Faller, Noun: Someone Experiencing Interesting Times - Chapter 21

A day or two later, Neil found himself, quite literally, on a ferry. A ship, if a very small one. Evidently, it ran between the small town sitting at the fork between Route 121 and 122. A seaside town - honestly just large enough to not be a village, that primarily seemed to be a rest stop for trainers as well as a tourist town. Fishing and tourism definitely made up most of their industry, given what he’d seen.

He had half a mind to find himself a fishing rod and see what bit. Maybe it’d be a battle, maybe it’d be a nice meal, who knew? Then again, the rest of their voyage was only expected to take another hour, and he’d been warned against fishing when he’d boarded. He’d thought of having an actual battle afterwards, but a quick glance had shown him that they’d already been pretty immediately occupied.

A knowing side-glance at both his pokemon and that was all it took to meander over to see how the fights were going.

The ferry was… not large. There was only space for one battlefield open to the sky, and bluntly there just wasn’t space to have a battle belowdecks. You’d need a cruise ship for that, or a ship designed specifically to handle the strain of having multiple battles occurring concurrently within its hull.

That said, battles. It wasn’t particularly surprising that he’d found Raiko in the crowd immediately, his traveling companion offering him an amused look as she nodded towards the people in line to battle, “None of them are doing anything particularly interesting, and the line is long enough that neither of us will get to battle. You wanna go chat with some of the sailors? I know you expressed interest in maybe working to protect ships like this in the future, and it can’t hurt to chat with the experts a bit.”

“Sounds like a plan. Poochyena, you want to stick around to watch the battles, or hear what some of the old hands have to say? I already know what Maragda’s answer’s going to be.” Neil asked with a tilt of his head. If it involved stories, Esmeraldina was on that like white on rice.

For a moment, the pup considered things. Tilting his head to the side, he nodded slowly, turned to Magarda, and nodded again. With a soft bark, he came alongside Neil. It seemed, for the moment, the doggo was content following them.

Probably helped that the morning training before they’d gotten on the boat had tuckered him out.

Regardless, it didn’t take all that long for Raiko to lead him and his small yet growing team of two towards someone who seemed to be standing watch alongside another sailor, the small girl offering a cheerful greeting, “Heya! Sorry to bother you, but my friend had some questions! Would you mind answering them?”

It shouldn’t have surprised him that the man immediately responded kindly and affirmatively - given the general vibe of this world, but there was still a frisson of culture shock from how different this place was to his homeworld. “Sure. You good on your own, Liam?” The stereotypically burly sailor asked his equally stereotypically burly sailor, who grunted an affirmative in response. With a nod, the man addressed Neil, “So, what do you want to know? Got an interest in becoming a sailor, perhaps?”

“Considering it as a career after I’m done with my Journey, yea.” Neil replied with a bob of his head. It was still amazing how much those words made people open up about their professions, a touch of shock at the fact he was going on his Journey well into his mid-twenties aside.

“I see, I see.” The sailor hummed, the giant of a man looking off into the distance with something akin to nostalgia in his eyes, “It’s not a bad choice of career, especially in Hoenn. Always ships around, given how much of our cities are on islands, let alone the fact the Evergrande Conference takes place outside of the mainland as well. You are going to have to find a crew to apprentice under or gain entry into one of the maritime academies, but if you do well on your journey you shouldn’t have problems getting doors to open to you.”

“Unless I end up doing all my maritime travel via Flying or Water type if I get any that can support my weight, probably going to have plenty of opportunities to find a crew willing to apprentice me, by that same dint.” Neil grunted agreeably. A lot of travel on a lot of different ships meant a lot of chances to get a standing offer with a crew.

“Exactly.” His current source of knowledge replied cheerfully, “That said, what exactly are you interested in? Most journeygoers aren’t usually interested in becoming a sailor, but rather on becoming one of the ship’s battlers.”

“Admittedly, that’s part of the draw, but I figure that if I’m on the deck anyways I may as well make myself useful whenever there aren’t any battles happening. Also, easier to hop onboard as crew if I have both skillets.” Neil replied with an easy roll of his shoulders, honest and to the point in a way that’d probably have had any sort of interview coach back home break out in hives.

Thankfully, this wasn’t the kind of world where you needed to send an entire armada’s worth of CVs to get so much as an interview.

“Indeed.” His conversation partner nodded, “That said, it’s better if you commit to a single crew rather than being a freelancer. Not that those aren’t useful, but they aren’t always looked kindly upon.”

“The inevitable question of ‘how come you never stick around for long’, huh?” Neil chuckled ruefully.

“Indeed.” He responded immediately, a rueful smile on his face, “Such is the lot of those with wanderlust.”

As Neil went to respond, a bark from Poochyena interrupted him, the doglike Pokemon evidently finally having grown bored. Given that Esmeraldina had also started to lose interest - going by her expression, anyway, he offered a smile towards the sailor. “Speaking of leaving with little warning, haha.”

With an amused chuckle, the sailor waved him off, “No worries, journeygoer. Your Pokemon demand your attention.”