"Sandslash, push harder! Come on, you've got this! Just five more laps and you can rest!"
Julian's voice echoed across the small training yard, raw and encouraging, cutting through the late afternoon air. The courtyard wasn't much to look at—just a patch of hard-packed dirt about thirty feet across, surrounded by a weathered wooden fence that had seen better days. It sat on the outskirts of Viridian Forest, close enough that you could hear wild Pidgey chattering in the trees if you listened carefully.
Right now though, the only sound that mattered was Sandslash's labored breathing.
The Ground-type was absolutely drenched. Sweat matted down its tan fur in dark patches, and fat droplets flew off with every movement, catching the sunlight like tiny crystals before hitting the dirt. Its chest heaved so violently Julian could count each desperate gulp of air from where he stood. The poor thing was clearly exhausted—anyone with eyes could see that.
But Sandslash kept going.
Its powerful limbs drove forward with mechanical determination, claws digging into the ground with each step. Every footfall kicked up a small cloud of dust that hung in the air, marking its path around the yard like breadcrumbs. What really got Julian though, what made his chest tight with pride, was the look in Sandslash's eyes. That fierce, stubborn glint that said it wasn't about to quit. Not now. Not ever.
Julian stood at the edge of the yard, arms crossed, watching every movement. His eyes tracked Sandslash's form automatically—stance, breathing pattern, any sign of actual distress versus just exhaustion. A small smile crept across his face without him even realizing it.
That's my partner, he thought, satisfaction warming him from the inside out. Keep pushing. You're getting stronger every single day.
But as he watched Sandslash round the corner for another lap, Julian's focus started to drift. His eyes glazed over slightly, his mind wandering backward like a balloon slipping from a kid's hand, floating away into the past.
He still didn't really understand how it happened.
One day he'd been... somewhere else. Someone else? The memories were fuzzy now, like trying to remember a dream after you've been awake for hours. And then—nothing. A blank space. And when consciousness returned, he was here. In the Pokemon world. Actually, legitimately in the Pokemon world.
Julian had gone through all the predictable stages. Disbelief. Excitement. Wonder. Then, pretty quickly, reality had set in.
Because apparently, he'd followed the standard reincarnation playbook right down to the letter, including the tragically cliché backstory: dead parents. No family. Nobody.
His parents—or rather, this body's parents—had died when he was really young. Too young to remember their faces or voices. All he had were vague impressions, feelings without images attached. After that, he'd bounced around for a while before ending up at an orphanage in Viridian City when he was six years old.
Viridian City.
Even now, years later, the irony wasn't lost on him. Of all the places to end up, he'd landed in the secret headquarters of Team Rocket. The main base of operations for Giovanni himself—the Giovanni, Gym Leader and crime boss extraordinaire.
By all rights, it should've been incredibly dangerous. Living in the literal lion's den, surrounded by criminals and shady dealings. But here was the weird thing: Viridian City was actually... really safe.
Giovanni, as it turned out, was playing the long game. He kept his identity completely under wraps, and more than that, he'd put serious effort into making Viridian City look like a model of civic virtue. The public order was rock solid. Streets were clean. Crime was low—at least, the visible kind. The guy ran his city like a well-oiled machine.
The low-level Team Rocket grunts running around in the shadows had absolutely no clue their boss was right there in plain sight, running the Gym and schmoozing with League officials. The higher-ups knew, obviously, but they kept their mouths shut. Which meant Viridian City, despite being Team Rocket HQ, was somehow safer and more stable than half the "legitimate" League cities out there.
And because Giovanni didn't care about penny-pinching on public services, the orphanage where Julian lived had surprisingly good funding. They got benefits and resources that orphanages in other cities could only dream about. Fresh food. Decent beds. Educational programs. The works.
Julian had realized pretty quickly that the Pokemon League's administration was... well, let's just say "problematic" was putting it mildly. Corruption, inefficiency, misallocated funds—the whole nine yards. It was kind of hilarious, in a dark way, that the criminal organization was actually running a better operation than the supposed good guys.
Welcome to reality, Julian had thought at the time. Guess the anime didn't show this part.
Of course, being reincarnated in the Pokemon world came with the standard protagonist package: a cheat ability. A system.
When Julian had first realized he'd ended up in the Pokemon world, he'd literally jumped three feet in the air from excitement. His heart had hammered in his chest, his mind racing with possibilities.
This is it! I'm actually here! I can raise Pokemon! Real, actual Pokemon! I can have my own team, go on adventures, maybe even become a champion!
The euphoria had lasted about a week.
Because after settling into the orphanage routine, reality—that cold, harsh mistress—had come knocking. Becoming a legitimate Pokemon Trainer wasn't just a matter of wanting it. It required resources. Money. Connections. Support.
Sure, if you just wanted a pet Pokemon, that was easy enough. Plenty of people kept small Grass-types around as companions—they ate little, didn't need much space, and were generally low-maintenance. Having a Bellsprout or Oddish hanging around your apartment was common enough.
But actually training Pokemon? Competing? Making a career out of it? That required serious cash.
Quality Pokemon food wasn't cheap. Medical care cost a fortune. Training equipment, TMs, supplements, travel expenses—it all added up fast. Most successful Trainers either came from wealthy families or had sponsors backing them. The "start from nothing and make it big" story was a nice fairy tale, but the reality was much harsher.
Julian, being an orphan living on charity, had exactly zero dollars to his name. He couldn't even afford to catch a Pokemon, let alone raise one properly.
Just when despair had really started setting in, the system had made its appearance.
Julian's hands had actually trembled when the interface first popped up in his vision. His breath had caught in his throat, his heart doing backflips.
Yes! This is it! I'm saved! I've got a system! I'm going to be amazing!
He'd eagerly pulled up the system description, ready to see what incredible powers he'd been granted. Sign-in rewards? Daily legendary Pokemon? Instant level-ups?
What he got was... an AI system.
Just an AI.
Julian's excitement had deflated like a popped balloon. It was like expecting a birthday present and getting socks. Useful socks, maybe, but still socks.
He'd read enough web novels to know how this usually went. The protagonist gets some overpowered sign-in system, right? Day one, boom—here's a Mewtwo. Day seven, here's a shiny Rayquaza. Daily check-in rewards raining legendary Pokemon and rare items like candy. Within a month, the protagonist is crushing Elite Four members and dating every Champion and Gym Leader in existence.
Julian had stared at his system interface, feeling incredibly deflated.
This AI system had apparently lost a huge chunk of its data during the dimensional transfer. Right now, it was basically empty. A blank slate. A computer with nothing installed.
But it wasn't completely useless. After moping for a day or two, Julian had forced himself to actually read the manual properly, and he'd found three core functions:
Function One: Knowledge Recording. Basically, the system could record anything Julian read or studied. Books, articles, research papers—if he looked at it, the system saved it. Perfectly. Like having a photographic memory, except even better because he could search through it all instantly. Never forget anything he'd read, ever.
Function Two: Information Organization and Analysis. The system could take messy, scattered data and organize it into clear, usable formats. See patterns. Run comparisons. Basically, it was like having a supercomputer that could crunch numbers and connect dots way faster than any human brain.
Function Three: Scanning. This one was interesting but limited. The system could scan Pokemon, items, whatever—but the accuracy depended entirely on how much knowledge it had stored already. The more data in the database, the better and more detailed the scan results would be.
Which brought Julian right back to his main problem: he was a kid in an orphanage. Where exactly was he supposed to get massive amounts of Pokemon knowledge?
He'd spent an entire evening lying on his thin orphanage mattress, staring at the ceiling, thinking bitter thoughts.
If only I'd been reborn in Pallet Town. If I could've gotten close to Professor Oak, I could've accessed years of research data. The system would've become incredible. I'd be unstoppable by now.
But there was no medicine for regret, as the saying went. He was stuck in Viridian City, and that was that.
For a while, Julian had seriously considered just running away. Maybe he could make it to Pallet Town on his own? Find Professor Oak somehow, convince him to take Julian on as an assistant?
But he'd quickly dismissed the idea. He was six years old. Barely four feet tall. Weak. The routes between cities were dangerous, filled with wild Pokemon that wouldn't hesitate to attack a lone kid. Every year, the news reported dozens of deaths from Pokemon attacks—Trainers and civilians alike. This world wasn't the sanitized, kid-friendly version from the anime. It was real, and that meant it was dangerous.
Going out alone would be suicide. Plain and simple.
Julian's brief spark of hope had guttered and nearly died.
But not quite.
He'd forced himself to sit up, shake off the despair, and think rationally.
Okay, so the system isn't amazing right now. But it's still better than nothing. I was already screwed before it showed up—at least now I've got something to work with. A chance is better than no chance at all.
With that slightly optimistic thought, Julian had settled into orphanage life, biding his time.
The years had crawled by slowly. At eight years old, the orphanage had arranged for all the age-appropriate kids to start school.
The education system in Viridian City ran on a 3-3-3 model: three years of elementary school, three years of middle school, three years of university. The orphanage covered tuition for elementary and middle school, but university was on you—if you wanted higher education, you had to fund it yourself.
At the time, Julian hadn't thought much of it. Free school was free school. But later, after learning more about how funding worked, he'd realized he owed Giovanni a pretty significant debt of gratitude. Without those six years of education, his system would never have gotten off the ground.
The school library and computer databases were absolute goldmines.
Sure, most of the material was basic—stuff for kids, the fundamentals of Pokemon care, type matchups, basic biology, that sort of thing. Nothing groundbreaking or advanced. But there was a lot of it, and crucially, it was all available for free.
For Julian, this was perfect.
If he'd tried to read everything manually, it would've taken ten years, minimum. But with the AI system, the process was lightning fast. For physical books, he'd just flip through the pages quickly—didn't even need to read carefully—and the system would record everything. For digital knowledge on the school computers, it was even easier. As long as there wasn't a firewall blocking access, the system could scan and download the information directly.
It was almost like hacking, but not quite. More like... super-efficient data collection.
From age eight to fourteen, Julian had spent almost every free moment in the library or computer lab. When he wasn't studying, he was working odd jobs—sweeping floors, running errands, helping out at local shops—anything to earn a few dollars here and there.
His classmates had thought he was weird. The other orphanage kids had called him boring. But Julian hadn't cared. He had a goal.
By the time he graduated middle school at fourteen, the AI system had accumulated a massive database. It wasn't complete by any means—there were still huge gaps, especially in advanced topics—but it was functional. Useful.
Using the system's knowledge base and analysis functions, Julian had taught himself breeding techniques and medicine-making. He'd practiced in secret, using the limited resources he could scrounge up, and had gotten pretty damn good at both. If he'd gone for official certification, he probably could've passed the tests for Junior Breeder and Junior Pharmacist without too much trouble.
But Julian had deliberately chosen not to pursue those certificates.
An orphan teenager with professional credentials? That was a recipe for unwanted attention. People would ask questions. Where'd you learn that? Who taught you? How'd you afford the materials?
And worse, there were plenty of people out there—both in the League and in the criminal underworld—who wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of a talented kid with no family to protect him. Kidnapping. Forced labor. Exploitation. Julian had read enough news stories to know how this went.
Better to fly under the radar. Better to be poor and overlooked than skilled and targeted.
Still, even without certificates, his actual abilities were real. He'd managed to get part-time work as an assistant at a local Pokemon breeding center and at a small medicine shop in town. The pay was decent—better than what most of the other employees made, actually, because he was legitimately good at the work.
That income had become his lifeline. His ticket out.
Because now, at sixteen, Julian finally had enough saved up to leave the orphanage and support himself. Not comfortably, but enough. He had skills, he had a small amount of money, and he had a plan.
A sound brought him back to the present—Sandslash's heavy breathing, closer now. His partner had finished the laps.
Julian blinked, his wandering thoughts snapping back into focus. Sandslash stood a few feet away, chest still heaving, looking at him with tired but proud eyes.
Julian grinned. "You did great. Come on, let's get you some water and food. You've earned it."
As Sandslash trudged toward the small shelter at the corner of the yard where Julian kept supplies, Julian looked around the modest courtyard—his courtyard, that he'd rented with his own money—and felt something warm settle in his chest.
It wasn't much. Not yet. But it was a start.
And after everything, a start was all he needed.
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