nostabbing | 005 | Violet City

[So here's ~~Parker~~ "Alice", for once heralding from a different setting than the sights and sounds of Goldenrod City; given the generally purple background scenery, it's probably a fair bet that she's in Violet. Plus, the fact that she's standing a short distance away from the unmistakable architecture of the Violet Gym only serves to reinforce this fact.

Just as the highly offended look on her face only serves to reinforce the fact that something is decidedly bothering her.]

Okay, so if you want to fly, you need the DVD thingy to teach it to your Pokemon and the badge thingy because...you just do for some reason. But I don't have to teach Switch with the DVD thingy because he was born with it.

[As if on cue, an Aerodactyl cranes its big sinister head down into the frame to photobomb the video and nuzzle against her cheek; clearly delighted by this, she wastes no time in tilting her head and rewarding him with a kiss on the Aerodactyl approximation of the cheek.]

So that means I just need the badge thingy to fly, and you get those from the gym. But I did that and it didn't work.

[Technically, she did it about four times...with four different badges...none of which were technically hers...because all of them were lifted from the badge cases of victorious trainers as they left Falkner's gym...

...

Whoops.]

So what else do you have to do to go flying? 'Cause I — hang on. [Her attention abruptly diverts somewhere offscreen.] HEY! IS IT HATCHING?!

[A beat passes, presumably containing a reply rendered inaudible to the microphone from the distance. And evidently so, because when "Alice" looks back, her eyes are bright and she's alight with sudden enthusiasm.]

Gottagobye.

[And the feed switches off.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You probably should, if you get a chance... or, at the very least, examine it next to a functional badge. If there's some sort of defect, it should be brought to light so that whoever's responsible for it can make reparations.

[And be fired, because they had one job]

[Huh. Now there's a good point. Maybe they're somehow keyed to the first person to touch them or something, once they're handed out — like a biological imprint, maybe — and that's why other people can't use them?

Well, that means she'll just have to steal a fresh one right off the Gym Leader, won't she.]

...Right! Right, that's totally what I'm going to do. 'Cause they better get this fixed, and fast. It's not like it's my fault the dumb thing doesn't work.

[YEAH. Incite the masses!]

Precisely. If mine turns out to be equally useless, I may just take it upon myself to travel back to Violet to let Falkner know exactly what I think of his gross negligence.

[but kayneth, your fiancee's the one who's good at complaining to customer service]

How far away are you now?

[She had to walk from Goldenrod, man, and it sucked.]

Azalea, though it will likely take me far longer to find out of the badge truly is defective, since I haven't been to the gym that gives out the HM yet and the Pokemon I have that hatched with it is still fairly... small.

If it becomes necessary for me to walk a long distance back to Violet, however...

[...his tone suggests that this will be the worst possible thing that could happen to Falkner]

I wonder if anybody even bothers to go win the DVD thing that teaches Pokemon the Fly move anymore, when so many people's animals are just born with it. You have to go to Cianwood or Saffron to get it, right? So that's either way out in the middle of nowhere or a pretty expensive train ticket.

Well, it can't hurt to be able to teach it to all of your Flying Pokemon, I'm sure... but at the same time, it seems so backwards to have your Pokemon only be able to learn it after that much traveling, especially given that you've had the ability to use the move since the very first Gym.

I don't have that many. And I think the ones I do have all have it already anyway.

Maybe they hide it so far away to make the game more of a challenge?

It seems as though whoever's in charge of how things work here mistakes pointless tedium for an actual challenge fairly regularly. It doesn't take particularly long to render wild Pokemon encounters completely trivial, so the only challenge then occurs if you don't have much outdoors experience-and after a certain amount of time, everyone here has outdoors experience.

Maybe the challenge is enduring the pointless tedium as long as you can without getting bored, though.

Or dead. Dead in the woods is possible, too.

Well, I suppose the former is legitimate... though they already make the latter too easy by making it impossible to die here, apparently.

Wouldn't being mostly dead in the woods be even worse, though? I mean, then you'd be alive to experience all of it. Having a tree fall on you or wild animals eating you or having to gnaw off your own limbs to get out of a bear trap...

Apparently when you receive an injury that should be fatal, you'll immediately be transported to a Pokemon Center. It's not one of those things where you're in a situation where you should die but are not able to, mercifully enough.

Of course, that does mean you have to work your way back to the point you were at before you "died," which is, again, extremely tedious.

005 | Violet City | Video / Action;

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