Chronicles of An Apple (Side Story #2)
Applebloom’s POV
The S.S. Travelling Foster
As the sun started to set off to the right I heard a voice call out from somewhere off to my left. They were asking me if I had seen anything yet. But just like every other time they started checking in on me, I just shook my head and started looking around somewhere else.
For some reason this had become a part of this weird routine I had been having to deal with lately. I’d start by waking up in some hotel room, stretch a little and once I get ready for the day I nearly get drowned in all these persons— I think that’s what they’re called anyway —asking and inviting me to go watch the Poké-whatsits with them.
Once I manage to convince them not to, I usually come up to the railing and just watch the sky and waves. At least then I’m not bothered all too much. That is, until it hits two o’clock. That’s when most of them start coming out on the deck where I usually sit around.
Again the voice called out again. Only this time, I could hear footsteps with it too. “Well, how’s about a break then? I don’t think either of us have gotten a bite to eat in a while. You must be starving.”
“Eenope,” I sink a little more against the railing. Sadly, my stomach betrays me and starts groaning up a storm. Hearing the man chuckle, I sighed and turn around to face him. “Alright, fine. That bird thing ain’t comin’ around any time soon anyways.”
As the person continued to chuckle, I saw him tuck a large notepad into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. As far as i could tell, he looked pretty average as far as all of these persons went. He had a plain green shirt, pants that only went as far as his knees on his hind legs, and the only real distinguishing thing about him was the bandana he wore to keep his hair out of his eyes.
This was Tracey Sketchit. And out of every name I heard on this entire ship, his was the only one that sounded normal around here.
Apparently he had been on this ship for a little while now thanks to a friend of his buying him a ticket, so he was just about as new to this ship as I was. However, since his talent had something to do with sketching, the captain of the ship offered him a job of being a caricature artist for the other passengers.
And here’s where the only difference between the two of us started to shine through. He came here by choice and happens to really like this ship and everything that it has to offer for the people on board.
I don’t.
Truth be told, I was barely interested enough to even look around this place.
However, I was grateful for the company he was willing to give. As I thought about it I noticed that I didn’t have much of a reason to go anywhere around here if I was on my own. I didn’t know anypony here, I don’t know where here was, and I didn’t feel like exploring around it either. The only places I’ve been to are my room, the doctor’s quarters, the deck, and this one large arena space they have for the Poké-things. So in a way I was kinda glad that there was someone to help drag me around a bit.
The only thing that I’ve been trying to figure out is how I got here. As far as I can remember, nothing out of the ordinary had been going on in Ponyville. It was just the average friend from out of town or the giant monster/magic/social problem goings ons. And in all of those problems, none of them had to do with being zapped to another world or anything.
That is until six days ago.
Six days ago around noon or so I woke up to a huge splash from underneath my bed. Instantly I woke up, only to tumble off the side and into the ocean myself. At the time I didn’t even notice what happened to me, I was more focused on remembering all the swimming lessons that Granny taught me.
After a few seconds of that, I noticed that the headboard of my waterlogged bed had come loose and was keeping afloat. So I used that to try and swim wherever I thought there might’ve been land.
“Captain! Man overboard on the rig—err—starboard side!”
“What?! How far out?!”
“Uh, one, no, t-two hundred feet!”
“two-hundred...Sharpedo, help us out here!”
Without warning I tried shaking the thought outta my head, nearly hitting the guy beside me with a face full of hair thanks to the whiplash. Thankfully he didn’t hold a grudge as he waited for me to get ahold of myself.
“Are you okay?” His voice was steady as I clutched my head. “What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothin’,” I lied. “Jus’ a headache.” Well, that part wasn’t a lie. Every time that happened I had started to get all jumpy like a bull at a rodeo and the headache that came after didn’t make me feel any better about it.
“Well, all the more reason to get something to eat for now. Come on,” He waited until I started to move before walking along with me to the dining hall. From what I could tell, any person who worked on this boat got their meals for free, and this guy was extending the offer to me.
I guess I should be grateful and all, he didn’t have to do anything, but I still didn’t know what to think about all of this. None of what was going on around me felt normal at all. Even walking around like this was unnatural. Still, I was at least starting to get used to it for as much good as that did me.
“Woah! What kinda Pokémon is that?!”
Right as we were about to get to the buffet tables, these two persons, both of which were mares I think, had caught our attention. One of them was looking curiously at the second one’s Pokémon that was resting on the back of her shirt. And to make it somewhat more confusing, this Pokémon was trembling like a pig in a snowstorm from the attention.
“Oh, dat’s Wimpod!” The second girl spoke with an accent kind of like Babs’, but kind of higher. “He came clear from Alola. Ain’t he a doll?!” As she clicked her tongue, the shellfish-looking thing started to skitter up the girls back before nesting itself in her brown beret.
“Uhh…” The first girl’s spine rattled in disgust as she backed away from the shellfish and the girl. “You don’t...Let that thing near any of the food, do you?”
“Hey! He ain’t an it! An’ Wimpod’s a gift from mah Grannie! Show some kindness, why don’tcha.” The second girl reached her hand up and scratched the Pokémon’s head gently, causing it to burrow itself further into her beret.
“Sorry, sorry, I just...Not a fan a bug types…” The girl shuffled in place before the two of them eventually went further down the buffet line to get their own food. Leaving room for us to start getting our own plates. Before we could though, Tracey noticed that I wasn’t moving.
“Applebloom?” He waited for me to snap out of it, but I wouldn’t budge. Eventually as the line started to form behind us, he tried a little harder and slowly waved his hoo—hand in front of my face.
“Applebloom, are you okay?”
Finally, something finally clicked in my head and I snapped out of my daze, stammering out with “I-I’m fine!”
He quickly drew back his hand and we both quickly got our food and got out of every person’s way before finding a seat towards the crew’s part of the dining hall. Once we found an empty table, which wasn’t too hard given that most of the crew was working around the rest of the ship, we sat down and I was left with Tracey giving me a worried look.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” I sunk in my seat a tad before looking down at my food. I didn’t know what most of the stuff they were serving was, but thankfully they had plenty of familiar stuff at the ‘Salad Bar.’ That, plus a few apple fritters from the dessert table and I had a meal I could recognize.
“It’s okay,” Tracey’s plate probably looked a little more normal. He had some of everything they were serving. “Is something wrong? You’ve been acting more out of it today than the last few days you’ve been here.”
I wonder why… I try to hide the guilty look on my face, but it was shining through too well. “It’s, uh...Jus’ what the captain guy said yesterday.” I felt the back of my throat start to strain from the talking so I quickly gulped down some water to make it go away.
“You talked to the captain again?” Tracey drew back a little and looked towards his own food. I just became friends with him the other day, so he only knew so much. Then again, the whole ‘treading water’ thing is turning into a rumor around here, so I guess every person knows something about me by this point. “Is everything okay?”
“Well…” I took one last swig of my water and set the empty glass down. “I dunno. I’m still tryin’ ta figure that part out mahself.” Already the waitress was coming to get me a refill and I was thankful for it.
The first time I spoke to the captain of the ship, it didn’t end too well. He was the one who fished me out of the water, so he and the ship’s doctor were there when I woke up.
“Okay. So, let’s try something simpler. What’s the last thing you remember?”
The doctor swept a strand of red hair out of her face as she held up a clipboard. She was trying to find out who I was. But as I sat up in the bed that was in the doctor’s office, still very out of it from all the swimming, I was just frustrated.
“I keep tellin’ ya, I didn’t ferget anythin’!” I tried to yell, but my voice was so ragged that the only thing that came out was something louder than a whisper. “Mah name’s Applebloom. I was goin’ ta bed when this loud boom sounded off. Then there was this weird pink cloud comin’ from Ponyvillle an’—”
“Okay, okay, calm down.” The captain held up a gentle hand as he stood behind the doctor. He looked tired too, but he was pushing through purely because of how worried he was. “I think we can all agree that it’s been a long day for you. Look, it’s almost nine now. Let’s get you something to eat and then you can rest here for the night. By tomorrow you’ll feel much better.”
“Yer not listenin’!” I pounded my hooves into the bed, my voice getting raspier. “I ain’t actin’ funny! I jus’ wanna go home!” Finally my voice had had it and I felt myself coughing up my lungs. My throat felt like it was on fire.
Still, there was nothing more the captain could do. He gently apologized and went to get me some dinner and some water, leaving me to sit in bed with the doctor focusing on some other patients.
“I wanna go home…”
The morning after all of that was where I realized that they weren’t going to believe anything about Equestria or the pink boom. So the next time they came in to talk to me I changed up the story a little bit. I pretended like I knew what I had been turned into and then told them that I was separated from the rest of my family and was trying to find them.
The only parts I kept the same was that we owned an apple farm, I have no idea how I wound up in the water, and that I had no idea what these ‘Pokémon’ were. Apparently everything except for that last part they seemed to believe. Thankfully, the doctor just assumed that I must’ve forgotten a few things from all the stress. It wasn’t how I wanted any of this to go, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Except now that horse was offering one doozy of a gift.
Feeling my throat burning up from all the strain, I chugged down about half of the water the second the waitress filled it. Aside from a sideways glance from her, I felt much better now and looked back towards Tracey. “Can I get yer take on it by any chance?”
“Sure, I’d be happy to help.” He quickly swallowed the food he was chewing on before before cleaning off his mouth. “What did he say?”
“Well,” I waited until the waitress was done filling up the water glass before I started talking. “He said that he couldn’t let me sail on the boat forever. So unless I can scrounge up enough money to pay fer a ticket he’s givin’ me two choices. One; I can enjoy the rest a my free ride until some place called Cinnabar Island,”
“Oh. That’s in the the Kanto region.” Tracey’s attention was now fully on me. “That’s where I’m from.”
“Really?” I almost erupted into a cheer, but something stopped me. “Wait, but aren’t you stayin’ on this cruise ‘till the end of the line?”
“Afraid so, yeah.” His smile faded away as fast as mine. “I could try and point you towards Professor Oak’s Lab in Pallet Town, but that would take another boat ride to get you there.”
“Yeah. I kinda figured, what with Cinnabar bein’ an island an’ all.” Truth be told, that wasn’t the real problem. Tracey might’ve been my only friend on this ship, but I only knew him a few days. I couldn’t start asking him favors like that.
“And then there’s the second option,” I sat back in my chair, eyeballing my food that I had barely touched. “The captain asked if I wanted ta work on the ship.”
“Work here?” Tracey blinked. “What would that do?”
“Well, the captain knows I don’t have anything. He even had ta get me a new set of clothes since mine were all soaked.” As if by habit I pulled at the pale and red shirt that I had on now. “But if I was working here then I’d have some money ta try an’ get ta wherever I need ta go. ‘Sides, the captain said that he an’ his crew could help me keep a lookout for mah family.”
“Well that doesn’t sound too bad,” Upon noticing my frown, Tracey furrowed his brow. “Is there something else about it?”
“Kinda,” I folded my hands together and gave a sweep across the room. Apparently for every two persons that was in here, there was one Pokémon. Each of them looking goofier than the last. “There’s only one catch. I need to have one a them Pokémon of mah own.”
“Oh? That’s all?” Tracey sat back and watched my confusion. “There are Pokémon everywhere. You just need to catch one yourself.”
“But we’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean.” I held out my arms and decided to ignore the weird looks I was getting from whoever was passing by. “The only Pokémon I’ve seen are the ones that everyone else has. How am I supposed to get a Pokémon clear out here?”
Tracey’s smile only widened. “Applebloom, you’ve been helping me with Pokémon Watching for the past three days. You’ve done nothing but seen Pokémon.”
“What?” My confusion reached its peak. “No, I’ve just been starin’ at that weird metal bird-thing that you were askin’ about.”
“Uh-huh,” He just nodded. “That’s a Pokémon.”
“...” After a second or two I took another scan around the room towards those Pokémon. Like I thought, most of them were pretty funky looking like this plump blue mouse-looking Pokémon or that shellfish thing from before…
I took a glance at another corner of the room and studied the fish tank. However, just as I thought, each of them didn’t look right. One was large and red with a crown-looking thing on its head and another just looked like a sideways heart. There were several other weird fish floating around in there, but the one in the center caught my attention the most. Mostly because it was a shark.
That was one of the few Pokémon I already knew the name of: Sharpedo. It was the captain’s Pokémon and the one that had apparently saved me from drowning before. At the time I was too exhausted to even be terrified of a shark swimming towards me so I guess you could say I got on good terms with Sharpedo.
“So…” Slowly, as I watched Sharpedo interacting with the other fish the same way a big brother would, it all started to click. “Pokémon are jus’ animals.”
“Well, they’re a lot more than that,” Tracey chuckled. “But I guess you’re not exactly wrong either.” After a few more seconds I could almost see the light bulb forming above his head. “Hey, are next stop is Cinnabar, right?”
“Uh,” I gave Tracey my full attention. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Tracey pulled out this red and white marble sized thing and handed it over to me. “Well then how about we find you a Pokémon while we’re there? With Venonat and me helping you, I’m sure we can find a Pokémon for you.”
“You mean that?” I quickly took the marble and looked it over. When I first met Tracey he had Venonat with him trying to spot that bird Pokémon earlier. The little puffball was actually kinda fun to meet. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” He didn’t even give it a second thought. “I haven’t been to Cinnabar in a long time. Besides, it’s the least I can do for your help keeping an eye on that Pokémon.”
As he explained it I looked over the marble and noticed a button on the front of it. Once I pressed it the marble instantly grew to the size of a baseball in my hands. While I stared at it dumbfounded, Tracey just started to chuckle again.
“Uh, r-right,” Embarrassed, I turned the orb back into a marble and tucked it away as casually as I could. “Well, I guess it’s a deal then. Let’s go find a Pokémon.” I held out a fist for a hoof bump which he gladly returned. I guess some things never change.
Two Days Later
Cinnabar Island Docks
3rd Person POV
Once Applebloom had finally made it off the ship she adjusted the almost empty backpack she had over her shoulders before looking around. Dozens of the other passengers were already off the ship and doing their own thing and enjoying the land beneath their feet just as Applebloom was.
Finally, she spotted them and began to make her way inland towards three individuals. One was a guy in a green t-shirt with a sketchpad in his hands as he starting picking out several interesting Pokémon from the crowds. That was Tracey. The second was a purple puffball with bright red eyes that I could see scanning the whole area for Pokémon, just like his trainer. That was Venonat.
And finally the third was a person standing beside them with a bright red colored floral print shirt, sailing hat, and a smoking pipe in his hand watching over the passengers as he scratched his beard with the other.
That was the captain.
Apparently, the captain had asked if he could come along with the two trainers. He had tried explaining that he had to make sure that the Pokémon Applebloom had was something she caught. Sadly, it didn’t take much for her to figure out that he was lying. In fact, the more she thought about it, she was sure that he had just wanted to avoid doing any ‘captain duties’ seeing as he was dressed like a tourist.
“Sorry about the wait!” As she called out to them, they all welcomed Applebloom with smiles all around. “I didn’t wanna fight the crowds ta get off the boat.”
“Oh, that’s quite alright missie,” The captain chuckled as looked back towards the ship. “Truth be told I have just as hard a time sneaking off the shi, err, taking a stroll, myself.”
“Yeah, sure,” Applebloom was struggling to keep up her smile and thankfully Tracey had spoken up before she lost her act.
“Well, if we’re all ready then let’s go find you a Pokémon Applebloom.” “Ven-ven!” From beside him, Venonat started to hop along beside him, voicing Applebloom’s excitement for her.
Applebloom’s smile only widened as she rested her hands in her pockets and finding the Pokéball in one of them. Over the last two days Applebloom took some time to learn how Pokéballs worked and a few basics of Pokémon, courtesy of Tracey and the captain’s help. She was ready.
“Right,” She nodded with a look of determination. “Let’s go.”
However, as the four of them started to walk further into the island, none of them were aware of something watching over them. It watched them with carefully before flying up higher into the air and ahead of them towards the middle of Cinnabar.
Finally, when it was far enough away where it wouldn’t draw too much attention to itself, the metal bird gave out a screech.
“SKARRRRMORY!”
The hunt was on.
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All right where is that third member of the trio? If Sweetie Belle and Applebloom are here as well Scootaloo shouldn't be far behind.
So when can we expect the next chapter?
8156425 To be perfectly honest, I didn't plan it that way. I have an idea what everyone is doing in the Pokémon world. The only reason it's been Sweetie Belle and then Applebloom is because you guys answered the questions I leave at the end of every chapter. Applejack was more popular than the other mane six in that vote and Creativity won the chapter after that. You guys had just as good a chance to see Scootaloo if Rainbow Dash was voted higher up and then voted right for her question.
8156595 Hopefully within the month. I don't do good with schedules, which more than likely shows, but if I don't have any more distractions than it should be within two weeks or so.
Wait, I thought Tracy was from Johto?(best region) I may be thinking that because he replaced Brock in Johto.
8171223 Actually, it's never revealed where his hometown is. However, after Tracey stopped traveling with Ash, he stayed at Professor Oak's Lab to be an aid. That is, until recently where he got a ticket for the Traveling Foster.
8171625 Fair enough. Does he still have his Typhlosion?
8171628 img05.deviantart.net/bc53/i/2014/018/2/8/derpy_hooves_shrug__i_dunno_lol__by_alterhouse-d72of7t.png
It feels like you're putting too many characters into this, whose plots have little to do with the main plot.