From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net) Subject: [PW!] Not All That Glitters Is Goldenrod Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2001-08-24 22:12:50 PST [Hey, if the series can do it, so can I. ^_-] Rob wrote: > Tendril rapidly Surfs across the lake. A happy Sarah and a trembling Mareep leap > off the Tentacruel and land on the other side of the lake. Sarah waves over to > Travis, whose Jolteon is already fighting a Psyduck who came out of the water due > to being afraid of Tendril, and she shouts out, "Thank you so much!" She removes > her crook from Barbie's neck, slings it onto her back, and walks through the nearby > building's open gate. She adjusts her eyes to the brightness in the room, happy to > have finally left the darkness of the Ilex Forest but also happy that she made some > new friends during the time she spent there. Big cities do not impress Mimic as much as most people. Any time the mass of humanity threatens to overwhelm, he likens it to a chaotic beedrill hive, with nowhere near the same population density. True, humans have a way of building things far larger than any group of pokemon, not to mention all kinds of technological conveniences that most wild pokemon (and even many humans not living in or near cities) never dream of, but it can almost be dismissed as a quirk of the species. In fact, it is the very facet that is often a weakness: a blindness to the true workings of nature...though it is hoped that, someday soon, rational scientific models can bring the same understanding that pokemon are born with. But, for now, a city is but another type of terrain, one with rather unique features. Such as putting Sarah into a trance. Sarah has, of course, heard of Goldenrod. Some of her family have even been here, once or twice. But the descriptions do not do justice to the true enormity of the place. People everywhere, with their cars and cycles and buses and other machines of transport and several machines that are probably construction because they sure don't look like they can move very fast but can sure bust up rocks like the concrete that is both horizontal on the road and vertical in the towers and... Green. The concept strikes Sarah suddenly enough to snap her thoughts back into a rational train. All her life, she has been in sight of fields of vegetation, usually including grass and/or trees. Even Violet and Azalea, for all their population, had significant amounts of greenery along the roadsides, and one could see the forest in the distance if one looked for it. But here, grey is far more dominant. Sure, a few trees litter the landscape here and there, looking lost and forlorn as if cut from a flock and left to take root and grow up without their countless extended family members nearby. Even behind her, a tall brick wall hides the forest from view, and she soon realizes that the image of a shield against the forest is no metaphor: on the other side, nature reigns, but here, humanity is the unquestioned master. No...not humanity, but civilization, she corrects herself as she spies a pack of "wild", or at least apparently trainerless, pokemon in a mostly empty lot nearby. They live in their environs, having scraped together a rudimentary shelter from discarded scrap. But the sight of an ampharos and a raichu bringing home grocery bags, in which Sarah can clearly see food and a receipt, and no one around them reacting as if this were the least bit strange, is what drives home the difference for Sarah. And what snaps her out of her stupor is Mimic suddenly moving around her neck. Jolted back into awareness of her surroundings, she sees two stereotypical-looking scum of the earth, one of whom is wrestling Barbie to the ground with insulated long gloves, and the other of whom is now rubbing his sore hands after jerking them away from Sarah's midsection. "Sorry. Sneak up on all three. Sarah want use Blazer or Luthor, or want Mimic rough up ruffians?" Sarah's first answer stops before it escapes her throat. The hesitant tone in Mimic's voice brings to mind memories of why he is reluctant to attack just now. TBC?