bertall | Iɴʙᴏx ✉ Vɪᴄᴛᴏʀʏ Rᴏᴀᴅ

Maybe. Is it working?

Not as well as if I were Sasha, but yes.

You won't be disappointed, I promise. Jean makes a really good latte with cinnamon and whipped cream and I've got a big book full of recipes I haven't even tried yet.

You're really enjoying yourself, aren't you?

I am, yeah. I never thought I'd get the chance to do what normal people get to do.

_{[Birthdays are also a nice touch - he wasn't big on celebrating them back home, but here? No one would judge him if he wanted to sit in and read, or get an entire cake all for himself.

Cake was always a bonus.]}

You wouldn't have without this place.

Ah, right, before I forget. I'm not finding any information on dietary requirements for pokemon with these starting materials, only some of what they may eat, and nothing about what they can't. Is there anything I should watch out for?

[ Like overfeeding with horses leading to increased colic and death. ]

It differs from Pokemon to Pokemon, but I've found that they all seem to be able to eat the same types of food that they sell in stores and even some of what we can normally eat. They all seem to enjoy the berries listed in the guide that you should have, and um... Let me think.

There's some that will eat things you wouldn't expect normal animals to eat - some enjoy electricity over regular food, and I've got a couple that eat rocks and minerals. Jean and I also have a few that eat garbage of all things too, but it makes things a little easier around the shop - mine has to eat outside though because she's a little on the large side and has an... odor. Like anything they can have their own likes and dislikes too. For example I have one that will go out of her way to pick out every single pecan out of a bag of trail mix and only eat those, and one of my Arcanine refuses to go anywhere near lemons while his daughter inhales them.

If you ever have one that eats metal, be
careful
especially if it happens to be an Aron.

_{[And just to... sort of prove his point, he attaches an old video snippet of an overturned dump truck and said teeny tiny Aron tearing through the underside of the chassis and, well, eating it.]}

This happened about a year ago and I still get weird looks when I go to that town. Thankfully he doesn't do this sort of stuff anymore, but his species is known for eating railroad tracks and bridges.

[ Moving pictures are a fascinatingly informative medium. That tiny, oddly bone-white pokemon is absurd as the perpetrator of truck destruction, and she can't help how her eyebrows climb higher when she watches. ]

In one evolution, or all of them? Assuming he evolves.

All of them, usually. He outgrew the truck-eating phase thankfully, but he still enjoys scrap metal when we find it. I let him eat the smaller truck one of my other Pokemon destroyed during the contest.

_{[The next picture takes a little more time to find, but this time it's of the Aron-turned-Aggron in all of his shiny-colored glory. He's big, imposing, and his armor is nearly gold in the sunlight as he sits back on his haunches with part of a jeep's bumper held firmly in his claws]}

I'll let him go around in junkyards with the town's permission, but he's pretty content with eating whatever we've got. Leftovers, special meals, junk, rocks, things like that. He's not too picky these days which works out great for everyone.

The weird thing though is despite how big some of them can get, they don't seem to need to eat a lot.

What do you mean?

Like I said, it's weird. I've noticed it with some of mine at least, but my big Arcanine only eats a bowl or so of actual food before he decides he's done. He used to eat a lot when he was a Growlithe, but he was also a lot smaller back then. Now he's even taller than I am.

With no difference between if they're more active or in whatever state they maintain while in the balls or the PC?

Yeah. The only time I've seen my Arcanine eat a lot is after a long run, but that's usually just over a few days. If he's more active than normal here and there, it doesn't change that much.

That's all strangely convenient. Are they that effective at conserving and storing energy? Or all capable of converting sunlight into energy?

[ No, but this just! Makes! No sense! ]

I'd go with the former. Grass-types on the other hand might actually rely on photosynthesis, but I don't have a lot of experience with them.

_{[Just wait until you start hatching eggs, Annie. Just wait until something like a horse pops out of an egg about the size of a football.]}

Ford would know a lot more about it than I would though.

[ Why would she hatch anything. Why would she want to hatch anything at all!? ]

I've heard that name mentioned before. Who's Ford?

He's a really close friend of mine.

Family, actually. Not... blood, obviously, but he's the sort of person I'd want to be part of it.

_{[There's another bout of silence, and then he quickly adds;]}

He also knows about Marley. Not a lot, but a little. Sometimes weird things happen here and he saw some of my memories.

[ Ah, right. She knows what he's talking about, though Annie's never "found" family of her own. Not exactly, and quite purposefully.

Then he writes the other part, and she frowns. ]

Wait, what kind of weird things? How was he seeing your memories? How do you even know something is "weird" for this place?

I've never seen it happen since then, and it didn't last very long. How he was seeing them, I don't know, but I saw some of his too. He showed me where he grew up and it felt. Real.

Sometimes people show up out of nowhere too for a few days which is when I'd see Reiner, but that doesn't happen very often. I can heal during those days.

Great, there's nothing about that which sounds like anything I like. Whatever brought us here is keeping us normal-human except when it decides to screw with everyone, at once, for days on end.

How often has this happened? Reiner was here at just those times?

If it makes you feel better it's only for a couple days and you can usually hide out.

But... I think it's happened three times since I've been here? And yeah, he's only been here during those couple days. I have some pictures of him if you want to see, but the quality won't be the best because they're pictures of the actual photograph.

[ ... Why in the world would she want to look at pictures of Reiner? Seems like something more important for Bertolt, and yes, maybe photographs will be nicer if she's here for a year and then longer, but right now it hasn't been all that long since she technically saw him last.

So he's sharing what matters to him. Things they certainly couldn't have carried with them into the Walls: photographs of the people they loved. ]

Maybe later, when I can see the original.

[ Who knows when that will be. ]

Is there any sign it's one of those weird times? If you've seen three of them, you should have noticed if there was a pattern.

Okay. I've got them tucked away in an album under my bed for now.

_{[They're safer there, and they wouldn't get lost that way.

His memories and the photographs are the only way he'll get to see an older Reiner now - not counting when he appears in this world for a short time - so they're something he wants to cherish and keep for as long as he can.]}

Usually there isn't, but sometimes it's obvious when something like that happens. Once I woke up near a route I was never on and people pop up in random towns. Most newcomers wake up in New Bark or Pallet.

Pallet is the town the ferry out of New Bark heads toward, isn't it? Then people not expecting to be here, here, and new to it but waking up in another town is unusual. I'd been wondering about that.

Was this woman named Mom around when you first arrived?

[ She might never see an older Reiner, but in all fairness, it's never making it home to her father that bothers her more. Seeing the time that she might be passing while encased in crystal reflected in Reiner's face would be... difficult, beyond her current emotional parsing abilities. ]

Yeah.

She was, too. She barely let me get a word before she shoved me out the door with my Growlithe and the stuff I had in the backpack I woke up with. Come to think of it, I think she even dragged me out of bed at first.

_{[It's rough thinking about the future - it still is for Bertolt, and he still catches himself wondering what his dad must look like now. Sure, he has the pocket watch that appeared next to his bed not too long ago that has an old family photo inside, but it's from before Bertolt left Marley.

It's not quite the same.]}

All things considered it's probably better to wake up like that rather than in some random forest.

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