Chapter 3: What’s in a Name

  Matty woke up with a bug on his face.

  Walking out of the tent, Matty walked over to the river and splashed his face with water. He had decided to name the caterpie Grub, and almost overnight, he had nearly doubled in size. After washing the sleep from his eyes, he decided to take a quick look around his campsite. Cleaning up some detritus that had accumulated, he noticed that around the tent where he had left Grub leaves to eat were covered in a slick thread. He grabbed the white silk and found it was slippery to the touch but quite strong. It was about as thick as sowing thread, but easily five times as strong.

  After he had gathered the thread and cleaned up his campsite, he looked in the guide. Opening the leather cover, and turning to the page labeled caterpie, he noticed some new notes about Grub’s eating habits and favorite foods. It turned out that he liked the leaves from Sitrus berry trees, but disliked the taste of the berries. Looking for the section on moves, he found that tackle was listed as taught, whereas string shot was listed as inherent. Turning to the beginning of the book where the index and the description of terms were, he read:

  “Some Pokemon can learn powerful attack moves on their own, whereas others need some help with technique and ability use (Take note that this is only in general and on a case-by-case basis)”

  Matty figured that meant that in the wild, all Pokemon would naturally be able to learn some moves, but a rare few would gain more powerful techniques. He made a note to read more about the ones he had seen in the area, and whether they were powerful or not. Feeling curious, he decided to see if the bird from a few days ago was anywhere in his book, but he couldn’t find anything. Deciding to do some more research on common Pokemon in his area, he looked through the list and was relieved to see that the strongest thing was a Poochyeana, a dark-type Pokemon that resembled a small dog. Looking through the types of attack it knew, and seeing its abilities, Matty realized that it probably was more dangerous than it appeared. He knew it was time to train.

  Matty sat down hard. It turned out that teaching a bug was harder than he thought. He had spent the beginning of the day, from morning till noon researching in his book on training techniques and trying to teach Grub to use anything but string shot. He had mastered the art of tying down opponents, and could easily trip up a moving target, but refused to fight with his tackle attack. Stopping for a quick break, he walked towards his stand of trees to gather some berries for lunch and feed Grub some leaves. Sitting by the river, he watched Grub devour the small pile as he sat and ate the Citrus and Oran berries. As he reached for the last one, he felt a sharp pain in his hand. Clutching it to his chest, he found, to his horror, a massive rat clamped down onto his palm. Screaming and flailing, he fell into the river, and the rat let go. Both of them crawled out of the river, coughing up water, and sat breathing heavily for a moment.

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  After he had caught his breath and calmed down a bit, Matty saw to his horror that he was looking at a rattata. He jumped back out of surprise and checked his pockets for a ball to throw at it. Realizing he had left his belt next to the tent, Matty ran backward, from it until he tripped over a log next to his campfire. The rattata began to run directly towards him, baring its fangs in anger and leaping into the air on a direct path to his face. Right before it struck his arm, it was yanked out of the air by a small green blur.

  “Grub, do it again” Matty cheered,

  Hearing the command, Grub sized up his opponent. The rattata outweighed him, but he had gotten a good first hit. Noticing his hesitation, the rattata jumped at him, preparing to strike. Dodging to the left, Grub let off a string shot directly into the rattata’s back and prepared to strike again. Hearing the vague shouting noises in the background as Matty cheered him on, he leaped directly at the tangled rattata and sent it rolling.

  Watching Grub battle, Matty called out move after move, but could only watch as Grub dodged the rattata’s ever more frantic attacks, and snuck in some cheap shots of their own. Mesmerized by the rapid back and forth, Matty only realized he should try to catch it after it took a tough tackle from behind and began to flee. Sprinting to his belt, he jumped up ready to throw, but the rattata was already gone. Looking around the campsite frantically to see if any more rats were inbound, he didn’t notice Grub crawling up to him triumphantly. Still looking around, he was startled as Grub climbed up his leg, onto his injured hand and began to patch it up. Looking at the bandage, Matty was surprised to see that the seemingly slick threads were tightly stuck to each other. Seeing the potential uses for it, he began to be very excited

  Matty gathered together some of the firewood that he had cut earlier and began to create a simple frame from some long and thin but sturdy sticks, using grub as some kind of glue gun to solidify the joints, he made the triangles and soon had a sturdy base for a simple shelter. After using a tarp he had bought earlier to cover the triangle frame, he hung some branches from the top leaves and needles down so that they would be a good defense against rain. entering his now roomier shelter he moved his pot and bag into it. Starting his nightly fire having built it facing away from the tent so it would not be smoked out, he sat up against it feeding grub leaves. grabbing his canteen he went to take a drink of water, and found that it was already empty. because filling it up with water from the river was unsafe, he had to boil a pot whenever he ran out. He filled the pot from a swiftly moving point in the river and put it next to the fire to boil. Matty wished he had a water barrel or a larger container to fill, but there wasn’t much he could do until he found a job or earned some money. Taking the night air in, he began to plan for what tomorrow would bring.