own second-hand phone.

  She laughed again, and we exchanged numbers.

  “Stay safe out there.”

  “You too. Have a good drive back.”

  Aoi sighed. “Alina, I’m exchanging Miltank milk and cabbages for the restaurant’s used oil so we can turn it into biofuel. My truck’s gonna smell like Giratina’s armpit for the rest of the month.”

  “Better you than me!”

  We laughed a little bit longer, then said a few more goodbyes, and soon enough I was on the curb, watching the white Kei truck heading further into town.

  “Now then.” I said to Venus. “Let’s go find a place to stay for the night, shall we?”