“Thank you!” We all said to the Rangers, waving as we made our way down the path.

  The snow had finally stopped falling, and we were now able to continue on towards Veilstone City. Mulligan and Sayla had even been kind enough to lend each of us a pair of snow shoes so we wouldn’t get stuck again. Granted, we would have to return them at the Veilstone Ranger Station, but it was a lot better than nothing.

  Most of our Pokémon were in their Balls. Jira had taken to hers easily, and although I wanted to keep her out of it as long as possible, she would have sunk through the snow immediately.

  Even if it wasn’t a mountain, she had put on a lot of mass after eating all of that soil.

  Our Fire-types were taking a rest, not having to literally blaze a path for us anymore, and the others were all resting and avoiding the cold, so it was just the four humans of our party.

  “How long is it to get to Veilstone?” Kevin asked, shielding his eyes as he looked up into the sky.

  “It would have been several days.” Ted said, a bit sullenly I thought. “But with this snow? Probably another week.”

  “Ugh.” Kevin sighed.

  Lucas agreed with him.

  Me? I didn’t mind so much. Sure the walk would be exhausting, and I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping in more snowdrifts.

  But the landscape was beautiful. A perfect white blanket had settled on the land, and icicles hung from treelimbs, glimmering as the sunlight refracted off of the frozen water.

  I was from New England, so this wasn’t my first blizzard by a long shot. If we had been back in my old world, the roads would already have been paved and salt tossed onto the asphalt. The snow would have turned black and brown with dirt and pollution as they were pushed to the side of the road so people could drive to work.

  A once perfect sight would have been ruined by the ceaseless engine of commerce and capitalism.

  But not here.

  There was still inter-regional transport, to be sure, but most of it was through trains or ferries. No need to have massive eighteen-wheelers hauling cargo containers. No planes flying by overhead.

  Just peace, and quiet.

  “Fineee.” Lucas moaned, and began stomping his way through the snow. “Come on! The faster we head out, the faster we get to Veilstone!”

  Well. Relative peace and quiet at any rate.

  I adjusted my bag, and we set off once more.

  /^\

  “This is a trap, right?” I asked, staring at the almost ludicrously sized pile of Berries in front of us.

  “Yes.” My three companions said in unison.

  I stared for another minute, then scratched my head. “But… Why? Poachers?”

  “No.” Ted sighed. “They’re almost as bad though.”

  Lucas started. “You mean-?”

  “I do.”

  “What’s almost as bad as poachers?”

  He looked around for a minute, ignoring me, then picked up a rock from the ground. Jira, practicing her long-distance walking skills, waddled over to the pile of Berries and started picking at them.

  We were getting pretty close to Veilstone by now, and we were starting to see the suburbs of the city coming up faster and faster. The snow had also lessened, thankfully, to where it was just a light dusting on the ground.

  Ted hefted the rock, looking around.

  “There.” Kevin said, pointing at a distant bush with an almost malicious glee.

  “We know you’re in there!” Ted shouted at the bush, aiming his rock. “Come on out!”

  I stared in confusion at the two of them, then took another look at the bush. At first glance it looked like any other bush I’d seen in Sinnoh, but the longer I stared at it, the odder it seemed. It was too… regular, if that was possible. As if it was the ideal of a bush, instead of a real, imperfect one.

  Still, the “bush” remained still.

  “One!” Ted called.

  No movement.

  “Two!”

  Nothing moved, and Ted raised the rock into a throwing position.

  “Thr-”

  “Okay!” A reedy voice shouted, and the bush rustled. “Okay! Geez, I’m coming out!”

  Ted lowered the rock, and a few seconds later a thin man in dirty clothes stepped out of his hiding spot, arms raised up high.

  Kevin tsked, and Lucas scowled.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, looking around in confusion.

  Jira looked up in surprise, Berry juice around her mouth.

  “You interrupted my hunt!” The man said, pulling a pair of glasses out of a pocket and perching them on the tip of his nose. “That’s what's going on! What are you, a bunch of thugs? Well I don’t have any money, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “It’s not.” Ted said, and dropped the rock to the ground. “This, Alina, is a Shiny Hunter.”

  I blinked, then looked over at the man in question.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He sniffed, and pushed his glasses up a little bit. “We prefer the term Alternative Colored Pokémon Enthusiasts,’ thank you very much. Or ACPEs, if you don’t want such a mouthfull.”

  I blinked as my two lives, that of a fan of the Pokémon games and that of an actual Pokémon Trainer, collided.

  “What?”

  “You are aware that some Pokémon have a different coloration than their base species?” The dirty man asked.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “People like these,” Kevin jabbed a finger at the man. “Try and capture them, usually by any means necessary.”

  The man sniffed. “We don’t do anything illegal.”

  “I’m sorry, who are we?”

  The man brightened. “Well, you see-”

  “A bunch of weirdo’s on the internet.” Lucas cut him off. “They get together in forums and chat rooms, and obsess over Shiny Pokémon.”

  “We are a close-knit community who have been unfairly victimized by the media!” The Shiny Hunter said, voice cracking half-way through his sentence.

  I blinked and took a closer look. Underneath all of the dirt and mud he had smeared onto his body, he couldn’t have been older than seventeen years old.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” I asked.

  “Shouldn’t you be minding your own business?” He snapped back. “You’re scaring away all the Pokémon!”

  I looked around in disbelief. “There’s nothing nearby though.”

  “Well not now. This is a waiting game!” He held up a notebook, flipped open to a page that was absolutely covered in tally marks. “There’s been seven thousand Ponyta who have come by here in the past several days!”

  “But… what have you been doing for food?”

  “The Sinnoh Emergency Management Administration has several offerings of ready-to-eat meals in handy packaging. I have a whole pallet back at home.” He said, puffing out his chest with pride.

  “And showering?”

  He scoffed. “Please, I haven’t showered in three weeks. The smell of a clean body scares away wild Pokémon, you see.”

  All four of us took a step back. Jira popped another Berry into her mouth, then spat it back out again.

  “And…” I looked around. “Please tell me you have a bathroom?”

  “I have a shovel!”

  “Oh Jesus.” I swore, and took another step back.

  “It’s worth it!” His eyes were wide, whites showing all around the iris as he waved his notebook. “Statistically, I’m bound to see an alternatively colored Ponyta within fifteen hundred more sightings!”

  Ted sighed. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Yes! Yes it is! We have records saying that one in eight thousand Pokémon are alternatively colored!”

  “How can you be sure it isn’t the same Pokémon though?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  The boy froze.

  “What?”

  “I mean, statistically, that one-in-eight-thousand is for eight thousand individual Pokémon, right? But if you’re just sitting here, how can you be sure that you’re not just counting the same Ponyta walking back and forth?”

  “I… uh… well…”

  He started frantically flipping through the notebook, murmuring to himself, and I took the opportunity to lean in to my companions.

  “Is this like… illegal?”

  “Technically, no.” Lucas said with an angry sigh. “Generic bait hunting like this isn’t doing anything wrong, per se, but it’s not a good look.”

  “Shiny Hunters are better than Shiny Breeders.” Ted said. “At least they’re not abusing Pokémon to try and breed the ‘perfect specimen.’ Breeders are held to some of the highest standards of care, and if somebody is found to be abusing the system, the entire League will crack down on them, hard.”

  “I would never do something as disgusting as that!”

  “But if a Shiny Hunter does something they’re not supposed to!” Ted said, raising his voice so he could be heard more clearly. “Like, I don’t know, using bootleg software on a Pokétch to attract Pokémon?”

  The boy tried to innocently cover the Pokétch on his wrist.

  “Does that exist?” I asked quietly.

  “There are things like the Poké Radar which are carefully kept by the Rangers and Pokémon labs.” Lucas explained in a whisper. “But sometimes people manage to hack in and steal the software, then modify it to be put on a Pokétch. Then they spread it around online. It’s not nearly as good as an actual Poké Radar, but it does work sometimes.”

  “The Rangers have an online division dedicated to stopping those kinds of programs.” Kevin said. “They have a bunch of Porygon who are trained to find the hackers and shut them down. But sometimes the poor Porygon gets corrupted, and they’re forced to evolve. It’s a nasty thing any time it happens.”

  I frowned, turning back to the boy.

  “So, are we just going to let this guy go?”

  Ted clicked his tongue.

  “I think we’re going to have to. I don’t think he’s broken any laws, and the only way to check if he’s using illegal programs is to look at his Pokétch.”

  “Y-you can’t do that! I have rights!”

  “We know!” Ted responded, then sighed. “We know. Just… go home, okay? Don’t you have parents who are worried about you?”

  “They think I’m out camping.”

  “Come on man,” Kevin said. “How many times have you just seen the same Ponyta? There’s obviously not a Shiny one around here. Just… go home and quit being weird. You’re making us all look bad.”

  Lucas elbowed him politely in the ribs.

  “What?”

  “You can’t say that kind of stuff.”

  “Why not? You did earlier? You said it was a bad look.”

  Lucas stopped, mouth working as he tried to make a comeback to that.

  Kevin smiled smugly, and turned back to the boy, whose shoulders were now slumping.

  “I just really like Ponyta…” He said.

  “And that’s fine.” Ted responded. “But this isn’t the way to do it. Besides, if you’re going to try and find a Shiny Pontya, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it in a place with more of them? They’re likely to be in fields, right? Not along a forest path.”

  The boy’s mouth opened, then closed several times.

  “Go home. Take a shower and eat some real food. And maybe think about taking a trip to some plains instead of crouching in a forest for weeks on end.”

  “But what if there’s an alternatively colored Ponyta around here?”

  “I can guarantee you that there’s not.”

  He sighed, and then took a tentative sniff of his arm.

  His eyes opened even wider, and he started coughing and sputtering.

  “Okay.” He said with a squeak. “You might have a point.”

  /^\

  It was night by the time we finally got to Veilstone City. Even though it probably would have been smarter to stop for the night and arrive in the morning, we were all too tired of travelling to stop and make a camp.

  “I can’t believe I used to do this all the time.” I groaned as the four of us staggered along the streets.

  “Tell me about it.” Ted grumbled. “Even if it’s not snowing, it’s still too cold. At least back in Hoenn it was nice to be able to have some warmth while you walked and slept.”

  I shot him a disgusted look, but didn’t follow up on his statement.

  “Does anybody know where a good hotel is?” I asked instead.

  “I do.” Kevin said tiredly. “I stayed there when I was here last time. It’s not too dirty, and the people there are nice enough. Plus they’re open at all hours; it’s run by former Trainers, so they know how people tend to come into town late at night.”

  “Great. Lead the way.”

  He stumbled forwards into the front of our little formation, and after a moment to get his bearings, directed us on where we should go.

  I couldn’t make out too much of the architecture or style of Veilstone City this late at night. The entire city was carved out of the mountains, and although there were plenty of street lights, the shadows cast by the rocks made it hard to make anything out.

  “There it is.” Kevin said, pointing to a squat building.

  It looked like almost any other Motel Eight in my old world, except that it was in a much, much better condition. The owners of the motel obviously cared for their building, and the neon lights were inviting.

  Then a building caught my eye, and I turned my head, feeling my stomach drop.

  There, just visible on the skyline near the center of town, was the imposing form of Team Galactic’s headquarters.