Chapter 126

CHAPTER 126

Damn it, the Poketch Company got me good.

Not because they had tricked me with the contract. In fact, I was very happy with what we had negotiated. I stepped out of the changing room I had been practically forced into with cargo pants, a simple gray t-shirt, and fingerless gloves. I was being dressed-up.

“You look great! I would have liked to get you in a dress, but the execs want you to have that authentic trainer look. A shame,” my stylist said.

I should have known that they would have made me do a photoshoot when they said they wanted to make me the face of their company. They’d probably plaster me all over their website and the news— I already knew Craig was on there. They were apparently planning on revealing this entire thing right after my battle with Fantina— which we all assumed I would win— and creating a whole advertising blitz to slowly make the transition for the change between me and Craig.

“Thank you, I guess,” I sighed. “What’s with the bag?”

There was a green, camo backpack next to mine, and I was wondering if it was something they were going to give me as a gift or something. It certainly was bigger than the one I owned, although I was sort of attached to it by now.

“It’s for the photoshoot,” she smiled. “Goes well with your clothes, and every trainer has a backpack, don’t they? Sit.”

My stylist motioned me to a chair in front of a mirror with a bunch of lights, and then started to wash my face with some kind of smooth moisturizer. Afterward, she applied primer to my skin.

“We don’t want to go too overboard here,” she whispered as her hand ran under my eyes. “I’ll keep the makeup at a minimum. Hiding every imperfection would make you lose all of your appeal as a trainer. They make you look authentic,” she said as her eyes glazed over my burns.

I held back an annoyed sigh, but continued closing my eyes as I waited for her to finish. It was for the money, I told myself. In fact, the first two hundred and fifty thousand pokedollars had already been transferred to my account, and I even had that laptop I had always wanted. The stylist proceeded to brush my hair, and then she finally sent me off. I carried both backpacks in my hands, but Melody— the woman who had greeted me on the fifth floor— came and took them from me. Apparently, she wasn’t just a greeter. She was supposed to be my sponsorship liaison. She wouldn’t be as overbearing as a coordinator’s manager, and I’d barely see her once I left this building, but she’d be the one who called me if I ever acted out of line and damaged the company’s image. Alternatively, she’d also be the one I’d need to contact if I ever wanted something from them. I thanked her with a short nod.

A short, male photographer called me over, and I was surprised to see that the background and the floor of my pictures would just be completely white. They were being so extra with things that I almost thought they’d green-screen me on a route or something. A few people also stood behind him and whispered among themselves.

“‘Afternoon young lady,” he smiled. “I’m Joshua Nance, your photographer. I hope you appreciate that the company’s kept things on the down-low for you. Ordinarily, they’d be a whole lot of people in this room. Anyway, if you ever have to take any more pictures after today, I’m probably the one you’ll have to work with.”

“I sure hope I won’t have to, but thanks,” I simply said. “Can we get started right away, or…?”

I just wanted this whole thing to be done with, go home and start budgeting. He motioned me to step onto the large, white background, which I obliged.

“They wanted me to tell you that these won’t be published until your battle with Fantina. They want to time the marketing blitz with your victory.” he explained as he fiddled with his camera.

Melody spoke up. “And you’ll be promoted much more than with our usual sponsorship terms until they gently push Mr. Goodwill out of the limelight, replacing him with you by the summer, after the end of the Conference,”

“There we go. We’ll start with simple pictures that show who you are as a person. Stand there and just give me any pose you want, just make it feel natural.”

After telling me at least ten times to loosen up because I apparently looked nervous, Mr. Nance snapped a few pictures, making sure the Pokeballs on my belt were visible. He explained to me that the background was white so that they’d pop in a picture and draw and captivate the public’s eyes, which I guess was the point.

“Do you want to take a picture with one of your Pokemon next?” He asked. “It’d help the people get to know you on a more personal level.”

I didn’t understand how that made any sense, but why not—

Wait.

Jellicent was a no-go until I figured out how this new evolution affected him around people when he wasn’t focusing on a battle.

Turtornator… well, he’d kill everyone in this room.

Tangrowth would touch everything with his vines. He’d probably break the camera out of curiosity too.

Larvitar might get too excited, and she could damage the building with her stomping. Plus, she didn’t really like strangers either.

Well, Electabuzz and Togetic were doable— although princess was starting to get a little too aggressive for my liking, but that was mostly when she fought things.

“Can I use two?” I asked.

“Sure, go ahead.”

I released princess and honey and hurriedly explained the situation to them. Togetic seemed happy enough but still looked at Mr. Nance with some amount of suspicion. Electabuzz, goofy as he was, was acting all shy about getting his picture taken. I carried Togetic in my arms and placed her head against my chest while Electabuzz wrapped an arm around me and smiled, flashing his sharp teeth.

“Excellent, excellent!” He smiled as he snapped more pictures. “This’ll show the world how close you are with your team.”

Finally, after twenty minutes of making us strike different poses, it was over. I changed, and Melody led me out of the building and gave me her number and email so I could contact her whenever I wanted. I called dad over, who surprisingly immediately drove up with his car after barely two minutes.

“You’re here early,” I said after letting out a tired exhale as I sat into his car.

“I was waiting around the block, I was too nervous. How’d it go? You look great.” He said.

“Yeah, they put makeup on me for some shoot. And Dad, that was like, three hours you were waiting for me?” I chuckled. “I signed. I work with the Poketch Company now. Wait, does that mean we’re co-workers?!”

“Slow down there, kiddo,” he said as he started driving. “You shouldn’t have signed right away. What were the terms?”

“It’s fine. I read it over a ton of times, and I caught how they were trying to screw me by making the contract exclusive forever. Plus, they have to preserve their rep. It’d be a bad look if they fu— screwed me over too hard while trying to make me the face of their company at the same time.”

“Hold on, the face of the company? Isn’t that Craig Goodwill?”

I explained the big elements of the contract to him— which, to me, was mostly the pay, but I also told him that it was an exclusive sponsorship. I’d have to cancel all of my meetings with the other companies I had written back to. It was a shame, but I knew they’d never offer me better terms. Plus, a part of me was glad I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in meetings with a bunch of business people. Just one had been tiresome enough. I didn’t know how Denzel planned on doing it. He still had eight meetings to get to.

“There’s a bunch of other stuff too. I’ve got a copy of the contract with me if you want to read it. It’s in a nice little leather booklet.”

“I’ll give it a read later,” he nodded before ruffling my hair. “I’m proud of you, kid. Do you want me to drop you off at the Center?”

I smiled. “How about lunch first?”

Dad took me to Arlyle’s to eat, although he didn’t eat anything himself because it was too unhealthy, or whatever. I sent a text to the group chat saying that the meeting went well, and they all congratulated me in their own way. Justin and Cecilia sent me private messages, the former sending a long, essay-like message about the economic power of the Poketch Company and how I had made the correct choice, while Cecilia berated me, saying she would have liked to give me advice first. She came around when I explained the terms, although she said I should have asked what constituted how ‘well I was doing’ for renegotiation purposes. I’d shoot Melody a message about it later, but she was right that I should have asked. Still, she was excited for me and glad that they had recognized how much I was worth.

Along with hearts.

A lot of hearts.

Arceus, she was cute. I sent her a GIF of two Teddiursa hugging with a caption that said ‘us’. I almost heard her squeal through the screen. She apparently hadn’t known that was possible, and she spent the next twenty minutes sending me romantic GIFs in return. I ended up asking her for vitamin advice.

Denzel congratulated me in a teasing manner, telling me to leave some fame for the rest of them. Pauline called me a gremlin, but also said that ‘a girl like me’ deserved to be rich, so she was hoping I’d renegotiate to get more money as soon as possible. Emilia called for a celebration and used a bunch of emojis I couldn’t decipher. The atmosphere between the three was still awkward, but I was glad they were at least not fighting. Or maybe they were, and they were hiding it from us.

Eh, I’d probably be able to figure it out the next time I saw them. Now that Cecilia had revealed the fact that there was some relationship drama afoot, I felt like I’d be able to read all of them like open books. I thanked dad for the food and driving me back to the Center and entered my Pokemon Center room right away. I’d join my friends later. I released my entire team aside from Turtonator, although at this point, Jellicent was so big he could barely move around the room. Still, he clumsily floated behind me— where he always liked to be when I was about to work.

I opened my new laptop and quickly set it up. Apparently, I could link my phone and my Poketch Watch, and

the computer to each other, which sure as hell was convenient. I supposed that this was the main benefit of being loyal to the brand. I smiled when I saw that the laptop came with a pre-installed spreadsheet app. This would be good for Pokemon training, but right now, I’d need it for one thing.

Budgeting.

I knew this wouldn’t be that complicated, but I’d always been bad with math. Back in school, I had gotten sixty to sixty-five percent on every subject, which meant I had barely graduated, but I hadn’t tried or studied.

Except in math, where I had to work my ass off to barely pass. So even though I knew the program would do all the calculations for me, I still felt a twinge of dread well up inside of me. Yes. Dread. That was how much I hated numbers.

“Okay…” I exhaled. “Two hundred and fifty thousand pokedollars per month.”

The date was currently January 10th, but I had already gotten my money for this month, so I’d get paid for five more months. That added up to… 1.25 million Pokedollars by the Conference.

And that was just the bare minimum. Bar any catastrophic circumstances where I completely fumbled the bag and they brought my salary down, there was nowhere to go but up when I renegotiated in three months. Plus, there were the bonuses for the tournaments, although they hadn’t given me a solid number for those, so I’d get even more money down the line.

All of the money I spent on a monthly basis was pennies compared to this, but I couldn’t go overboard. I needed to save for very specific things.

“It’s mid-January, but let’s just stick with that five month number for the sake of simplicity. Let’s say that currently, I spend around… five thousand Pokedollars per month for everything I need,” I whispered. “That adds up to twenty-five grand by the Conference, so I’m left with 1,225,000 pokedollars. Not bad.”

I opened up my browser and looked up the price of a Shiny Stone. I already knew the average price was 745,000 pokedollars, but it tended to fluctuate a lot with supply. I blew a raspberry when I saw that the price had jumped to almost 800,000, which tended to be the upper limit of its price range. Well, it wasn’t like I had enough to buy one right now. Hopefully, the price would go down by the time I did, though. The Shiny Stone was the main reason I couldn’t just go and spend everything I currently had on TMs, even though looking at the money on my trainer card did fill me with a giddy feeling.

Is this how dad felt every time he got paid?

So basically, I needed to have 800,000 Pokedollars by the time the Conference came around— preferably a little earlier than that so that Togetic could get used to her new body. She was a slow flier right now, but Togekiss were known to be quick, since they used both their wings and fairy type energy to fly, whereas she currently only used the energy to float instead. That meant that I had to control my spending.

Vitamins and TMs were the only things I currently wanted. According to Cece, a single bottle for every vitamin— Protein, Iron, Calcium, Zinc, Carbos, and Magnesium— cost 50,000 pokedollars. Nothing to billionaires, but a fuck ton of money to me. If I spread it out, though, it’d last me the whole month, but my Pokemon would take a bit longer to see the effects. I was fine with it, though, since vitamins tended to have diminishing returns the longer you fed them to your Pokemon, so catching up there was definitely on the table if I got better terms with the Poketch Company. According to Cece and some reputable breeders I found online, the best way to go about this was to feed your Pokemon a baseline of every vitamin in the first few months, and then specialize in different kinds for what you wanted each Pokemon to do. For example, Carbos was known to improve a Pokemon’s speed, so I’d give them to Electabuzz, whereas Jellicent now had excellent survivability, so I’d give him Magnesium instead. They were meant to improve on their strengths.

“So 50,000 pokedollars times five months…” I quietly spoke, typing on my laptop. “That’s 250,000 pokedollars. Added with the cost for everything else, I’d be left with 975,000 pokedollars by June.”

That left me 175,000 to play with— no, I’d keep a 10,000 pokedollar buffer on top of the 800,000 I might have needed just to be safe. Although again, I’d have more depending on how I did in those five tournaments I was supposed to join, and my salary would probably increase for those last two months before the Conference. Hell, if I had time and I was short on cash, then maybe I could join more tournaments. Still, I’d play it safe until I got my first bonus after the Solaceon tournament. From then on, I’d be able to get an idea of the money range, at least.

165,000 pokedollars. That was the final number I was free to spend on TMs for the rest of the year until shown otherwise, and bar any exceptional circumstances where I’d have to spend money for an emergency. I probably needed to keep another buffer for that, like emergency savings, so I lowered that number further to 145,000. It might have seemed like a lot now, but TMs for the moves I wanted were actually expensive. They wouldn’t cost a mere 15,000 like Thunder Wave had. For example, I wanted Psychic for Togetic, and that alone cost 80,000, which was fair, since it was one of the most versatile moves a Pokemon could learn. The reusable one would be more expensive, but right now, I was only looking at prices for single-use TMs.

That left me with 65,000. I turned back toward my team and wondered who I could buy a TM for. Jellicent was fine for now, and he had a lot of moves to learn naturally, still. I didn’t exactly want to overwhelm Larvitar with TMs when she was learning new moves at an already incredible pace. There were actually a lot of affordable TMs Tangrowth could learn, so he could be an option. Electabuzz was interesting. I didn’t have the money for it, but they could learn Teleport, which was one of the most expensive TMs in the world. Non-psychic types unfortunately couldn’t teleport other people with them, though, and the range would be rather pitiful, but it’d mean that he could dodge a lot easier in battles.

The learning process was dangerous, and could be lethal without a Pokemon acting as his teacher, so I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to teach it to him in the long term unless I suddenly became friends with a person that had a Pokemon that knew the move. There were a lot of horror stories about Pokemon accidentally teleporting underground and being buried alive. A better option I was looking at was Protect. Honey was my most vulnerable Pokemon. Even though Togetic could take fewer hits, she was adept at not getting hit thanks to Ancient Power and Extrasensory. I figured that Electabuzz needed something like that to protect himself from attacks that he couldn’t dodge, especially since he’d be my ace against Fantina.

The single-use protect TM cost 78,000 pokedollars, though… that was beyond my emergency fund.

I leaned back into my chair and sighed as I stared at Jellicent, who looked down at me with a worried gaze.

“Well, I might as well live a little,” I said. “I’ll be able to pad my savings a bit after the Solaceon tournament. Let’s get those Vitamins and TMs.”

——

Why did no one ever tell me that spending so much money at once hurt? I felt like I was doing something fundamentally wrong, and yet I had done the math. It all was economically sound! I walked out of the mart and immediately used my Pokedex to teach princess and honey their respective moves. If I could have bought the reusable version of Protect, I could have taught it to Togetic too, but this store actually didn’t even sell reusable TMs, surprisingly enough. Emilia wanted me to get back to the Center quickly, since she was already organizing a party.

“She sure works fast,” I smiled.

I messaged her that I’d be back in thirty minutes or so, and that I just needed to try out my new moves. Not wanting to bother my dad too much, I took a bus to route 208 and released my two Pokemon.

“Feel any different?” I asked them. “I taught a new move to both of you. Princess, you have Psychic now, which is offensively better than Extrasensory in every way. If you ever want to pick someone up, though, use Extrasensory, because Psychic hurts up here,” I explained, pointing to my head.

She nodded with a determined look and chirped.

“Why don’t you try it on, uh… here, why don’t you rip a branch from this tree for me. Use Extrasensory to do it.”

Her eyes shimmered, and she separated a small branch from the tree I had motioned at. In the meantime, I grabbed my computer, in which I had opened a new spreadsheet and a stopwatch application.

“Okay, now try to lift it into the sky with the same move as quickly as you can,” I continued. “Stop when you reach the top of your head.”

The air around the twig distorted, and she lifted it up, stopping as soon as it reached her crown.

“That was almost three seconds. 2.94. Not bad,” I smiled, typing the number on my laptop. “Now put it down and do the same with Psychic. You might have to try a little harder, but you have the knowledge to use it.”

Princess squinted, then closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. The branch shook, and I almost pressed go on the stopwatch too early. When she opened her eyes, the twig shot up so quickly that I pressed it too late instead, and she didn’t manage to stop it at her head. In fact, it flew off far into the distance. She bowed her head at me and let out an apologetic cry.

“Togeprri…”

“That’s okay, princess,” I comforted her, rubbing her chin. “You did awesome for your first time. We’ll track it later, along with how much your progress with the move through the rest of the year. Then we’ll be able to look back at the number and smile when we see how far you’ll have come.”

Togetic slowly smiled and clapped her hands.

“Aw, you’re so cute,” I laughed. “Now it’s your turn, hon. Your new move is Protect. It makes a big, transparent barrier around you that protects you from attacks, although it’s tiring to use. Try it out.”

The electric type stepped forward and confidently punched his palm, making me smirk. He brought both of his hands forward, yelled out his name, and a thin barrier that barely covered his entire torso appeared in front of him.

Togetic laughed so hard she fell on the ground, and I had to ask her to not make fun of her brother. If Electabuzz didn’t have any fur, he would have been blushing for sure. Luckily for him, the rest of the family hadn’t been there to see him fail, but Togetic would probably spill the beans anyway.

“Don’t look so down. Come on,” I told him. “TMs just give you the rudimentary knowledge. You still have to put a lot of work in to actually master the move. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Buzz…” he said, nodding toward Togetic.

“She failed too. She can barely control the direction of what she uses Psychic on.”

That seemed to have stopped her laughing fit.

“Okay, we have like fifteen minutes until I have to leave. We can be fashionably late to the party and no one will bat an eye.”

Tomorrow, I would sign up for my battle against Fantina.