I'm not sure where you got that number. Pokedollars are Yen. It's only in the US games that Pokedollars even exist, in literally every other country and language they use Yen.

I've been running all over google and bulbapedia hunting down information so I'm not a hundred percent on the source at this point. I think that it actually came from one of the drop-down menus on google for commonly asked questions.

I don't even want to talk about the rabbit holes I keep running into when I go to research a movepool, click on a move, click on which pokemon learn a move, ask myself 'How can I justify adding this to the story?' and then get distracted by trying to hunt down how something was implemented in the anime versus how it got put into the games.

I've gotten to learn that the symbol for the Pokemon currency is based primarily off the Russian Rubel combined with the Japanese Yen symbol and that it may have also taken inspiration from the Phillipine Peso.

So I've also seen a reference stating that the base cost of cab fair is 710 Pokedollars which directly mirrors the base cost of cab fair in Tokyo, which would reinforce your point.
 
Well, I specifically went and googled how much the Pokedollar was worth for the monthly wage that Oak pays and according to google it was one pokedollar = .006297 USD.

Which actually kind of works out pretty well. It makes those multi-thousand Poke payouts into something reasonable. The cost of a PokeBall is then equal to about a buck twenty five (1.25 USD) which would normally be absurdly cheap but I'm attributing that to the Lab Trainer Discount that was advertised as a perk of working for a Professor.

So one million pokedollars is... 6,297 bucks. Which is ruinously expensive for a standard bike but the ones in the Pokeverse can stand up to all kinds of insane terrain, do amazing tricks and really only fall short when it comes to Thunderbolt via Pikachu.

Less number crunchy- That's the retail price for a brand spankin' new bicycle. Alec'd be lucky if it was still half that once he rode it off the lot! Anything he can dig up in the scrap yard is going to be last years model, at the least. If he could get 100k I'd be surprised.

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didn't game theory manage to get the pokedollar to yen amount by finding the price of branded lemonade in the game (sold at a vending machine) and its actual world counterpart?
 
Unusually, both parents would dash off into the night with dreams of being the very best.
For a series about the power of bonds and friendship some bonds sure are easily broken. I'm surprised there's not a law or something that if a parent abandons their child they have to pay child support or all their poke supplies cost 2x more or something.

Regardless, if Gate doesn't work, does Alex still have access to his domain?
 
Or it might simply be a foundational difference in that there's practically NO bonding between people beyond friendship. If the bonding betwixt a Trainer and their Pokemon is socially, emotionally, and legally the peak of bonds, instead of our, say, immediate family unit, then their society would function in an entirely alien methodology compared to most any of our cultures.
 
The trip had been enlightening, though, for a number of different reasons. Primarily, it let Alec know what people were throwing away. LCD Televisions, VCR players, big computer monitors and the few computer cases he'd cracked open had RAM sticks in them that measured in the megabytes.

Alec pursed his lips, elbow deep in a computer tower as he was busy extracting the RAM and Processor.

The prevalence of 3.5 floppy drives should have been a pretty big tell, too.

Ignoring the overhead shadow as a trio of Magnemite flew over, Alec picked up the real prize after pocketing his minuscule amount of precious metal. A reasonably large televideo unit. A combined TV/VCR player. Mending could repair it but it wouldn't bring the remote control back.

Repair, futzing with time, had basically conjured the thing right on top of the unit in a glitter of golden sparkles.
Wouldn't it be CRTs instead of LCDs to match the other tech listed?
LCDs would be new state-of-the-art stuff, with CRTs being tossed in the scrapheap for the new flatscreens.
 
For a series about the power of bonds and friendship some bonds sure are easily broken. I'm surprised there's not a law or something that if a parent abandons their child they have to pay child support or all their poke supplies cost 2x more or something.

Regardless, if Gate doesn't work, does Alex still have access to his domain?

In every single game you can find a handful of houses with no adults at all.

I mean, that doesn't prove anything but it is a surprisingly common occurrence.

And the number of people that are usually found deep in locations that, disbarring game logic, shouldn't have been able to get into the deepest depths of a cave that is far, far off and away from civilization in any kind of a reasonable time frame.

The story emphasizes the bonds people make with PokeMon, far more so than it does the bonds people make with each other. Even in the Anime, Ash's dad didn't show up, didn't spare the time away from his own journey to do more than leave a hat to be delivered with a Nurse Joy because that wasn't his priority.

It's not considered a negative mark against his character in the anime, either. That's just how things are.

On this side of the screen, dude's getting a dad of the year award. It's a nice, big trophy awarded posteriorly at the end of a boot.

So, trying to link up that kind of event with some measure of logic- Group homes. Places for kids to still get cared for while their parents are off not being parents, probably have a few in every single city.

As to the costs- I would assume that, without having a government sponsor to defray the cost of equipment, being a trainer to a large or powerful team absolutely should be incredibly expensive. Look up the cost of dogfood and then compare that against how much a large dog, like a Great Dane would eat.

The only way I see that whole thing working from a worldbuilding perspective is putting in some shit that emphasizes the whole "it takes a village" style of child rearing. That sort of ties it all up in a neat little bow? Idk

Or it might simply be a foundational difference in that there's practically NO bonding between people beyond friendship. If the bonding betwixt a Trainer and their Pokemon is socially, emotionally, and legally the peak of bonds, instead of our, say, immediate family unit, then their society would function in an entirely alien methodology compared to most any of our cultures.

Basically this. It's a wildly different world with dramatically different mores.

Wouldn't it be CRTs instead of LCDs to match the other tech listed?
LCDs would be new state-of-the-art stuff, with CRTs being tossed in the scrapheap for the new flatscreens.

Thank you so much! I was busy at that time hunting down the cost of the TV/VCR combo around the year 1995. By then the prices had come down from sky-high but it still would've been a reasonably compact but high dollar item. Al probably got about 30 bucks out of it.

Regardless, if Gate doesn't work, does Alex still have access to his domain?

He does but the cost of opening a gate into his domain has increased due to the structure of the local reality being less flexible in comparison to other realities with significant amounts of dimensional travel. (The Ultra Wormholes thing is actually a bit in the future and hasn't happened in-universe yet)

Not enough to stop him but it will be enough that he comments on it.
 
Anime Adjacent: PokeMon 5
Lieutenant Colonel (That was his name, not his rank) Surge did actually keep abreast of the comings and goings of his city. As much as one man could, at any rate.

It was a -City-, not some dinky little one-Mudsdale town in the heart of Unova. There were more ships coming in than he could name, more cargo passing through his port than any other part of Kanto and more wealth trading hands in any one week than the rest of the League saw in a year.

He couldn't keep track of everything. The Jennies couldn't keep track of everything. Not even the Rockets really knew what all was happening. More than most, sure, but the thing about the Black Market was that nobody trusted anybody, especially if they did business with 'em.

Today was a slow day for the massive Unovan. No gym challengers meant he could focus on other pursuits. Sometimes that meant special training with his PokeMon, today that meant following up on something one of his own informants had tipped him off about.

A kid was coming in to his informant's shop, a little hole-in-the wall pawnshop off the main road, and was dropping off some high-dollar stuff. Not a lot, not all at once, never more than he could carry by hand...

But it was like clockwork. Kid shows up, drops off something in pristine condition-

Factory new, according to the squealer.

-gets ripped off and then goes on their way.

Once or twice wouldn't be too noticeable. If the kid was dropping off the same thing, it'd be questionable albeit in a different direction. Wouldn't be the first time someone found a 'Lost' shipment and didn't understand how to move stuff quietly.

It was unusual enough that Surge decided to take the time to get a personal look at things. He was in the pawn shop 'Jack & Hoff's Pawn and Trade', waiting. Not obviously, he wasn't an infiltration expert but he knew how to not stand out like an Unovan in Kanto...

No, he really didn't.

Surge was in the middle of examining a good looking television, sitting on the floor of the cramped store with its remote taped to the top of it. The price wasn't great but the unit itself looked brand new.

Probably one of the ones the potential thief had dropped off.

Surge heard the doorbell jingling and had to restrain himself from turning around, choosing instead to look at the reflection off of some of the other devices to see who'd come in.

A kid, a bit on the bulky side. Weird features, though. Fuzzy brown hair and bright yellow eyes. Not what Surge would normally expect from the locals. The kid had a couple of VCR players stacked on top of each other.

"Yo, Jack!" The kid yelled, his head tilted to the side to see around his haul. "Got somethin' for ya!"

"What?!" Jack Hofferson shouted from the back, squeezing his rotund figure out through a narrow door situated behind the counter. "Aww, come on, kid! I ain't got room for more junk!"

"Alright." The kid turned right back around. "Later."

"Wait!" Jack shouted as the kid tried to balance his electronics between one hand and knee so he could open the door, making him pause. "Fine, geeze. You got no patience brat, you know that?"

"Patients are for doctors, you fat prick." The kid mocked, turning right around and gently placing his stack on the counter. A few seconds later and he'd fished the remotes to them out of his pockets. "Just got done fixing these up. How much you gonna offer for 'em?"

"What are you doing when you fix 'em up?" Surge raised a blonde eyebrow at the pawnbroker's question. Jack didn't usually bother being overt. "Pullin' these right out the boxes?"

"We both know they'd be worth more in the boxes, asshole. Not my fault your regulars think spit and wishes will fix somethin' enough to be worth somethin'." Looking around the kid, Surge had to admit that the units looked like they were brand spankin' new. Heck, one looked like the unit he'd thrown away the year before, looked the same as the day he'd unboxed it! "Think I'm alright on cash at the moment. How about trying some of that trade you promised?"

"Finally decide I've got somethin' you want?" Jack grinned, an ugly look considering he was missing several teeth.

Surge had been there when the man, drunk, had decided to try picking a fight with a Machop. It hadn't gone at all as Jack intended.

Jack was plastered, Jack was thick. Jack fell down when he got low-kicked.

"Finally decided everything nearby is trash." The kid disagreed, an unimpressed look on his face. "Jerkoffs at the docks are trying to upsell some dull trash because it's foreign. More respectable places ain't willing to sell to me at all. So here's what I'm thinkin'. You get both of these and I get that hunk of rust on the back wall."

Surge and Jack both followed where the kid was pointing to. A short sword, the blade pitted and tassel torn which sat in front of a scabbard that clearly suffered from dry-rot. There was an orb in the center of the cross guard but it looked like it was made of glass instead of anything valuable.

"That was my grandfather's sword." Jack lied immediately. "I can't let it go for that!"

"Alright." The kid instantly agreed. "Cash it is, then."

"...Trio feathers, kid." Jack sighed, running one hand down his face. "You're bad at this, you know that? You tell me what you want, I give you some grief, we bicker back and forth over the price- Hagglin' is an artform, kiddo. What do you even need that antique hunk a junk for?"

"I know what haggling is." The kid rolled his eyes, the little shit. "And I'm bad at it. I've made an offer, you didn't make a counter offer. And for the sword, I'm planning on hitting the road soon. I'll need something to stab people with if they decide to get a little too handsy."

"Geeze..." Jack shook his head and turned around, stretching pretty hard to reach the old thing. "We got newer stuff, kid. This thing has got to be about thirty percent rust, at the least."

"Newer, yeah, but it's all junk. The survival knives here are those hollow-handled pieces of crap. I don't trust myself with a switch blade or butterfly knife, so those are out." The kid accepted the sword carefully when Jack held it over the counter. "What? No cleaning kit?"

"What do you think this is, kid?" Jack laughed, his belly jiggling. "You want to get your rust all sharpened up, go talk to the blacksmith on the main road. I sell goods, not cleaning kits."

"Fine, fine." The kid held the scabbard of the sword in his off-hand with more surety than Surge was expecting. Shimmying the blade into it was a slow, awkward affair but again, the kid actually looked like he knew what he was doing. "I'll see if I can find anything decent tomorrow. How quickly do computers move for you?"

"They don't." Jack immediately replied. "At least this crap I can move to some other sellers. Nobody knows what to do with a computer if it ain't one of the video-conference units at a PokeMon Center."

"Gotcha, gotcha." The kid turned around and headed for the door, hunk of rust held under one arm. "Alright, I'll catch you tomorrow."

The bell over the door jingled merrily as the kid stepped out. Surge moved towards the window at the front of the shop as the boy got on to a scooter and pushed off.

It was a bright red scooter, no engine on the back. It had a wide platform to stand on and had large, inflatable tires that would have fit right in on a heavy-duty wagon.

Not long after the kid got moving, Surge saw a Houndour reveal itself from behind a post office box, sniff at the air and then take off after him.

Surge shook his head and turned around, leaning over the counter.

"Weird kid, right?" Jack asked him, picking up one of the VCR units as he did so. The man started off by checking the plug, then opening the flap and peering into the unit itself. "No idea where he's gettin' this stuff. Some of it, had to look it up, ain't been made in years."

"That is pretty odd." Surge agreed as he picked up the unit that looked just like his old one. "I remember buying one of these almost a decade ago. Real Mudsdale of a unit, just kept chuggin' along. Real quality Unovan manufacturing. Not like the crap we're gettin' these days."

"Might be a Psychic?" Jack asked as he began to inspect the other unit. "Heard some of those fellas can levitate stuff. Rumor is, that girl up north? Sabrina? Some folks are saying the nutjob can Teleport."

Surge winced and very cautiously began to look around, his eyes on the shop window as he saw a flash of purple hair outside. The soldier held his breath but there was no sign the lunatic or her crazy little doll had heard them.

Sure, she was kilometers away... But psychics like Sabrina were scary for a reason.

"Don't even joke about that." Surge whispered angrily. "You know there's a Drowzee colony nearby! They might be listening!"

"...You know that's just a hoax, right?" Jack asked, obviously concerned. "It's not like every psychic PokeMon nearby is answering to her just because she's really gifted."

"I know that!" Surge agreed, still whispering angrily. "It's not every psychic! Just..."

Surge sent another panicked glance at the window but saw nothing.

"Just... Most of them."
 
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Surge thinks Alec is weird and yet is superstitious enough to think nearby Psychic-types are spies for Sabrina. ...par for the course for Pokémon world weirdness, I suppose.
 
Will the Edgerunners segments be posted and continued here?

I need to get back into the game, get a feel for how the action felt. The next segment I've sort of outlined involves some metal gear solid stealth assassination action

Against a pack of Scavs.

But I'm also keeping abreast of Ghost in the City by Seras over on Spacebattles because their story is really good and I don't want to rip it off.
 
Hehe, at the end where Surge is freaking out over Sabrina, I just suddenly flashed on her sitting at home drinking tea with the big bulldog from Little Nicky asleep on the floor doing his little girls "La la la la laa la *snore* La la la la laa la *snore*" bit :p
 
Any inklings of continuing the MHA story? I guess it kinda hit a rough to continue from spot but little Eri was adorable.
 
So thinking of Pokemon types that might work well with him psychic types are out, probably a lot of the same problems martians have with dealing with him, especially if he still has mind blank up. Fairy might be one he gets on with great or horribly depending on where they land on the scale of cartoon fairy to actual fey creatures. Dark types like the little houndour might be able to handle the fear he causes instinctually better than probably most other types so that's an option. Ghost are definitely up there with working with someone a little bit eldritch and as long as Al isn't the one being pranked he'll probably get along with a few of the more mischiefif ones, though the more solemn or series ones might be a better fit. Maybe poison types? Al can be a bit, or a lot, caustic to people he doesn't get along with or sometimes even to people he does get along with though not on purpose. All that being said I do hope he gets a Porygon, their just so cool and cute, besides a digital entity might be able to handle his everything better compared to more fleshy Pokemon.
 
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Mmm, pie
Omake: Literally making a stand

"... This is so boring." Mew had shapechanged to look like an old pink haired woman using Transform then got real clothes by basically stealing them and leaving behind some Elemental Evolution Stones. The stones were worth way more that the clothes but it made her felt less guilty.

The fake old woman was waiting for the darn troublesome SI to show up in the road. She was running a Berry Stand... in freaking Kanto, if the kid wanted Berries for that Garden of his, he would have to come to her eventually.

She even left posters in town with drawings even a Team Rocket Grunt could understand and even paid actually freaking money so the things wouldn't get removed.

But Mew had forgot how boring playing human was, heck no one even had even tried to rob her yet!

Even if the SI didn't know any Translation spell surely he could understand the drawings right?

*At that exact same moment...

"Hey Jo, what the heck are Berries?"

"I am sure it is that expensive fruit they use as part of the ingredients to make Potions."

"Huh, it is worth buying them?"

"Maybe if you make your own Potions or want to get your Pokemon really strong, otherwise it is usually too expensive."

"Think some of them would do good in a pie?"

"Mmm... Maybe the Oran or Citrus Berries perhaps?"

"Okay, gonna try buying a few, always willing to try new things."

Then Alchemist passed down with his Scooter ignoring everything but the road in front on him and so he didn't see the posters.
 
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So, he just motoring along as he is responsible and no time to stop along the road.

Is he gonna meet Sabrina?
 
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