bor902
professional illiterate
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My life as a youngster with a top percentage Rattata was much more successful than I expected? - Pokemon SI
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Jebediah
Chapter 16: Celadon Department store
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Thank you to my new patrons 
: BlackJackPershing, Salix, gin, SnowyOwl, Big Casino, NightW0lfgaming, Rafter, SirSlaps, ProfoundMagician, Nathan M, Mark Seymour, NO12CHERE, Daniel Kim, Paul Pintea, Trespitry, Gregory, andre, Allute, Michael John Hughes
-/-
Metapod was healthy soon enough, her shed skin having already rid her of all status conditions immediately after the battle. Neither Joey or Erika really minded the small wait anyway, as they were too busy discussing the upcoming match.
"Lance is going to wreck Bruno so hard, I'm just sad I won't be there to see it in person," Joey lamented, feeling weird with only one team-member on his belt now that he'd gotten used to having two.
"The match is supposed to happen in Indigo stadium in three months. Maybe I could convince my dad to teleport us there. But, he usually doesn't feel up for things like that during the season. Also, Lance winning? Check your brain damage, did you see the muscles on Bruno?" Erika replied easily.
"What does muscle size have to do with his pokemon being able to beat Lance," Joey asked while scratching his head.
Erika simply rolled her eyes. "Well obviously he's a fighting-type master. The bigger his muscles are, the bigger the muscles of his pokemon will be."
"Is Kong an incompetent then? Never saw anything bulging out of his gi," Joey said and noticed his mistake as his friend cracked up.
"I hope you haven't," she taunted.
"Says the girl looking at Bruno's muscles. Don't tell me you have a poster of him in your bedroom."
She blushed and looked away from where they were traversing the more traditionally built Celadon streets. The city had more tradition in the direction of agriculture, dancing and scents. Very much unlike the newly developed industrial giant that was Saffron.
"The way he won his way into the elite four was super inspiring, ok," she mumbled. "He came from nowhere, no conference wins, just relentlessly working his way up the ranks until he got the right to challenge the elite four. He's even working on taking Blaine's spot and pushing the old man down, good riddance, I say."
Was that why Bruno had caught two onix in the games? Specifically to beat Blaine and take his spot? It would make sense. However, Agatha would probably forever remain beyond him. It was just too hard of a match up. "You just don't like Blaine because he's a fire-type expert?" Joey asked, somewhat amused.
Erika recoiled, before puffing up her chest. "Of course not! He's just an ass. My dad says so."
"At his age, I wonder if he's going to be ok with just being demoted. He might quit altogether. Hasn't Cinnabar been on the lookout for a new gym-leader?" Joey wondered aloud.
"The last gym-leader suffered a burn-out," she elaborated, causing Joey to chuckle. "It's not funny, it's a serious health risk for gym-leaders," she chided with a reproachful look.
Joey waved her off. "No, it's just. You'd think that as a fire-type gym-leader he would have had a burn-heal on hand," he guffawed.
"You're a weirdo, I hope you know that."
"Born and raised, baby," Joey replied as they arrived back in the front of the gigantic glasshouse-esque gym.
"Well, anyway. I'm sure that if Bruno can't oust him, then Lance can."
"Wow," Joey mumbled. "You sure switched sides fast."
Erika simply sniffed as they walked through the tall grass towards the sounds of battle in the distance. "There's too many old men in the elite four right now. Blaine, Pryce. Both of them can go for all I care. Not cute at all."
"Both of them specialise in typings super-effective against grass," Joey mused.
"I'm not like that," Erika grumbled as they reached the sight of the battle-area, where a beaten up bulbasaur and a poisoned tyrogue covered in leech seeds were standing facing each other. Despite the contrary expectation that Joey had considering Hitoshi's overall behaviour and competency, it was the bulbasaur that collapsed, and the boy in a karate gi collected his badge.
"Good job on your fourth badge," Joey commented sarcastically as Hitoshi recalled his pokemon and walked past him, probably also towards the poke-centre. The boy glared at him, but didn't say anything as he left.
"What do you mean? He was challenging for his second," Mia said as Joey and Erika joined her in watching as Michael took the field, releasing pidgey high into the air.
"Just a little inside joke," the youngster said with a wink, before focusing back on the match. "Sky King, whoop whoop!" he shouted in support of the youngster. If nothing else, one had to admire Michael's tenacity. He seemingly wasn't talented, good-looking, smart, gifted, personable, charismatic or even really worthy of his very dumb pidgey, but… he was still out here trying to make stuff happen, unlike a lot of other trainers.
The boy shot them a thumbs up by punching his arm side-ways, not taking his eyes off the riveting battle which consisted of a tangela throwing powders, rocks and vines in the air and pidgey dodging everything with seeming ease. Eventually the bird responded with a few well-directed gusts, which quickly knocked out the tangela, which as a last resort tried to use absorb on the flying menace. The attack didn't do much, ergo the result.
Michael happily walked off with a badge. From the gym leader's perspective it had probably looked like the boy had prepared well, and hadn't taken any unnecessary risks by getting up close for style-points. In reality Michael always battled like his opponent had a 100% likelihood of one-shotting him if pidgey ever got even slightly close to the ground. Someone had traumatised him at some point. Joey wasn't sure who.
Next up was Sabrina, who, to Joey's amusement, fielded two abra. She'd dared laugh at his metapod, when she'd literally just caught the same pokemon again. Some people really didn't have any shame. She won easily enough, and while Joey felt that the gym-leader raised the bar in the middle just like he had with him, it didn't seem to impact the psychic human at all. Her two abra teleported away from all danger, spammed psybeams, confusions and other such things and that was that, really. The girl promptly left after her battle, prompting to not stick around like Michael had. But to be fair, her abra had gotten poisoned at some point, while Michael's pidgey had remained almost completely unharmed and untouched throughout the entirety of the match.
It seemed that in Joey's absence Mia had made a deal to go last, because after Sabrina the bug-catcher stepped up and predictably sent out a caterpie. However, for all that the boy had an interesting gimmick, having created a sort of string-shot variant in which the string was jumbled into hard and sticky balls and used like a sort of bullet-seed, Tadghsiobhan seemed to be done with losing to the caterpie-line for the day. An oddish shut down all string shot attempts with acid and eventually won the match with a tackle of all things.
The bug-catcher left, dejected. Joey thought the boy had a pretty good chance at winning a rematch.
The last match of the day was Mia, and it was nice to see the wariness in Tadghsiobhan's face when the girl sent out her rattata. Never again would the Celadon gym underestimate the power of the humble rat or the steadiness of a well-trained metapod.
Tadghsiobhan sent out an oddish, and even though the battle was hardly anything truly interesting in terms of tactics, Joey nevertheless paid close attention. If for no other reason than to advise his friend afterwards.
The match started simply, quickly entering a stalemate. Lil mouse tried to advance via quick attack, but failed to properly close in due to oddish's high acid accuracy. Joey's rattata was better at break and run manoeuvres and might have been able to break through with sheer speed and power. But, Joey had kept a track of how often Mia trained, and it turned out that she, and other youngsters all only trained about 15% as much as Joey did. There wasn't really a comparison.
Nevertheless, the battle was far from over, as Mia then ordered lil mouse to stand back and harass the oddish with tail whip while dodging its attacks.
There was no escape from Tadghsiobhan however, the man simply ordered a poison powder rain barrage, and while it did seem exhausting, there was too much poison in the air for rattata to avoid. But Mia had been learning from Joey, and even if lil mouse got poisoned, it was potentially worth it if the loss of stamina on the side of the oddish could be capitalised on. Lil mouse quick attacked into the grass-type's space once again, and was subsequently attacked frontally with acid. However, instead of dodging left or right and abandoning its trajectory, this time lil mouse jumped in the air, letting go of the normal-type energy.
"That's not good," Erika muttered from next to Joey. "Rattata can't dodge in mid-air."
And, as expected Tadghsiobhan ordered an acid to strike down on the incoming rat missile, which was falling at a predictable speed towards the oddish.
Joey simply furrowed his brow and tried not to blink. If he had he would have missed it, against the glare of the sun amplified by the glass of the ceiling. Rattata trailed white. The youngster thought back to the exercise he'd seen Mia doing back in Saffron. Rattata using a quick attack in the air. He hadn't thought much about it back then. Quick attack functioned by channelling energy through the body of the pokemon to give it the physical power boost to propel itself forward. During this process energy was ejected backwards, pushing the pokemon forward in addition to its muscular efforts. In the air the initial burst was more of a spurt due to Lil Mouse not having anything to jump off of. However, with white trailing behind her, the rat flew down faster, accelerating its downward momentum and thus dodging the large acid glob by a hair's width. The oddish was too surprised by its own miss, and potentially also too tired to retaliate again so quickly, and a rattata missile struck it right in the face, knocking it to the ground.
It was over then. Rattata was close enough to run circles around oddish, and the battle promptly ended after a few more quick attacks. Mia got her badge and seemed slightly dumbfounded by her own victory.
"I didn't think I'd win, to be honest," she admitted to Joey afterwards, as everyone shuffled out of the gym to stand in front of it.
Everyone had won, other than the bug-catcher. Even Michael had managed, although that had mostly been due to the type mismatch, not any actual strategy on the boy's part.
"You trained towards a specific goal and strategy for two months, knowing exactly what to expect, and what you were capable of. Why would you have lost?" Joey asked.
All he got from Mia at that was a weak chuckle. "I guess you wouldn't get it," she muttered. She seemed to be oddly down considering her victory, and Joey wondered what was wrong. He'd initiate a conversation if she wasn't out of her funk tomorrow, but for now he still had something to do.
"I have to go to the department store. It's not anywhere near closing time, but I have to see what they have to make a strategic decision on how to spend my money," the boy eventually said to his friend and Erika, who'd stayed close to him throughout most of the day.
"I'm going to go to the poke-centre to get rattata rid of the poison. Then I'll go as well. I want a technical machine," she said before pulling up a map of Celadon on her PokeNav and going towards the white and red building.
"I actually have to go back inside and help clean up the battlefield more thoroughly," Erika said.
"I'll battle you in next year's conference, if we don't meet again before then," Joey replied. The girl considered his words, before nodding, and turning back around. By the time he looked back, Ruth had also left, probably to enjoy what to her must have been a vacation day in a nice new city. The only one left was Michael, who was just standing there, lost in thought. Occasionally the boy took out his badge case, opened it, looked at the rainbow badge before putting it away again.
He seemed to notice everyone's absence because he looked up and smiled cockily. "I guess it's just the two of us now, huh, Joey. That gym-leader didn't really wind me up too much. You wanna battle and become reacquainted with your place in the pecking order?" he asked, fingering the sleeves of his puffy white shirt.
Joey simply stared at him, before turning around and walking off.
"Hey, where are you going?" Michael asked as he started following him.
Joey broke out into a run, Michael screaming for him to wait as he ran after him. However, Joey actually trained his body with his pokemon some-times, and even if ghost-type energy wasn't the best for enhancing one's physique, it was better than nothing. He left the kid in the dust, literally, and metaphorically, as his battling career was actually going somewhere.
He ran a bit more before pulling to a stop in the celadon main square, which was dwarfed by the gigantic six story department story absolutely dominating the space and casting a large shadow.
It had been an exhausting day full of social interaction and battling, but now it was time to spend some of his hard-earned money and get himself a fighting chance against Surge.
-/-
If Joey had thought that the department store was huge from the outside, a hulking giant taking up most of the space in Celadon's city centre, then being inside the beast was a whole different story. Perhaps it was because he was still in a brat's body, but the ceilings were incredibly tall, and he couldn't even reach the uppermost shelves on the first floor. He'd taken the elevator stairs up, just to check what the layout was. He remembered vaguely that in some versions of the games, different TM's had been available on every floor. However, it seemed that this wasn't the case here, as the second floor mostly held items for healing, different types of repel and some basic poke-balls.
Joey didn't really need any of that, as he kept himself upped on the basic potions which were enough for his team at the moment, wasn't going into any dangerous places that would require a repel, and was fine with the league issued basic poke-balls he had gotten when passing his licensing exam and won his first badge. He knew that with the winning of his second badge he would get a third poke-ball for his third team-member.
With his next badge he would finally be qualified to train tier-2 pokemon, and thus evolve rattata if his starter wanted that.
Anyway, looking around, impressed at the variety of trainers mingling around, from rangers to older hobby trainers, he went a floor up, getting himself a lemonade from one of the many vending machines that were littering the corridor's in front of the stairs.
It was on the third floor that he finally got to where he wanted to be. He had to wipe his mouth to prevent himself from salivating as he looked at the floor, lined with high shelves containing technical machines of all kinds. Not wasting any time he quickly started walking around and cataloguing what was available. He noted that there were two different kinds of technical machines available. Those for single use, and those for multiple use. The price hike between the two different products was insane.
One of the technical machines that he definitely needed for multiple use at some point for example was TM17 protect. An indispensable tool for any professional battler, this move was valuable as a reusable TM due to the fact that almost every pokemon could learn it. The single use machine cost a solid 50k poke dollars, a lot, but manageable. However, the reusable machine cost a whopping 250k poke-dollars, which was ridiculous.
Thankfully it wasn't time yet for Joey to invest in the move, but he'd probably have to do so before he competed in the conference.
Drooling his way past a few more moves that he couldn't afford, or that were too expensive to justify, Joey quickly found the three technical machines he was most interested in. TM28 dig, TM39 swift and TM8 rock smash. Now it was in a way seductive to try and get a reusable version of either dig or swift, since they had quite a wide coverage. It was incredibly likely that his next pokemon would be able to learn one of those two moves. Also, it would be an investment, having the move now would mean he'd never have to use it again, right? But, there was one issue, namely that this investment would be too long term. If he beat Surge on his first try, then that would give him an immediate cash infusion with which he could buy another TM. But, was it likely that he was going to beat Surge with just dig, or with just swift? Or was it more likely that he'd win if he had both.
The thing about completionists was that they tended to think too long term. By the time they finally bought every single reusable TM, they would have already lost a bunch of battles they could have won if they had access to the correct move. Joey had a success philosophy that depended a lot on momentum. Keeping one's self in a winning position from an earlier time-point would give him more rewards down the line than if he scrounged for longer with the aim of some future benefit. Who knew what the future would bring anyway?
In other words, Joey was going to get the single use TMs, because they'd increase his chances against Surge now. He didn't want to waste his mental energy on figuring out finances. In a world where a teenager could have a team of six dragons the old adage of money being power wasn't true anymore. Power was power and money was only good when it was giving the user access to more power. Unfortunately technical machines were keyed to a trainer identity when bought, which meant that someone owning a reusable one couldn't undercut Silph. Co. by charging low prices for external usage.
"How can I help you?" someone said from beside Joey suddenly. The boy turned around to muster the clerk who'd walked up to him. Dressed as usual in the yellow apron the man didn't look like much, but he was exactly who the youngster needed right now.
"I just beat the gym so I have money burning its way out of my pocket. I'd like a single use copy of dig, swift, and rock smash," he quickly explained. The clerk considered him with dull brown eyes, perhaps recognizing Joey's status as a youngster and thus questioning where he was getting the money from.
The man's eyes lit up and he smiled. "I recognize you," he said suddenly, putting a finger to his right temple. "You're that kid who beat Kong with a rattata. I watched your match on the TV, it was a joy to see."
Taken slightly off guard by the sudden compliment Joey blushed and awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "Aw, thanks. I didn't know anyone cared."
"And now you beat Celadon as well, I'll have to catch one of those repeats!" the man exclaimed, pulling a key from somewhere and starting to unlock the barred technical machines and putting together Joey's order. "It was really nice to see a rattata win over a mankey. My raticate was super excited. You know, it's just about time us youngsters got some recognition. I've hung up the hat years ago, but I still follow the battling scene."
Following the battling scene wasn't really saying much considering almost everyone did, but Joey wasn't about to be mean to his first fan.
"Thanks for your kind words," he instead said humbly as the two of them went to the counter and the clerk ran up the bill. It was about half of Joey's budget, but there would be more chances to earn money in the future. With Lance's match against Bruno coming up, and people generally acting quite surprised that the dragon-trainer dared make the challenge with his relative inexperience, the odds were likely going to be quite stacked against Lance. Probably worse than 1-5, which meant that Joey could potentially quintuple the amount of money in his bank account. He still had another three months or so to earn as much cash as possible, which, with the fact that he liked challenging higher level trainers and could even start doing jobs now, would mean quite a lot of money would be flowing his way. Joey swiped his trainer card in the terminal and absent-mindedly put an arm around the technical machine cases to pull them into his backpack. He froze when he noted that there were five boxes in his arm, instead of three. He looked up at the clerk who smiled at him.
"I get a few of those every year. Benefits of working in the department store I guess. Thing is, I don't really battle anymore and I only have my raticate. TM18 counter and TM03 helping hand, I think you can use those better than me," the older man said.
Joey nodded seriously, not about to refuse a free lunch. He looked at the man's name tag. "Thanks, Zuka. Next year's indigo conference. Come watch me. I'll show you some magic," he promised before leaving with a wave and a small. He went up the escalator to the next floor as he considered the gift. He didn't have a pokemon that could learn counter, but helping hand was a move that had quite some potential. It increased the overall power of the pokemon afflicted, which suggested some interesting dynamics. Perhaps rattata could use it on himself. Perhaps he could use it on metapod during training and see if it had any good long-term benefits. Maybe it was even usable on an opponent during a match to make them overcommit to an attack.
The world was Joey's tactical oyster, and in a time where most trainers seemed to be functioning under the misbelief that a bigger flamethrower was a better flamethrower, unconventional tactics would likely end up being his tool for victory. For some odd reason not many fighting-type pokemon actually used detect, and not many people had ever tried to win much of anything with a metapod. Joey was already on his second badge, so what he was doing was obviously working for the moment. With the new technical machines he'd purchased more possibilities would open up and he would manage to have even more routes all leading to the same goal. The conference.
He considered the oddity of trainers preferring quite simple tactics over anything requiring real brain power, and why a culture so steeped in battling oftentimes didn't seem so good at it. Perhaps it was just necessary to look at these things from the outside sometimes. It was always inside a system that one got the most stuck.
All thoughts of tactics and other such things fled his mind however as he entered the fourth floor. It wasn't that he necessarily needed anything from here, but it was the region's largest collection of evolution stones. It would have been a waste had he come here without at least taking a look.
It glittered, it shined, and the price tags made him wince. In other words, no.
The fire stones seemed to glow with an unseen fire and exuded a warmth even through the protective glass. It made him want to own one, just for the sake of owning one. However, this was definitely a thing that could perhaps wait until after Lance had won the championship. All the money spent now was less money coming in later. He reluctantly left the floor behind, going one more up. He knew that if he'd had a pokemon that needed an evolution stone, he wouldn't have been able to prevent himself from buying one right there, right now.
It was weird actually, how much his sense of money had already become skewed after a few months of being a trainer. On the stipend, and with his strategy of challenging higher level trainers he was making an insane amount of money. Although, that would probably change now after he'd won his second badge. The losses would be harsher and the wins would be less profitable, but still. Joey had money. A surprising amount of money. Perhaps it helped that he wasn't training something like a snorlax, which would have bankrupted him in a week.
Rather than wait completely for the end of the betting pool, there was one thing that Joey really wanted to get at the department store. And what he wanted was to be found on the fifth floor. He stepped off the escalator and looked around, sighing once again at the beauty of his surroundings. A different beauty now. The beauty of efficacy. The diet he gave his pokemon was well thought out and probably more precise than 80% of other trainers, but Celadon, once again, had the largest collection of dietary supplements. And by default then, the highest quality. Joey walked around the aisles, frowning at the prices, which at times were higher than technical machines, but he ended up collecting some protein and some calcium for rattata, the high grade stuff this time. Supposedly the bottles would last him for a few months with such a small pokemon. For metapod he got some iron, as preparation for perhaps teaching her iron defence at some point. He hadn't found the technical machine for the move down-stairs but it wasn't like supplementing would hurt, considering that harden was a move that took advantage of a specific material being available as well.
Despite how he'd told himself that he wouldn't spend all his money in the department store Joey almost ended up wiping his bank account by the time he actually left the building. Still, it had been a fruitful trip. With the gym badge in his pocket and his money spent he'd essentially done the two things he'd come here to do. Now, it was time to relax a bit and worry about the bus ride back and the money gathering action he'd have to commit too, tomorrow.
-/-
Now normally the things that Joey would have done upon arriving in a new city would have been different. However, unfortunately he wasn't an adult anymore, and thus this closed off bars, clubs and gambling. Not gambling actually, since he was allowed to go to the game corner, however, he knew that the house always won, and he had a much safer bet coming up in the near future.
So, instead of doing any of that, Joey got himself a few sticks of yakitori and walked around town, going into art galleries and museums as he pleased. One of the advantages of being young was that entry was free. The art scene was admittedly a bit dead in comparison to his old world, mostly because of the smaller population size, but there were still interesting things to see.
There had been an exhibition of poke-painting in the modern museum which had been fairly interesting, trying to guess which pokemon had painted which by the emotion infused into the piece. But, his favourite art piece of the day had been a large installation consisting of several walls painted a bright blue with golden swirls. Coral reefs were attached to the bricks and it was supposed to mimic a sunken archipelago. It was magical walking amongst it and it reminded him of his visits to Art Basel and the Venice Biennale in his past life.
However, everything in the pokemon eventually led back to one thing in particular. Battling. Without actually intending to, and snacking on street food on the way, Joey ended up at the public battling fields. Perhaps it was a waste of time to do so considering he was in a new city and these places always looked the same. But, for better or worse Joey had been conditioned into a battling fanatic during his tenure in this new world. The bond between trainer and pokemon, the way they synergised in battle, the awesome visual impressions and the fast paced tactics. It all mesmerised him. Before he knew it he was sitting down, spectating the local battling scene and writing notes as he took it all in. The way that a hypno teleported on top of an ivysaur to deliver a fire punch. How a machop dodged its way into a bulk up induced rampage and finished off its opponent with one low kick. There was gold to be found in moments like these, and even if he'd been prospecting for his whole life, his sieve pan never came up empty.
"Didn't have enough battling for the day yet?" a voice asked from behind Joey, causing the boy to glance back and lock eyes with the green-haired Elio.
"I'm not taking any challenges, but there's just something about it that forces you to sit down and watch," he said as the older man sat down next to him.
"It's quaint," he eventually said. "But it gets tough to enjoy these things after you've participated in your first conference. The competition there is so elevated, everything public like this starts to look a bit like a joke. You can't help but notice the inefficacy, and if you actually accept a challenge it's just as likely that your pokemon will fall into bad patterns due to bad opponents as they are to gain anything out of it."
"What do you do when you want to battle then?" Joey asked.
A shrug. "You know about the ranking system, I presume. After participating in a conference and getting far enough you get to inscribe yourself in the region's ranking system and start challenging people. Those that end the year in the top 3 get to challenge the lowest ranking elite four. Getting into the top fifty even for a day gets you the title of ace-trainer. Not everyone can win the conference, it only happens once a year. That's where I get most of my battles. Otherwise I also challenge gym trainers quite regularly, they're very good in their chosen type. The days of battling once a day are definitely behind me though, it's more like once a week now."
"Doesn't that give older trainers an additional advantage, having access to such a system?" Joey wondered.
"The conference is usually split up in two brackets. One for older and one for younger trainers. It's only in the top 8 or 4 that they meet depending on the turn-out. Get there and you can be on the other side next year."
"I have to admit I haven't thought about the conference much yet, I'm focusing on doing things step by step at the moment. Surge is my next goal."
"You won the rainbow badge, right?" Elio clarified.
Joey nodded. "Yeah, pulled through in the end."
"Were you already at the department store?"
"Yep, got myself dig. It's probably my only chance against the raichu that Surge will field."
"Just don't make your exit point too predictable, he'll punch down with mega punch and then you're toast just as well as if you'd been hit by a thunder," Elio mused out loud. The youngster nodded.
"It's going to be a tough match, but I'm more scared of King to be honest. I don't have a method to get those water-types out of their habitat," Joey admitted.
The older trainer pressed out a non-committed hum. "Well, poisoning the water or learning thundershock are probably your only options. It is a very annoying gym. Perhaps even the most annoying one in Kanto."
"I thought that honour belonged to Koga, or maybe Giovanni."
"Koga is complex and tough, but possible. Giovanni is a psycho, yes, but his pokemon are straight-forward," Elio said with a grimace, before looking at his watch. "Anyway, you should probably get going, it's getting close to dark"
"You're not coming?" Joey wondered.
"Nah, I have my own accommodation. Good job at the gym." That was all Elio seemingly had to say and the two of them parted ways.
It was on the way back to the house they were being hosted at that Joey walked past the game-corner, just in time to see the bug-catcher they'd come with being literally kicked out the front door. Kid looked like he was about to cry. Joey kept walking. Maybe it would be a lesson. Gambling was bad, unless one knew the odds in advance.
Everybody had to learn that lesson at some point.
It was back in front of the traditional looking house that he met up with Mia again. There was no poke-ball at her belt so he assumed that Lil mouse would also be spending the night at the poke-centre.
"Didn't see you in the department store," Joey greeted the girl, who frowned and crossed her arms.
"Lil mouse ended up needing to stay at the centre so I also stayed longer. Did you know that Lance was making a challenge for Bruno's spot?" she asked.
"Yeah," Joey replied, as the two of them entered the house, the sun setting behind them. "It's going to be an interesting thing to watch."
-/-
AN: A bit of a more chill chapter considering the hype of the last one. If you want to read ahead you can head over to my patreon; 9 chapters, soon 10 chapters ahead which is about 50k words. We're almost at Surge already :O (basically next chapter.)
: BlackJackPershing, Salix, gin, SnowyOwl, Big Casino, NightW0lfgaming, Rafter, SirSlaps, ProfoundMagician, Nathan M, Mark Seymour, NO12CHERE, Daniel Kim, Paul Pintea, Trespitry, Gregory, andre, Allute, Michael John Hughes-/-
Metapod was healthy soon enough, her shed skin having already rid her of all status conditions immediately after the battle. Neither Joey or Erika really minded the small wait anyway, as they were too busy discussing the upcoming match.
"Lance is going to wreck Bruno so hard, I'm just sad I won't be there to see it in person," Joey lamented, feeling weird with only one team-member on his belt now that he'd gotten used to having two.
"The match is supposed to happen in Indigo stadium in three months. Maybe I could convince my dad to teleport us there. But, he usually doesn't feel up for things like that during the season. Also, Lance winning? Check your brain damage, did you see the muscles on Bruno?" Erika replied easily.
"What does muscle size have to do with his pokemon being able to beat Lance," Joey asked while scratching his head.
Erika simply rolled her eyes. "Well obviously he's a fighting-type master. The bigger his muscles are, the bigger the muscles of his pokemon will be."
"Is Kong an incompetent then? Never saw anything bulging out of his gi," Joey said and noticed his mistake as his friend cracked up.
"I hope you haven't," she taunted.
"Says the girl looking at Bruno's muscles. Don't tell me you have a poster of him in your bedroom."
She blushed and looked away from where they were traversing the more traditionally built Celadon streets. The city had more tradition in the direction of agriculture, dancing and scents. Very much unlike the newly developed industrial giant that was Saffron.
"The way he won his way into the elite four was super inspiring, ok," she mumbled. "He came from nowhere, no conference wins, just relentlessly working his way up the ranks until he got the right to challenge the elite four. He's even working on taking Blaine's spot and pushing the old man down, good riddance, I say."
Was that why Bruno had caught two onix in the games? Specifically to beat Blaine and take his spot? It would make sense. However, Agatha would probably forever remain beyond him. It was just too hard of a match up. "You just don't like Blaine because he's a fire-type expert?" Joey asked, somewhat amused.
Erika recoiled, before puffing up her chest. "Of course not! He's just an ass. My dad says so."
"At his age, I wonder if he's going to be ok with just being demoted. He might quit altogether. Hasn't Cinnabar been on the lookout for a new gym-leader?" Joey wondered aloud.
"The last gym-leader suffered a burn-out," she elaborated, causing Joey to chuckle. "It's not funny, it's a serious health risk for gym-leaders," she chided with a reproachful look.
Joey waved her off. "No, it's just. You'd think that as a fire-type gym-leader he would have had a burn-heal on hand," he guffawed.
"You're a weirdo, I hope you know that."
"Born and raised, baby," Joey replied as they arrived back in the front of the gigantic glasshouse-esque gym.
"Well, anyway. I'm sure that if Bruno can't oust him, then Lance can."
"Wow," Joey mumbled. "You sure switched sides fast."
Erika simply sniffed as they walked through the tall grass towards the sounds of battle in the distance. "There's too many old men in the elite four right now. Blaine, Pryce. Both of them can go for all I care. Not cute at all."
"Both of them specialise in typings super-effective against grass," Joey mused.
"I'm not like that," Erika grumbled as they reached the sight of the battle-area, where a beaten up bulbasaur and a poisoned tyrogue covered in leech seeds were standing facing each other. Despite the contrary expectation that Joey had considering Hitoshi's overall behaviour and competency, it was the bulbasaur that collapsed, and the boy in a karate gi collected his badge.
"Good job on your fourth badge," Joey commented sarcastically as Hitoshi recalled his pokemon and walked past him, probably also towards the poke-centre. The boy glared at him, but didn't say anything as he left.
"What do you mean? He was challenging for his second," Mia said as Joey and Erika joined her in watching as Michael took the field, releasing pidgey high into the air.
"Just a little inside joke," the youngster said with a wink, before focusing back on the match. "Sky King, whoop whoop!" he shouted in support of the youngster. If nothing else, one had to admire Michael's tenacity. He seemingly wasn't talented, good-looking, smart, gifted, personable, charismatic or even really worthy of his very dumb pidgey, but… he was still out here trying to make stuff happen, unlike a lot of other trainers.
The boy shot them a thumbs up by punching his arm side-ways, not taking his eyes off the riveting battle which consisted of a tangela throwing powders, rocks and vines in the air and pidgey dodging everything with seeming ease. Eventually the bird responded with a few well-directed gusts, which quickly knocked out the tangela, which as a last resort tried to use absorb on the flying menace. The attack didn't do much, ergo the result.
Michael happily walked off with a badge. From the gym leader's perspective it had probably looked like the boy had prepared well, and hadn't taken any unnecessary risks by getting up close for style-points. In reality Michael always battled like his opponent had a 100% likelihood of one-shotting him if pidgey ever got even slightly close to the ground. Someone had traumatised him at some point. Joey wasn't sure who.
Next up was Sabrina, who, to Joey's amusement, fielded two abra. She'd dared laugh at his metapod, when she'd literally just caught the same pokemon again. Some people really didn't have any shame. She won easily enough, and while Joey felt that the gym-leader raised the bar in the middle just like he had with him, it didn't seem to impact the psychic human at all. Her two abra teleported away from all danger, spammed psybeams, confusions and other such things and that was that, really. The girl promptly left after her battle, prompting to not stick around like Michael had. But to be fair, her abra had gotten poisoned at some point, while Michael's pidgey had remained almost completely unharmed and untouched throughout the entirety of the match.
It seemed that in Joey's absence Mia had made a deal to go last, because after Sabrina the bug-catcher stepped up and predictably sent out a caterpie. However, for all that the boy had an interesting gimmick, having created a sort of string-shot variant in which the string was jumbled into hard and sticky balls and used like a sort of bullet-seed, Tadghsiobhan seemed to be done with losing to the caterpie-line for the day. An oddish shut down all string shot attempts with acid and eventually won the match with a tackle of all things.
The bug-catcher left, dejected. Joey thought the boy had a pretty good chance at winning a rematch.
The last match of the day was Mia, and it was nice to see the wariness in Tadghsiobhan's face when the girl sent out her rattata. Never again would the Celadon gym underestimate the power of the humble rat or the steadiness of a well-trained metapod.
Tadghsiobhan sent out an oddish, and even though the battle was hardly anything truly interesting in terms of tactics, Joey nevertheless paid close attention. If for no other reason than to advise his friend afterwards.
The match started simply, quickly entering a stalemate. Lil mouse tried to advance via quick attack, but failed to properly close in due to oddish's high acid accuracy. Joey's rattata was better at break and run manoeuvres and might have been able to break through with sheer speed and power. But, Joey had kept a track of how often Mia trained, and it turned out that she, and other youngsters all only trained about 15% as much as Joey did. There wasn't really a comparison.
Nevertheless, the battle was far from over, as Mia then ordered lil mouse to stand back and harass the oddish with tail whip while dodging its attacks.
There was no escape from Tadghsiobhan however, the man simply ordered a poison powder rain barrage, and while it did seem exhausting, there was too much poison in the air for rattata to avoid. But Mia had been learning from Joey, and even if lil mouse got poisoned, it was potentially worth it if the loss of stamina on the side of the oddish could be capitalised on. Lil mouse quick attacked into the grass-type's space once again, and was subsequently attacked frontally with acid. However, instead of dodging left or right and abandoning its trajectory, this time lil mouse jumped in the air, letting go of the normal-type energy.
"That's not good," Erika muttered from next to Joey. "Rattata can't dodge in mid-air."
And, as expected Tadghsiobhan ordered an acid to strike down on the incoming rat missile, which was falling at a predictable speed towards the oddish.
Joey simply furrowed his brow and tried not to blink. If he had he would have missed it, against the glare of the sun amplified by the glass of the ceiling. Rattata trailed white. The youngster thought back to the exercise he'd seen Mia doing back in Saffron. Rattata using a quick attack in the air. He hadn't thought much about it back then. Quick attack functioned by channelling energy through the body of the pokemon to give it the physical power boost to propel itself forward. During this process energy was ejected backwards, pushing the pokemon forward in addition to its muscular efforts. In the air the initial burst was more of a spurt due to Lil Mouse not having anything to jump off of. However, with white trailing behind her, the rat flew down faster, accelerating its downward momentum and thus dodging the large acid glob by a hair's width. The oddish was too surprised by its own miss, and potentially also too tired to retaliate again so quickly, and a rattata missile struck it right in the face, knocking it to the ground.
It was over then. Rattata was close enough to run circles around oddish, and the battle promptly ended after a few more quick attacks. Mia got her badge and seemed slightly dumbfounded by her own victory.
"I didn't think I'd win, to be honest," she admitted to Joey afterwards, as everyone shuffled out of the gym to stand in front of it.
Everyone had won, other than the bug-catcher. Even Michael had managed, although that had mostly been due to the type mismatch, not any actual strategy on the boy's part.
"You trained towards a specific goal and strategy for two months, knowing exactly what to expect, and what you were capable of. Why would you have lost?" Joey asked.
All he got from Mia at that was a weak chuckle. "I guess you wouldn't get it," she muttered. She seemed to be oddly down considering her victory, and Joey wondered what was wrong. He'd initiate a conversation if she wasn't out of her funk tomorrow, but for now he still had something to do.
"I have to go to the department store. It's not anywhere near closing time, but I have to see what they have to make a strategic decision on how to spend my money," the boy eventually said to his friend and Erika, who'd stayed close to him throughout most of the day.
"I'm going to go to the poke-centre to get rattata rid of the poison. Then I'll go as well. I want a technical machine," she said before pulling up a map of Celadon on her PokeNav and going towards the white and red building.
"I actually have to go back inside and help clean up the battlefield more thoroughly," Erika said.
"I'll battle you in next year's conference, if we don't meet again before then," Joey replied. The girl considered his words, before nodding, and turning back around. By the time he looked back, Ruth had also left, probably to enjoy what to her must have been a vacation day in a nice new city. The only one left was Michael, who was just standing there, lost in thought. Occasionally the boy took out his badge case, opened it, looked at the rainbow badge before putting it away again.
He seemed to notice everyone's absence because he looked up and smiled cockily. "I guess it's just the two of us now, huh, Joey. That gym-leader didn't really wind me up too much. You wanna battle and become reacquainted with your place in the pecking order?" he asked, fingering the sleeves of his puffy white shirt.
Joey simply stared at him, before turning around and walking off.
"Hey, where are you going?" Michael asked as he started following him.
Joey broke out into a run, Michael screaming for him to wait as he ran after him. However, Joey actually trained his body with his pokemon some-times, and even if ghost-type energy wasn't the best for enhancing one's physique, it was better than nothing. He left the kid in the dust, literally, and metaphorically, as his battling career was actually going somewhere.
He ran a bit more before pulling to a stop in the celadon main square, which was dwarfed by the gigantic six story department story absolutely dominating the space and casting a large shadow.
It had been an exhausting day full of social interaction and battling, but now it was time to spend some of his hard-earned money and get himself a fighting chance against Surge.
-/-
If Joey had thought that the department store was huge from the outside, a hulking giant taking up most of the space in Celadon's city centre, then being inside the beast was a whole different story. Perhaps it was because he was still in a brat's body, but the ceilings were incredibly tall, and he couldn't even reach the uppermost shelves on the first floor. He'd taken the elevator stairs up, just to check what the layout was. He remembered vaguely that in some versions of the games, different TM's had been available on every floor. However, it seemed that this wasn't the case here, as the second floor mostly held items for healing, different types of repel and some basic poke-balls.
Joey didn't really need any of that, as he kept himself upped on the basic potions which were enough for his team at the moment, wasn't going into any dangerous places that would require a repel, and was fine with the league issued basic poke-balls he had gotten when passing his licensing exam and won his first badge. He knew that with the winning of his second badge he would get a third poke-ball for his third team-member.
With his next badge he would finally be qualified to train tier-2 pokemon, and thus evolve rattata if his starter wanted that.
Anyway, looking around, impressed at the variety of trainers mingling around, from rangers to older hobby trainers, he went a floor up, getting himself a lemonade from one of the many vending machines that were littering the corridor's in front of the stairs.
It was on the third floor that he finally got to where he wanted to be. He had to wipe his mouth to prevent himself from salivating as he looked at the floor, lined with high shelves containing technical machines of all kinds. Not wasting any time he quickly started walking around and cataloguing what was available. He noted that there were two different kinds of technical machines available. Those for single use, and those for multiple use. The price hike between the two different products was insane.
One of the technical machines that he definitely needed for multiple use at some point for example was TM17 protect. An indispensable tool for any professional battler, this move was valuable as a reusable TM due to the fact that almost every pokemon could learn it. The single use machine cost a solid 50k poke dollars, a lot, but manageable. However, the reusable machine cost a whopping 250k poke-dollars, which was ridiculous.
Thankfully it wasn't time yet for Joey to invest in the move, but he'd probably have to do so before he competed in the conference.
Drooling his way past a few more moves that he couldn't afford, or that were too expensive to justify, Joey quickly found the three technical machines he was most interested in. TM28 dig, TM39 swift and TM8 rock smash. Now it was in a way seductive to try and get a reusable version of either dig or swift, since they had quite a wide coverage. It was incredibly likely that his next pokemon would be able to learn one of those two moves. Also, it would be an investment, having the move now would mean he'd never have to use it again, right? But, there was one issue, namely that this investment would be too long term. If he beat Surge on his first try, then that would give him an immediate cash infusion with which he could buy another TM. But, was it likely that he was going to beat Surge with just dig, or with just swift? Or was it more likely that he'd win if he had both.
The thing about completionists was that they tended to think too long term. By the time they finally bought every single reusable TM, they would have already lost a bunch of battles they could have won if they had access to the correct move. Joey had a success philosophy that depended a lot on momentum. Keeping one's self in a winning position from an earlier time-point would give him more rewards down the line than if he scrounged for longer with the aim of some future benefit. Who knew what the future would bring anyway?
In other words, Joey was going to get the single use TMs, because they'd increase his chances against Surge now. He didn't want to waste his mental energy on figuring out finances. In a world where a teenager could have a team of six dragons the old adage of money being power wasn't true anymore. Power was power and money was only good when it was giving the user access to more power. Unfortunately technical machines were keyed to a trainer identity when bought, which meant that someone owning a reusable one couldn't undercut Silph. Co. by charging low prices for external usage.
"How can I help you?" someone said from beside Joey suddenly. The boy turned around to muster the clerk who'd walked up to him. Dressed as usual in the yellow apron the man didn't look like much, but he was exactly who the youngster needed right now.
"I just beat the gym so I have money burning its way out of my pocket. I'd like a single use copy of dig, swift, and rock smash," he quickly explained. The clerk considered him with dull brown eyes, perhaps recognizing Joey's status as a youngster and thus questioning where he was getting the money from.
The man's eyes lit up and he smiled. "I recognize you," he said suddenly, putting a finger to his right temple. "You're that kid who beat Kong with a rattata. I watched your match on the TV, it was a joy to see."
Taken slightly off guard by the sudden compliment Joey blushed and awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "Aw, thanks. I didn't know anyone cared."
"And now you beat Celadon as well, I'll have to catch one of those repeats!" the man exclaimed, pulling a key from somewhere and starting to unlock the barred technical machines and putting together Joey's order. "It was really nice to see a rattata win over a mankey. My raticate was super excited. You know, it's just about time us youngsters got some recognition. I've hung up the hat years ago, but I still follow the battling scene."
Following the battling scene wasn't really saying much considering almost everyone did, but Joey wasn't about to be mean to his first fan.
"Thanks for your kind words," he instead said humbly as the two of them went to the counter and the clerk ran up the bill. It was about half of Joey's budget, but there would be more chances to earn money in the future. With Lance's match against Bruno coming up, and people generally acting quite surprised that the dragon-trainer dared make the challenge with his relative inexperience, the odds were likely going to be quite stacked against Lance. Probably worse than 1-5, which meant that Joey could potentially quintuple the amount of money in his bank account. He still had another three months or so to earn as much cash as possible, which, with the fact that he liked challenging higher level trainers and could even start doing jobs now, would mean quite a lot of money would be flowing his way. Joey swiped his trainer card in the terminal and absent-mindedly put an arm around the technical machine cases to pull them into his backpack. He froze when he noted that there were five boxes in his arm, instead of three. He looked up at the clerk who smiled at him.
"I get a few of those every year. Benefits of working in the department store I guess. Thing is, I don't really battle anymore and I only have my raticate. TM18 counter and TM03 helping hand, I think you can use those better than me," the older man said.
Joey nodded seriously, not about to refuse a free lunch. He looked at the man's name tag. "Thanks, Zuka. Next year's indigo conference. Come watch me. I'll show you some magic," he promised before leaving with a wave and a small. He went up the escalator to the next floor as he considered the gift. He didn't have a pokemon that could learn counter, but helping hand was a move that had quite some potential. It increased the overall power of the pokemon afflicted, which suggested some interesting dynamics. Perhaps rattata could use it on himself. Perhaps he could use it on metapod during training and see if it had any good long-term benefits. Maybe it was even usable on an opponent during a match to make them overcommit to an attack.
The world was Joey's tactical oyster, and in a time where most trainers seemed to be functioning under the misbelief that a bigger flamethrower was a better flamethrower, unconventional tactics would likely end up being his tool for victory. For some odd reason not many fighting-type pokemon actually used detect, and not many people had ever tried to win much of anything with a metapod. Joey was already on his second badge, so what he was doing was obviously working for the moment. With the new technical machines he'd purchased more possibilities would open up and he would manage to have even more routes all leading to the same goal. The conference.
He considered the oddity of trainers preferring quite simple tactics over anything requiring real brain power, and why a culture so steeped in battling oftentimes didn't seem so good at it. Perhaps it was just necessary to look at these things from the outside sometimes. It was always inside a system that one got the most stuck.
All thoughts of tactics and other such things fled his mind however as he entered the fourth floor. It wasn't that he necessarily needed anything from here, but it was the region's largest collection of evolution stones. It would have been a waste had he come here without at least taking a look.
It glittered, it shined, and the price tags made him wince. In other words, no.
The fire stones seemed to glow with an unseen fire and exuded a warmth even through the protective glass. It made him want to own one, just for the sake of owning one. However, this was definitely a thing that could perhaps wait until after Lance had won the championship. All the money spent now was less money coming in later. He reluctantly left the floor behind, going one more up. He knew that if he'd had a pokemon that needed an evolution stone, he wouldn't have been able to prevent himself from buying one right there, right now.
It was weird actually, how much his sense of money had already become skewed after a few months of being a trainer. On the stipend, and with his strategy of challenging higher level trainers he was making an insane amount of money. Although, that would probably change now after he'd won his second badge. The losses would be harsher and the wins would be less profitable, but still. Joey had money. A surprising amount of money. Perhaps it helped that he wasn't training something like a snorlax, which would have bankrupted him in a week.
Rather than wait completely for the end of the betting pool, there was one thing that Joey really wanted to get at the department store. And what he wanted was to be found on the fifth floor. He stepped off the escalator and looked around, sighing once again at the beauty of his surroundings. A different beauty now. The beauty of efficacy. The diet he gave his pokemon was well thought out and probably more precise than 80% of other trainers, but Celadon, once again, had the largest collection of dietary supplements. And by default then, the highest quality. Joey walked around the aisles, frowning at the prices, which at times were higher than technical machines, but he ended up collecting some protein and some calcium for rattata, the high grade stuff this time. Supposedly the bottles would last him for a few months with such a small pokemon. For metapod he got some iron, as preparation for perhaps teaching her iron defence at some point. He hadn't found the technical machine for the move down-stairs but it wasn't like supplementing would hurt, considering that harden was a move that took advantage of a specific material being available as well.
Despite how he'd told himself that he wouldn't spend all his money in the department store Joey almost ended up wiping his bank account by the time he actually left the building. Still, it had been a fruitful trip. With the gym badge in his pocket and his money spent he'd essentially done the two things he'd come here to do. Now, it was time to relax a bit and worry about the bus ride back and the money gathering action he'd have to commit too, tomorrow.
-/-
Now normally the things that Joey would have done upon arriving in a new city would have been different. However, unfortunately he wasn't an adult anymore, and thus this closed off bars, clubs and gambling. Not gambling actually, since he was allowed to go to the game corner, however, he knew that the house always won, and he had a much safer bet coming up in the near future.
So, instead of doing any of that, Joey got himself a few sticks of yakitori and walked around town, going into art galleries and museums as he pleased. One of the advantages of being young was that entry was free. The art scene was admittedly a bit dead in comparison to his old world, mostly because of the smaller population size, but there were still interesting things to see.
There had been an exhibition of poke-painting in the modern museum which had been fairly interesting, trying to guess which pokemon had painted which by the emotion infused into the piece. But, his favourite art piece of the day had been a large installation consisting of several walls painted a bright blue with golden swirls. Coral reefs were attached to the bricks and it was supposed to mimic a sunken archipelago. It was magical walking amongst it and it reminded him of his visits to Art Basel and the Venice Biennale in his past life.
However, everything in the pokemon eventually led back to one thing in particular. Battling. Without actually intending to, and snacking on street food on the way, Joey ended up at the public battling fields. Perhaps it was a waste of time to do so considering he was in a new city and these places always looked the same. But, for better or worse Joey had been conditioned into a battling fanatic during his tenure in this new world. The bond between trainer and pokemon, the way they synergised in battle, the awesome visual impressions and the fast paced tactics. It all mesmerised him. Before he knew it he was sitting down, spectating the local battling scene and writing notes as he took it all in. The way that a hypno teleported on top of an ivysaur to deliver a fire punch. How a machop dodged its way into a bulk up induced rampage and finished off its opponent with one low kick. There was gold to be found in moments like these, and even if he'd been prospecting for his whole life, his sieve pan never came up empty.
"Didn't have enough battling for the day yet?" a voice asked from behind Joey, causing the boy to glance back and lock eyes with the green-haired Elio.
"I'm not taking any challenges, but there's just something about it that forces you to sit down and watch," he said as the older man sat down next to him.
"It's quaint," he eventually said. "But it gets tough to enjoy these things after you've participated in your first conference. The competition there is so elevated, everything public like this starts to look a bit like a joke. You can't help but notice the inefficacy, and if you actually accept a challenge it's just as likely that your pokemon will fall into bad patterns due to bad opponents as they are to gain anything out of it."
"What do you do when you want to battle then?" Joey asked.
A shrug. "You know about the ranking system, I presume. After participating in a conference and getting far enough you get to inscribe yourself in the region's ranking system and start challenging people. Those that end the year in the top 3 get to challenge the lowest ranking elite four. Getting into the top fifty even for a day gets you the title of ace-trainer. Not everyone can win the conference, it only happens once a year. That's where I get most of my battles. Otherwise I also challenge gym trainers quite regularly, they're very good in their chosen type. The days of battling once a day are definitely behind me though, it's more like once a week now."
"Doesn't that give older trainers an additional advantage, having access to such a system?" Joey wondered.
"The conference is usually split up in two brackets. One for older and one for younger trainers. It's only in the top 8 or 4 that they meet depending on the turn-out. Get there and you can be on the other side next year."
"I have to admit I haven't thought about the conference much yet, I'm focusing on doing things step by step at the moment. Surge is my next goal."
"You won the rainbow badge, right?" Elio clarified.
Joey nodded. "Yeah, pulled through in the end."
"Were you already at the department store?"
"Yep, got myself dig. It's probably my only chance against the raichu that Surge will field."
"Just don't make your exit point too predictable, he'll punch down with mega punch and then you're toast just as well as if you'd been hit by a thunder," Elio mused out loud. The youngster nodded.
"It's going to be a tough match, but I'm more scared of King to be honest. I don't have a method to get those water-types out of their habitat," Joey admitted.
The older trainer pressed out a non-committed hum. "Well, poisoning the water or learning thundershock are probably your only options. It is a very annoying gym. Perhaps even the most annoying one in Kanto."
"I thought that honour belonged to Koga, or maybe Giovanni."
"Koga is complex and tough, but possible. Giovanni is a psycho, yes, but his pokemon are straight-forward," Elio said with a grimace, before looking at his watch. "Anyway, you should probably get going, it's getting close to dark"
"You're not coming?" Joey wondered.
"Nah, I have my own accommodation. Good job at the gym." That was all Elio seemingly had to say and the two of them parted ways.
It was on the way back to the house they were being hosted at that Joey walked past the game-corner, just in time to see the bug-catcher they'd come with being literally kicked out the front door. Kid looked like he was about to cry. Joey kept walking. Maybe it would be a lesson. Gambling was bad, unless one knew the odds in advance.
Everybody had to learn that lesson at some point.
It was back in front of the traditional looking house that he met up with Mia again. There was no poke-ball at her belt so he assumed that Lil mouse would also be spending the night at the poke-centre.
"Didn't see you in the department store," Joey greeted the girl, who frowned and crossed her arms.
"Lil mouse ended up needing to stay at the centre so I also stayed longer. Did you know that Lance was making a challenge for Bruno's spot?" she asked.
"Yeah," Joey replied, as the two of them entered the house, the sun setting behind them. "It's going to be an interesting thing to watch."
-/-
AN: A bit of a more chill chapter considering the hype of the last one. If you want to read ahead you can head over to my patreon; 9 chapters, soon 10 chapters ahead which is about 50k words. We're almost at Surge already :O (basically next chapter.)
Chapter 17: Vacation and training
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
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-/-
It was already quite late by the time Joey managed to return to the gym-leaders house. He'd ambled his way there, just as he'd ambled his way to the department store and upon arriving he'd found a small cold dinner prepared for him in his guest bed-room. He quickly consumed the meal before calling out metapod and feeding her the usual, in addition to adding iron now. Then he groomed her carapace, told her how proud of her he was, and went to sleep. Good battles tended to be absolutely exhausting, and the gym-battle had definitely fit that criteria.
-/-
The next morning Ruth used a portable card-reader to update the licences of everyone who'd managed to win their gym-battle and handed out new poke-balls for those who'd merited a team expansion. Mia was extremely excited to potentially catch an oddish, Michael was talking about how there was a spearow out there with his name on it, and Sabrina would probably catch a third abra. The bug-catcher Rick, who'd lost his battle, mostly seemed sad. Hitoshi was a gym-trainer, thus not falling under Ruth's jurisdiction, and Joey, as always, didn't quite know what pokemon he really wanted.
The second badge meant that he was now able to field a team of three pokemon, but he was still stuck on tier-1, which meant he couldn't evolve rattata, for example. The third badge, the one he would hopefully get from Surge would finally allow him to do that. It was the only badge that didn't increase team-size allowances, the reasoning being that a trainer first needed to get used to having evolved pokemon around.
They all filed onto the bus and had an uneventful trip back to Saffron. Joey almost wanted something to happen just so that he could see Elio's probably impressive team in action. But no such luck came his way and he spent another several hours chatting with Mia. He'd really have to avoid her for a bit in the future, because they were really running out of things to discuss.
Perhaps it was proof that he himself was a bit conflict-seeking, but at some point during the drive, Joey stood up and walked to Hitoshi, who was day-dreaming at one of the window-seats. Probably about stuffing someone into a locker, or something. "How do you train fighting-type energy, anyway?" Joey asked in lieu of anything else to say.
The brown-haired boy looked at Joey as if he were an idiot. "Why do you think wild fighting-types constantly challenge each other to battles? Using fighting-type energy in a fight is the best way to train fighting-type energy." Was the short explanation.
Joey didn't have an answer to that, other than a short thank you, and he went back to the seat, wondering if the answer was actually as easy as it sounded or if it made perfect sense. Joey knew a lot about pokemon, moves, habitats, diet. He could probably get a breeder's licence if he really wanted too. He'd even worked his way through thick tomes such as, "The consistencies of anatomy between different mammalian fire-types." The issue was that how to specifically train a TE, was not something that had quite managed to enter the public sphere of knowledge. Perhaps trainers kept it to themselves, thinking it gave them an edge. Perhaps it was all so individualised and there was no point in trying to set up general statements. Or maybe, maybe there was a reason why many of the most successful trainers were type-specialists.
He didn't move from his seat for the rest of his trip, and stumbled out of the bus profoundly tired and feeling weary to his bones. He had a lot to do, gather money and bet on Lance winning his match against Bruno, train for the next gym, teach rattata dig and find more trainers to challenge. Right now he mostly just felt like lying down and reading a fiction novel, instead of a book that would help him in some way become a better trainer. Getting the first badge had required extensive preparation and work, the second badge had been more of a challenge than he'd thought, and Joey realised that he'd maybe figured out a limit. Sure, he took weekends off, mostly, but maybe three months of continuous work was enough for him to need a more serious vacation. His pokemon deserved it, if nothing else.
However, before he was allowed to leave and go think about the thought he'd just had, Joey and the other youngsters, sans asshole this time, were gathered by Ruth who had one last announcement to make.
The old woman nodded happily as she looked at the youngsters assembled before her and started. "Good job, everyone. I'm sure you'll do great next circuit and following conference. However, rather than just focusing on getting badges for the next year and nine months, the league has decided to offer youngsters another incentive to grow, which I personally think has been missing for quite a while. You will receive this news by mail later on, but I wanted to share it personally with those youngsters already there, or well on their way to qualifying for, the first time ever held, youngster tournament!" she announced.
Joey's brain short-circuited for a second and the first thing he could think of when it rebooted was about who exactly would want to watch a bunch of rattata tackle each other all day.
"To qualify you need to be in possession of at least one badge. You will be seeded on the amount of badges that you have beyond that. The prizes will include cash rewards, but also technical machines, poke-balls and maybe even a rare pokemon," she continued explaining excitedly. She stopped when she saw Joey that Joey had raised his hand. "Yes?"
"When and where will the tournament take place?"
"It will be two weeks before the start of the indigo conference, so you still have half a year to prepare! The place hasn't been decided yet, but, the thought has been that maybe it will be held in the city which has the most youngsters have badges, so there's less people to transport," she explained.
Joey sort of hoped that it wouldn't be in Saffron. It wasn't easy to travel in the pokemon world and he'd enjoyed his trip to Celadon. It would be nice to get to explore another city before he actually started his journey.
"It's also a great opportunity to start building a portfolio for future sponsorships," Ruth explained, causing Joey to look up again attentively. Sponsorships were good. He'd need to see how possible it was to get sponsored by professor Oak, but winning the youngster tournament and then placing high in the indigo conference would probably be a pretty good springboard for anything else.
He felt a glare hit the side of his head, and looked to see Sabrina staring at him like a boxer about to enter a ring. The thought that she would be his toughest competition had crossed his mind. It was nice to see the thought reciprocated. He gave her a smile while Ruth finished explaining the details.
He'd take a break first, he really was tired. But, it seemed like rather than just thinking about the next gym-badge, Joey had just gotten a more long-term goal to work towards.
-/-
Despite a new found motivation that latched itself like a fly to shit onto the upcoming youngster tournament, Joey did not ignore his body's screams for rest. He spent four days after his return to Saffron doing absolutely nothing. He lounged around in his room with some novels and comic books and went to the park with his pokemon for fun, not for battling.
It got so bad at some point that Theresa confronted him about it, asking, of all things, if he was depressed. Joey laughed at her face and then helped her make dinner for all the other kids. It was a great time. Four days were the double of what he usually took off, the weekend, so he actually got to relax. He wrote in his diary, visited the technology museum and went out to try and find the best ice-cream in town.
It ended up being a little corner store owned by a lady who used to be a trainer. She specialised in ice-types and made water-based ice-cream that was better than its milk-based counterpart. Joey's mind was officially blown. There were even flavours for pokemon, so both rattata and metapod got some too, although the latter didn't like it too much, preferring to much down on her toxic orb even in times of rest. She was becoming less and less affected by the poison. The gym challenge seemed to have commemorated a jump in terms of resistance, which just really went to show that pokemon learned best in battle.
He'd even visited Macy's pokedoll store and was surprised and gladdened to find that there was way more variety than there had been before. There hadn't been a metapod doll, unfortunately, but the murkrow one was actually making a killing. Perhaps due to the fact that murkrow were sort of exotic for Kanto. Both the native birds were actually sort of boring, brown and cream-coloured.
However, all good things came to an end eventually, and on the fifth day of his return from Celadon, Joey and his crew were gathered outside in the city's training rooms. "So, you're probably wondering what the next step is," the boy said as he paced in front of the attentive pokemon, like a general about to set out for war giving a last minute briefing to his troops. "We beat Kong and we beat… Celadon. Nobody believed in us, no one thought we could do it. But we did. Give yourselves a pat on the back."
Rattata and Joey patted themselves on the back, while metapod fired a string-shot at the latter. The trainer dodged, long since used to the bug's antics.
"Anyway, good job and all that. We took four days off to celebrate, that's done with. Onto our next challenge," Joey said and puffed out his chest. "We're going to be facing a real macho man, a trueborn American, my personal hero. He's going to send out only one pokemon, and that's going to be a raichu. Our job will be, as three, or two, depending whether we will find a new member that suits the squad, to wear that monster down. Raichu are physically strong, have a whip-like tail with a halberd attached to it, and shoot thunder and lightning out of their ass. Suffice to say, this is a bit problematic." He pointed at the green bug pokemon. "You're going out first, as it only makes sense. Your job is to exhaust the raichu. Hit him with as many string shots as you can, ruin the field. From what I've seen it doesn't really have much else other than electric and physical moves so if you can keep it at bay with string-shot for long enough to properly harden, then you can stall for a while. In that sense your training sort of stays the same. You'll use string shot to block ranged attacks, and you'll exchange physical hits on your body to weigh them down with as much string as possible. The only difference is that while a bug bite would be nice, you shouldn't aim for it, the raichu will just shock you. On that note, never leave a string shot in your mouth for long, electricity might travel up the connection."
Metapod nodded, an awkward tilt forwards and back, seemingly alright with the fact that she was going to essentially be a speed-bump for the more powerful pokemon. But, this was what Surge's gym taught to a certain extent. Who to sacrifice. "I would also like to start working on something new in regards to string shot, I recently saw a caterpie compact the move and harden it somehow. It sort of attained the same function as bullet seed. It would be a good way to finish an enemy from afar if you manage to slow them down enough that they can't dodge. Would be a good way to damage the raichu a bit as well while keeping it at bay."
"Metapod, pod, pod?" the pokemon stated questioningly with a roll of her eyes towards Joey's backpack.
"The toxic orb?" he asked, and received a nod. "You're not quite there yet I think, but you'll probably develop a sufficient resistance soon enough. I foresee a call to Koga in our near future," Joey said before turning to rattata.
"For you, we got a special technical machine which should help you out a lot against Surge. It's dig, a ground-type move. You have three months to get it down. It will provide a retreat into which raichu's electricity won't be able to follow. Your only respite, probably. You'll use it to dodge and counter-attack, with some flashes of detect in-between to avoid randomly getting hit for no reason," he explained succinctly, and before his hand could go for the poke-ball at his belt, his starter already began furiously digging into the earth below, flinging up grass and dirt as his paws blurred.
"We haven't taught you the move yet," Joey muttered as he recalled the enthusiastic pokemon and went over to his backpack and pulled out the appropriate technical machine. Placing the poke-ball at the base of the grey-silvery square which held the disk with the encrypted data, he pressed start.
It wasn't an overly dramatic process. The disk flashed a bright brown, before losing its colour, which seemed to flow into rattata's pokeball. A few seconds later and the machine beeped once, signalling that it had completed its task. Removing the pokeball and releasing the rat on the ground, Joey didn't even get to say anything before the purple rodent was going, digging down at a rapid pace and disappearing from sight. Both Joey and metapod looked at the hole their comrade had disappeared into.
What went down had to come up, right? Joey looked around the clearing, wondering where his starter would jump out from, before starting to get worried at the ten second mark. Rattata had disappeared quite fast, so it wasn't like the digging should take that much time.
Joey suddenly realised that for all of rattata's talents, he didn't really have a way of navigating the vast underground. How exactly was one supposed to tell which was way up, or down, when traversing the earth? Sure the move provided some basic sensing, but this was the rat's first time using it. Getting slightly worried Joey ran to the hole and looked down, the sight that greeted him enough to make his poor fragile heart relax in an instant. All worries for his starter fled his mind as he saw the idiot laying there in a hole that went straight down for six feet, completely and utterly knocked out. The rat's eyes were swirly and his body hung limp on the ground. A bit of earth crumpled and fell down, covering rattata, making Joey aware of the danger of not retrieving his starter. He sighed and recalled the pokemon, sending him out again on the stable surface of the training field.
The rat had probably gotten knocked out by the unknown energy expenditure that ground TE represented. He hadn't learned it properly, hadn't rested between the intake of the move and the first try, and had immediately tried to use the full-fledged version of the move instead of first testing it out on a smaller distance.
"You're really lucky you're the most motivated and loyal pokemon in the world," Joey muttered, looking at his starter's unconscious form, thinking back on the blood and sweat they'd excreted to even get to two gym-badges, and the dangers they'd faced together. "Because you are definitely not the smartest."
With a shake of his head and denying himself the satisfaction of waking the rat right back up with a large splash of cold water from his reusable water bottle, Joey turned to the exasperated metapod making up the other half of his team. "Let's start with working on the bullet seed string shot," he said with a shake of his head. "By then maybe the idiot will have woken up. We probably won't get to do a dig and bug seed tandem training exercise yet going by how his first dig went, but maybe we'll just do a quick detect session."
Metapod, blessed with a higher than room-temperature IQ nodded and promptly spat out a large glob of string shot, which somehow resembled a ball but quickly reverted back to a liquid once it hit the ground. Joey looked at the result while stroking his chin, thinking about how, if one left string shot out for too long, it sort of calcified and crumbled. "Try holding it in your mouth for a bit, until it hardens. Let's work on consistency first, then we'll do shape. It doesn't really need to be ball-shaped anyway, any object hurts if it's solid enough," he said and watched as metapod initiated the move, but struggled to keep it in her carapaced mouth. It was leaking out, covering the green chitin with white sticky liquid.
There was nothing else to do than keep trying in cases like this, although maybe Joey would be having an easier time had he asked for the bug-catcher's advice back then. Maybe the gym-battle had tainted his opinion of the boy a bit too much, also, the getting kicked out of the game-corner was pretty cringe.
Anyway, he and metapod worked together for approximately half an hour, actually managing to get somewhere, before some light shuffling and weak chitters disrupted their flow. The youngster nodded at metapod to keep going and turned around to the rattata who was stumbling up on all fours, as usual.
"Maybe we should approach this a bit slower, huh?" Joey asked reproachfully, causing rattata to awkwardly stand on his hind-legs and to scratch the back of his head.
"You feeling alright?" Joey asked, and received a series of rapid nods in return.
"Rattata, rattatatatatatata!"
The trainer sighed. "Alright, but if you collapse again you're benched for the day. So keep a good eye on your energy reserves. Whenever you're feeling tired you can stop working on dig and do some physical exercise, you're still not the fastest pokemon alive, and even when you will be, you'll have to keep training to keep that edge."
Rattata nodded enthusiastically, shadow boxing in the air and jumping up and down.
"How about you just try to initiate a dig, but hold the energy in your paws at first. Let's see if that's already your limit," Joey suggested.
Rattata scrunched up his face and concentrated. Light brown energy gathered in his paws and dissolved the ground they were resting on, without the pokemon even having to move physically.
"Fascinating," Joey muttered. He wondered if they could split training the move into two separate categories. Channelling the energy and trying to travel downwards without any movement, and travelling with only movement, no energy. However, experimentation would take a while, as rattata looked noticeably tired from the small exertion. "It seems to be quite an exhausting move," Joey concluded. "However, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If we treat your TE exertion prowess as a muscle, then having a move that can so thoroughly and quickly exhaust it might be a good thing. Take a five minute rest, I'll be back in a second," he said and went over to check on metapod.
She was already producing a string shot that was considerably less sticky and more hard than the one she'd been using before. "This will probably be more exhausting on your nutrition reserves than just practising the move," Joey cautioned. "I'll be preparing a higher amount of meals today for this purpose. For rattata as well, he seems to be getting exhausted really fast." Metapod blinked at him, signalling that she understood, and continued in her efforts to get to a decent hardness level. Joey watched for a minute or two, making sure that she was making a decent amount of progress without his interference, before returning back to rattata.
His starter already looked less tired, and Joey had him run through a set of drills, during which he would randomly call out dig. At every such instance rattata would have to quickly channel dig through his limbs, creating small paw imprints into the ground. The training was a mix of physical exercise and ground TE training, since only the latter would exhaust the pokemon too fast. It seemed to be working too, as rattata was able to do it for an uninterrupted fifteen minutes, the imprints in the ground growing larger and larger with the same amount of channelling. Joey nodded in satisfaction, gave his starter a short break before turning his attention to metapod again.
He wondered, as he trained his team throughout the day. How he would handle training even more pokemon in the future. He wasn't necessarily being run ragged, but to him it seemed that with every new addition to his roster, he'd have less time to give each pokemon individual attention. Perhaps there was a number of pokemon that a trainer simply couldn't train at the same time. A point where the quality of training suffered so much that the expanded roster which usually suggested a higher type-coverage, was actually giving diminishing returns.
Joey strongly suspected that most trainers could handle about six pokemon. Personally he was struggling to imagine doing more than four. It would come with time, probably.
It was an extremely successful day in the end. He still hadn't quite decided if he actually wanted to give the sleep-talk TM to metapod, wondering if he should save it for a pokemon with whom he wanted to use a rest + sleeptalk combo, but metapod was making progress regardless, her string shot growing harder and harder by the hour.
Maybe he'd sleep on the decision, he thought to himself with a chuckle, drawing some odd looks from the adults walking the same street he was taking home. But tomorrow it was time to start having more mixed days. A bit of training in the morning, then making some money, and then some battles in the afternoon when the hobby trainers came off work.
-/-
AN: A bit of a short chapter, as was also the case after our last gym-badge. Just need some down-time for Joey so that the next arc can get initiated full speed. If you want to read up to 9 chapters ahead or just support me as an artist you can go over to my patreon, if not then you can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
-/-
It was already quite late by the time Joey managed to return to the gym-leaders house. He'd ambled his way there, just as he'd ambled his way to the department store and upon arriving he'd found a small cold dinner prepared for him in his guest bed-room. He quickly consumed the meal before calling out metapod and feeding her the usual, in addition to adding iron now. Then he groomed her carapace, told her how proud of her he was, and went to sleep. Good battles tended to be absolutely exhausting, and the gym-battle had definitely fit that criteria.
-/-
The next morning Ruth used a portable card-reader to update the licences of everyone who'd managed to win their gym-battle and handed out new poke-balls for those who'd merited a team expansion. Mia was extremely excited to potentially catch an oddish, Michael was talking about how there was a spearow out there with his name on it, and Sabrina would probably catch a third abra. The bug-catcher Rick, who'd lost his battle, mostly seemed sad. Hitoshi was a gym-trainer, thus not falling under Ruth's jurisdiction, and Joey, as always, didn't quite know what pokemon he really wanted.
The second badge meant that he was now able to field a team of three pokemon, but he was still stuck on tier-1, which meant he couldn't evolve rattata, for example. The third badge, the one he would hopefully get from Surge would finally allow him to do that. It was the only badge that didn't increase team-size allowances, the reasoning being that a trainer first needed to get used to having evolved pokemon around.
They all filed onto the bus and had an uneventful trip back to Saffron. Joey almost wanted something to happen just so that he could see Elio's probably impressive team in action. But no such luck came his way and he spent another several hours chatting with Mia. He'd really have to avoid her for a bit in the future, because they were really running out of things to discuss.
Perhaps it was proof that he himself was a bit conflict-seeking, but at some point during the drive, Joey stood up and walked to Hitoshi, who was day-dreaming at one of the window-seats. Probably about stuffing someone into a locker, or something. "How do you train fighting-type energy, anyway?" Joey asked in lieu of anything else to say.
The brown-haired boy looked at Joey as if he were an idiot. "Why do you think wild fighting-types constantly challenge each other to battles? Using fighting-type energy in a fight is the best way to train fighting-type energy." Was the short explanation.
Joey didn't have an answer to that, other than a short thank you, and he went back to the seat, wondering if the answer was actually as easy as it sounded or if it made perfect sense. Joey knew a lot about pokemon, moves, habitats, diet. He could probably get a breeder's licence if he really wanted too. He'd even worked his way through thick tomes such as, "The consistencies of anatomy between different mammalian fire-types." The issue was that how to specifically train a TE, was not something that had quite managed to enter the public sphere of knowledge. Perhaps trainers kept it to themselves, thinking it gave them an edge. Perhaps it was all so individualised and there was no point in trying to set up general statements. Or maybe, maybe there was a reason why many of the most successful trainers were type-specialists.
He didn't move from his seat for the rest of his trip, and stumbled out of the bus profoundly tired and feeling weary to his bones. He had a lot to do, gather money and bet on Lance winning his match against Bruno, train for the next gym, teach rattata dig and find more trainers to challenge. Right now he mostly just felt like lying down and reading a fiction novel, instead of a book that would help him in some way become a better trainer. Getting the first badge had required extensive preparation and work, the second badge had been more of a challenge than he'd thought, and Joey realised that he'd maybe figured out a limit. Sure, he took weekends off, mostly, but maybe three months of continuous work was enough for him to need a more serious vacation. His pokemon deserved it, if nothing else.
However, before he was allowed to leave and go think about the thought he'd just had, Joey and the other youngsters, sans asshole this time, were gathered by Ruth who had one last announcement to make.
The old woman nodded happily as she looked at the youngsters assembled before her and started. "Good job, everyone. I'm sure you'll do great next circuit and following conference. However, rather than just focusing on getting badges for the next year and nine months, the league has decided to offer youngsters another incentive to grow, which I personally think has been missing for quite a while. You will receive this news by mail later on, but I wanted to share it personally with those youngsters already there, or well on their way to qualifying for, the first time ever held, youngster tournament!" she announced.
Joey's brain short-circuited for a second and the first thing he could think of when it rebooted was about who exactly would want to watch a bunch of rattata tackle each other all day.
"To qualify you need to be in possession of at least one badge. You will be seeded on the amount of badges that you have beyond that. The prizes will include cash rewards, but also technical machines, poke-balls and maybe even a rare pokemon," she continued explaining excitedly. She stopped when she saw Joey that Joey had raised his hand. "Yes?"
"When and where will the tournament take place?"
"It will be two weeks before the start of the indigo conference, so you still have half a year to prepare! The place hasn't been decided yet, but, the thought has been that maybe it will be held in the city which has the most youngsters have badges, so there's less people to transport," she explained.
Joey sort of hoped that it wouldn't be in Saffron. It wasn't easy to travel in the pokemon world and he'd enjoyed his trip to Celadon. It would be nice to get to explore another city before he actually started his journey.
"It's also a great opportunity to start building a portfolio for future sponsorships," Ruth explained, causing Joey to look up again attentively. Sponsorships were good. He'd need to see how possible it was to get sponsored by professor Oak, but winning the youngster tournament and then placing high in the indigo conference would probably be a pretty good springboard for anything else.
He felt a glare hit the side of his head, and looked to see Sabrina staring at him like a boxer about to enter a ring. The thought that she would be his toughest competition had crossed his mind. It was nice to see the thought reciprocated. He gave her a smile while Ruth finished explaining the details.
He'd take a break first, he really was tired. But, it seemed like rather than just thinking about the next gym-badge, Joey had just gotten a more long-term goal to work towards.
-/-
Despite a new found motivation that latched itself like a fly to shit onto the upcoming youngster tournament, Joey did not ignore his body's screams for rest. He spent four days after his return to Saffron doing absolutely nothing. He lounged around in his room with some novels and comic books and went to the park with his pokemon for fun, not for battling.
It got so bad at some point that Theresa confronted him about it, asking, of all things, if he was depressed. Joey laughed at her face and then helped her make dinner for all the other kids. It was a great time. Four days were the double of what he usually took off, the weekend, so he actually got to relax. He wrote in his diary, visited the technology museum and went out to try and find the best ice-cream in town.
It ended up being a little corner store owned by a lady who used to be a trainer. She specialised in ice-types and made water-based ice-cream that was better than its milk-based counterpart. Joey's mind was officially blown. There were even flavours for pokemon, so both rattata and metapod got some too, although the latter didn't like it too much, preferring to much down on her toxic orb even in times of rest. She was becoming less and less affected by the poison. The gym challenge seemed to have commemorated a jump in terms of resistance, which just really went to show that pokemon learned best in battle.
He'd even visited Macy's pokedoll store and was surprised and gladdened to find that there was way more variety than there had been before. There hadn't been a metapod doll, unfortunately, but the murkrow one was actually making a killing. Perhaps due to the fact that murkrow were sort of exotic for Kanto. Both the native birds were actually sort of boring, brown and cream-coloured.
However, all good things came to an end eventually, and on the fifth day of his return from Celadon, Joey and his crew were gathered outside in the city's training rooms. "So, you're probably wondering what the next step is," the boy said as he paced in front of the attentive pokemon, like a general about to set out for war giving a last minute briefing to his troops. "We beat Kong and we beat… Celadon. Nobody believed in us, no one thought we could do it. But we did. Give yourselves a pat on the back."
Rattata and Joey patted themselves on the back, while metapod fired a string-shot at the latter. The trainer dodged, long since used to the bug's antics.
"Anyway, good job and all that. We took four days off to celebrate, that's done with. Onto our next challenge," Joey said and puffed out his chest. "We're going to be facing a real macho man, a trueborn American, my personal hero. He's going to send out only one pokemon, and that's going to be a raichu. Our job will be, as three, or two, depending whether we will find a new member that suits the squad, to wear that monster down. Raichu are physically strong, have a whip-like tail with a halberd attached to it, and shoot thunder and lightning out of their ass. Suffice to say, this is a bit problematic." He pointed at the green bug pokemon. "You're going out first, as it only makes sense. Your job is to exhaust the raichu. Hit him with as many string shots as you can, ruin the field. From what I've seen it doesn't really have much else other than electric and physical moves so if you can keep it at bay with string-shot for long enough to properly harden, then you can stall for a while. In that sense your training sort of stays the same. You'll use string shot to block ranged attacks, and you'll exchange physical hits on your body to weigh them down with as much string as possible. The only difference is that while a bug bite would be nice, you shouldn't aim for it, the raichu will just shock you. On that note, never leave a string shot in your mouth for long, electricity might travel up the connection."
Metapod nodded, an awkward tilt forwards and back, seemingly alright with the fact that she was going to essentially be a speed-bump for the more powerful pokemon. But, this was what Surge's gym taught to a certain extent. Who to sacrifice. "I would also like to start working on something new in regards to string shot, I recently saw a caterpie compact the move and harden it somehow. It sort of attained the same function as bullet seed. It would be a good way to finish an enemy from afar if you manage to slow them down enough that they can't dodge. Would be a good way to damage the raichu a bit as well while keeping it at bay."
"Metapod, pod, pod?" the pokemon stated questioningly with a roll of her eyes towards Joey's backpack.
"The toxic orb?" he asked, and received a nod. "You're not quite there yet I think, but you'll probably develop a sufficient resistance soon enough. I foresee a call to Koga in our near future," Joey said before turning to rattata.
"For you, we got a special technical machine which should help you out a lot against Surge. It's dig, a ground-type move. You have three months to get it down. It will provide a retreat into which raichu's electricity won't be able to follow. Your only respite, probably. You'll use it to dodge and counter-attack, with some flashes of detect in-between to avoid randomly getting hit for no reason," he explained succinctly, and before his hand could go for the poke-ball at his belt, his starter already began furiously digging into the earth below, flinging up grass and dirt as his paws blurred.
"We haven't taught you the move yet," Joey muttered as he recalled the enthusiastic pokemon and went over to his backpack and pulled out the appropriate technical machine. Placing the poke-ball at the base of the grey-silvery square which held the disk with the encrypted data, he pressed start.
It wasn't an overly dramatic process. The disk flashed a bright brown, before losing its colour, which seemed to flow into rattata's pokeball. A few seconds later and the machine beeped once, signalling that it had completed its task. Removing the pokeball and releasing the rat on the ground, Joey didn't even get to say anything before the purple rodent was going, digging down at a rapid pace and disappearing from sight. Both Joey and metapod looked at the hole their comrade had disappeared into.
What went down had to come up, right? Joey looked around the clearing, wondering where his starter would jump out from, before starting to get worried at the ten second mark. Rattata had disappeared quite fast, so it wasn't like the digging should take that much time.
Joey suddenly realised that for all of rattata's talents, he didn't really have a way of navigating the vast underground. How exactly was one supposed to tell which was way up, or down, when traversing the earth? Sure the move provided some basic sensing, but this was the rat's first time using it. Getting slightly worried Joey ran to the hole and looked down, the sight that greeted him enough to make his poor fragile heart relax in an instant. All worries for his starter fled his mind as he saw the idiot laying there in a hole that went straight down for six feet, completely and utterly knocked out. The rat's eyes were swirly and his body hung limp on the ground. A bit of earth crumpled and fell down, covering rattata, making Joey aware of the danger of not retrieving his starter. He sighed and recalled the pokemon, sending him out again on the stable surface of the training field.
The rat had probably gotten knocked out by the unknown energy expenditure that ground TE represented. He hadn't learned it properly, hadn't rested between the intake of the move and the first try, and had immediately tried to use the full-fledged version of the move instead of first testing it out on a smaller distance.
"You're really lucky you're the most motivated and loyal pokemon in the world," Joey muttered, looking at his starter's unconscious form, thinking back on the blood and sweat they'd excreted to even get to two gym-badges, and the dangers they'd faced together. "Because you are definitely not the smartest."
With a shake of his head and denying himself the satisfaction of waking the rat right back up with a large splash of cold water from his reusable water bottle, Joey turned to the exasperated metapod making up the other half of his team. "Let's start with working on the bullet seed string shot," he said with a shake of his head. "By then maybe the idiot will have woken up. We probably won't get to do a dig and bug seed tandem training exercise yet going by how his first dig went, but maybe we'll just do a quick detect session."
Metapod, blessed with a higher than room-temperature IQ nodded and promptly spat out a large glob of string shot, which somehow resembled a ball but quickly reverted back to a liquid once it hit the ground. Joey looked at the result while stroking his chin, thinking about how, if one left string shot out for too long, it sort of calcified and crumbled. "Try holding it in your mouth for a bit, until it hardens. Let's work on consistency first, then we'll do shape. It doesn't really need to be ball-shaped anyway, any object hurts if it's solid enough," he said and watched as metapod initiated the move, but struggled to keep it in her carapaced mouth. It was leaking out, covering the green chitin with white sticky liquid.
There was nothing else to do than keep trying in cases like this, although maybe Joey would be having an easier time had he asked for the bug-catcher's advice back then. Maybe the gym-battle had tainted his opinion of the boy a bit too much, also, the getting kicked out of the game-corner was pretty cringe.
Anyway, he and metapod worked together for approximately half an hour, actually managing to get somewhere, before some light shuffling and weak chitters disrupted their flow. The youngster nodded at metapod to keep going and turned around to the rattata who was stumbling up on all fours, as usual.
"Maybe we should approach this a bit slower, huh?" Joey asked reproachfully, causing rattata to awkwardly stand on his hind-legs and to scratch the back of his head.
"You feeling alright?" Joey asked, and received a series of rapid nods in return.
"Rattata, rattatatatatatata!"
The trainer sighed. "Alright, but if you collapse again you're benched for the day. So keep a good eye on your energy reserves. Whenever you're feeling tired you can stop working on dig and do some physical exercise, you're still not the fastest pokemon alive, and even when you will be, you'll have to keep training to keep that edge."
Rattata nodded enthusiastically, shadow boxing in the air and jumping up and down.
"How about you just try to initiate a dig, but hold the energy in your paws at first. Let's see if that's already your limit," Joey suggested.
Rattata scrunched up his face and concentrated. Light brown energy gathered in his paws and dissolved the ground they were resting on, without the pokemon even having to move physically.
"Fascinating," Joey muttered. He wondered if they could split training the move into two separate categories. Channelling the energy and trying to travel downwards without any movement, and travelling with only movement, no energy. However, experimentation would take a while, as rattata looked noticeably tired from the small exertion. "It seems to be quite an exhausting move," Joey concluded. "However, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If we treat your TE exertion prowess as a muscle, then having a move that can so thoroughly and quickly exhaust it might be a good thing. Take a five minute rest, I'll be back in a second," he said and went over to check on metapod.
She was already producing a string shot that was considerably less sticky and more hard than the one she'd been using before. "This will probably be more exhausting on your nutrition reserves than just practising the move," Joey cautioned. "I'll be preparing a higher amount of meals today for this purpose. For rattata as well, he seems to be getting exhausted really fast." Metapod blinked at him, signalling that she understood, and continued in her efforts to get to a decent hardness level. Joey watched for a minute or two, making sure that she was making a decent amount of progress without his interference, before returning back to rattata.
His starter already looked less tired, and Joey had him run through a set of drills, during which he would randomly call out dig. At every such instance rattata would have to quickly channel dig through his limbs, creating small paw imprints into the ground. The training was a mix of physical exercise and ground TE training, since only the latter would exhaust the pokemon too fast. It seemed to be working too, as rattata was able to do it for an uninterrupted fifteen minutes, the imprints in the ground growing larger and larger with the same amount of channelling. Joey nodded in satisfaction, gave his starter a short break before turning his attention to metapod again.
He wondered, as he trained his team throughout the day. How he would handle training even more pokemon in the future. He wasn't necessarily being run ragged, but to him it seemed that with every new addition to his roster, he'd have less time to give each pokemon individual attention. Perhaps there was a number of pokemon that a trainer simply couldn't train at the same time. A point where the quality of training suffered so much that the expanded roster which usually suggested a higher type-coverage, was actually giving diminishing returns.
Joey strongly suspected that most trainers could handle about six pokemon. Personally he was struggling to imagine doing more than four. It would come with time, probably.
It was an extremely successful day in the end. He still hadn't quite decided if he actually wanted to give the sleep-talk TM to metapod, wondering if he should save it for a pokemon with whom he wanted to use a rest + sleeptalk combo, but metapod was making progress regardless, her string shot growing harder and harder by the hour.
Maybe he'd sleep on the decision, he thought to himself with a chuckle, drawing some odd looks from the adults walking the same street he was taking home. But tomorrow it was time to start having more mixed days. A bit of training in the morning, then making some money, and then some battles in the afternoon when the hobby trainers came off work.
-/-
AN: A bit of a short chapter, as was also the case after our last gym-badge. Just need some down-time for Joey so that the next arc can get initiated full speed. If you want to read up to 9 chapters ahead or just support me as an artist you can go over to my patreon, if not then you can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Metapod can't learn Sleep Talk, but Caterpie can learn Snore through Tutoring, so that may be possible for Metapod. Also, Joey can try to convince Surge to teach Metapod Electroweb. If you allow TCG moves, Metapod can learn Rollout, Sharpen and Stun Spore. It can also learn Mysterious Powder, which is a Confuse Ray variant. There's the move Stiffen as well, but that's literally just Protect with a different name.
I enjoy this story and hope to see more soon.
Seems to me sleep talk would be more a distraction than a useful move here. Maybe if he finds something with rest.
Chapter 18: Constance the town of the dead
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Sorry for the slight delay, had a bit of a crazy week
Thank you to my new patrons: William Casey-Cowan, Shabbybook, Arakhil, Ken Willians, TheBerryMan, Definitely not a racoon, Tank45, TataIma, David Hedges, Gokumui213, Paul Becker, King Lokajad, aca, Jonathan Ireland, Anamika Thakur, Michael Heintz, Sir Walrus, Ben Barber, Chrono, John Summer, Journey_Man Mike, Southmonk
-/-
Joey stood in front of the job posting board, an honestly quite simple, but large, cork wall put up in the less busy part of the poke-centre, away from the computers, the desk, the cafeteria. There were too many tasks to choose from, and with his two badges he was now qualified for quite a lot of them. As he was taking in the information on the board, he considered his main secondary objective as well.
He'd recently freed up a third slot on his team. Considering that in Vermillion he wouldn't get any concessions for having two, instead of three pokemon, facing the same Raichu, it was thus strategically important to find a third team-member as soon as possible so that he could train them up.
The issue was that Joey didn't really rush these things. In terms of long-term planning, it was better to lose the gym-battle, if winning meant that he'd caught a long-term incompatible pokemon.
On the other hand, simply because he didn't like rushing things didn't mean that he didn't want to hit two pidgey with one stone. While he was open to the idea of any pokemon if they had the correct attitude, he didn't necessarily want a second rattata or a second metapod. So this already removed three jobs from the consideration, all of them from some sort of food storage companies which were having issues with the crafty rats breaking through the security and nibbling at the supplies. While the pay was decent, the likeliness of Joey finding a third team-member was minimal. It was a similar case when one looked at the job posted by a certain Dr. Jenkins, which involved taking the man's caterpie for a walk once a day. While the caterpie was most assuredly an awesome pokemon and probably very friendly, Joey didn't think that taking it to the local park was going to really net him a third team-member.
Several jobs were excluded thus due to this list of criteria. Either they weren't paid enough, didn't involve him exploring an area that had wild pokemon, didn't involve pokemon he was interested in, or were simply above his level; like the catching of a beedrill for the pokemon technical institute. 'An exclusive trainers school where trainers learn everything there is to know about pokemon!'
There was also a job from the same employer looking for a trainer with three badges to come in and battle some of the students as a way to test their mettle. That one Joey might consider doing in the future. While the school was a bit of a joke, after all, they claimed that their graduates were as good as someone with eight-badges. Weirdly enough, the league apparently agreed, as they allowed them entry to the conference.
Or more likely, the league was funding and investigating models of training that didn't involve going into the wild and potentially dying, which was a thing that did actually happen, so good on them.
Joey still wasn't going to suggest anything but the traditional route to anyone who actually wanted to succeed.
Anyway, all of this left Joey with a pick of three jobs. The first option consisted of going through the east gate of Saffron to route seven and trying to find a group of aggressive oddish who were challenging, and badly beating young trainers in the wild before stealing their berry supplies. Nobody was really harmed, mostly humiliated really, so this didn't necessitate a ranger response. However, the oddish were apparently slippery and blended in very well with the foliage, which had resulted in the city official sent to flush them out being unable to find them. The money was decent, but nothing special. Also, Joey was sick of dealing with oddish. The only pokemon he was really interested in on that route were the vulpix and the growlithe, but considering that he'd be chasing oddish, it was unlikely he'd meet any. Also, he had bad experiences with vulpix and growlithe were decisively pack animals. Abra were, of course, impossible to catch, and probably impossible to train for Joey who was ghost-typed. There was also the possibility of finding a mankey, which Joey didn't feel like dealing with at the moment, and a heracross. He was probably more likely to find a random fist-sized diamond on the floor than finding a heracross however. Also, he already had a bug-type.
The second mission involved finding a watch that an older gentleman had lost in the forest while traversing route six around the south Saffron gate. While this was principally interesting and Joey's restrictions on how far from the gates he could walk had been loosened, and route six had more pokemon he was interested in, such as magnemite, psyduck and poliwag, he didn't really know how he would go about finding a watch. Considering the existence of pidgey, who sometimes liked to pick up shiny things, it was entirely possible that the thing was in Fuschia by now. He might end up finding a third team-member, but fulfilling the mission sounded nearly impossible.
The third mission was perhaps the most doable. All that Joey needed to do was deliver an offering to an abandoned church close to the east gate on route eight, which connected Saffron and Lavender. He'd never actually been on route eight, mostly due to the issue that it was one of the few routes in the region where one could find ghosts. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did make it the most dangerous route going out of Saffron. However, now that he himself knew how to use shadow ball, his rattata had a rudimentary usage of bite and he had a metapod with bug-bite, Joey was less scared than before. Also the route held the vulpix and growlithe he was interested in, while also having sandshrew, which he wouldn't say no to, hoothoot, which had recently become available due to migration patterns, and ekans, which he didn't want. Not even because he was still mad at the species, but because it would probably hurt team spirit to have one on the team. There was also the possibility of catching a jigglypuff, but considering those things tended to put one to sleep before one even got close, Joey was rather hoping on not meeting one.
The choice was quite clear in the end. The first mission was doable, but didn't involve pokemon Joey was interested in. He was kinda sick of battling oddish at this point, and was alright with letting someone else have the privilege. The second mission had more interesting pokemon, and maybe it would be nice to get a water-type so he could surf in the future, but trying to find a watch in a forest was probably a gigantic waste of time.
Joey pulled off the briefing of the third mission, the one with the abandoned church. It was only possible to be consigned to one mission at a time, otherwise he might also take the oddish one to be honest, simply for the sake of money. But, there would probably be more missions in by tomorrow, and maybe the oddish one would still be there. He looked at the piece of paper, recognizing the street that the address of the mission giver was on and promptly turned around to leave, only to stop when he saw Mia walking towards him, brown hair set in a pair of twintails with oddish hair-bands.
"Cute hair," he complimented as the girl came to a stop next to him, seemingly focused on the board.
"Thanks. Are you also looking for jobs?" she asked.
"Yeah, I spent all I had on technical machines. I need to replenish my wallet."
"Me too," the girl said with a sigh. "So expensive. Also, I forgot that my battle rating would change. I lost a battle to someone without any badges and I ended up paying them a lot of money."
Joey nodded. "Yeah, I got two badges now. Means I have to take every match quite seriously if I don't want to lose what little I have. But, well, most of the hobby trainers still give good odds."
He pointed to the oddish job that he himself hadn't chosen. "This might be interesting for you, you did say you wanted an oddish, and they'd be good against Surge, King, and then even Flint."
Mia looked at the piece of paper more closely, before ripping it off the board with a nod. "I have a second slot on my team now, but there's too many possibilities!" she exclaimed. "Also, I don't know if I want to battle Surge. Maybe it would be smarter to just skip him and aim straight for the cascade badge. Then I'd have more time to train."
Joey raised an eyebrow, not necessarily approving of not at least trying the gym. The ride there was free, and Surge would probably never be as nice again. He couldn't imagine he was such a hardass against youngsters. "What's your plan?" he asked, receiving a shrug.
"I picked up the TM for shock wave, but lil mouse has been struggling with the move."
"Maybe it would have been better to start with thunder wave, get her used to the TE first," Joey mused. "Although, in six months when it's time for Cerulean it should be ready no problem."
"I don't have infinite money," Mia said with a pout. "I only had enough for one TM and I made it count."
It was funny how between the two of them it was Joey, the orphan, who had more liquidity. It made sense though. Pokemon battling was a very lucrative career, and Joey had been battling a lot, had increased his stipend by beating Kong a while ago, and even increased the likelihood of winning it big by challenging trainers way beyond his pay-grade. It was very likely that he was earning a similar salary as Mia's father, who naturally couldn't spend all the money on buying his daughter technical machines. The man had other expenses, whereas Joey didn't. He lived in the orphanage for free, got food for free, healthcare for free… The only thing he had to pay for himself were his training-related expenses, and those were more than covered by his stipend. All his victory money had essentially gone into buying TMs, of which he'd gotten three himself.
"Want a rematch with Kong at some point?" Joey asked. Mia simply grimaced, which answered that question. There probably wasn't really a point in even thinking about it while she still had only a rattata. Her battle in Celadon had already been hard-fought, and Kong's second badge challenge wasn't going to be any easier. "I'll leave you to your oddish-catching then," Joey said and clapped the girl on the shoulder. "Do come get me after you have two team-members, we could have a proper match."
"As if, after seeing what you did to that poor oddish at the Celadon gym," Mia muttered and waved him goodbye.
Joey exited the poke-centre after inputting into the system which job he'd taken, then, without really waiting for any excuse to delay, he immediately went over to the address described in the mission statement. It was conveniently placed on the very east side of Saffron, close to the poke-centre, close to the gym and to the gate.
He ended up in front of a modest two story family home done in the typical yellow brick and green roof style of the city. He rang the door-bell, already preparing his badge case on the off-chance that people wouldn't believe he was qualified for the task. It was a tiny old woman who opened the door, leaning on a cane and looking at him from the same height he occupied.
"Hello dearie, how can I help you?" she asked in that sweet old lady voice that made probably made people want to help her cross the street, but then run away immediately after as they started oversharing details about her grandchildren, cats, and the state of the garden.
Joey wasn't that interested, so he just held up his trainer licence close to the woman's face, so that she could read it with her presumably weakening eye-sight. "Trainer-licence Jonathan Joestar, two badges, here for the route eight mission. Are you Ellie Rogers?" he asked clearly.
The old lady nodded enthusiastically. "Wonderful! I was worried that nobody would come in time," she said, before slowly shaking his head. "Route 8 has become so deserted since the fighting-type gym has been established. Everyone is afraid of the ghosts, but just look at Lavender town, they live with them in harmony. My son works at Silph Co., he's working on some sort of ghost detection goggles, perhaps that will help people be less scared one day."
Joey nodded along, filling away the information for later. One skill that made ghost-pokemon particularly dangerous was their ability to hide from sight, whether it was by entering the shadows, or by putting themselves partially into the distorted world. "Sounds good," he said. "Can I get more clear instructions on how to come to the mission objective building, also, what's the offering?" he asked.
The old lady chuckled and stepped back. "Won't you come inside for a cup of tea?" she asked. "Then I can tell you the full story."
Joey mimed looking at his poke-nav, as if to check the time. "I don't drink tea, unfortunately," he eventually lied.
"I also have coffee," the old lady prompted.
"Allergic to caffeine."
"Orange juice?"
"No thank you, just brushed my teeth."
"Milk."
"Lactose intolerant."
"Beer?"
"Underage."
"Cookies."
Joey hesitated, it seemed that he wouldn't be getting anywhere without staying over for a snack. He sighed in resignation and accepted the offer of cookies. One minute later he'd been led through a corridor with more pictures than wall and into the living room where he'd sat down on a couch next to a napping meowth. The youngster sat down next to it, not wanting to get scratched for the disturbance, but also not wanting to sit in any of the rickety wooden chairs surrounding the coffee table. They looked uncomfortable.
Ellie came back quickly, carrying a platter of suspiciously oven-fresh looking chocolate chip cookies, along with a pitcher of lemonade. She puttered about, shoving both in his face until he accepted it, and sat down herself. Joey leaned back, starting to nibble on one of the cookies, in preparation for a longer conversation.
"It all started when I was born," Ellie began. "84 years ago in the small village of Constance, just outside what is now Saffron. It used to be just a simple mining town, if you'll believe, then they discovered new uses for the ore they were mining. Technological uses. Silph Co. was founded. The fighting types and the humans commanding them partially moved out into the fresh air, now tasked with freeing up enough ground for a city, and company expansion. The process of town to city only lasted a decade or so, enough for me to become a teenager. However, while Saffron was flourishing, Constance was just trudging by as it always had been. We were culturally more close to Lavender, which was exhibited most clearly by the church we had in our town square. We didn't see a point in keeping up with the times, preferring to focus on the Bonds instead."
The Bonds in this case referred to an older belief that man did not need to create tools and further technology, since everything that needed to be achieved, could be achieved by symbiotically co-existing with pokemon.
"However, this meant that when the great storm hit, sixty years ago to the day, our village was small enough to get flattened in its entirety. Except for the church. Saffron, meanwhile, had simply lost a district. The broken bodies of zubat, pidgeotto and spearow littered the ground in Constance along with the eviscerated corpses of rattata and nidoran. Cut up by the winds, they said. Or, rather, nobody said. People who'd survived with their pokemon and families by hiding in the cellars didn't bother rebuilding, they moved away. Centuries of tradition forgotten, traded in for convenience. I was amongst them, I had a child on the way and no midwife had stayed to bring it to term."
"This great storm," Joey interjected, suspicious. "Where did it come from?"
The old lady shrugged whimsically. "Nobody knows. Some hikers told tales of great gusts of fire, lightning and ice above the dark clouds. Three titanic bird-like figures fighting over territory.
But… Pokemon capable of such power might as well have been gods, and I refuse to believe that beings of such power would have caused such wanton destruction. It was a freak weather phenomena, my grandson says, and I prefer to agree."
The youngster filed away the possibility that the storm had been caused by a battle between the three birds, Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos. He had noted upon arriving in this world that legendary pokemon were more myth than reality. Perhaps this would change soon. The human population was undergoing an explosion. This meant that more and more trainers ventured into the wild thus increasing the chances of glimpsing a legendary. At the same time, cameras were becoming more common, thus making it inevitable that soon, one of these legendary pokemon would be captured on tape, after which point their existence could not be denied anymore.
"However, not everyone left for Saffron. After all, not all buildings had been flattened. The church stood, and the priestess refused to go. She saw it as a challenge from a higher power to restore the village to its former glory. To rebuild it. She tried and failed to convince people to stay. There were jobs in Saffron, and newly built houses which could be bought with very little money."
"If this all happened sixty years ago…" Joey muttered. "Then the priestess is likely dead, no? Is she the person I'm bringing an offering to?"
Ellie nodded. "Yes, Maria Rogers, my mother. She stayed in the village for a decade, rebuilding houses, mending fences, praying. All her children were grown up, gone. There was nothing preventing her from following her divine task. We kept a room free here, in Saffron, for when she decided to join us. Bring the word to the people in Saffron, who also desperately need to hear it."
"She never made it," Joey guessed from the bitter tone the story had taken.
"She didn't. A fever. She died with her golduck at her bedside. All the chansey which back then were spread around villages to heal ailments and wandered the wilds in search of pains to cure, had been gathered to be distributed in the poke-centres of the region. We came to visit, as we often did, only to find her dead. She'd managed to rebuild ten houses, one for each year of her life after the catastrophe. Just that she'd never found anyone to live in them again. They remained empty. Except for the rattatas, the zubats and other assortments of wild pokemon."
"She sounds like an admirable woman," Joey complimented, actually impressed by the story. Did it matter if the priestess had died unaccomplished, if she had spent her life working towards her goals? Ten years of solitude indeed.
"A fool," Ellie spat, her wrinkled face pulled together by a grimace. "Fifty years to this day she died. I send a different trainer to her grave every year with the candles and the flowers. I can't bear to look at that wretched corpse of a village again and my battling days are over anyway."
Joey looked at her doubtfully, wondering if there ever had been battling days to speak of.
The old lady grinned at him with bright eyes and nodded towards the sleeping meowth. "He used to be a terror, until he grew old." Upon closer inspection the meowth had more grey hair than white, and seemed a bit thin. A sign of age apparently.
"Well, I'll be honoured to bring the offerings to your mother's grave," Joey said. "Just give me the directions and I'll see it done," he promised.
Ellie pierced him with her gaze at his proclamation, as if testing his resolve. Joey, for his part, didn't falter. There was no real resolve or higher stakes involved in this deal from what he could glean. He was just being paid to do something and since he wanted the money, he would do it. Of course it was nice that he was delivering flowers to a grave instead of cleaning out the muk from the sewers, but that was about it.
The old woman eventually nodded, seemingly pleased by what she'd seen and pulled out a large piece of folded brown paper which she unravelled to reveal a map of route 8. It was quite old, but maybe it had to be, as it still showed Constance, circled in red on the north side of the route. The route itself was several times as long as its symmetrical counterpart leading to Celadon, a winding path which bordered both north and south into a large forest which remained to this day mostly unexplored. Constance was in a way the first exit on the side of Saffron. One could reach it by just taking the first left after one exited the gate. They were supposed to be building some sort of underground tunnel system to connect the cities better for non-battlers, but it was still under construction. It seemed like Joey would have to go through the active construction site actually, to get to the marked path.
"It really is quite close. If I'm reading the dimensions correctly, then what is this? Five kilometres away from the outer edges of Saffron?" he asked.
"The city has gotten larger, but eventually they had to put up a wall, put a stop to it," Ellie said, hinting at the end of expansion which had stopped two decades ago. The endangerment of pokemon habitats had gotten too serious, the rangers and the trainers had become unable to deal with all the issues this caused. The league and the city governing body had decided that this was as good a point as any to stop and to be content with what one had. Joey wasn't really exposed to the real-estate market, considering he lived in the orphanage, but he had heard that the prices had been getting worse ever since. After all, there was nowhere to build and people from big cities were usually quite reluctant to move to smaller towns, such as silver town, which lay between Saffron and Lavender.
Any mobility usually happened from families who wanted to raise their children somewhere quieter, and thus moved out, freeing up space for someone new to move in.
"Maybe in today's climate there would have been some people interested in moving to Constance," Joey mused.
Ellie simply shrugged. "Who knows. In the end what's done is done." She stood up, relying on her cane to do so, and went into another room.
Joey looked down at his plate, noticing that he'd somehow eaten all the cookies. He grimaced. Ever since he'd started playing around with ghost-type energy he'd started needing less and less sustenance. The dough lay heavy in his stomach. But, at least it tasted good. While he waited for the mission giver to come back, he continued playing with the map, laying his compass in the requisite position to check the directions he would need to keep in mind as he went.
The mission seemed quite simple, fitting for someone with only two badges. It wasn't far enough to encounter any seriously dangerous pokemon like those that slumbered and fought amongst each other in the great forests of the region. The worst he'd encounter would be an ekans, or maybe a haunter. All the actually dangerous pokemon roaming those parts, such as alakazam, or arcanine, maybe a ninetails, weren't really known for being overly aggressive against random human children.
So, he would probably be fine, he concluded. It was exciting. He was finally about to leave and start exploring more of the region. Kanto wasn't big, perhaps taking up as much space as a smaller country like Switzerland did in his previous life, but the pokemon inhabiting it made the environment much more inaccessible. In a way, this world hadn't been fully explored yet, which meant that there was still some excitement in going off route.
Of course he wasn't allowed to do proper wilding yet, but after his seventh badge he would be qualified to do so, with a full team, all of them evolved. Constance was on the route, still, sort of, so it didn't count.
Ellie eventually came back with a wicker basket, one of those that looked handmade, she handed it over to Joey who had stood up to receive it. There was the usual assortment of some incense sticks, flowers, a ground of sake, a bottle of water and some nori rice crackers. All of it was quite self-explanatory and Joey nodded. "I'll be on my way then, it's not even mid-day yet so I can probably be back for dinner," he said.
"Do take it slow dearie, it's a beautiful walk of about two hours there and two hours back. You're not in any rush," Ellie said and accompanied him to the door. After a final goodbye, Joey was finally ready to go on his first mission.
-/-
Joey has gotten his range of leaving expanded again, so he can go out further. Still no inter-city travel, but he can hike around a bit. Red zones he can't enter, but there aren't that many around Saffron.
We are not starting a new arc before the next gym battle, which I'd call the job arc. Joey will be exploring the authentic pokemon adventurer vibe including the stereotypical pin up wall with requests. Exciting.
Battle with Surge and between Bruno and Lance has officially concluded over on patreon for the highest tier, so if you want to treat yourself, or support me, you can head on over to read up to ten chapters in advance. No pressure though, everything will be public eventually.
Thank you to my new patrons: William Casey-Cowan, Shabbybook, Arakhil, Ken Willians, TheBerryMan, Definitely not a racoon, Tank45, TataIma, David Hedges, Gokumui213, Paul Becker, King Lokajad, aca, Jonathan Ireland, Anamika Thakur, Michael Heintz, Sir Walrus, Ben Barber, Chrono, John Summer, Journey_Man Mike, Southmonk
-/-
Joey stood in front of the job posting board, an honestly quite simple, but large, cork wall put up in the less busy part of the poke-centre, away from the computers, the desk, the cafeteria. There were too many tasks to choose from, and with his two badges he was now qualified for quite a lot of them. As he was taking in the information on the board, he considered his main secondary objective as well.
He'd recently freed up a third slot on his team. Considering that in Vermillion he wouldn't get any concessions for having two, instead of three pokemon, facing the same Raichu, it was thus strategically important to find a third team-member as soon as possible so that he could train them up.
The issue was that Joey didn't really rush these things. In terms of long-term planning, it was better to lose the gym-battle, if winning meant that he'd caught a long-term incompatible pokemon.
On the other hand, simply because he didn't like rushing things didn't mean that he didn't want to hit two pidgey with one stone. While he was open to the idea of any pokemon if they had the correct attitude, he didn't necessarily want a second rattata or a second metapod. So this already removed three jobs from the consideration, all of them from some sort of food storage companies which were having issues with the crafty rats breaking through the security and nibbling at the supplies. While the pay was decent, the likeliness of Joey finding a third team-member was minimal. It was a similar case when one looked at the job posted by a certain Dr. Jenkins, which involved taking the man's caterpie for a walk once a day. While the caterpie was most assuredly an awesome pokemon and probably very friendly, Joey didn't think that taking it to the local park was going to really net him a third team-member.
Several jobs were excluded thus due to this list of criteria. Either they weren't paid enough, didn't involve him exploring an area that had wild pokemon, didn't involve pokemon he was interested in, or were simply above his level; like the catching of a beedrill for the pokemon technical institute. 'An exclusive trainers school where trainers learn everything there is to know about pokemon!'
There was also a job from the same employer looking for a trainer with three badges to come in and battle some of the students as a way to test their mettle. That one Joey might consider doing in the future. While the school was a bit of a joke, after all, they claimed that their graduates were as good as someone with eight-badges. Weirdly enough, the league apparently agreed, as they allowed them entry to the conference.
Or more likely, the league was funding and investigating models of training that didn't involve going into the wild and potentially dying, which was a thing that did actually happen, so good on them.
Joey still wasn't going to suggest anything but the traditional route to anyone who actually wanted to succeed.
Anyway, all of this left Joey with a pick of three jobs. The first option consisted of going through the east gate of Saffron to route seven and trying to find a group of aggressive oddish who were challenging, and badly beating young trainers in the wild before stealing their berry supplies. Nobody was really harmed, mostly humiliated really, so this didn't necessitate a ranger response. However, the oddish were apparently slippery and blended in very well with the foliage, which had resulted in the city official sent to flush them out being unable to find them. The money was decent, but nothing special. Also, Joey was sick of dealing with oddish. The only pokemon he was really interested in on that route were the vulpix and the growlithe, but considering that he'd be chasing oddish, it was unlikely he'd meet any. Also, he had bad experiences with vulpix and growlithe were decisively pack animals. Abra were, of course, impossible to catch, and probably impossible to train for Joey who was ghost-typed. There was also the possibility of finding a mankey, which Joey didn't feel like dealing with at the moment, and a heracross. He was probably more likely to find a random fist-sized diamond on the floor than finding a heracross however. Also, he already had a bug-type.
The second mission involved finding a watch that an older gentleman had lost in the forest while traversing route six around the south Saffron gate. While this was principally interesting and Joey's restrictions on how far from the gates he could walk had been loosened, and route six had more pokemon he was interested in, such as magnemite, psyduck and poliwag, he didn't really know how he would go about finding a watch. Considering the existence of pidgey, who sometimes liked to pick up shiny things, it was entirely possible that the thing was in Fuschia by now. He might end up finding a third team-member, but fulfilling the mission sounded nearly impossible.
The third mission was perhaps the most doable. All that Joey needed to do was deliver an offering to an abandoned church close to the east gate on route eight, which connected Saffron and Lavender. He'd never actually been on route eight, mostly due to the issue that it was one of the few routes in the region where one could find ghosts. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did make it the most dangerous route going out of Saffron. However, now that he himself knew how to use shadow ball, his rattata had a rudimentary usage of bite and he had a metapod with bug-bite, Joey was less scared than before. Also the route held the vulpix and growlithe he was interested in, while also having sandshrew, which he wouldn't say no to, hoothoot, which had recently become available due to migration patterns, and ekans, which he didn't want. Not even because he was still mad at the species, but because it would probably hurt team spirit to have one on the team. There was also the possibility of catching a jigglypuff, but considering those things tended to put one to sleep before one even got close, Joey was rather hoping on not meeting one.
The choice was quite clear in the end. The first mission was doable, but didn't involve pokemon Joey was interested in. He was kinda sick of battling oddish at this point, and was alright with letting someone else have the privilege. The second mission had more interesting pokemon, and maybe it would be nice to get a water-type so he could surf in the future, but trying to find a watch in a forest was probably a gigantic waste of time.
Joey pulled off the briefing of the third mission, the one with the abandoned church. It was only possible to be consigned to one mission at a time, otherwise he might also take the oddish one to be honest, simply for the sake of money. But, there would probably be more missions in by tomorrow, and maybe the oddish one would still be there. He looked at the piece of paper, recognizing the street that the address of the mission giver was on and promptly turned around to leave, only to stop when he saw Mia walking towards him, brown hair set in a pair of twintails with oddish hair-bands.
"Cute hair," he complimented as the girl came to a stop next to him, seemingly focused on the board.
"Thanks. Are you also looking for jobs?" she asked.
"Yeah, I spent all I had on technical machines. I need to replenish my wallet."
"Me too," the girl said with a sigh. "So expensive. Also, I forgot that my battle rating would change. I lost a battle to someone without any badges and I ended up paying them a lot of money."
Joey nodded. "Yeah, I got two badges now. Means I have to take every match quite seriously if I don't want to lose what little I have. But, well, most of the hobby trainers still give good odds."
He pointed to the oddish job that he himself hadn't chosen. "This might be interesting for you, you did say you wanted an oddish, and they'd be good against Surge, King, and then even Flint."
Mia looked at the piece of paper more closely, before ripping it off the board with a nod. "I have a second slot on my team now, but there's too many possibilities!" she exclaimed. "Also, I don't know if I want to battle Surge. Maybe it would be smarter to just skip him and aim straight for the cascade badge. Then I'd have more time to train."
Joey raised an eyebrow, not necessarily approving of not at least trying the gym. The ride there was free, and Surge would probably never be as nice again. He couldn't imagine he was such a hardass against youngsters. "What's your plan?" he asked, receiving a shrug.
"I picked up the TM for shock wave, but lil mouse has been struggling with the move."
"Maybe it would have been better to start with thunder wave, get her used to the TE first," Joey mused. "Although, in six months when it's time for Cerulean it should be ready no problem."
"I don't have infinite money," Mia said with a pout. "I only had enough for one TM and I made it count."
It was funny how between the two of them it was Joey, the orphan, who had more liquidity. It made sense though. Pokemon battling was a very lucrative career, and Joey had been battling a lot, had increased his stipend by beating Kong a while ago, and even increased the likelihood of winning it big by challenging trainers way beyond his pay-grade. It was very likely that he was earning a similar salary as Mia's father, who naturally couldn't spend all the money on buying his daughter technical machines. The man had other expenses, whereas Joey didn't. He lived in the orphanage for free, got food for free, healthcare for free… The only thing he had to pay for himself were his training-related expenses, and those were more than covered by his stipend. All his victory money had essentially gone into buying TMs, of which he'd gotten three himself.
"Want a rematch with Kong at some point?" Joey asked. Mia simply grimaced, which answered that question. There probably wasn't really a point in even thinking about it while she still had only a rattata. Her battle in Celadon had already been hard-fought, and Kong's second badge challenge wasn't going to be any easier. "I'll leave you to your oddish-catching then," Joey said and clapped the girl on the shoulder. "Do come get me after you have two team-members, we could have a proper match."
"As if, after seeing what you did to that poor oddish at the Celadon gym," Mia muttered and waved him goodbye.
Joey exited the poke-centre after inputting into the system which job he'd taken, then, without really waiting for any excuse to delay, he immediately went over to the address described in the mission statement. It was conveniently placed on the very east side of Saffron, close to the poke-centre, close to the gym and to the gate.
He ended up in front of a modest two story family home done in the typical yellow brick and green roof style of the city. He rang the door-bell, already preparing his badge case on the off-chance that people wouldn't believe he was qualified for the task. It was a tiny old woman who opened the door, leaning on a cane and looking at him from the same height he occupied.
"Hello dearie, how can I help you?" she asked in that sweet old lady voice that made probably made people want to help her cross the street, but then run away immediately after as they started oversharing details about her grandchildren, cats, and the state of the garden.
Joey wasn't that interested, so he just held up his trainer licence close to the woman's face, so that she could read it with her presumably weakening eye-sight. "Trainer-licence Jonathan Joestar, two badges, here for the route eight mission. Are you Ellie Rogers?" he asked clearly.
The old lady nodded enthusiastically. "Wonderful! I was worried that nobody would come in time," she said, before slowly shaking his head. "Route 8 has become so deserted since the fighting-type gym has been established. Everyone is afraid of the ghosts, but just look at Lavender town, they live with them in harmony. My son works at Silph Co., he's working on some sort of ghost detection goggles, perhaps that will help people be less scared one day."
Joey nodded along, filling away the information for later. One skill that made ghost-pokemon particularly dangerous was their ability to hide from sight, whether it was by entering the shadows, or by putting themselves partially into the distorted world. "Sounds good," he said. "Can I get more clear instructions on how to come to the mission objective building, also, what's the offering?" he asked.
The old lady chuckled and stepped back. "Won't you come inside for a cup of tea?" she asked. "Then I can tell you the full story."
Joey mimed looking at his poke-nav, as if to check the time. "I don't drink tea, unfortunately," he eventually lied.
"I also have coffee," the old lady prompted.
"Allergic to caffeine."
"Orange juice?"
"No thank you, just brushed my teeth."
"Milk."
"Lactose intolerant."
"Beer?"
"Underage."
"Cookies."
Joey hesitated, it seemed that he wouldn't be getting anywhere without staying over for a snack. He sighed in resignation and accepted the offer of cookies. One minute later he'd been led through a corridor with more pictures than wall and into the living room where he'd sat down on a couch next to a napping meowth. The youngster sat down next to it, not wanting to get scratched for the disturbance, but also not wanting to sit in any of the rickety wooden chairs surrounding the coffee table. They looked uncomfortable.
Ellie came back quickly, carrying a platter of suspiciously oven-fresh looking chocolate chip cookies, along with a pitcher of lemonade. She puttered about, shoving both in his face until he accepted it, and sat down herself. Joey leaned back, starting to nibble on one of the cookies, in preparation for a longer conversation.
"It all started when I was born," Ellie began. "84 years ago in the small village of Constance, just outside what is now Saffron. It used to be just a simple mining town, if you'll believe, then they discovered new uses for the ore they were mining. Technological uses. Silph Co. was founded. The fighting types and the humans commanding them partially moved out into the fresh air, now tasked with freeing up enough ground for a city, and company expansion. The process of town to city only lasted a decade or so, enough for me to become a teenager. However, while Saffron was flourishing, Constance was just trudging by as it always had been. We were culturally more close to Lavender, which was exhibited most clearly by the church we had in our town square. We didn't see a point in keeping up with the times, preferring to focus on the Bonds instead."
The Bonds in this case referred to an older belief that man did not need to create tools and further technology, since everything that needed to be achieved, could be achieved by symbiotically co-existing with pokemon.
"However, this meant that when the great storm hit, sixty years ago to the day, our village was small enough to get flattened in its entirety. Except for the church. Saffron, meanwhile, had simply lost a district. The broken bodies of zubat, pidgeotto and spearow littered the ground in Constance along with the eviscerated corpses of rattata and nidoran. Cut up by the winds, they said. Or, rather, nobody said. People who'd survived with their pokemon and families by hiding in the cellars didn't bother rebuilding, they moved away. Centuries of tradition forgotten, traded in for convenience. I was amongst them, I had a child on the way and no midwife had stayed to bring it to term."
"This great storm," Joey interjected, suspicious. "Where did it come from?"
The old lady shrugged whimsically. "Nobody knows. Some hikers told tales of great gusts of fire, lightning and ice above the dark clouds. Three titanic bird-like figures fighting over territory.
But… Pokemon capable of such power might as well have been gods, and I refuse to believe that beings of such power would have caused such wanton destruction. It was a freak weather phenomena, my grandson says, and I prefer to agree."
The youngster filed away the possibility that the storm had been caused by a battle between the three birds, Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos. He had noted upon arriving in this world that legendary pokemon were more myth than reality. Perhaps this would change soon. The human population was undergoing an explosion. This meant that more and more trainers ventured into the wild thus increasing the chances of glimpsing a legendary. At the same time, cameras were becoming more common, thus making it inevitable that soon, one of these legendary pokemon would be captured on tape, after which point their existence could not be denied anymore.
"However, not everyone left for Saffron. After all, not all buildings had been flattened. The church stood, and the priestess refused to go. She saw it as a challenge from a higher power to restore the village to its former glory. To rebuild it. She tried and failed to convince people to stay. There were jobs in Saffron, and newly built houses which could be bought with very little money."
"If this all happened sixty years ago…" Joey muttered. "Then the priestess is likely dead, no? Is she the person I'm bringing an offering to?"
Ellie nodded. "Yes, Maria Rogers, my mother. She stayed in the village for a decade, rebuilding houses, mending fences, praying. All her children were grown up, gone. There was nothing preventing her from following her divine task. We kept a room free here, in Saffron, for when she decided to join us. Bring the word to the people in Saffron, who also desperately need to hear it."
"She never made it," Joey guessed from the bitter tone the story had taken.
"She didn't. A fever. She died with her golduck at her bedside. All the chansey which back then were spread around villages to heal ailments and wandered the wilds in search of pains to cure, had been gathered to be distributed in the poke-centres of the region. We came to visit, as we often did, only to find her dead. She'd managed to rebuild ten houses, one for each year of her life after the catastrophe. Just that she'd never found anyone to live in them again. They remained empty. Except for the rattatas, the zubats and other assortments of wild pokemon."
"She sounds like an admirable woman," Joey complimented, actually impressed by the story. Did it matter if the priestess had died unaccomplished, if she had spent her life working towards her goals? Ten years of solitude indeed.
"A fool," Ellie spat, her wrinkled face pulled together by a grimace. "Fifty years to this day she died. I send a different trainer to her grave every year with the candles and the flowers. I can't bear to look at that wretched corpse of a village again and my battling days are over anyway."
Joey looked at her doubtfully, wondering if there ever had been battling days to speak of.
The old lady grinned at him with bright eyes and nodded towards the sleeping meowth. "He used to be a terror, until he grew old." Upon closer inspection the meowth had more grey hair than white, and seemed a bit thin. A sign of age apparently.
"Well, I'll be honoured to bring the offerings to your mother's grave," Joey said. "Just give me the directions and I'll see it done," he promised.
Ellie pierced him with her gaze at his proclamation, as if testing his resolve. Joey, for his part, didn't falter. There was no real resolve or higher stakes involved in this deal from what he could glean. He was just being paid to do something and since he wanted the money, he would do it. Of course it was nice that he was delivering flowers to a grave instead of cleaning out the muk from the sewers, but that was about it.
The old woman eventually nodded, seemingly pleased by what she'd seen and pulled out a large piece of folded brown paper which she unravelled to reveal a map of route 8. It was quite old, but maybe it had to be, as it still showed Constance, circled in red on the north side of the route. The route itself was several times as long as its symmetrical counterpart leading to Celadon, a winding path which bordered both north and south into a large forest which remained to this day mostly unexplored. Constance was in a way the first exit on the side of Saffron. One could reach it by just taking the first left after one exited the gate. They were supposed to be building some sort of underground tunnel system to connect the cities better for non-battlers, but it was still under construction. It seemed like Joey would have to go through the active construction site actually, to get to the marked path.
"It really is quite close. If I'm reading the dimensions correctly, then what is this? Five kilometres away from the outer edges of Saffron?" he asked.
"The city has gotten larger, but eventually they had to put up a wall, put a stop to it," Ellie said, hinting at the end of expansion which had stopped two decades ago. The endangerment of pokemon habitats had gotten too serious, the rangers and the trainers had become unable to deal with all the issues this caused. The league and the city governing body had decided that this was as good a point as any to stop and to be content with what one had. Joey wasn't really exposed to the real-estate market, considering he lived in the orphanage, but he had heard that the prices had been getting worse ever since. After all, there was nowhere to build and people from big cities were usually quite reluctant to move to smaller towns, such as silver town, which lay between Saffron and Lavender.
Any mobility usually happened from families who wanted to raise their children somewhere quieter, and thus moved out, freeing up space for someone new to move in.
"Maybe in today's climate there would have been some people interested in moving to Constance," Joey mused.
Ellie simply shrugged. "Who knows. In the end what's done is done." She stood up, relying on her cane to do so, and went into another room.
Joey looked down at his plate, noticing that he'd somehow eaten all the cookies. He grimaced. Ever since he'd started playing around with ghost-type energy he'd started needing less and less sustenance. The dough lay heavy in his stomach. But, at least it tasted good. While he waited for the mission giver to come back, he continued playing with the map, laying his compass in the requisite position to check the directions he would need to keep in mind as he went.
The mission seemed quite simple, fitting for someone with only two badges. It wasn't far enough to encounter any seriously dangerous pokemon like those that slumbered and fought amongst each other in the great forests of the region. The worst he'd encounter would be an ekans, or maybe a haunter. All the actually dangerous pokemon roaming those parts, such as alakazam, or arcanine, maybe a ninetails, weren't really known for being overly aggressive against random human children.
So, he would probably be fine, he concluded. It was exciting. He was finally about to leave and start exploring more of the region. Kanto wasn't big, perhaps taking up as much space as a smaller country like Switzerland did in his previous life, but the pokemon inhabiting it made the environment much more inaccessible. In a way, this world hadn't been fully explored yet, which meant that there was still some excitement in going off route.
Of course he wasn't allowed to do proper wilding yet, but after his seventh badge he would be qualified to do so, with a full team, all of them evolved. Constance was on the route, still, sort of, so it didn't count.
Ellie eventually came back with a wicker basket, one of those that looked handmade, she handed it over to Joey who had stood up to receive it. There was the usual assortment of some incense sticks, flowers, a ground of sake, a bottle of water and some nori rice crackers. All of it was quite self-explanatory and Joey nodded. "I'll be on my way then, it's not even mid-day yet so I can probably be back for dinner," he said.
"Do take it slow dearie, it's a beautiful walk of about two hours there and two hours back. You're not in any rush," Ellie said and accompanied him to the door. After a final goodbye, Joey was finally ready to go on his first mission.
-/-
Joey has gotten his range of leaving expanded again, so he can go out further. Still no inter-city travel, but he can hike around a bit. Red zones he can't enter, but there aren't that many around Saffron.
We are not starting a new arc before the next gym battle, which I'd call the job arc. Joey will be exploring the authentic pokemon adventurer vibe including the stereotypical pin up wall with requests. Exciting.
Battle with Surge and between Bruno and Lance has officially concluded over on patreon for the highest tier, so if you want to treat yourself, or support me, you can head on over to read up to ten chapters in advance. No pressure though, everything will be public eventually.
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
I think psychic makes more sense in this case
- Location
- spain
^_^
I wonder who could have taught them that?
<_< >_>
Certainly a mystery for the ages.
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
I guess we will never find out... Another one of life's great mysteries.
Glad someone got the joke
Ok. Maye. This looks interesting so far. Love the worldbuilding and how it's presented. Although I wish the SI used his future knowledge a little more like maybe teaching his friends about alternatives evolutions like Bellosom but i guess is still early and you are taking your time in making the characters.
Chapter 19: Hyms to the forgotten
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
Thank you to my new patrons: Mamick, Theo Q, THE ONE ABOVE ALL THE LIVING TRIBUNAL, blueberrybutcher, blaxgamer, A person, Shannon Gilding, jon smith, inos2711, Andres Mejia, Ville Valtonen, Kush Raval,, Arne, Michael S Mifsud, halestlemon, Dragondragon, Paul Gomer, Arkhad, K, Templar, It'sATap, Sulaiman, Benjamin Grey, Ariana, CrazedGamma1721, Shynatuk, Nicholas, Rageflare, JourneyMan_Mike, Southmonks
-/-
Having stepped out of the eastern gate, Joey breathed in the fresh air of the pine trees and enjoyed the wide panoramic view that he got of the route. Saffron lay on a little incline, which meant that he could see quite far.
There were a surprisingly high amount of trainers mingling everywhere, having spontaneous battles, or training their teams. Perhaps he could snag a match on his way back, combine everything into one.
But, for now he had a mission to get to, he ignored the suspicious looks of the two youngsters hanging around outside the gate and went on his merry way towards the barred off construction site of the underground tunnel. There were several workmen in hard-hats collaborating with a machop and a machoke to carry large steel beams into a uniformly cut hole in the ground. Two rangers looked at Joey briefly as he walked past the site, gawping rudely at all the assorted tools and blueprints laid out for all to see.
One of the rangers suddenly frowned and walked up to Joey, just as he was about to walk past the site and leave it behind. "Hey kid," the man started. "Youngsters aren't allowed this far out," the man informed him.
Already having expected a situation like this Joey whipped out his trainer ID faster than a groom his dick at a stag party. The ranger, about 24 years old by the looks of it, took the ID and quickly scanned the information, raising an eyebrow at the amount of badges earned.
Although, Joey was starting to experience a bit of a growth-spurt, so he didn't know why he in particular had been flagged. Kids only one year older than him were running around with fully-fledged trainer fledged licenses so he didn't quite know what attribute marked him out as a youngster. Maybe his blue shorts, his yellow t-shirt and his cap.
Was he being profiled?
"Are you the kid who beat Kong with a rattata?" the ranger suddenly asked, looking like he was close to cracking up as he handed Joey his ID back.
The boy shrugged. "I did beat Kong with a rattata, but I don't if any other kids have, so I'm unsure if I'm the one you specifically mean with that."
The ranger giggled, some laugh lines creasing his face. "Good one!" he said and clapped Joey on the shoulder. "Don't think a youngster with a rattata has ever beaten Kong, or ever will for that manner. They usually go for the pidgey's around here for a reason. Anyway, you can keep going if you want, but keep your pokenav ready in case of an emergency. We can be there in a jiffy. Where are you going specifically?"
"Going to Constance," Joey said. "Flower delivery for a grave."
"Well, there's a powerful golduck protecting the area from what I remember, just don't antagonise it or else we might not be able to save your butt in time." The ranger waved him off. "Remember to turn around if you hear any weird laughter coming from the forest. Just because Lavender is on the other side of the route doesn't mean we don't get ghosts nowhere else. Every town has a graveyard somewhere, you know."
Joey was already walking off, grimacing at the reminder that he was apparently walking into a forest with a sometimes randomly emerging laughter that could be categorised as weird. Honestly, didn't the people in the pokemon world have any knowledge of tropes? Joey already knew to run away from weird laughter in dark forests, mentioning them before he entered the area was just asking for trouble in advance. He waved the ranger goodbye nevertheless, as the man went back to his buddy to stare at the gigantic hole in the ground being excavated and filled with support beams. He rolled his eyes as more and more trees started surrounding him. The path to Constance was easy to find, but boy if it wasn't badly kept. Barely a trail really, bushes and trees transgressing on its sovereignty left and right.
All in all he wasn't really seeing anything more dangerous than a spearow here and there, although he could swear he also saw a flash of blue signifying an abra teleporting away. Maybe the curious psychic had been spying on the construction efforts.
Anyway, Joey entered the woods alone, with his team at his belt, still in their poke-balls.
Perhaps a bit of a weird choice considering that pokemon were usually by default necessary to protect the squishy humans from other pokemon.
But, well, normal rules didn't apply to Joey. He was a spurcel boi.
With his ghost-typing he could become intangible and shadow sneak away. By not releasing his pokemon he made himself the only possible target. This meant that if he dodged an incoming attack, he could choose into which position exactly he could release his pokemon. It was funny, that even despite carrying around a team of two at this point, he was still quite possibly the most powerful member of the trio that he'd created.
Walking through the forest, alone, with nothing but wild pokemon to bother him for the first time in a long while was quite enjoyable really. The quiet, the tranquillity of nature which often tricked humans into thinking that they were calm on the inside, whereas they were only mimicking their environment.
The green of the trees and the fresh smell of the earth. The absolute lack of fear he felt on this pleasantly sunny day which pierced through the foliage and let sunlight dance across his skin in a pattern as intricate as any ballet performance.
It reminded him of the hiking he'd done in his last life, and how those days had been mostly over after his rebirth. He was starting to look forward to his journey. The pokemon world offered many beautiful opportunities, but one of the things that it did not offer to those unfortunate citizens with no battle pokemon to call their own was the ability to wander the wilds and experience the sights that the world had to offer in solitude.
Another thing that the pokemon world was missing was some good music. It turned out that with the way culture was preoccupied with battling and had a much smaller human population, there were also less good beats. Shocking. Joey would have probably been willing to kill for his old playlist, a set of headphones and a joint right about now.
"Well, you can't have it all, can you," he muttered to himself as he saw a bellsprout hanging off a tree from its vines, looking at him curiously.
He wondered what grass or poison-type secretion he'd have to sniff to get a proper high around here. He hadn't really found any mentions of any sort of cannabis strain yet.
-/-
In a completely anticlimactic and lame turn of events, Joey managed to walk the entire way to Constance without being harassed by literally anything, not even some pollen flying in the air, for which it was actually the season. He didn't know if he'd wished for something to happen. He'd known it was unlikely that something would, after all he was extremely close to the city and he'd literally walked past two rangers.. But… Well, he'd grown up watching the pokemon anime where every episode had contained some shenanigans.
The forest opened in front of him, some broken down fences long since overgrown by grass came into view. Constance was a remnant of a past age, an age in which humans hadn't yet retreated and urbanised themselves into a small but densely populated series of cities.
A broken age. It was odd to consider that people had moved out of villages and into cities even in a world where pokemon existed and technically represented a bigger incentive to remain closely connected to nature.
Some tribes remained, apparently, but most people these days suffered the dreary daily existence of an urban environment, despite being born into a world of literal magic.
Kinda pathetic, really. In a world of pokemon, there was even less incentive to lose one's life to a television or a computer, but it was still developing in that direction. Sure, there was a strong counter-culture, and people who loved battling would probably never stop exploring. But still, it was a sad thing to see. Especially for Joey who knew where the road would end.
"Well, fuck em. Can only secure my own happiness, can't I?" he mused.
He was oddly happy, really. Even if the scene he found himself facing was incredibly depressing. The broken fences were a good prequel to the dilapidated houses, with crushed support beams and caved in roofs. Everything was a combination of wood and stone, but doubtlessly ruined. It was easy to see as he walked through the main road into the village where exactly the priestess had started rebuilding. There were ten houses surrounding the church which weren't broken, but just very much abandoned and overgrown with weeds and blackberry bushes.
He saw several pokemon peeking out of the houses, be it from the holes in the walls, or from the broken windows. Paras, zubat, rattata. Everything was present, the weaker species having apparently found ample places to nest in this old human settlement.
In a way Ellie's mother had succeeded. Someone had come to the settlement, used the houses she'd built, and the ones that had broken down. Just not in the way the woman had likely expected.
Having looked around the village, but also having navigated clearly towards the centre during his walk, Joey arrived in front of the church which dominated the middle of what appeared to be a simple enough square, as overgrown as it was now with vegetation.
Was that a sandshrew that he saw? Joey wondered. The little yellow pokemon saw him looking and scuttered off, straight into the ground by using dig.
Joey suddenly stepped back, feeling a premonition. He did so just in time to dodge a stream of water weakly impacting at his feet. He looked to the left, where it had originated. A golduck was staring at him suspiciously from a pond that seemed to have developed next to the church. The youngster internally thanked whatever deity had decided to let him retain his powers over distortion past his reincarnation. He was pretty sure that he was starting to develop a sort of ghostly sixth sense in regards to his surroundings.
Although, to be fair, it was a hot summer day and the water gun had barely had enough kinetic force to even reach him. He could have used it as refreshment. Although, with the pokeballs and pokenav on his person, it was probably better to avoid water at the moment.
He raised his hands when he saw the golduck's bill swell up with another water gun.
"Hey, hey, I come in peace, dude. Why don't we all just chillll!" he exclaimed, extremely non-suspiciously.
The golduck slowly exited the pond, revealing that it was a huge specimen. Most golduck were around 5 foot 7, if Joey remembered correctly, this one was closer to 6 foot 9. Towering almost twice the size of the youngster. However, it was also old, with flappy skin and an awkward gait.
"I came to bring the offerings for the priestess Maria, her daughter Ellie sent me," Joey exclaimed, holding up his basket with the flowers and the food, not particularly afraid of the approaching golduck, but also not particularly happy about a wild pokemon getting so close to him.
He barely ducked in time to avoid another water gun, a serious one this time. Mentioning Ellie's name didn't seem to have improved the situation, oddly enough.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't like her either," he complained loudly. This somehow managed to placate the pokemon, which refrained from shooting again.
"Golduck, duck, du," it complained loudly and while Joey wasn't an expert in golduckese he could get the general gist.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, tell me about it!" he exclaimed again. His mind quickly went through the possibilities of why this golduck didn't seem to like Ellie, before coming to the obvious conclusion. "What's the point of trying to make amends after someone has already passed away? That's just dodging the responsibility we have towards our loved ones while they still live."
He seemed to have said the correct thing, as the golduck finally relaxed a bit.
"Gol, gol, gol," it muttered, looking around forlornly, before shaking its head as if to awaken from a fever dream.
"I only took the job because of the money and because, well, even if the gesture is unwelcome, nobody can ever have enough flowers on their grave, right?" he asked into the air, getting a reluctant nod from the pokemon. "Anyway, can I just drop this off and then I'll be on my way?"
The golduck seemed to consider for a few moments, before eventually nodding its large blue head, and gesturing at the youngster to follow along.
"Beautiful place you got here," Joey complimented as he was led around the church. "Like a pokemon sanctuary, with all the different species and families."
It was beautiful. The sun tickled from high up in the sky and nature had made the houses which were more practical by design, into holistic works of art. It was very uncommon for a place like this to come by naturally. Generally different pokemon segregated their burrows. The only time when such a co-existence occurred was when a more powerful pokemon was there to protect the congregation, or when a pre-existing structure made a place a desirable to live.
Looking at the doubtlessly old golduck and the beautiful houses, both criteria were fulfilled.
For the moment, Joey refrained from asking if there was any young and wilful pokemon that wanted to go on a journey. It had the risk of escalating the situation that he'd just managed to calm down.
Golduck finished leading Joey around the church and into its overgrown backyard, where there would usually be a small graveyard.
There was indeed, actually, it's just that all the other tombstones were completely overgrown, basically becoming invisible. There was only one stone jutting out of the earth that was still recognizable. That of mother Maria. Looking at the well-maintained grave Joey realised how utterly worthless Ellie's gesture was. The grave was completely overgrown, but not with weeds, but with flowers. Roses, dahlias, petunias, lilies, gladioles. An utter cacophony of colour surrounded Mother Maria's resting place. It wasn't even sad anymore, just beautiful.
He looked down at his basket, with its, comparably boring flowers, one rice-cake and a bit of sake. He sighed.
"A job's a job," he muttered and quietly removed the items, laying them down on the grave and pouring the sake on the grave-stone. He put his hands together and his head down in a short prayer. "Lord Arceus almighty that art thou in heaven, blessed be thy beautiful creation and the balance permeating all things." The world stilled at Joey's words, but he continued, unheeded. "Not mourning the death of mother Maria, your devout servant, we rather celebrate her re-entrance back into the ecosystem of your creation. May she find solace and peace in her next life, along with love to fill her heart." Joey opened his eyes and unclasped his hands. A tug pulled at his soul, and a shiver went through his body. It was like a tiny pebble had been dropped into the lake of creation. A distorted existence pinged at his senses, from inside the dilapidated church.
It was obvious that Maria had been more concerned with creating new homes than upkeeping the holy temple.
But, what was the use of a church if god was not dead? Joey wondered. Arceus was alive and well, floating around somewhere out there doing whatever magical goats pokemon did in their free time. The legendary likely didn't care too much about human worship, considering that the entirety of the pokemon world was praying to it simply by existing as its creation.
"Mind if I check out that church?" Joey asked the golduck standing there, its blue colour contrasting wonderfully with the green of their surroundings.
The pokemon looked at him suspiciously for a few seconds, before shrugging. It was an odd gesture for such a large beast, but Joey accepted the move for what it was.
He walked out of the little graveyard and around the church, looking at the wooden boards that made up its walls and the plywood used to board up what looked like holes. He'd been told that the church had remained untouched by the storms back then, so he could only assume that the other holes had been caused by some sort of other damage.
The doors were large, as was proper for a building that wished to receive many people at a time. Joey looked up, until the tower of the church, with what looked like a bronze bell still hung on top.
If his assumption was correct he should probably knock. However, he never had been one for niceties. Becoming a child and being forgiven for so much more than he had been as an adult hadn't improved the situation either.
He pushed open the doors. They swung inwards with a menacing creak. He was surprised they still worked at all to be honest.
What opened to his eyes wasn't completely unexpected, but stunning in its similarity to the christian churches of his last life. There were none in Saffron, so this was the first time he was getting a glimpse of an Arceus church, or, as people here in this world liked to call the pokemon, god.
A rickety church with four rows of wooden pews on both sides. There were old and dusty books scattered amongst the seats, likely filled with some sort of hymns. There wasn't really anything particularly beautiful about the place. It was just old and neglected and sad. However, beyond the creaking high arches and the religious memorabilia there was one thing that was beautiful enough for Joey to take note.
The stained glass above the pew from which the pastor had once preached. The sun was right behind it, coloured light rays depicting the scene of the glass once again onto the wooden floor of the church. The scene? Creation. A ball of light extending its tendrils and bringing humans and pokemon into the world. The art was minimalistic and perhaps even a bit amateurish, but the message was clear.
This world had been created by a higher being and this higher being was to be worshipped out of gratitude, not because one wanted something from it.
Without having truly noticed it Joey had walked up all the way to the pew so as to admire the glass more clearly. However, even the greatest work of art couldn't hold his attention for longer than a few minutes, and this stained glass, while nice, certainly didn't count in that category.
He turned around, looking out at the church from a now different perspective, and froze in his tracks.
In the middle of the benches, floating above the long-since destroyed red-carpet leading to the pew, was a floating blue-green shape with purple tipped tendrils functioning as hair and a pearl necklace around its neck. It was a misdreavus. A pokemon that through its ghost-typing definitely belonged into the "Top 10 pokemon I don't want to meet in a dark alley-way category." The list also included entries such as haunter, sycther, gengar, weezing, arbok, golbat, gastly.
Overall however, Joey wasn't too afraid. The lolled out large tongue of the misdreavus made it look a bit like a growlithe, which was cute.
The pokemon simply levitated in place, looking at Joey confusedly. "Yo, haven't seen a human in a while?" the boy eventually asked when he realised that the situation was not escalating.
The misdreavus nodded slowly, while the youngster asked himself a very pertinent question.
Legends said that ghost-pokemon were the result of some people or pokemon being unable to disconnect from the living world after their death. Either due to still having left one task unfulfilled, or dying with regrets, or angry.
Joey for his part didn't necessarily believe this theory, considering he himself was quite experienced with distortion and knew that some beings were just created through it, passing onto the material world when there were strong enough emotions present to draw them in. After all, if ghosts were the result of unfulfilled wishes, then ghosts would likely also have the ability to dissolve and pass onto the next life, if they saw their wishes fulfilled.
However, just because the misdreavus curiously looking at Joey was not literally mother Maria... The woman's devotion, her motivation for rebuilding the village, and her likely disappointment when no one returned to live here and her dissatisfaction with her death. Well, it was definitely a situation in which a ghost could have been spawned. Quite frankly, other than that particular death, Constance looked like a paradise for all sorts of pokemon, which was even less likely to have spawned ghosts.
Unsure of what he wanted to do, similarly to the misdreavus, which was just levitating there, looking at Joey, the youngster decided to extend a peace gesture. Misdreavus were tier 2 pokemon because of their ghost typing. He couldn't really catch the thing, and it didn't seem to have a personality too conductive to being trained. It looked sort of stupid, really. But that didn't mean Joey couldn't be friendly. He turned his attention inwards for a second, gripping there the distortion sitting at the centre of the being and projecting it outwards.
In essence, he became a ghost. His flesh grew pale and translucent, he cast a dark shadow and his eyes glowed a friendly blood-red.
"Mis, mis, dreavus!" the pokemon exclaimed and flew closer to Joey, extending one of its hair like tendrils which it used to wiggle at the boy.
Joey laughed and jumped up, having lost enough weight from the transformation that it looked like he was jumping on the moon.
He and the ghost-type chased each other like that for a few minutes, before Joey decided that he didn't really have infinite time here. The walk had been long enough, and he still wanted to get back to Saffron in time to get a few battles in. The money wasn't going to earn itself. He let go of the distortion, which he had been losing his grip on anyway, and came to a halt at the doors of the church one last time, the misdreavus flying through him from the sudden stop. A slightly sweet smell of flowers and a light breeze whiffed past Joey who put his hand on the door handle.
"Misdreavus!" the pokemon exclaimed, suddenly flying up to Joey and hovering in front of his face. It's tongue was still lolling out and it looked like a kicked puppy. It was obvious that it didn't want Joey to leave.
"Sorry buddy, I have to go. Responsibilities calling," Joey said apologetically. "But it was fun playing ghost-catch," he chuckled, rubbing under his nose.
"Mis?" the pokemon said questioningly.
Joey tilted his head. Was he planning on coming back here? Not really, he'd come for the money, and different jobs would bring him to different places. Unless…
The reason he hadn't taught any of his team-members sleep-talk was because it wouldn't necessarily be the most useful move against Surge, but also because there was no one for him to practise with. After all, if rattata wanted to practise sleep talk, then someone would have to first put him to sleep.
Although… Would he be able to use the move while sleeping normally, at night? Food for thought, Joey considered. However, that was around the time where he himself also wanted to sleep, so it was a bit of a sub-optimal
"Do you maybe know hypnosis?" Joey thus asked the misdreavus.
As an answer to that question the ghost promptly nodded, opened its eyes wide, made them glow and blasted Joey face to face with a large dose of the sleep-inducing psychic move the species was prone to learning sometimes..
As the boy collapsed in on himself he realised that the way he'd phrased that question in regards to his positioning had probably been the dumbest thing he'd done all year.
-/-
A splash of water hit Joey's sleeping face and the boy jumped up from where he'd been laying on the steps in front of the church. He shot up, a hand going up to cradle his head where a migraine was stabbing at his brain in progressively more violent waves of percussion.
"Son of a bitch, tits, motherfucker, pineapple cunt!" he rapidly shot from his mouth as he rolled on the floor in an attempt to alleviate the pain.
For all the method of healing was primitive, it seemed to work, oddly enough. The headache lessened with every roll and soon enough he was laying there on his back, panting, but not in pain.
"Last time I'm asking a ghost if they know hypnosis," he muttered to himself as he righted himself up to look at the position of the sun. It didn't seem like a lot of time had passed so that was good at least. He filed away the information that hypnosis could cause a headache as he looked around, finding a deadpanning golduck looking at him as if he were an idiot, which, to be fair, he was, and a misdreavus spinning on its own axis apologetically.
The youngster stood up and dusted himself off. "Well, what's done is done, but I still need to get home," he said. At his words the golduck put up both arms to point him towards the road that he'd used to enter Constance. It seemed like it wanted him to leave. That ticked Joey off, for some reason. Sure this seemed to be mostly a pokemon sanctuary, ergo, no humans allowed or whatever. But… Joey hadn't done anything wrong, he was actually kind of a nice guy, really.
Looking at the misdreavus a silly idea entered his mind. The ghost seemed lonely, and it knew hypnosis. He'd been planning on coming back at some point anyway, not just because of the move. But with the move… His visits could be more regular. "Would you perhaps be interested in helping a friend of mine practice sleep talk in a few months? You'd just need to put them to sleep, then they'd do the rest themselves until they wake up again. I could bring berries," he suggested while golduck quacked in the background.
Misdreavus stopped spinning around itself and seemed to consider the suggestion. According to 'Ghosts and what you need to know to not get horribly murdered by one,' by Agaric Treewood, misdreavus didn't actually need to eat, but enjoyed the act under specific circumstances. The offer was thus a bit of a shot in the dark, but it wasn't like Joey had anything else he could offer a ghost. It didn't need blankets since it never got cold, it didn't need clothes since it couldn't wear them and it didn't need potion's since they didn't work on it.
After a period of consideration that was quite frankly, way too long for such a simple question. Perhaps a by-product of being a ghost with what was likely not a great sense of passing time, misdreavus finally nodded.
"Mis," it said once, very decisively.
"Golduck, duck, gold?!?" the water-typed pokemon chimed in while pointing at itself with a stupefied expression.
"Is there someone I forgot to ask?" Joey wondered aloud, before shaking his head after some consideration. "Nah," he said, letting the word drag its way out of its mouth for maximal emotional damage.
"Golduck!" the big pokemon quacked, affronted.
"Them's the rules," Joey said with a sigh as he stood up, patted himself down, avoided a water-gun that would have otherwise hit his face and started walking towards the exit of the village. "See ya'll some other time!" he shouted.
Different sorts of pokemon poked their heads out of their domiciles to watch him leave, but none approached him as he did so. He retreated back into his thoughts.
He realised that the hypnosis situation could have gone very badly. Ignoring the fact what could have been done to him had any of the pokemon there been malicious, there was also the simple fact that if the hypnosis had lasted until late in the afternoon, it might have become inadvisable to walk back in the dark, forcing him to sleep over.
It was good that that hadn't happened. He hated sleep-overs. If you had male friends they'd try to fart in your face at least once during the night, whereas if you'd tricked your fake-gay-ass into a group of female friends, they'd inevitably try to force you to shove something up your ass.
Horrible.
He considered as he walked if there was any training exercise he could have his pokemon do as they approached Saffron, but sighed at the stupidity of such a move. A long walk in two directions along with a forced nap, the day was slipping through his hands. Sure, rattata could train dig while Joey walked and metapod could train swinging from trees. But, for all that Joey was having a nice time, he was still in what was essentially enemy territory. His pokemon being tired or not might very well be the deciding factor between winning or losing a fight. Similarly, them being out, thus losing him one second in recall time in case he needed to shadow-sneak away could be the deciding factor between life and death.
It had been twelve years since Joey had worked any type of job. Twelve years of bliss, reading, relaxing, meditating, exploring his ghost-powers. Twelve years, one job, a relaxed delivery which required a few
hours of working. That's all it took for him to get sick of working just as much as he'd been upon his untimely demise. Some things truly were forever, and it wasn't diamonds.
"You better win your battle, dragon-boy," Joey muttered to himself as he walked.
It was doubly frustrating to not be training considering how close metapod was to mastering the reaction she had to the toxic orb and necessitating Joey to call Koga.
"Soon, soon," he muttered to himself
-/-
Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun, was this slife of life? Maybe. Joey deserves it, he's been working hard. Shit boutta go down
-/-
Having stepped out of the eastern gate, Joey breathed in the fresh air of the pine trees and enjoyed the wide panoramic view that he got of the route. Saffron lay on a little incline, which meant that he could see quite far.
There were a surprisingly high amount of trainers mingling everywhere, having spontaneous battles, or training their teams. Perhaps he could snag a match on his way back, combine everything into one.
But, for now he had a mission to get to, he ignored the suspicious looks of the two youngsters hanging around outside the gate and went on his merry way towards the barred off construction site of the underground tunnel. There were several workmen in hard-hats collaborating with a machop and a machoke to carry large steel beams into a uniformly cut hole in the ground. Two rangers looked at Joey briefly as he walked past the site, gawping rudely at all the assorted tools and blueprints laid out for all to see.
One of the rangers suddenly frowned and walked up to Joey, just as he was about to walk past the site and leave it behind. "Hey kid," the man started. "Youngsters aren't allowed this far out," the man informed him.
Already having expected a situation like this Joey whipped out his trainer ID faster than a groom his dick at a stag party. The ranger, about 24 years old by the looks of it, took the ID and quickly scanned the information, raising an eyebrow at the amount of badges earned.
Although, Joey was starting to experience a bit of a growth-spurt, so he didn't know why he in particular had been flagged. Kids only one year older than him were running around with fully-fledged trainer fledged licenses so he didn't quite know what attribute marked him out as a youngster. Maybe his blue shorts, his yellow t-shirt and his cap.
Was he being profiled?
"Are you the kid who beat Kong with a rattata?" the ranger suddenly asked, looking like he was close to cracking up as he handed Joey his ID back.
The boy shrugged. "I did beat Kong with a rattata, but I don't if any other kids have, so I'm unsure if I'm the one you specifically mean with that."
The ranger giggled, some laugh lines creasing his face. "Good one!" he said and clapped Joey on the shoulder. "Don't think a youngster with a rattata has ever beaten Kong, or ever will for that manner. They usually go for the pidgey's around here for a reason. Anyway, you can keep going if you want, but keep your pokenav ready in case of an emergency. We can be there in a jiffy. Where are you going specifically?"
"Going to Constance," Joey said. "Flower delivery for a grave."
"Well, there's a powerful golduck protecting the area from what I remember, just don't antagonise it or else we might not be able to save your butt in time." The ranger waved him off. "Remember to turn around if you hear any weird laughter coming from the forest. Just because Lavender is on the other side of the route doesn't mean we don't get ghosts nowhere else. Every town has a graveyard somewhere, you know."
Joey was already walking off, grimacing at the reminder that he was apparently walking into a forest with a sometimes randomly emerging laughter that could be categorised as weird. Honestly, didn't the people in the pokemon world have any knowledge of tropes? Joey already knew to run away from weird laughter in dark forests, mentioning them before he entered the area was just asking for trouble in advance. He waved the ranger goodbye nevertheless, as the man went back to his buddy to stare at the gigantic hole in the ground being excavated and filled with support beams. He rolled his eyes as more and more trees started surrounding him. The path to Constance was easy to find, but boy if it wasn't badly kept. Barely a trail really, bushes and trees transgressing on its sovereignty left and right.
All in all he wasn't really seeing anything more dangerous than a spearow here and there, although he could swear he also saw a flash of blue signifying an abra teleporting away. Maybe the curious psychic had been spying on the construction efforts.
Anyway, Joey entered the woods alone, with his team at his belt, still in their poke-balls.
Perhaps a bit of a weird choice considering that pokemon were usually by default necessary to protect the squishy humans from other pokemon.
But, well, normal rules didn't apply to Joey. He was a spurcel boi.
With his ghost-typing he could become intangible and shadow sneak away. By not releasing his pokemon he made himself the only possible target. This meant that if he dodged an incoming attack, he could choose into which position exactly he could release his pokemon. It was funny, that even despite carrying around a team of two at this point, he was still quite possibly the most powerful member of the trio that he'd created.
Walking through the forest, alone, with nothing but wild pokemon to bother him for the first time in a long while was quite enjoyable really. The quiet, the tranquillity of nature which often tricked humans into thinking that they were calm on the inside, whereas they were only mimicking their environment.
The green of the trees and the fresh smell of the earth. The absolute lack of fear he felt on this pleasantly sunny day which pierced through the foliage and let sunlight dance across his skin in a pattern as intricate as any ballet performance.
It reminded him of the hiking he'd done in his last life, and how those days had been mostly over after his rebirth. He was starting to look forward to his journey. The pokemon world offered many beautiful opportunities, but one of the things that it did not offer to those unfortunate citizens with no battle pokemon to call their own was the ability to wander the wilds and experience the sights that the world had to offer in solitude.
Another thing that the pokemon world was missing was some good music. It turned out that with the way culture was preoccupied with battling and had a much smaller human population, there were also less good beats. Shocking. Joey would have probably been willing to kill for his old playlist, a set of headphones and a joint right about now.
"Well, you can't have it all, can you," he muttered to himself as he saw a bellsprout hanging off a tree from its vines, looking at him curiously.
He wondered what grass or poison-type secretion he'd have to sniff to get a proper high around here. He hadn't really found any mentions of any sort of cannabis strain yet.
-/-
In a completely anticlimactic and lame turn of events, Joey managed to walk the entire way to Constance without being harassed by literally anything, not even some pollen flying in the air, for which it was actually the season. He didn't know if he'd wished for something to happen. He'd known it was unlikely that something would, after all he was extremely close to the city and he'd literally walked past two rangers.. But… Well, he'd grown up watching the pokemon anime where every episode had contained some shenanigans.
The forest opened in front of him, some broken down fences long since overgrown by grass came into view. Constance was a remnant of a past age, an age in which humans hadn't yet retreated and urbanised themselves into a small but densely populated series of cities.
A broken age. It was odd to consider that people had moved out of villages and into cities even in a world where pokemon existed and technically represented a bigger incentive to remain closely connected to nature.
Some tribes remained, apparently, but most people these days suffered the dreary daily existence of an urban environment, despite being born into a world of literal magic.
Kinda pathetic, really. In a world of pokemon, there was even less incentive to lose one's life to a television or a computer, but it was still developing in that direction. Sure, there was a strong counter-culture, and people who loved battling would probably never stop exploring. But still, it was a sad thing to see. Especially for Joey who knew where the road would end.
"Well, fuck em. Can only secure my own happiness, can't I?" he mused.
He was oddly happy, really. Even if the scene he found himself facing was incredibly depressing. The broken fences were a good prequel to the dilapidated houses, with crushed support beams and caved in roofs. Everything was a combination of wood and stone, but doubtlessly ruined. It was easy to see as he walked through the main road into the village where exactly the priestess had started rebuilding. There were ten houses surrounding the church which weren't broken, but just very much abandoned and overgrown with weeds and blackberry bushes.
He saw several pokemon peeking out of the houses, be it from the holes in the walls, or from the broken windows. Paras, zubat, rattata. Everything was present, the weaker species having apparently found ample places to nest in this old human settlement.
In a way Ellie's mother had succeeded. Someone had come to the settlement, used the houses she'd built, and the ones that had broken down. Just not in the way the woman had likely expected.
Having looked around the village, but also having navigated clearly towards the centre during his walk, Joey arrived in front of the church which dominated the middle of what appeared to be a simple enough square, as overgrown as it was now with vegetation.
Was that a sandshrew that he saw? Joey wondered. The little yellow pokemon saw him looking and scuttered off, straight into the ground by using dig.
Joey suddenly stepped back, feeling a premonition. He did so just in time to dodge a stream of water weakly impacting at his feet. He looked to the left, where it had originated. A golduck was staring at him suspiciously from a pond that seemed to have developed next to the church. The youngster internally thanked whatever deity had decided to let him retain his powers over distortion past his reincarnation. He was pretty sure that he was starting to develop a sort of ghostly sixth sense in regards to his surroundings.
Although, to be fair, it was a hot summer day and the water gun had barely had enough kinetic force to even reach him. He could have used it as refreshment. Although, with the pokeballs and pokenav on his person, it was probably better to avoid water at the moment.
He raised his hands when he saw the golduck's bill swell up with another water gun.
"Hey, hey, I come in peace, dude. Why don't we all just chillll!" he exclaimed, extremely non-suspiciously.
The golduck slowly exited the pond, revealing that it was a huge specimen. Most golduck were around 5 foot 7, if Joey remembered correctly, this one was closer to 6 foot 9. Towering almost twice the size of the youngster. However, it was also old, with flappy skin and an awkward gait.
"I came to bring the offerings for the priestess Maria, her daughter Ellie sent me," Joey exclaimed, holding up his basket with the flowers and the food, not particularly afraid of the approaching golduck, but also not particularly happy about a wild pokemon getting so close to him.
He barely ducked in time to avoid another water gun, a serious one this time. Mentioning Ellie's name didn't seem to have improved the situation, oddly enough.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't like her either," he complained loudly. This somehow managed to placate the pokemon, which refrained from shooting again.
"Golduck, duck, du," it complained loudly and while Joey wasn't an expert in golduckese he could get the general gist.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, tell me about it!" he exclaimed again. His mind quickly went through the possibilities of why this golduck didn't seem to like Ellie, before coming to the obvious conclusion. "What's the point of trying to make amends after someone has already passed away? That's just dodging the responsibility we have towards our loved ones while they still live."
He seemed to have said the correct thing, as the golduck finally relaxed a bit.
"Gol, gol, gol," it muttered, looking around forlornly, before shaking its head as if to awaken from a fever dream.
"I only took the job because of the money and because, well, even if the gesture is unwelcome, nobody can ever have enough flowers on their grave, right?" he asked into the air, getting a reluctant nod from the pokemon. "Anyway, can I just drop this off and then I'll be on my way?"
The golduck seemed to consider for a few moments, before eventually nodding its large blue head, and gesturing at the youngster to follow along.
"Beautiful place you got here," Joey complimented as he was led around the church. "Like a pokemon sanctuary, with all the different species and families."
It was beautiful. The sun tickled from high up in the sky and nature had made the houses which were more practical by design, into holistic works of art. It was very uncommon for a place like this to come by naturally. Generally different pokemon segregated their burrows. The only time when such a co-existence occurred was when a more powerful pokemon was there to protect the congregation, or when a pre-existing structure made a place a desirable to live.
Looking at the doubtlessly old golduck and the beautiful houses, both criteria were fulfilled.
For the moment, Joey refrained from asking if there was any young and wilful pokemon that wanted to go on a journey. It had the risk of escalating the situation that he'd just managed to calm down.
Golduck finished leading Joey around the church and into its overgrown backyard, where there would usually be a small graveyard.
There was indeed, actually, it's just that all the other tombstones were completely overgrown, basically becoming invisible. There was only one stone jutting out of the earth that was still recognizable. That of mother Maria. Looking at the well-maintained grave Joey realised how utterly worthless Ellie's gesture was. The grave was completely overgrown, but not with weeds, but with flowers. Roses, dahlias, petunias, lilies, gladioles. An utter cacophony of colour surrounded Mother Maria's resting place. It wasn't even sad anymore, just beautiful.
He looked down at his basket, with its, comparably boring flowers, one rice-cake and a bit of sake. He sighed.
"A job's a job," he muttered and quietly removed the items, laying them down on the grave and pouring the sake on the grave-stone. He put his hands together and his head down in a short prayer. "Lord Arceus almighty that art thou in heaven, blessed be thy beautiful creation and the balance permeating all things." The world stilled at Joey's words, but he continued, unheeded. "Not mourning the death of mother Maria, your devout servant, we rather celebrate her re-entrance back into the ecosystem of your creation. May she find solace and peace in her next life, along with love to fill her heart." Joey opened his eyes and unclasped his hands. A tug pulled at his soul, and a shiver went through his body. It was like a tiny pebble had been dropped into the lake of creation. A distorted existence pinged at his senses, from inside the dilapidated church.
It was obvious that Maria had been more concerned with creating new homes than upkeeping the holy temple.
But, what was the use of a church if god was not dead? Joey wondered. Arceus was alive and well, floating around somewhere out there doing whatever magical goats pokemon did in their free time. The legendary likely didn't care too much about human worship, considering that the entirety of the pokemon world was praying to it simply by existing as its creation.
"Mind if I check out that church?" Joey asked the golduck standing there, its blue colour contrasting wonderfully with the green of their surroundings.
The pokemon looked at him suspiciously for a few seconds, before shrugging. It was an odd gesture for such a large beast, but Joey accepted the move for what it was.
He walked out of the little graveyard and around the church, looking at the wooden boards that made up its walls and the plywood used to board up what looked like holes. He'd been told that the church had remained untouched by the storms back then, so he could only assume that the other holes had been caused by some sort of other damage.
The doors were large, as was proper for a building that wished to receive many people at a time. Joey looked up, until the tower of the church, with what looked like a bronze bell still hung on top.
If his assumption was correct he should probably knock. However, he never had been one for niceties. Becoming a child and being forgiven for so much more than he had been as an adult hadn't improved the situation either.
He pushed open the doors. They swung inwards with a menacing creak. He was surprised they still worked at all to be honest.
What opened to his eyes wasn't completely unexpected, but stunning in its similarity to the christian churches of his last life. There were none in Saffron, so this was the first time he was getting a glimpse of an Arceus church, or, as people here in this world liked to call the pokemon, god.
A rickety church with four rows of wooden pews on both sides. There were old and dusty books scattered amongst the seats, likely filled with some sort of hymns. There wasn't really anything particularly beautiful about the place. It was just old and neglected and sad. However, beyond the creaking high arches and the religious memorabilia there was one thing that was beautiful enough for Joey to take note.
The stained glass above the pew from which the pastor had once preached. The sun was right behind it, coloured light rays depicting the scene of the glass once again onto the wooden floor of the church. The scene? Creation. A ball of light extending its tendrils and bringing humans and pokemon into the world. The art was minimalistic and perhaps even a bit amateurish, but the message was clear.
This world had been created by a higher being and this higher being was to be worshipped out of gratitude, not because one wanted something from it.
Without having truly noticed it Joey had walked up all the way to the pew so as to admire the glass more clearly. However, even the greatest work of art couldn't hold his attention for longer than a few minutes, and this stained glass, while nice, certainly didn't count in that category.
He turned around, looking out at the church from a now different perspective, and froze in his tracks.
In the middle of the benches, floating above the long-since destroyed red-carpet leading to the pew, was a floating blue-green shape with purple tipped tendrils functioning as hair and a pearl necklace around its neck. It was a misdreavus. A pokemon that through its ghost-typing definitely belonged into the "Top 10 pokemon I don't want to meet in a dark alley-way category." The list also included entries such as haunter, sycther, gengar, weezing, arbok, golbat, gastly.
Overall however, Joey wasn't too afraid. The lolled out large tongue of the misdreavus made it look a bit like a growlithe, which was cute.
The pokemon simply levitated in place, looking at Joey confusedly. "Yo, haven't seen a human in a while?" the boy eventually asked when he realised that the situation was not escalating.
The misdreavus nodded slowly, while the youngster asked himself a very pertinent question.
Legends said that ghost-pokemon were the result of some people or pokemon being unable to disconnect from the living world after their death. Either due to still having left one task unfulfilled, or dying with regrets, or angry.
Joey for his part didn't necessarily believe this theory, considering he himself was quite experienced with distortion and knew that some beings were just created through it, passing onto the material world when there were strong enough emotions present to draw them in. After all, if ghosts were the result of unfulfilled wishes, then ghosts would likely also have the ability to dissolve and pass onto the next life, if they saw their wishes fulfilled.
However, just because the misdreavus curiously looking at Joey was not literally mother Maria... The woman's devotion, her motivation for rebuilding the village, and her likely disappointment when no one returned to live here and her dissatisfaction with her death. Well, it was definitely a situation in which a ghost could have been spawned. Quite frankly, other than that particular death, Constance looked like a paradise for all sorts of pokemon, which was even less likely to have spawned ghosts.
Unsure of what he wanted to do, similarly to the misdreavus, which was just levitating there, looking at Joey, the youngster decided to extend a peace gesture. Misdreavus were tier 2 pokemon because of their ghost typing. He couldn't really catch the thing, and it didn't seem to have a personality too conductive to being trained. It looked sort of stupid, really. But that didn't mean Joey couldn't be friendly. He turned his attention inwards for a second, gripping there the distortion sitting at the centre of the being and projecting it outwards.
In essence, he became a ghost. His flesh grew pale and translucent, he cast a dark shadow and his eyes glowed a friendly blood-red.
"Mis, mis, dreavus!" the pokemon exclaimed and flew closer to Joey, extending one of its hair like tendrils which it used to wiggle at the boy.
Joey laughed and jumped up, having lost enough weight from the transformation that it looked like he was jumping on the moon.
He and the ghost-type chased each other like that for a few minutes, before Joey decided that he didn't really have infinite time here. The walk had been long enough, and he still wanted to get back to Saffron in time to get a few battles in. The money wasn't going to earn itself. He let go of the distortion, which he had been losing his grip on anyway, and came to a halt at the doors of the church one last time, the misdreavus flying through him from the sudden stop. A slightly sweet smell of flowers and a light breeze whiffed past Joey who put his hand on the door handle.
"Misdreavus!" the pokemon exclaimed, suddenly flying up to Joey and hovering in front of his face. It's tongue was still lolling out and it looked like a kicked puppy. It was obvious that it didn't want Joey to leave.
"Sorry buddy, I have to go. Responsibilities calling," Joey said apologetically. "But it was fun playing ghost-catch," he chuckled, rubbing under his nose.
"Mis?" the pokemon said questioningly.
Joey tilted his head. Was he planning on coming back here? Not really, he'd come for the money, and different jobs would bring him to different places. Unless…
The reason he hadn't taught any of his team-members sleep-talk was because it wouldn't necessarily be the most useful move against Surge, but also because there was no one for him to practise with. After all, if rattata wanted to practise sleep talk, then someone would have to first put him to sleep.
Although… Would he be able to use the move while sleeping normally, at night? Food for thought, Joey considered. However, that was around the time where he himself also wanted to sleep, so it was a bit of a sub-optimal
"Do you maybe know hypnosis?" Joey thus asked the misdreavus.
As an answer to that question the ghost promptly nodded, opened its eyes wide, made them glow and blasted Joey face to face with a large dose of the sleep-inducing psychic move the species was prone to learning sometimes..
As the boy collapsed in on himself he realised that the way he'd phrased that question in regards to his positioning had probably been the dumbest thing he'd done all year.
-/-
A splash of water hit Joey's sleeping face and the boy jumped up from where he'd been laying on the steps in front of the church. He shot up, a hand going up to cradle his head where a migraine was stabbing at his brain in progressively more violent waves of percussion.
"Son of a bitch, tits, motherfucker, pineapple cunt!" he rapidly shot from his mouth as he rolled on the floor in an attempt to alleviate the pain.
For all the method of healing was primitive, it seemed to work, oddly enough. The headache lessened with every roll and soon enough he was laying there on his back, panting, but not in pain.
"Last time I'm asking a ghost if they know hypnosis," he muttered to himself as he righted himself up to look at the position of the sun. It didn't seem like a lot of time had passed so that was good at least. He filed away the information that hypnosis could cause a headache as he looked around, finding a deadpanning golduck looking at him as if he were an idiot, which, to be fair, he was, and a misdreavus spinning on its own axis apologetically.
The youngster stood up and dusted himself off. "Well, what's done is done, but I still need to get home," he said. At his words the golduck put up both arms to point him towards the road that he'd used to enter Constance. It seemed like it wanted him to leave. That ticked Joey off, for some reason. Sure this seemed to be mostly a pokemon sanctuary, ergo, no humans allowed or whatever. But… Joey hadn't done anything wrong, he was actually kind of a nice guy, really.
Looking at the misdreavus a silly idea entered his mind. The ghost seemed lonely, and it knew hypnosis. He'd been planning on coming back at some point anyway, not just because of the move. But with the move… His visits could be more regular. "Would you perhaps be interested in helping a friend of mine practice sleep talk in a few months? You'd just need to put them to sleep, then they'd do the rest themselves until they wake up again. I could bring berries," he suggested while golduck quacked in the background.
Misdreavus stopped spinning around itself and seemed to consider the suggestion. According to 'Ghosts and what you need to know to not get horribly murdered by one,' by Agaric Treewood, misdreavus didn't actually need to eat, but enjoyed the act under specific circumstances. The offer was thus a bit of a shot in the dark, but it wasn't like Joey had anything else he could offer a ghost. It didn't need blankets since it never got cold, it didn't need clothes since it couldn't wear them and it didn't need potion's since they didn't work on it.
After a period of consideration that was quite frankly, way too long for such a simple question. Perhaps a by-product of being a ghost with what was likely not a great sense of passing time, misdreavus finally nodded.
"Mis," it said once, very decisively.
"Golduck, duck, gold?!?" the water-typed pokemon chimed in while pointing at itself with a stupefied expression.
"Is there someone I forgot to ask?" Joey wondered aloud, before shaking his head after some consideration. "Nah," he said, letting the word drag its way out of its mouth for maximal emotional damage.
"Golduck!" the big pokemon quacked, affronted.
"Them's the rules," Joey said with a sigh as he stood up, patted himself down, avoided a water-gun that would have otherwise hit his face and started walking towards the exit of the village. "See ya'll some other time!" he shouted.
Different sorts of pokemon poked their heads out of their domiciles to watch him leave, but none approached him as he did so. He retreated back into his thoughts.
He realised that the hypnosis situation could have gone very badly. Ignoring the fact what could have been done to him had any of the pokemon there been malicious, there was also the simple fact that if the hypnosis had lasted until late in the afternoon, it might have become inadvisable to walk back in the dark, forcing him to sleep over.
It was good that that hadn't happened. He hated sleep-overs. If you had male friends they'd try to fart in your face at least once during the night, whereas if you'd tricked your fake-gay-ass into a group of female friends, they'd inevitably try to force you to shove something up your ass.
Horrible.
He considered as he walked if there was any training exercise he could have his pokemon do as they approached Saffron, but sighed at the stupidity of such a move. A long walk in two directions along with a forced nap, the day was slipping through his hands. Sure, rattata could train dig while Joey walked and metapod could train swinging from trees. But, for all that Joey was having a nice time, he was still in what was essentially enemy territory. His pokemon being tired or not might very well be the deciding factor between winning or losing a fight. Similarly, them being out, thus losing him one second in recall time in case he needed to shadow-sneak away could be the deciding factor between life and death.
It had been twelve years since Joey had worked any type of job. Twelve years of bliss, reading, relaxing, meditating, exploring his ghost-powers. Twelve years, one job, a relaxed delivery which required a few
hours of working. That's all it took for him to get sick of working just as much as he'd been upon his untimely demise. Some things truly were forever, and it wasn't diamonds.
"You better win your battle, dragon-boy," Joey muttered to himself as he walked.
It was doubly frustrating to not be training considering how close metapod was to mastering the reaction she had to the toxic orb and necessitating Joey to call Koga.
"Soon, soon," he muttered to himself
-/-
Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun, was this slife of life? Maybe. Joey deserves it, he's been working hard. Shit boutta go down
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Detecting a small piece of Future Party Member energy here, though it's counteracted by Joey judging it to not be that rare trainable individual. It would be after Surge though, and would only be catchable if Joey can't find anyone else before Surge, so that's quite a time gap. If Mismagius isn't a possible evolution than it would probably fulfill my ideal criteria as an unassuming low tier. Just such a little guy, and he definitely should get a ghost buddy.
This line puzzled me, is it implying he had distortion powers before he died? Or just that the reincarnation itself granted those powers and he's glad about it?
Idk if he's just being an antisocial weirdo again, or if he had a very very weird night once and has decided to overgeneralize it, but god what a perplexing paragraph.
This line puzzled me, is it implying he had distortion powers before he died? Or just that the reincarnation itself granted those powers and he's glad about it?
Idk if he's just being an antisocial weirdo again, or if he had a very very weird night once and has decided to overgeneralize it, but god what a perplexing paragraph.
He probably comes from Persona 4. His thoughts about TV could be a clue.
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
It's called lebanese humour, I'm experimenting
Refers to the in-between he spent him in between death and new life
Chapter 20: Facing a member of the Elite Four
bor902
professional illiterate
- Location
- wherever i am at the moment
AN: I bet you're looking forward to reading this chapter, huh? Facing a future member of the elite four. well, before you can go do that you have to waste five seconds reading this completely irrelevant author's note in which I say nothing of value! Mwahwahwahwahwahwahwahwah.
-/-
It wasn't long before Joey emerged onto route 8. The same place that he'd left it in fact, at the construction site of the underground tunnel. Although, now that it was the afternoon the construction crew had finished working. The hole was closed off with a large round iron cover.
The route was also less busy than previously, although some trainers and youngsters were still roaming around and battling. That would likely end soon as well.
Trainers who travelled usually followed the same schedule. They'd train in the mornings, travel during noon and then battle on the second half of their journey as they did so until they couldn't anymore or found their next sleeping spot.
The reason why there were less trainers around was because those too weak to handle the heat had already gotten their teams knocked out, theoretically only leaving the strong. One of Joey's hands subconsciously moved to his belt, resting comfortably on rattata's pokeball.
It had been a nice break for his pokemon, no matter how little anyone likely appreciated it. But, seeing everyone else battling it out recklessly on the large dirt road connecting Saffron and Lavender. It just made him want to join in as well. He looked down the road, the area close to the gate currently being occupied by a youngster with a pidgey battling a trainer with a spearow. In other words, boring.
The more impressive battles were finding place further down the road. The energy that always came around at the start of the season hadn't subsided yet, and new trainers were battling for their lives. They hadn't found a tempo yet, and just recklessly threw themselves into any challenge.
Joey walked further down the route, passing a magmar grilling a gloom, a sandslash battling a pikachu and an eevee fighting a golbat.
Any one of the trainers would have been an interesting challenge, although he certainly would have preferred the black-haired girl with the pikachu. After all, its evolution was what he would face in Vermillion.
He was even tempted to wait out the battle which the pikachu was winning through a skilled use of iron-tail, but then he saw HER, and all thoughts of waiting for a battle to finish to challenge someone who likely wasn't interested, more preoccupied with getting to a poke-centre, fled his mind.
She didn't have the mature style that she would acquire in the future, wearing a pair of black leather platform shoes, black shorts and an ice blue crop-top, but Lorelei walked down route 8 as if she owned it. Her long red hair, bound in a pony-tail swayed to the left and to the right as she passed the battles happening all around her, not deigning to give them even a look.
For all intents and purposes, the future elite four member looked like she was the main character of her own fanfiction titled "Reborn as an ice princess in this beautiful world." She'd just placed highly in the Silver conference and was now going to Saffron for her third Kanto badge, seemingly having taken the Pewter, Cerulean, Lavender route.
Joey's eyes narrowed as a battle-lust that he hadn't experienced before welled up inside of him. His heart was beating a mile a minute and his palms were sweating. He'd met characters who would go on to become gym-leaders. Erika and Sabrina. Koga would join the elite-four. He'd even met someone who would become champion, the mirror in his bathroom. But… Lorelei was fated to become an ice-type master.
The elite four weren't something that the average idiot could beat, unlike in the original games. They were the unsurpassable goal. The conference was basically designed to confer the privilege of breaking one's head against the mountain they represented. They almost never lost, and they lost their position even less often. There was a new member on average every five years and every single person who belonged to the exclusive club was a legend in one way or the other.
To be a master was a badly defined concept, usually conferred by beating another master. It was widely understood however, that at some point of one's training one simply passed over some sort of barrier. One's pokemon became more, for lack of a better word.
As Joey stepped in front of the fifteen-year old girl, feeling for all intents and purposes like Icarus about to have his wings melted, he realised that he wasn't facing Lorelei the elite four member, but Lorelei the teenage prodigy. The first indication that this was the case was the fact that she was startled by his appearance, revealing that she hadn't been purposefully striding, led by fate and confidence, but that she had simply been lost in thought. The second indication was the fact that the girl wasn't wearing glasses, and that the way she looked slightly to the right of Joey indicated that she had bad eyesight.
In the end Joey didn't know if he preferred getting his ass beat by an elite four member or a teenage girl still stuck in that particular stage of insecurity where she refused to wear her glasses. But whatever the case, he would still like to get his ass beaten, and by this particular woman, every day of the week if need be. He knew of course that someone of her calibre didn't need to accept his challenge, so he decided to throw out an iconic line famous for riling up even the most ice-blooded trainers. "You look weak, let's battle!" he shouted enthusiastically, pointing a finger at Lorelei and taking a wide-stance, as if to block her escape.
The girl startled again, pointing a finger at herself and looking around confusedly. "You mean me?" she asked, before pausing. "Wait, aren't you a bit young to be out here?"
How did the girl know his age if she couldn't even see properly? Joey wondered.
Anyway, all trainers and youngsters were young by default. The pokemon world had an odd relationship with age in comparison to Joey's old world. After all, it would have been completely ridiculous on earth to send out anyone into the wilds with only one battle monster for protection regardless of age. Especially if the person in question was 12, 13, 14, or even 15.
This was because the people of the pokemon world were actually quite spoiled in regards to how safe everything was. Sure they didn't feel especially safe because this was the only context that they knew. Also, well, Joey himself had been attacked by a wild arbok not too long ago. However, pokemon for the most part had moral values which rejected murder, theft or battery and assault. If a wild pokemon encountered a crime, they would likely help the aggrieved victim. The sense of morality had trickled down to humanity at large, making heavy offences much less prevalent. It was probably more dangerous to walk down the average street in New York than to walk the routes and even some of the deep forests in Kanto.
Having digressed Joey refocused his gaze on his enemy, of which the identity differed depending on the time and weather. "My age has nothing to do with the beating I'm about to dole out on you and your team," he said confidently.
The confidence was fake, of course, he just needed to make sure that Lorelei would want to battle him. It was similar to how he had to provoke that old gentleman with the growlithe back in the days before his first gym badge. There were some people that Joey really wanted to battle and he wasn't really willing to give them much of a choice in the matter.
As expected from his well thought out provocation, Lorelei's face ran a bit red from what he presumed was anger. Not very cool for an ice type trainer, he thought. She proceeded to point a finger at a position that was around half a metre to the left of him. "You talk a lot of game for someone who doesn't know the depths of the waters they're trying to swim in," she said. It sounded like a rehearsed phrase she stole from her great uncle Pryce, the current champion of the Indigo league.
Not for long, if Lance had anything to say about that, but for the moment it likely entitled Lorelei to a lot of privilege. Like having an absolutely garbage battle start catch-phrase, apparently.
"The river may forget the name of the drowned, and a blizzard might make all traces of an unwary traveller disappear, but the point of battling is to test your mettle and to try ascend peaks that you've previously thought impossible," he answered. Of course, he failed to mention that he knew that he did not have a sliver of a chance against the girl's team and that he was only challenging her to get crushed and to see how higher level trainers battled on his own skin, or a rather, the skin of his pokemon, something he was much more willing to risk for just a bit of experience.
"If it's a challenge you're seeking, then it would hardly be nice of me to refuse!" Lorelei answered. "But, be warned, I finished top eight in last year's silver conference." She pulled out her PokeNav and sent the challenge, it was thankfully, due to her lack of glasses, a tool that one only needed to aim semi-properly.
Giddy with excitement at the thought of battling a future member of the Elite Four Joey accepted the challenge, and since they were on the route and quite close to the gate and then by default the pokecentre, he set the challenge to a two on two which was his prerogative as the less accomplished trainer in the match.
His plan was simple, similar to how he'd handled Celadon. Metapod would go first and hinder Lorelei's first Pokemon. Then Rattata would come in and hopefully knock it out. Joey wasn't delusional enough to think that he could actually win the match, but beating one of the girl's team-members would be an accomplishment in itself.
"All right, let's do this!" he shouted excitedly and held up his bug type's pokeball.
Lorelei matched his pose more loosely, as if to signal disinterest. "Let's get this out of the way. I have places to be."
They both released their pokemon at the same time and what came out was probably somewhat anticlimactic to any observer.
Joey's metapod found herself facing a slowpoke.
He wouldn't underestimate it, however. He would take this as seriously as if it were a gym-battle
This was a simple match on a route so there was no particular decision on who got to start, so the moment that Joey saw his opponent he immediately ordered a, "string shot!" This was because he knew that slowpoke were generally slow and that he could get the first move advantage if he moved fast enough. A white string shot from metapod's mouth already at the first syllable out of Joey's, the two of them being perfectly in sync after so long training together.
However, if Joey and metapod were in sync, then Lorelei and slowpoke must have been telepathically connected, because without even uttering an order, the slowpoke opened its pink maw and shot out a highly pressurised stream of water which hit the string shot in mid-air. Contrary to Joey's general experience with ranged attacks, namely that they were cancelled out in scenarios like this, slowpoke's water gun did no such thing. In other words, it shot through the string as if it was made of paper and the highly pressurised water impacted metapod's shell not a second later, never giving the youngster the opportunity to even respond to the move.
In the end of the day a water gun was simply an application of kinetic force, something which exhibited itself in the way that the attack picked metapod up when hitting her and threw her at Joey who in lieu of trying to catch the gigantic beast that he'd grown simply ducked underneath the flying green crescent.
Upon looking back from his newfound position crouched on the floor, he discovered his pokemon to be unconscious, swirls in her eyes and one last groan coming from her mouth.
"Metaaa."
"Fuck," he murdered quietly as he recalled her. He didn't have a lot of time to think about his loss, but several thoughts nevertheless flitted through his mind.
Lorelei meanwhile, stood there surprised at the easy victory and crossed her arms in confusion as Joey reevaluated.
How was it that one water gun had managed to knock out metapod? Bug types weren't particularly vulnerable to water and metapod was quite used to being hit with large amounts of force. Was it possible that the water gun had simply been mastered to such an extent that it's packed the power equivalent of a higher tiered move? Or had slowpoke used something other than a water gun, but simply held such mastery over that move that it could manipulate the shape?
The empty pink face of the pokemon, hinting at nothing happening behind that fore-head, held no answers. Whatever the case, Joey didn't have much of a choice in holding up rattata's pokeball. The unfortunate circumstance that the opponent they would face now was not tired in the slightest, simply yawning there, a snot bubble forming from its left nostril, was just something they'd have to deal with.
"That was quick," Lorelei said. "Are you perhaps trying to use this match as a training tool for your weaker pokemon?" she asked, clearly unable to make out the fact that Joey was a youngster. However, if she did indeed know his identity, then her words were an effective piece of mental warfare, because even if Joey was used to losing to older trainers he still had somewhat decent opinion of his tactical acumen. Although to be fair, calling out string shot and then immediately getting knocked out didn't really give him much of an opportunity to show anything. Metapod only knew four moves anyway, and tackle was currently unusable.
"I'm sorry, but slowpoke is actually my youngest team member," his opponent said. "He still fought in a conference, though. "
"You're just going through with your original team then? Joey asked. "Not interested in catching any Kanto pokemon?"
"My grand uncle always said that there's not much of a point in expanding a team of six until that team has stopped progressing quickly enough to need perpetual involvement in their training process," the girl replied.
Joey mentally noted that down, unwilling to let the advice of the current champion slip through his fingers. Partially he was of the same belief already anyway. After all, pokemon needed to be well trained, and it was this attribute of being well trained that elevated the team, not any sort of diversity of tactics, or move sets, or typings. Every single member of the Elite Four was a type specialist. This was because type specialists took advantage of the fact that it was easier and more efficient to train up a team of pokemon of the same type, than it was to spread one's focus on a variety. Almost every pokemon needed individual guidance specific to their species. With pokemon of the same type, there was at least some overlap in training methodologies and move-training. In other words, type-specialists streamlined the training process.
Joey himself was walking the road of the generalist, but as the world would soon find out with the ascent of Cynthia and Leon, widely considered to be some of the strongest champions in the world, if not the strongest, being a generalist was a harder start but also offered a ceiling that was elevated in comparison to that of a type specialist.
Not wanting to stall anymore and having calmed himself down somewhat from the expected loss, but the unexpected way it had occurred, he sent out his next pokemon. Which, considering that he only had two anyway was not much of a mystery. Rattata took the field and before the oddly autonomous slowpoke could attack his starter with one of its deadly water guns he ordered his rat to advance. "Advance slowly, but cage it in," he shouted.
His starter shot forward in a white blur barely avoiding a very accurate water gun which lived up to its name of gun with how fast it shot from the slowpoke's mouth. Thankfully rattata managed to clear the distance after one dodge, and it soon became apparent that slowpoke was more of a ranged beast than a melee one. As rattata ran increasingly tight circles around it, creating the scenario for the perfect strike, the slowpoke couldn't do anything but confusedly turn in circles and shoot out a water gun every now and again in a futile attempt to ward off the much faster adversary.
It was clear however, that while Joey had outsmarted the very basic intelligence of the slowpoke, the trainer behind the creature was not so easily overwhelmed. As rattata jumped in for a quick attack at the slowpoke's behind, which would hopefully turn into a hyper fang Lorelei interjected.
"Disable," she ordered calmly.
"Switch to tackle!" Joey desperately shouted, but it was already too late. Similarly to how the slowpoke had not been particularly slow on the uptake earlier, its eyes quickly glinted with a menacing white as it turned its head. Joey's starter stumbled to a stop, the white cage he'd started creating around slowpoke dissipating into motes of light.
Regardless of the set-back however, rattata was close enough.
"Hyperfang," Joey ordered almost deliriously and rattata was a mere millimetre from clamping down on the slowpoke when Lorelei sealed their doom.
"Confusion into yawn," she ordered and a purple light enveloped rattata, held him up and threw him back in one simple motion, not even aiming at holding him in place and harming him. The rat spun in the air, away from the slowpoke, as the pink creature yawned, a visible vibration of sound going through the air and hitting rattata before it even hit the ground.
"Rattata, get in and bite," Joey ordered desperately as he watched his starter yawn at the oncoming tiredness clouding his eyes. Would they really be beaten by a stupid sleep effect? Rattata's fangs erupted in dark unstable energy, signalling that the pokemon's grasp of the move was still quite shaky. However, this was the only way Rattata could currently approach slowpoke without suddenly being picked up by confusion and thrown back until he fell asleep. While previously quick attack had kept his starter at a too high velocity to be picked up by confusion, now they could only rely on cheap tricks.
Rattata surged forward.
Lorelei answered with one simple command. "Headbutt," she ordered.
It didn't matter at this stage if slowpoke-harmed rattata enough to prevent him falling asleep. Going by the strength of the previous water gun, a head butt would similarly be enough to knock out Joey's starter.
However, ordering a physical move had been the first mistake that Lorelei had made the entire battle and Joey wasn't someone who was going to let that go unanswered. An idea flew through his mind as Slowpoke committed to the headbutt, slightly more slowly than it had to the previous ranged attacks.
"Drop bite, detect out of the way, bite yourself, then hyperfang!"
The thing about yawn on and why it wasn't the best sleep inducing move in the game, despite its area of effect sound wave, was that unless the move was practised to a frankly ridiculous level, a pokemon affected by it could harm themselves enough to release the incoming sleep effect. Rattata, bless his little heart, was a pokemon trained for speed and had gone through countless drills for the small move-set that he did have. Joey's orders were executed cleanly, precisely, in one second, the time it took for Slowpoke to barrel forward with a glowing head that looked like it could fell a tree.
The rat dropped the bite, channelled fighting type energy to dodge perfectly, purple and pink fur almost brushing against each other. As it spun back in place rattata bit himself in the tail hard enough to draw blood and then shot forward, eyes wide awake growing and fangs glowing a luminous white.
"Protect," Lorelei ordered and the slowpoke immediately dropped its physical attack and concentrated on creating a blue-green shield around itself.
Rattata bounced off harmlessly, and despite being one of the most speedy pokemon in Saffron, the rebound from failing a physical attack on protect stunned him for just long enough for a water gun to impact his torso and to throw him back straight off the route where he slammed violently into a tree. The impact was hard enough for the whole thing to shake and leaves to fall on the ground.
The timing of the protect had been perfect and showed exactly the difference in experience if not wisdom between Joey and Lorelei. She'd ordered the move, seeing Joey's previous fast reaction, just in time for the youngster to be unable to react and to cause rattata to be stunned for barely a second.
The youngster sighed and recalled his starter, noting on his PokeNav how a minuscule amount of pokédollars was withdrawn from his account and another loss was added to his record. He hadn't expected a win, but he'd at least hoped that he would get one hit in.
"Well, you got me good," he said to the red-haired girl who just handed him his ass on a silver platter.
Lorelei for her part congratulated her slowpoke with an enthusiastic, "well done," before recalling the monster.
"I have to ask though," Joey said. "How did you get a slowpoke to react so quickly?"
"While slowpoke can sometimes take several seconds to even notice that they've been hurt, the training of their psychic potential and experience in battle are two effective ways of improving their cognitive ability," Lorelei explained in a voice which hinted at the fact that in the future she would look like a teacher and also offer classes on the orange Islands, where Joey thought that she was from originally. "Naturally putting so much training into bringing reaction speeds simply to an average, would in other pokemon constitute ascension into a level considered quite good. It is at this point that it is the job of the trainer to work with one's pokemon and to make up for their shortcomings."
Seeing as Lorelei seemed to be in an explaining mood, Joey decided to be forward and ask a question. "What else could I have done?"
The girl shrugged with unfocused eyes. "If you had a ranged attack to trigger protect, you could have used the refractory period to maybe get a hit in," she thought out loud, before startling. "I really have to go now though, I want to finish the gym circuit quickly so that I can go train and prepare for the conference. Have a nice day!" she said in a friendly tone and in an attempt to rush past Joey almost ran straight into the boy if he had not dodged he watched her go with a contemplative face. Her form quickly disappeared into the gate building and into the city beyond as he stood there thinking about his future plans.
It had obviously been a good idea to challenge someone who was very likely to win the conference this year. After all, now he knew what kind of level he had to achieve to even think about getting anywhere. However, while this experience was valuable, he still had to focus on Surge and the youngster tournament first. Maybe it would be smart to teach rattata swift as soon as possible. The minute dig was up to a high enough standard and the period of recommended rest after a TM intake had run out.
For the moment he had something even more short-term to do though. Having just done battle with a future member of the Elite Four, it was now time to go to another one for training.
In other words, it was time to call Koga.
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AN: Joey building some strong connections. Taught by one future member of the Elite Four, has battled another. Knows on a slightly more personal level two future gym-leaders, Erika and Hitoshi.
Maybe you've noticed that I'm doing a lot to create a roster for the Indigo conference in a year in a half. We've already introduced about 7 characters who will be participating in it? This means I won't have to generate lame randos for Joey to face when he's bracketed.
Read ahead on patreon. Or don't, your choice
-/-
It wasn't long before Joey emerged onto route 8. The same place that he'd left it in fact, at the construction site of the underground tunnel. Although, now that it was the afternoon the construction crew had finished working. The hole was closed off with a large round iron cover.
The route was also less busy than previously, although some trainers and youngsters were still roaming around and battling. That would likely end soon as well.
Trainers who travelled usually followed the same schedule. They'd train in the mornings, travel during noon and then battle on the second half of their journey as they did so until they couldn't anymore or found their next sleeping spot.
The reason why there were less trainers around was because those too weak to handle the heat had already gotten their teams knocked out, theoretically only leaving the strong. One of Joey's hands subconsciously moved to his belt, resting comfortably on rattata's pokeball.
It had been a nice break for his pokemon, no matter how little anyone likely appreciated it. But, seeing everyone else battling it out recklessly on the large dirt road connecting Saffron and Lavender. It just made him want to join in as well. He looked down the road, the area close to the gate currently being occupied by a youngster with a pidgey battling a trainer with a spearow. In other words, boring.
The more impressive battles were finding place further down the road. The energy that always came around at the start of the season hadn't subsided yet, and new trainers were battling for their lives. They hadn't found a tempo yet, and just recklessly threw themselves into any challenge.
Joey walked further down the route, passing a magmar grilling a gloom, a sandslash battling a pikachu and an eevee fighting a golbat.
Any one of the trainers would have been an interesting challenge, although he certainly would have preferred the black-haired girl with the pikachu. After all, its evolution was what he would face in Vermillion.
He was even tempted to wait out the battle which the pikachu was winning through a skilled use of iron-tail, but then he saw HER, and all thoughts of waiting for a battle to finish to challenge someone who likely wasn't interested, more preoccupied with getting to a poke-centre, fled his mind.
She didn't have the mature style that she would acquire in the future, wearing a pair of black leather platform shoes, black shorts and an ice blue crop-top, but Lorelei walked down route 8 as if she owned it. Her long red hair, bound in a pony-tail swayed to the left and to the right as she passed the battles happening all around her, not deigning to give them even a look.
For all intents and purposes, the future elite four member looked like she was the main character of her own fanfiction titled "Reborn as an ice princess in this beautiful world." She'd just placed highly in the Silver conference and was now going to Saffron for her third Kanto badge, seemingly having taken the Pewter, Cerulean, Lavender route.
Joey's eyes narrowed as a battle-lust that he hadn't experienced before welled up inside of him. His heart was beating a mile a minute and his palms were sweating. He'd met characters who would go on to become gym-leaders. Erika and Sabrina. Koga would join the elite-four. He'd even met someone who would become champion, the mirror in his bathroom. But… Lorelei was fated to become an ice-type master.
The elite four weren't something that the average idiot could beat, unlike in the original games. They were the unsurpassable goal. The conference was basically designed to confer the privilege of breaking one's head against the mountain they represented. They almost never lost, and they lost their position even less often. There was a new member on average every five years and every single person who belonged to the exclusive club was a legend in one way or the other.
To be a master was a badly defined concept, usually conferred by beating another master. It was widely understood however, that at some point of one's training one simply passed over some sort of barrier. One's pokemon became more, for lack of a better word.
As Joey stepped in front of the fifteen-year old girl, feeling for all intents and purposes like Icarus about to have his wings melted, he realised that he wasn't facing Lorelei the elite four member, but Lorelei the teenage prodigy. The first indication that this was the case was the fact that she was startled by his appearance, revealing that she hadn't been purposefully striding, led by fate and confidence, but that she had simply been lost in thought. The second indication was the fact that the girl wasn't wearing glasses, and that the way she looked slightly to the right of Joey indicated that she had bad eyesight.
In the end Joey didn't know if he preferred getting his ass beat by an elite four member or a teenage girl still stuck in that particular stage of insecurity where she refused to wear her glasses. But whatever the case, he would still like to get his ass beaten, and by this particular woman, every day of the week if need be. He knew of course that someone of her calibre didn't need to accept his challenge, so he decided to throw out an iconic line famous for riling up even the most ice-blooded trainers. "You look weak, let's battle!" he shouted enthusiastically, pointing a finger at Lorelei and taking a wide-stance, as if to block her escape.
The girl startled again, pointing a finger at herself and looking around confusedly. "You mean me?" she asked, before pausing. "Wait, aren't you a bit young to be out here?"
How did the girl know his age if she couldn't even see properly? Joey wondered.
Anyway, all trainers and youngsters were young by default. The pokemon world had an odd relationship with age in comparison to Joey's old world. After all, it would have been completely ridiculous on earth to send out anyone into the wilds with only one battle monster for protection regardless of age. Especially if the person in question was 12, 13, 14, or even 15.
This was because the people of the pokemon world were actually quite spoiled in regards to how safe everything was. Sure they didn't feel especially safe because this was the only context that they knew. Also, well, Joey himself had been attacked by a wild arbok not too long ago. However, pokemon for the most part had moral values which rejected murder, theft or battery and assault. If a wild pokemon encountered a crime, they would likely help the aggrieved victim. The sense of morality had trickled down to humanity at large, making heavy offences much less prevalent. It was probably more dangerous to walk down the average street in New York than to walk the routes and even some of the deep forests in Kanto.
Having digressed Joey refocused his gaze on his enemy, of which the identity differed depending on the time and weather. "My age has nothing to do with the beating I'm about to dole out on you and your team," he said confidently.
The confidence was fake, of course, he just needed to make sure that Lorelei would want to battle him. It was similar to how he had to provoke that old gentleman with the growlithe back in the days before his first gym badge. There were some people that Joey really wanted to battle and he wasn't really willing to give them much of a choice in the matter.
As expected from his well thought out provocation, Lorelei's face ran a bit red from what he presumed was anger. Not very cool for an ice type trainer, he thought. She proceeded to point a finger at a position that was around half a metre to the left of him. "You talk a lot of game for someone who doesn't know the depths of the waters they're trying to swim in," she said. It sounded like a rehearsed phrase she stole from her great uncle Pryce, the current champion of the Indigo league.
Not for long, if Lance had anything to say about that, but for the moment it likely entitled Lorelei to a lot of privilege. Like having an absolutely garbage battle start catch-phrase, apparently.
"The river may forget the name of the drowned, and a blizzard might make all traces of an unwary traveller disappear, but the point of battling is to test your mettle and to try ascend peaks that you've previously thought impossible," he answered. Of course, he failed to mention that he knew that he did not have a sliver of a chance against the girl's team and that he was only challenging her to get crushed and to see how higher level trainers battled on his own skin, or a rather, the skin of his pokemon, something he was much more willing to risk for just a bit of experience.
"If it's a challenge you're seeking, then it would hardly be nice of me to refuse!" Lorelei answered. "But, be warned, I finished top eight in last year's silver conference." She pulled out her PokeNav and sent the challenge, it was thankfully, due to her lack of glasses, a tool that one only needed to aim semi-properly.
Giddy with excitement at the thought of battling a future member of the Elite Four Joey accepted the challenge, and since they were on the route and quite close to the gate and then by default the pokecentre, he set the challenge to a two on two which was his prerogative as the less accomplished trainer in the match.
His plan was simple, similar to how he'd handled Celadon. Metapod would go first and hinder Lorelei's first Pokemon. Then Rattata would come in and hopefully knock it out. Joey wasn't delusional enough to think that he could actually win the match, but beating one of the girl's team-members would be an accomplishment in itself.
"All right, let's do this!" he shouted excitedly and held up his bug type's pokeball.
Lorelei matched his pose more loosely, as if to signal disinterest. "Let's get this out of the way. I have places to be."
They both released their pokemon at the same time and what came out was probably somewhat anticlimactic to any observer.
Joey's metapod found herself facing a slowpoke.
He wouldn't underestimate it, however. He would take this as seriously as if it were a gym-battle
This was a simple match on a route so there was no particular decision on who got to start, so the moment that Joey saw his opponent he immediately ordered a, "string shot!" This was because he knew that slowpoke were generally slow and that he could get the first move advantage if he moved fast enough. A white string shot from metapod's mouth already at the first syllable out of Joey's, the two of them being perfectly in sync after so long training together.
However, if Joey and metapod were in sync, then Lorelei and slowpoke must have been telepathically connected, because without even uttering an order, the slowpoke opened its pink maw and shot out a highly pressurised stream of water which hit the string shot in mid-air. Contrary to Joey's general experience with ranged attacks, namely that they were cancelled out in scenarios like this, slowpoke's water gun did no such thing. In other words, it shot through the string as if it was made of paper and the highly pressurised water impacted metapod's shell not a second later, never giving the youngster the opportunity to even respond to the move.
In the end of the day a water gun was simply an application of kinetic force, something which exhibited itself in the way that the attack picked metapod up when hitting her and threw her at Joey who in lieu of trying to catch the gigantic beast that he'd grown simply ducked underneath the flying green crescent.
Upon looking back from his newfound position crouched on the floor, he discovered his pokemon to be unconscious, swirls in her eyes and one last groan coming from her mouth.
"Metaaa."
"Fuck," he murdered quietly as he recalled her. He didn't have a lot of time to think about his loss, but several thoughts nevertheless flitted through his mind.
Lorelei meanwhile, stood there surprised at the easy victory and crossed her arms in confusion as Joey reevaluated.
How was it that one water gun had managed to knock out metapod? Bug types weren't particularly vulnerable to water and metapod was quite used to being hit with large amounts of force. Was it possible that the water gun had simply been mastered to such an extent that it's packed the power equivalent of a higher tiered move? Or had slowpoke used something other than a water gun, but simply held such mastery over that move that it could manipulate the shape?
The empty pink face of the pokemon, hinting at nothing happening behind that fore-head, held no answers. Whatever the case, Joey didn't have much of a choice in holding up rattata's pokeball. The unfortunate circumstance that the opponent they would face now was not tired in the slightest, simply yawning there, a snot bubble forming from its left nostril, was just something they'd have to deal with.
"That was quick," Lorelei said. "Are you perhaps trying to use this match as a training tool for your weaker pokemon?" she asked, clearly unable to make out the fact that Joey was a youngster. However, if she did indeed know his identity, then her words were an effective piece of mental warfare, because even if Joey was used to losing to older trainers he still had somewhat decent opinion of his tactical acumen. Although to be fair, calling out string shot and then immediately getting knocked out didn't really give him much of an opportunity to show anything. Metapod only knew four moves anyway, and tackle was currently unusable.
"I'm sorry, but slowpoke is actually my youngest team member," his opponent said. "He still fought in a conference, though. "
"You're just going through with your original team then? Joey asked. "Not interested in catching any Kanto pokemon?"
"My grand uncle always said that there's not much of a point in expanding a team of six until that team has stopped progressing quickly enough to need perpetual involvement in their training process," the girl replied.
Joey mentally noted that down, unwilling to let the advice of the current champion slip through his fingers. Partially he was of the same belief already anyway. After all, pokemon needed to be well trained, and it was this attribute of being well trained that elevated the team, not any sort of diversity of tactics, or move sets, or typings. Every single member of the Elite Four was a type specialist. This was because type specialists took advantage of the fact that it was easier and more efficient to train up a team of pokemon of the same type, than it was to spread one's focus on a variety. Almost every pokemon needed individual guidance specific to their species. With pokemon of the same type, there was at least some overlap in training methodologies and move-training. In other words, type-specialists streamlined the training process.
Joey himself was walking the road of the generalist, but as the world would soon find out with the ascent of Cynthia and Leon, widely considered to be some of the strongest champions in the world, if not the strongest, being a generalist was a harder start but also offered a ceiling that was elevated in comparison to that of a type specialist.
Not wanting to stall anymore and having calmed himself down somewhat from the expected loss, but the unexpected way it had occurred, he sent out his next pokemon. Which, considering that he only had two anyway was not much of a mystery. Rattata took the field and before the oddly autonomous slowpoke could attack his starter with one of its deadly water guns he ordered his rat to advance. "Advance slowly, but cage it in," he shouted.
His starter shot forward in a white blur barely avoiding a very accurate water gun which lived up to its name of gun with how fast it shot from the slowpoke's mouth. Thankfully rattata managed to clear the distance after one dodge, and it soon became apparent that slowpoke was more of a ranged beast than a melee one. As rattata ran increasingly tight circles around it, creating the scenario for the perfect strike, the slowpoke couldn't do anything but confusedly turn in circles and shoot out a water gun every now and again in a futile attempt to ward off the much faster adversary.
It was clear however, that while Joey had outsmarted the very basic intelligence of the slowpoke, the trainer behind the creature was not so easily overwhelmed. As rattata jumped in for a quick attack at the slowpoke's behind, which would hopefully turn into a hyper fang Lorelei interjected.
"Disable," she ordered calmly.
"Switch to tackle!" Joey desperately shouted, but it was already too late. Similarly to how the slowpoke had not been particularly slow on the uptake earlier, its eyes quickly glinted with a menacing white as it turned its head. Joey's starter stumbled to a stop, the white cage he'd started creating around slowpoke dissipating into motes of light.
Regardless of the set-back however, rattata was close enough.
"Hyperfang," Joey ordered almost deliriously and rattata was a mere millimetre from clamping down on the slowpoke when Lorelei sealed their doom.
"Confusion into yawn," she ordered and a purple light enveloped rattata, held him up and threw him back in one simple motion, not even aiming at holding him in place and harming him. The rat spun in the air, away from the slowpoke, as the pink creature yawned, a visible vibration of sound going through the air and hitting rattata before it even hit the ground.
"Rattata, get in and bite," Joey ordered desperately as he watched his starter yawn at the oncoming tiredness clouding his eyes. Would they really be beaten by a stupid sleep effect? Rattata's fangs erupted in dark unstable energy, signalling that the pokemon's grasp of the move was still quite shaky. However, this was the only way Rattata could currently approach slowpoke without suddenly being picked up by confusion and thrown back until he fell asleep. While previously quick attack had kept his starter at a too high velocity to be picked up by confusion, now they could only rely on cheap tricks.
Rattata surged forward.
Lorelei answered with one simple command. "Headbutt," she ordered.
It didn't matter at this stage if slowpoke-harmed rattata enough to prevent him falling asleep. Going by the strength of the previous water gun, a head butt would similarly be enough to knock out Joey's starter.
However, ordering a physical move had been the first mistake that Lorelei had made the entire battle and Joey wasn't someone who was going to let that go unanswered. An idea flew through his mind as Slowpoke committed to the headbutt, slightly more slowly than it had to the previous ranged attacks.
"Drop bite, detect out of the way, bite yourself, then hyperfang!"
The thing about yawn on and why it wasn't the best sleep inducing move in the game, despite its area of effect sound wave, was that unless the move was practised to a frankly ridiculous level, a pokemon affected by it could harm themselves enough to release the incoming sleep effect. Rattata, bless his little heart, was a pokemon trained for speed and had gone through countless drills for the small move-set that he did have. Joey's orders were executed cleanly, precisely, in one second, the time it took for Slowpoke to barrel forward with a glowing head that looked like it could fell a tree.
The rat dropped the bite, channelled fighting type energy to dodge perfectly, purple and pink fur almost brushing against each other. As it spun back in place rattata bit himself in the tail hard enough to draw blood and then shot forward, eyes wide awake growing and fangs glowing a luminous white.
"Protect," Lorelei ordered and the slowpoke immediately dropped its physical attack and concentrated on creating a blue-green shield around itself.
Rattata bounced off harmlessly, and despite being one of the most speedy pokemon in Saffron, the rebound from failing a physical attack on protect stunned him for just long enough for a water gun to impact his torso and to throw him back straight off the route where he slammed violently into a tree. The impact was hard enough for the whole thing to shake and leaves to fall on the ground.
The timing of the protect had been perfect and showed exactly the difference in experience if not wisdom between Joey and Lorelei. She'd ordered the move, seeing Joey's previous fast reaction, just in time for the youngster to be unable to react and to cause rattata to be stunned for barely a second.
The youngster sighed and recalled his starter, noting on his PokeNav how a minuscule amount of pokédollars was withdrawn from his account and another loss was added to his record. He hadn't expected a win, but he'd at least hoped that he would get one hit in.
"Well, you got me good," he said to the red-haired girl who just handed him his ass on a silver platter.
Lorelei for her part congratulated her slowpoke with an enthusiastic, "well done," before recalling the monster.
"I have to ask though," Joey said. "How did you get a slowpoke to react so quickly?"
"While slowpoke can sometimes take several seconds to even notice that they've been hurt, the training of their psychic potential and experience in battle are two effective ways of improving their cognitive ability," Lorelei explained in a voice which hinted at the fact that in the future she would look like a teacher and also offer classes on the orange Islands, where Joey thought that she was from originally. "Naturally putting so much training into bringing reaction speeds simply to an average, would in other pokemon constitute ascension into a level considered quite good. It is at this point that it is the job of the trainer to work with one's pokemon and to make up for their shortcomings."
Seeing as Lorelei seemed to be in an explaining mood, Joey decided to be forward and ask a question. "What else could I have done?"
The girl shrugged with unfocused eyes. "If you had a ranged attack to trigger protect, you could have used the refractory period to maybe get a hit in," she thought out loud, before startling. "I really have to go now though, I want to finish the gym circuit quickly so that I can go train and prepare for the conference. Have a nice day!" she said in a friendly tone and in an attempt to rush past Joey almost ran straight into the boy if he had not dodged he watched her go with a contemplative face. Her form quickly disappeared into the gate building and into the city beyond as he stood there thinking about his future plans.
It had obviously been a good idea to challenge someone who was very likely to win the conference this year. After all, now he knew what kind of level he had to achieve to even think about getting anywhere. However, while this experience was valuable, he still had to focus on Surge and the youngster tournament first. Maybe it would be smart to teach rattata swift as soon as possible. The minute dig was up to a high enough standard and the period of recommended rest after a TM intake had run out.
For the moment he had something even more short-term to do though. Having just done battle with a future member of the Elite Four, it was now time to go to another one for training.
In other words, it was time to call Koga.
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AN: Joey building some strong connections. Taught by one future member of the Elite Four, has battled another. Knows on a slightly more personal level two future gym-leaders, Erika and Hitoshi.
Maybe you've noticed that I'm doing a lot to create a roster for the Indigo conference in a year in a half. We've already introduced about 7 characters who will be participating in it? This means I won't have to generate lame randos for Joey to face when he's bracketed.
Read ahead on patreon. Or don't, your choice
- Location
- OK
Absolutely loving this. Great fic, with a really fun gimmick in the form of the youngster-styled team of underdog pokemon.
Chapter 21: The poison master's teachings
New
bor902
professional illiterate
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- wherever i am at the moment
Thank you to my new patrons: Matthe Fraser, Saad Raja, AnonymousJohn, Abdul Hanan, Ahsir Valjee, Jose Matos, World Apotheosis, Willian, Derpydude9001, DrFuju, Rei Rini, Jonathan, gunnar jens, Christopher Crouch, Josh Freiman, Sharon S, Skyman, Just Ashbaugh, Northmountain, Journey_Man Mike, Southmonk
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"All right rattata, show me how far you've gotten with dig," Joey said.
After having gotten their asses kicked by Lorelei last week, and hadn't that been a blast, they had quickly fallen into a routine which they were growing increasingly familiar with as they grew as a team. They trained in the mornings, did missions when good ones were posted on the board and challenged trainers in the afternoon.
Generally the training occurred outside of town. Joey wanted to give himself at least the opportunity of meeting a pokemon who could have the potential to become their third team member. That hadn't happened yet, but he was open to the idea.
Today they were in the training fields of the city for once. The large and closed boxes with minimalistic environments enclosed them in a tomb of productivity, symbolic of office work in modern society. The one they were in right now had a single tree and a big boulder in the middle. There wasn't even any grass growing, which was good because they would have destroyed any vegetation with their dig practice.
Joey's starter slipped underground and reappeared a second later in an enthusiastic upwards jump five metres away. The youngster nodded.
"Metapod, pod, pod, pod!" the bug-type complained from the side about not having any specific task to do. Joey had left her in the shade of the boulder to wait and rest. After all, he didn't know how hard Koga would go on her in the upcoming training session.
And wasn't that something? Just a week ago they got their ass beat by one future member of the Elite Four, and today they'd be getting specialised training from another. This one was a gym leader right now as well, probably even further along the path than Lorelei, despite the switched timelines of their Elite Four ascension.
Metapod had been incredibly fired up after her very quick and decisive loss to Lorelei's slowpoke. However, that didn't necessarily mean that Joey had been able to devise a specific training regimen for her. She was only capable of learning so many moves after all.
They've been working, just as they had been right before the Celadon gym, on string shot, which was encountering diminishing returns in its improvement and it's bullet variation; harden, which still had some upwards mobility and bug bite, which was worth eeking out every single iota of potential out of, due to its existence as the only damaging move metapod knew.
Joey had also tried to train string shot tree manoeuvring, in addition to the reeling in metapod could already do too lighter pokemon, but it was proving to be a frustrating endeavour. Girl was big and heavy and the internal mechanism of string shot which allowed it to be used as a rope did not provide a significant amount of speed with which to do so. Sure, metapod could rapple up a tree and swing down into a given direction, but the whole thing took way too long to be useful in a battle. They would work on it, of course. They had all the time in the world to master her limited move set.
It was clear however that metapod was getting frustrated with the training. Rattata was making such steep progress every day with his new move, while she had nothing new to learn which she could improve on quickly due to its novelty.
The rat had gone from fainting underground due to running out of energy, to quite reliably using the move to, if not attack, then at least reposition. Thankfully, rather than sulking about it, metapod used her frustration as fuel to make the lives of the youngsters and trainers inhabiting or visiting Saffron a living nightmare. She didn't have a particularly high win rate against anyone with a ranged attack that moved faster than a thrown stone, but her ability to lock down and destroy physical threats was becoming impressive. Also, there was something incredibly satisfying about winning a two badge level battle with a metapod.
"Come on girl," Joey said. "I hardly think the poison Master is going to be late, so just conserve your energy and take the rest you can get. I doubt you're going to get much of it in the future. Once you start being able to practise poison TE you're probably going to want to do that at least several hours a day. Don't think I'll let you slack on your other training either."
His words mollified the pokemon somewhat and she closed her eyes to signal that she would wait. It must have been frustrating to be unable to move for the most part. She was as reliant on Joey, as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair would have been. A bit less perhaps, due to the string shot, but still. Hopefully the reward of evolution would make up for the suffering of the second stage. She'd get wings and achieve three-dimensional mobility.
"I see you rattata," Joey muttered at the purple rat which had come to chitter at his feet at the fact that he'd taken his attention off the training. He bent down and went on his knees to talk to his starter on a more even level, handing him a small pebble which his starter started idly rolling around in his front paws, crumbling it with an application of ground TE.
He'd developed a variety of training methods in the past week, which, when all put together at the end, progressed the proficiency of dig quite efficiently. He'd gathered some of the methods from the forums, some from books and others from his own mind and imagination.
Dig was a move essentially comprised of three parts. First, the pokemon had to channel ground type energy into the appendages they were using to dig to soften up the ground. In other words, they reduced the density of the earth. Joey theorised that at some level of mastery of the move, a pokemon would be able to dig, without using their body at all.
The second part of dig was the fluid movement once underground. Dig caused a pokemon to move faster than they would have otherwise been able to dig with no move assistance. It was essentially a ground type version of a quick attack enhancing the limbs in the ground environment while manipulating the earth to allow faster passage.
Unlike the exercise that rattata was doing right now, with the crumbling of the stone, Joey had not found a specific exercise for this part. He'd just started timing the rat at how fast he traversed distance underground and rewarded beating previous records.
The third part of dig was the coming out of the ground. An explosive attack stacked with ground type energy. Rattata generally trained that with metapod. It was a physical attack so it could help the bug master harden. Rattata's success was determined by how high into the air he could knock his teammate.
There was technically a fourth aspect, namely the fact that pokemon gained a very rudimentary ability to sense what was going on above ground while using the move, but there was nothing Joey could do about that right now. It was probably in this aspect of the move, where it helped being an actual ground type. They likely had a way, or a predisposition, to being able to sense things in regards to their element. He couldn't imagine that they didn't know exactly what was happening around them and above them.
"All right, rattata," Joey eventually decided. "How about we do a little bit of the first two steps today since metapod has to rest."
He pulled out a bag of pebbles from his pocket, took out the fistful and showed it to his attentive starter who had worked his way through the previous little stone. Then, Joey stood up, threw his hand in the air and released the ammunition. From one moment to the next the training ground was absolutely covered in rocks.
"This is going to be a training in three parts. You're going to identify two stones decently far enough from each other, then you will disintegrate one pebble, go underground to try and get to the other one as quickly as possible, before disintegrating that one as well, before going to the next one. This should train your disintegration ability, your underground travel speed, and your control over your ascent. After all, if you exit too violently, you may throw the pebble out of the way meaning you would have to go search for another one, thus affecting your speed. I think we can do this a few times today, if you manage to get faster in your destruction of all the pebbles throughout the training session, then you're going to get an oran berry feast. Simple, right?" he asked.
Rather than nodding the rat simply sprinted off faster than Joey could have said his name. The youngster activated a timer on his PokeNav. The trick in keeping the rat motivated was of course that he would throw more pebbles up every time to make it more and more difficult to beat the previous record. Sometimes you just had to be an ass to get maximum efficiency from one's surroundings.
"An interesting training method," a voice suddenly commented from behind Joey, who definitely did not flinch. The youngster rather gracefully turned around to look at the ninja who had managed to sneak up on him.
"I recently learned that moves are best trained by doing them in a multifaceted and diverse manner," he replied. "Also, rattata is not too much for theory."
Koga nodded. "It's good to see that you know some of the idiosyncrasies of your pokemon, however, as fascinating as the subject may be, I came here to check up on the progress of your metapod," the man said in a rough voice with crossed arms. The combination made him look displeased, but from Joey's research, that was just how he usually looked and sounded.
"Before we continue the conversation," Joey said suspiciously. "Perhaps you could tell me under which face you were hiding when we first met."
Koga cracked a small grin at that, which for him was likely the equivalent of a loud laugh. He didn't have his scarf on today. "Nurse Joy. I'm glad you're taking your safety a bit more seriously."
Joey was tempted to continue the line of questioning ad absurdum, however he wanted to stay in the man's good graces and didn't want to risk the help he was getting. "As for metapod," he started. "She's been getting incredibly resistant to poison, to the point where the toxic orb is doing minuscule amounts of damage which can be stacked up for around half an hour, before it becomes smart to remove the object."
Koga looked over Joey's head, at the pokemon in question. "It sounds to me that you've reached the limit of poison resistance training. Poison will never not be damaging, it can only be non-damaging if it is metapod herself who creates it. The best that one can hope for, is the situation where prolonged exposure can be suffered with minimal damage. I guess it is now time for the next step," he concluded.
"I have a question," Joey suddenly said. Several thoughts had fluttered through his mind as he'd watched metapod go through her toxic orb training. He'd written some of them down, knowing that he would soon have a short period of access to someone who specialised in poison types. It would have been foolish to not use the opportunity to pose some of his questions. "What is it exactly that metapod has built a resistance to? Poisons exist in many different flavours, and I hardly believe that the toxic orb cycles through all of them. Toxins to venoms to chemicals and plant extracts. In essence the question is, what kind of poison is inflicted in a poison type move?"
The gym leader seemed slightly taken aback at the question but had a response ready. "It's an interesting conundrum, the interaction between the actual chemical composition of a poison with the poison type energy that is then afflicted onto it when the move or the status is produced. The answer is either simple, or impossible. The simple answer is that any and all poisons, were they not inflicted with type energy, would have no effect whatsoever on a pokemon. It is rather humans, who are vulnerable to such things. The aura of a pokemon is simply too strong and their bodies too resilient. However, there are to this extent no such different poisons, because upon being mixed with the type energy, the poison changes in its chemical constitution to a sort of prototypical neurotoxin/acid. Thus, any poison in essence simply becomes poison of the most basic variety. Naturally the more complicated version is that different chemical solutions react differently to the insertion of type energy, however the difference is minuscule and the field completely under researched. Your metapod has been building up resistance to poison type energy, and not to any specific molecule, because it never had to do that in the first place, its powerful biology simply rejected those aspects from the get go."
"And toxic?" Joey asked. "I assume that there's then no chemical difference between toxic and other poison type moves, and it is only more powerful because of a heftier dose of poison TE?"
"Exactly. All improvements of poisonous efficacy in a pokemon come from higher level mastery of poison type energy, or of an insertion of more of that energy into the move. Technically one could also insert more type energy into a poison powder, however most of it would go to waste, since only the smallest part of poison powder actually reaches its target."
"I see. I only have one second question, and that is if rattata or any of my other pokemon can build a similar resistance through the same method."
Koga hummed thoughtfully. "Poison resistance is built by poison exposure. Just like how a pokemon's energy has to develop the efficacy at which it strengthens the biological structure, it also has to develop how efficiently it degrades and expels poison type energy from the body. While any other pokemon you have will certainly benefit from building resistance with a toxic orb, it will be a question of priority, since it will take much longer than metapod, who has shed skin to protect herself and a future ability to learn poison type moves to help habituation. Whereas metapod seemingly took three months of time in which her other training endeavours were likely affected by a general lethargy and moodiness, a normal type such as a rattata which does not naturally learn any poison type moves, would likely require a year. The risk also would be much higher." He waved his hand in the air. "Regardless, while this topic is interesting and you can keep the toxic orb if you are so inclined, it is perhaps time to get to the point."
"To verify if metapod's poison resistance is actually up to par?" Joey asked.
"You're her trainer are you not?" Koga responded impatiently. "There is no easy way to measure how efficient the poison resistance of a pokemon is. You are the most qualified to tell me if you're ready or not. So are you?"
The youngster nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, it's about time," he said.
The ninja stepped forward, a technical machine with a glint of purple suddenly in his hands. Both of them turned towards the bug type which had been curiously listening in on their conversation.
"The type energy usage inherent to this technical machine comes from a butterfree who knows poison powder," Koga said. "As you might remember we were considering using as low level a pokemon as possible, a weedle likely in this case. In the end we decided that the best way forward was to go by taking the move from the same evolution line and from a pokemon that knows the move metapod would learn upon evolution. Poison sting, and poison powder are very similar, but they're not the same."
The youngster recalled metapod into her pokeball and held it up in front of him. "Well, let's do this," he said.
Koga took the pokeball and promptly inserted it into the appropriate slot in the technical machine. The two of them watched curiously as, with a press of a button, the machine glowed an ominous purple, before ejecting its disc.
Koga handed the Pokeball back to Joey and prompted him to release the bug type. Joey did so and the large metapod materialised on the ground.
"Now, I would urge you not to try anything for the moment," the poison master said seriously, referring to the pokemon. "We simply did that first so that you could first acclimatise to the energy: Before trying anything, we have to first discuss the methodology of training up poison type energy proficiency."
"Meta, meta," the Pokemon answered. likely saying something along the lines of: 'I'm not as stupid as my teammate, please.'
The ninja turned to Joey. "What do you know about training type energy?"
The youngster sighed. It was a tough topic to research. "I know that training mastery of TE independently of any move can improve the control of moves of the same type. I also know that every person's understanding of type energy can be treated in a way as an individual guideline. This is why type specialists are rewarded for their narrow focus. They can pick out the similarities that come with training pokemon of a similar typing, without learning and appropriating irrelevant information. There are commonalities among pokemon of the same type, such as fighting types preferring to, well, fight to train themselves in the usage of their energy. Poison, however… that seems to me a bit more abstract than that."
"There are two main ways to train type energy mastery specifically. The first is to master a move of the typing until one can start introducing variables into its use. For example, dig can be divided into separate aspects. When all of these have been mastered, one can remove the structure of the move from the equation, and one is left with the ability to channel the appropriate type energy," Koga explained.
Joey couldn't help but interrupt with an exclamation. "It makes sense now! Damn. Why didn't I come up with that? Why doesn't any book mention it?"
The gym leader shook his head. "These are all incredibly advanced topics. Rather than focusing on type energy mastery, it is easier and more effective at the start of one's career, perhaps even for the first 5 years of it, to focus simply on mastering to a decent extent as many moves as possible to shore up issues of inflexibility. Similarly it is more likely that after one has mastered several moves of a type, that one will be able to get down to the essence of the issue."
"I see," Joey said, already wondering how he could implement this knowledge into improving his team. They weren't really walking the traditional path of training, so all things that were generally inadvisable deserved serious consideration. "And what's the second type?" he asked.
"The second type of training is more difficult and suited for specialists. It is also the type of training that metapod will be forced to undergo by default of not knowing or being able to know a poison type move. It is essentially strapping a cart in front of the ponyta. A master of the type, can induce in a pupil a higher understanding of the energy, by foreign injection, and by discussing the symbolics of the matter. You need to consider for a moment that type energy, or, in other words, aura, is an abstract concept, however, there are some similarities and realities that stay true across the board. If these can be communicated to a pokemon, this understanding may help them come to a point where they can manipulate the energy sooner. Suffice to say, this method works better on pokemon who are more intelligent. That is why psychics generally learn type energy first, and then the moves while fighting types prefer simpler methods, first learn the moves and then the type energy.
"Well, out of the three of us, metapod is probably the smartest," Joey admitted bashfully and got a chuckle from the gym leader.
"That remains to be seen," Koga said. "Regardless, the technical machine having done its job, metapod should have in her the ability to access three types of energy. The normal type, through her ability to use the moves tackle and harden. The bug type, which is her natural typing and thus the predominant energy and poison type. The issue comes when one considers how to tap into these different energies. After all, the predominant typing of the pokemon over shadows all other sensations, while in a similar vein it is difficult to sense these things at all before one has achieved sufficient mastery of the ability to manipulate the energy. Contradictory, since to master one must first sense."
"Wouldn't the toxic orb have helped with her ability to detect poison TE within her?" Joey asked.
"One could certainly hope so. However, reality is seldom so nice as to form itself after our desires," Koga said coldly. He turned to Metapod. "An explanation on what the poison type is, to start."
Joey pulled out the notebook that he had been keeping since the beginning of this treatment, into which he had also noted Koga's previous words about training of type energy and the way poison energy actually interacted with the chemical components poison.
"The easiest way to explain poison type energy is that it is purple. A colour in nature, that generally signifies that whatever it blesses is dangerous to the touch." Koga began, metapod listening attentively, as she better. "However, simply saying that poison is dangerous is an oversimplification. Many poisons, in the correct dosage are used as medicine and even poison type energy, which is less complicated, is being used in this case to destroy something within you that you want to get rid of. If I had to compare it to any other typing, it would be ground," the man concluded.
Joey tilted his head in the background. He wouldn't have thought of that. After all, at least in terms of temperament, poison types were generally put in the same category as dark and ghost types.
"The reason for this is because ground type moves often rely on dissolving, decomposing, deconstructing the ground. However, in comparison to poison this is a very simple usage generally applied to any earthen substance. Poison is similar only in that it is essentially also a thing that at its core destroys molecular bonds. In other words, just like how ground types first dissolve the ground and then restructure it to their needs to fight, poison types are focused on dissolving in a specific manner the composition of their opponents. It is not a general attack that tries to destroy everything like fire, but a precise dagger which attacks the places which are most vulnerable. The ability of blood to congeal or to not, the nerves which are required to feel and thus react to one's surroundings, the hormones regulating pain. It makes sense, really, that ground types can affect so much, but poison types so little. After all, the ground is inert. Poison, by default, is functioning inside enemy territory, fighting against a biology that has the concept of self-defence and against an aura which instinctually rejects the intrusive substance. That is why, poison must make every single bit of damage count, because it is not allowed to rampage uncontrollably but rather exists in a perpetual state of war with the enemy's defence mechanisms." Koga paused to let the words sink in. "It is this power that you will soon wield. To affect little, but to make the effect count.
"A single drop of poison can harm the equilibrium of an entire body, no matter how large. It is the tool that, rather than strengthening itself, depends on bringing the enemy down to one's level. In my experience the ability to use it feels like having a burning star of purple inside oneself which one can with the lightest touch inflict on one's enemies who it shall destroy from within."
Joey was really starting to doubt his willingness to challenge the man for a badge later on in his journey. This did not sound very nice. Metapod however seemed to be taking in the words like a sponge. Her eyes were wide and spiritually at least she was nodding along as if it all made perfect sense. Which it did. Poison was an inert substance which killed when it was shared with someone who wasn't immune.
"Now," Koga began anew. "I want you to close your eyes."
Metapod followed the instruction.
"I want you to blend out all sensory inputs except for my own voice. I want you to forget about the grass tickling your shell, forget about the feeling of gravity weighing you down, forget the wind, forget the earth pressing up against you, forget the sounds of the birds in the background."
He let a small silence enter the clearing. "Now go within yourself. There you will find an energy that is light green, slightly yellowish. It is your being, but, for now, ignore it. There's also a little white dot, representing the normal type energy present in you, ignore it as well. Do not consider these two, and then by default the only energy left is the memory transmitted to you about poison by the technical machine. Focus on that memory, you are a butterfree spewing poison powder everywhere. You feel the build up of that move, the injection of the poison energy into the spores produced through your wings. You feel the purple, it is undulating inside of you. It is rising inside of your throat, tainting the contents of yourself and being slowly with your entire focus, spat out!" the last word Koga shouted. and with that shout metapod jerked in place and spat onto the ground a disgusting, but small glob of purple acid which sizzled away at the grass.
The ninja paused, as did everyone else in the clearing. Even rattata, mostly forgotten as he'd been, stopped in his dig fueled pebble run and looked over as the purple blob slowly lost its acidity and stopped eating into the ground.
"Metapod!"
"Calm yourself," Koga warned. "Return to your centre, close your eyes, turn your senses inwards. Explore what you have just done. You have created something which has the potential to harm yourself and your loved ones, but which can also save them by being applied to your enemies. Bring out the energy again, grasp it as you grasp the other energies when you need them. It will come to your aid. Now let it slowly trickle up your throat and dribble to the ground to which you're bound to!" he said again, focusing a certain animosity onto the ground which metapod ultimately wanted to get away from through evolution.
A few droplets of purple were once again ejected from metapod's mouth, more concentrated they landed on the floor and blackened the earth. Metapod was left breathing heavily and her eyes which had previously been closed voluntarily for now simply closed.
"I would recommend recalling her," Koga said to Joey who did just that. "She's probably tired, using any type energy for the first time can be very exhausting."
The youngster nodded along. "I've never considered using guided meditation to help bring out type energy," he mused.
Koga nodded. "It was best to do it now when the memory of the technical machine was still fresh," he said. "I would recommend not practising that particular expression for the rest of the day, though. It likely burned the throat. With how inexperienced she is, there's no point in practising when exhausted."
"Thank you for your help," Joey said.
The gym leader just shook his head. "It's an interesting project, I've also learned something from it. After all, I've never really gone so in-depth in teaching a non-poison type pokemon the energy. Regardless, I don't have enough time to help you further, so I will rather give you a time point after which you should call me again."
Joey sighed internally at the fact that the man was already leaving, but as a gym leader, and as a father he really didn't have that much time, and already the one hour that Joey had gotten had been more worthwhile than entire weeks have been in the past. "All right, same deal as last time. What's the benchmark?"
"The poison type energy produced right now has already likely harmed the everstone. The goal is, that whenever it dissolves some of it, the next string shot will inject the remains, which is the inevitable end for all materials that metapod consumes. To this purpose, I would suggest that you train by having her try to hold increasingly resistant material in her mouth, until she manages to degrade parts of a stone with her practice. From this we will see when she gets to a point where the everstone is likely sufficiently damaged. At that point, call me and we will work out the next few steps. "
Joey nodded and blinked, and the man was gone and he was left in the clearing with his two pokemon, but otherwise, alone.
The youngster considered calling out something along the lines of, 'I know you're still here.' If the man was still here but hiding somehow, then it would freak him out, and if he wasn't no one would be here to witness Joey's idiocy. He refrained, Koga was a useful contact to cultivate, and being a respectful young lad was still probably the safest and best way to go forward in the relationship. He looked at metapod who was taking a sleep of exhaustion, a happy smile on her face. He looked at rattata, still paused in his efforts and looking at his teammate.
"Well?" Joey asked. "What are you waiting for? Get back to work. Surge ain't gonna beat himself."
-/-
AN: I hope I showed in this chapter how far Joey still has to go before he can consider himself an Elite trainer. In terms of knowledge and application. If you want to read a few chapters ahead you can head over to my patron, if not you can wait cozily here
-/-
"All right rattata, show me how far you've gotten with dig," Joey said.
After having gotten their asses kicked by Lorelei last week, and hadn't that been a blast, they had quickly fallen into a routine which they were growing increasingly familiar with as they grew as a team. They trained in the mornings, did missions when good ones were posted on the board and challenged trainers in the afternoon.
Generally the training occurred outside of town. Joey wanted to give himself at least the opportunity of meeting a pokemon who could have the potential to become their third team member. That hadn't happened yet, but he was open to the idea.
Today they were in the training fields of the city for once. The large and closed boxes with minimalistic environments enclosed them in a tomb of productivity, symbolic of office work in modern society. The one they were in right now had a single tree and a big boulder in the middle. There wasn't even any grass growing, which was good because they would have destroyed any vegetation with their dig practice.
Joey's starter slipped underground and reappeared a second later in an enthusiastic upwards jump five metres away. The youngster nodded.
"Metapod, pod, pod, pod!" the bug-type complained from the side about not having any specific task to do. Joey had left her in the shade of the boulder to wait and rest. After all, he didn't know how hard Koga would go on her in the upcoming training session.
And wasn't that something? Just a week ago they got their ass beat by one future member of the Elite Four, and today they'd be getting specialised training from another. This one was a gym leader right now as well, probably even further along the path than Lorelei, despite the switched timelines of their Elite Four ascension.
Metapod had been incredibly fired up after her very quick and decisive loss to Lorelei's slowpoke. However, that didn't necessarily mean that Joey had been able to devise a specific training regimen for her. She was only capable of learning so many moves after all.
They've been working, just as they had been right before the Celadon gym, on string shot, which was encountering diminishing returns in its improvement and it's bullet variation; harden, which still had some upwards mobility and bug bite, which was worth eeking out every single iota of potential out of, due to its existence as the only damaging move metapod knew.
Joey had also tried to train string shot tree manoeuvring, in addition to the reeling in metapod could already do too lighter pokemon, but it was proving to be a frustrating endeavour. Girl was big and heavy and the internal mechanism of string shot which allowed it to be used as a rope did not provide a significant amount of speed with which to do so. Sure, metapod could rapple up a tree and swing down into a given direction, but the whole thing took way too long to be useful in a battle. They would work on it, of course. They had all the time in the world to master her limited move set.
It was clear however that metapod was getting frustrated with the training. Rattata was making such steep progress every day with his new move, while she had nothing new to learn which she could improve on quickly due to its novelty.
The rat had gone from fainting underground due to running out of energy, to quite reliably using the move to, if not attack, then at least reposition. Thankfully, rather than sulking about it, metapod used her frustration as fuel to make the lives of the youngsters and trainers inhabiting or visiting Saffron a living nightmare. She didn't have a particularly high win rate against anyone with a ranged attack that moved faster than a thrown stone, but her ability to lock down and destroy physical threats was becoming impressive. Also, there was something incredibly satisfying about winning a two badge level battle with a metapod.
"Come on girl," Joey said. "I hardly think the poison Master is going to be late, so just conserve your energy and take the rest you can get. I doubt you're going to get much of it in the future. Once you start being able to practise poison TE you're probably going to want to do that at least several hours a day. Don't think I'll let you slack on your other training either."
His words mollified the pokemon somewhat and she closed her eyes to signal that she would wait. It must have been frustrating to be unable to move for the most part. She was as reliant on Joey, as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair would have been. A bit less perhaps, due to the string shot, but still. Hopefully the reward of evolution would make up for the suffering of the second stage. She'd get wings and achieve three-dimensional mobility.
"I see you rattata," Joey muttered at the purple rat which had come to chitter at his feet at the fact that he'd taken his attention off the training. He bent down and went on his knees to talk to his starter on a more even level, handing him a small pebble which his starter started idly rolling around in his front paws, crumbling it with an application of ground TE.
He'd developed a variety of training methods in the past week, which, when all put together at the end, progressed the proficiency of dig quite efficiently. He'd gathered some of the methods from the forums, some from books and others from his own mind and imagination.
Dig was a move essentially comprised of three parts. First, the pokemon had to channel ground type energy into the appendages they were using to dig to soften up the ground. In other words, they reduced the density of the earth. Joey theorised that at some level of mastery of the move, a pokemon would be able to dig, without using their body at all.
The second part of dig was the fluid movement once underground. Dig caused a pokemon to move faster than they would have otherwise been able to dig with no move assistance. It was essentially a ground type version of a quick attack enhancing the limbs in the ground environment while manipulating the earth to allow faster passage.
Unlike the exercise that rattata was doing right now, with the crumbling of the stone, Joey had not found a specific exercise for this part. He'd just started timing the rat at how fast he traversed distance underground and rewarded beating previous records.
The third part of dig was the coming out of the ground. An explosive attack stacked with ground type energy. Rattata generally trained that with metapod. It was a physical attack so it could help the bug master harden. Rattata's success was determined by how high into the air he could knock his teammate.
There was technically a fourth aspect, namely the fact that pokemon gained a very rudimentary ability to sense what was going on above ground while using the move, but there was nothing Joey could do about that right now. It was probably in this aspect of the move, where it helped being an actual ground type. They likely had a way, or a predisposition, to being able to sense things in regards to their element. He couldn't imagine that they didn't know exactly what was happening around them and above them.
"All right, rattata," Joey eventually decided. "How about we do a little bit of the first two steps today since metapod has to rest."
He pulled out a bag of pebbles from his pocket, took out the fistful and showed it to his attentive starter who had worked his way through the previous little stone. Then, Joey stood up, threw his hand in the air and released the ammunition. From one moment to the next the training ground was absolutely covered in rocks.
"This is going to be a training in three parts. You're going to identify two stones decently far enough from each other, then you will disintegrate one pebble, go underground to try and get to the other one as quickly as possible, before disintegrating that one as well, before going to the next one. This should train your disintegration ability, your underground travel speed, and your control over your ascent. After all, if you exit too violently, you may throw the pebble out of the way meaning you would have to go search for another one, thus affecting your speed. I think we can do this a few times today, if you manage to get faster in your destruction of all the pebbles throughout the training session, then you're going to get an oran berry feast. Simple, right?" he asked.
Rather than nodding the rat simply sprinted off faster than Joey could have said his name. The youngster activated a timer on his PokeNav. The trick in keeping the rat motivated was of course that he would throw more pebbles up every time to make it more and more difficult to beat the previous record. Sometimes you just had to be an ass to get maximum efficiency from one's surroundings.
"An interesting training method," a voice suddenly commented from behind Joey, who definitely did not flinch. The youngster rather gracefully turned around to look at the ninja who had managed to sneak up on him.
"I recently learned that moves are best trained by doing them in a multifaceted and diverse manner," he replied. "Also, rattata is not too much for theory."
Koga nodded. "It's good to see that you know some of the idiosyncrasies of your pokemon, however, as fascinating as the subject may be, I came here to check up on the progress of your metapod," the man said in a rough voice with crossed arms. The combination made him look displeased, but from Joey's research, that was just how he usually looked and sounded.
"Before we continue the conversation," Joey said suspiciously. "Perhaps you could tell me under which face you were hiding when we first met."
Koga cracked a small grin at that, which for him was likely the equivalent of a loud laugh. He didn't have his scarf on today. "Nurse Joy. I'm glad you're taking your safety a bit more seriously."
Joey was tempted to continue the line of questioning ad absurdum, however he wanted to stay in the man's good graces and didn't want to risk the help he was getting. "As for metapod," he started. "She's been getting incredibly resistant to poison, to the point where the toxic orb is doing minuscule amounts of damage which can be stacked up for around half an hour, before it becomes smart to remove the object."
Koga looked over Joey's head, at the pokemon in question. "It sounds to me that you've reached the limit of poison resistance training. Poison will never not be damaging, it can only be non-damaging if it is metapod herself who creates it. The best that one can hope for, is the situation where prolonged exposure can be suffered with minimal damage. I guess it is now time for the next step," he concluded.
"I have a question," Joey suddenly said. Several thoughts had fluttered through his mind as he'd watched metapod go through her toxic orb training. He'd written some of them down, knowing that he would soon have a short period of access to someone who specialised in poison types. It would have been foolish to not use the opportunity to pose some of his questions. "What is it exactly that metapod has built a resistance to? Poisons exist in many different flavours, and I hardly believe that the toxic orb cycles through all of them. Toxins to venoms to chemicals and plant extracts. In essence the question is, what kind of poison is inflicted in a poison type move?"
The gym leader seemed slightly taken aback at the question but had a response ready. "It's an interesting conundrum, the interaction between the actual chemical composition of a poison with the poison type energy that is then afflicted onto it when the move or the status is produced. The answer is either simple, or impossible. The simple answer is that any and all poisons, were they not inflicted with type energy, would have no effect whatsoever on a pokemon. It is rather humans, who are vulnerable to such things. The aura of a pokemon is simply too strong and their bodies too resilient. However, there are to this extent no such different poisons, because upon being mixed with the type energy, the poison changes in its chemical constitution to a sort of prototypical neurotoxin/acid. Thus, any poison in essence simply becomes poison of the most basic variety. Naturally the more complicated version is that different chemical solutions react differently to the insertion of type energy, however the difference is minuscule and the field completely under researched. Your metapod has been building up resistance to poison type energy, and not to any specific molecule, because it never had to do that in the first place, its powerful biology simply rejected those aspects from the get go."
"And toxic?" Joey asked. "I assume that there's then no chemical difference between toxic and other poison type moves, and it is only more powerful because of a heftier dose of poison TE?"
"Exactly. All improvements of poisonous efficacy in a pokemon come from higher level mastery of poison type energy, or of an insertion of more of that energy into the move. Technically one could also insert more type energy into a poison powder, however most of it would go to waste, since only the smallest part of poison powder actually reaches its target."
"I see. I only have one second question, and that is if rattata or any of my other pokemon can build a similar resistance through the same method."
Koga hummed thoughtfully. "Poison resistance is built by poison exposure. Just like how a pokemon's energy has to develop the efficacy at which it strengthens the biological structure, it also has to develop how efficiently it degrades and expels poison type energy from the body. While any other pokemon you have will certainly benefit from building resistance with a toxic orb, it will be a question of priority, since it will take much longer than metapod, who has shed skin to protect herself and a future ability to learn poison type moves to help habituation. Whereas metapod seemingly took three months of time in which her other training endeavours were likely affected by a general lethargy and moodiness, a normal type such as a rattata which does not naturally learn any poison type moves, would likely require a year. The risk also would be much higher." He waved his hand in the air. "Regardless, while this topic is interesting and you can keep the toxic orb if you are so inclined, it is perhaps time to get to the point."
"To verify if metapod's poison resistance is actually up to par?" Joey asked.
"You're her trainer are you not?" Koga responded impatiently. "There is no easy way to measure how efficient the poison resistance of a pokemon is. You are the most qualified to tell me if you're ready or not. So are you?"
The youngster nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, it's about time," he said.
The ninja stepped forward, a technical machine with a glint of purple suddenly in his hands. Both of them turned towards the bug type which had been curiously listening in on their conversation.
"The type energy usage inherent to this technical machine comes from a butterfree who knows poison powder," Koga said. "As you might remember we were considering using as low level a pokemon as possible, a weedle likely in this case. In the end we decided that the best way forward was to go by taking the move from the same evolution line and from a pokemon that knows the move metapod would learn upon evolution. Poison sting, and poison powder are very similar, but they're not the same."
The youngster recalled metapod into her pokeball and held it up in front of him. "Well, let's do this," he said.
Koga took the pokeball and promptly inserted it into the appropriate slot in the technical machine. The two of them watched curiously as, with a press of a button, the machine glowed an ominous purple, before ejecting its disc.
Koga handed the Pokeball back to Joey and prompted him to release the bug type. Joey did so and the large metapod materialised on the ground.
"Now, I would urge you not to try anything for the moment," the poison master said seriously, referring to the pokemon. "We simply did that first so that you could first acclimatise to the energy: Before trying anything, we have to first discuss the methodology of training up poison type energy proficiency."
"Meta, meta," the Pokemon answered. likely saying something along the lines of: 'I'm not as stupid as my teammate, please.'
The ninja turned to Joey. "What do you know about training type energy?"
The youngster sighed. It was a tough topic to research. "I know that training mastery of TE independently of any move can improve the control of moves of the same type. I also know that every person's understanding of type energy can be treated in a way as an individual guideline. This is why type specialists are rewarded for their narrow focus. They can pick out the similarities that come with training pokemon of a similar typing, without learning and appropriating irrelevant information. There are commonalities among pokemon of the same type, such as fighting types preferring to, well, fight to train themselves in the usage of their energy. Poison, however… that seems to me a bit more abstract than that."
"There are two main ways to train type energy mastery specifically. The first is to master a move of the typing until one can start introducing variables into its use. For example, dig can be divided into separate aspects. When all of these have been mastered, one can remove the structure of the move from the equation, and one is left with the ability to channel the appropriate type energy," Koga explained.
Joey couldn't help but interrupt with an exclamation. "It makes sense now! Damn. Why didn't I come up with that? Why doesn't any book mention it?"
The gym leader shook his head. "These are all incredibly advanced topics. Rather than focusing on type energy mastery, it is easier and more effective at the start of one's career, perhaps even for the first 5 years of it, to focus simply on mastering to a decent extent as many moves as possible to shore up issues of inflexibility. Similarly it is more likely that after one has mastered several moves of a type, that one will be able to get down to the essence of the issue."
"I see," Joey said, already wondering how he could implement this knowledge into improving his team. They weren't really walking the traditional path of training, so all things that were generally inadvisable deserved serious consideration. "And what's the second type?" he asked.
"The second type of training is more difficult and suited for specialists. It is also the type of training that metapod will be forced to undergo by default of not knowing or being able to know a poison type move. It is essentially strapping a cart in front of the ponyta. A master of the type, can induce in a pupil a higher understanding of the energy, by foreign injection, and by discussing the symbolics of the matter. You need to consider for a moment that type energy, or, in other words, aura, is an abstract concept, however, there are some similarities and realities that stay true across the board. If these can be communicated to a pokemon, this understanding may help them come to a point where they can manipulate the energy sooner. Suffice to say, this method works better on pokemon who are more intelligent. That is why psychics generally learn type energy first, and then the moves while fighting types prefer simpler methods, first learn the moves and then the type energy.
"Well, out of the three of us, metapod is probably the smartest," Joey admitted bashfully and got a chuckle from the gym leader.
"That remains to be seen," Koga said. "Regardless, the technical machine having done its job, metapod should have in her the ability to access three types of energy. The normal type, through her ability to use the moves tackle and harden. The bug type, which is her natural typing and thus the predominant energy and poison type. The issue comes when one considers how to tap into these different energies. After all, the predominant typing of the pokemon over shadows all other sensations, while in a similar vein it is difficult to sense these things at all before one has achieved sufficient mastery of the ability to manipulate the energy. Contradictory, since to master one must first sense."
"Wouldn't the toxic orb have helped with her ability to detect poison TE within her?" Joey asked.
"One could certainly hope so. However, reality is seldom so nice as to form itself after our desires," Koga said coldly. He turned to Metapod. "An explanation on what the poison type is, to start."
Joey pulled out the notebook that he had been keeping since the beginning of this treatment, into which he had also noted Koga's previous words about training of type energy and the way poison energy actually interacted with the chemical components poison.
"The easiest way to explain poison type energy is that it is purple. A colour in nature, that generally signifies that whatever it blesses is dangerous to the touch." Koga began, metapod listening attentively, as she better. "However, simply saying that poison is dangerous is an oversimplification. Many poisons, in the correct dosage are used as medicine and even poison type energy, which is less complicated, is being used in this case to destroy something within you that you want to get rid of. If I had to compare it to any other typing, it would be ground," the man concluded.
Joey tilted his head in the background. He wouldn't have thought of that. After all, at least in terms of temperament, poison types were generally put in the same category as dark and ghost types.
"The reason for this is because ground type moves often rely on dissolving, decomposing, deconstructing the ground. However, in comparison to poison this is a very simple usage generally applied to any earthen substance. Poison is similar only in that it is essentially also a thing that at its core destroys molecular bonds. In other words, just like how ground types first dissolve the ground and then restructure it to their needs to fight, poison types are focused on dissolving in a specific manner the composition of their opponents. It is not a general attack that tries to destroy everything like fire, but a precise dagger which attacks the places which are most vulnerable. The ability of blood to congeal or to not, the nerves which are required to feel and thus react to one's surroundings, the hormones regulating pain. It makes sense, really, that ground types can affect so much, but poison types so little. After all, the ground is inert. Poison, by default, is functioning inside enemy territory, fighting against a biology that has the concept of self-defence and against an aura which instinctually rejects the intrusive substance. That is why, poison must make every single bit of damage count, because it is not allowed to rampage uncontrollably but rather exists in a perpetual state of war with the enemy's defence mechanisms." Koga paused to let the words sink in. "It is this power that you will soon wield. To affect little, but to make the effect count.
"A single drop of poison can harm the equilibrium of an entire body, no matter how large. It is the tool that, rather than strengthening itself, depends on bringing the enemy down to one's level. In my experience the ability to use it feels like having a burning star of purple inside oneself which one can with the lightest touch inflict on one's enemies who it shall destroy from within."
Joey was really starting to doubt his willingness to challenge the man for a badge later on in his journey. This did not sound very nice. Metapod however seemed to be taking in the words like a sponge. Her eyes were wide and spiritually at least she was nodding along as if it all made perfect sense. Which it did. Poison was an inert substance which killed when it was shared with someone who wasn't immune.
"Now," Koga began anew. "I want you to close your eyes."
Metapod followed the instruction.
"I want you to blend out all sensory inputs except for my own voice. I want you to forget about the grass tickling your shell, forget about the feeling of gravity weighing you down, forget the wind, forget the earth pressing up against you, forget the sounds of the birds in the background."
He let a small silence enter the clearing. "Now go within yourself. There you will find an energy that is light green, slightly yellowish. It is your being, but, for now, ignore it. There's also a little white dot, representing the normal type energy present in you, ignore it as well. Do not consider these two, and then by default the only energy left is the memory transmitted to you about poison by the technical machine. Focus on that memory, you are a butterfree spewing poison powder everywhere. You feel the build up of that move, the injection of the poison energy into the spores produced through your wings. You feel the purple, it is undulating inside of you. It is rising inside of your throat, tainting the contents of yourself and being slowly with your entire focus, spat out!" the last word Koga shouted. and with that shout metapod jerked in place and spat onto the ground a disgusting, but small glob of purple acid which sizzled away at the grass.
The ninja paused, as did everyone else in the clearing. Even rattata, mostly forgotten as he'd been, stopped in his dig fueled pebble run and looked over as the purple blob slowly lost its acidity and stopped eating into the ground.
"Metapod!"
"Calm yourself," Koga warned. "Return to your centre, close your eyes, turn your senses inwards. Explore what you have just done. You have created something which has the potential to harm yourself and your loved ones, but which can also save them by being applied to your enemies. Bring out the energy again, grasp it as you grasp the other energies when you need them. It will come to your aid. Now let it slowly trickle up your throat and dribble to the ground to which you're bound to!" he said again, focusing a certain animosity onto the ground which metapod ultimately wanted to get away from through evolution.
A few droplets of purple were once again ejected from metapod's mouth, more concentrated they landed on the floor and blackened the earth. Metapod was left breathing heavily and her eyes which had previously been closed voluntarily for now simply closed.
"I would recommend recalling her," Koga said to Joey who did just that. "She's probably tired, using any type energy for the first time can be very exhausting."
The youngster nodded along. "I've never considered using guided meditation to help bring out type energy," he mused.
Koga nodded. "It was best to do it now when the memory of the technical machine was still fresh," he said. "I would recommend not practising that particular expression for the rest of the day, though. It likely burned the throat. With how inexperienced she is, there's no point in practising when exhausted."
"Thank you for your help," Joey said.
The gym leader just shook his head. "It's an interesting project, I've also learned something from it. After all, I've never really gone so in-depth in teaching a non-poison type pokemon the energy. Regardless, I don't have enough time to help you further, so I will rather give you a time point after which you should call me again."
Joey sighed internally at the fact that the man was already leaving, but as a gym leader, and as a father he really didn't have that much time, and already the one hour that Joey had gotten had been more worthwhile than entire weeks have been in the past. "All right, same deal as last time. What's the benchmark?"
"The poison type energy produced right now has already likely harmed the everstone. The goal is, that whenever it dissolves some of it, the next string shot will inject the remains, which is the inevitable end for all materials that metapod consumes. To this purpose, I would suggest that you train by having her try to hold increasingly resistant material in her mouth, until she manages to degrade parts of a stone with her practice. From this we will see when she gets to a point where the everstone is likely sufficiently damaged. At that point, call me and we will work out the next few steps. "
Joey nodded and blinked, and the man was gone and he was left in the clearing with his two pokemon, but otherwise, alone.
The youngster considered calling out something along the lines of, 'I know you're still here.' If the man was still here but hiding somehow, then it would freak him out, and if he wasn't no one would be here to witness Joey's idiocy. He refrained, Koga was a useful contact to cultivate, and being a respectful young lad was still probably the safest and best way to go forward in the relationship. He looked at metapod who was taking a sleep of exhaustion, a happy smile on her face. He looked at rattata, still paused in his efforts and looking at his teammate.
"Well?" Joey asked. "What are you waiting for? Get back to work. Surge ain't gonna beat himself."
-/-
AN: I hope I showed in this chapter how far Joey still has to go before he can consider himself an Elite trainer. In terms of knowledge and application. If you want to read a few chapters ahead you can head over to my patron
, if not you can wait cozily hereMinor continuity error: Joey recalls Metapod, and then a couple paragraphs later is looking at her sleeping.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Some really fascinating takes on type energy and how it interacts with the world here! Honestly, I keep thinking Metapod's gonna get so fed up with things that she ends up becoming some kind of poison assassin Butterfree out of sheer spite and inspiration from Koga lol. Can't wait to see how things pan out once the everstone is gone.
Chapter 22: The unbeatable type-check
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As the deadline for the next gym battle approached, Joey nervously started to consider the possibility that he would be facing Surge with just two pokemon. No matter how open he tried to be to the idea of a new team member, he never quite managed to meet a pokemon that really fit his idea of what a professional battler should act like. Unwilling to compromise on this issue he simply put himself more and more into the training of the team that he did have.
Missions became a useful source of money, which was immediately put into the pot for Lance's victory over Bruno. Leisure activities such as visiting Constance and playing with the misdreavus served as brief interludes in between the gruelling switches between training, battling and working.
"Come on rattata, dig, dig, dig" Joey encouraged as his starter, after two months of trying was finally beginning to achieve a level of the move that would actually be useful. The rat could now burrow underground in a moment's notice, almost as fast as if it initiated quick attack, and then came out from underneath just as quickly and accurately.
"No!" Joey screamed, correcting himself. "I want you to swim! The earth is simply a body of water which you are traversing as if you were a fish," he called enthusiastically as rattata frantically moved through the earth of the training ground, turning into a swamp. The session eventually concluded with the rat laying on his back and staring at the sun, completely exhausted, but satisfied.
Joey went over, and force fed his starter a concentrate of oran berries, sugar and proteins. A workout milkshake essentially.
"15 minutes of rest, then again," he commented, receiving an exhausted nod.
Joey turned towards metapod and watched as she swung from tree to tree in a slow, but controlled fashion. Brief flashes of harden interspersed the movements when she was in the air without being attached to anything. Turning her into what was essentially the bug equivalent of spider-man, or a morning star. It was definitely still a work in progress. Joey knew, however, that with the bug's limited move pool, making her dodge one move that she otherwise couldn't would be a victory in itself.
If she managed to accurately throw herself at an enemy with her hardened body, then that would just be the cherry on top.
However, that was still a long way off. For the moment he was satisfied by the fact that her poison TE practice was still at the stage where her skill grew steadily. She was still only dissolving organic material in her mouth, but much faster now. The bullet seed hardened string was also getting somewhere, and was starting to break the things it hit.
Like branches, and discarded beer bottles.
The youngster watched his team giving their all and bit his fingernails at the fact that without a third team member, his previous plans for the next gym might very well have to be thrown out.
He wished that he could function as a third team member himself. He did train his ghostly powers almost daily now. Koga had with his explanation of the poison type reignites the passion for his own exploration of aura, however this would not help in the gym battle. He couldn't compete.
If he actually wanted to stand a chance against Surge's raichu in a 2 vs 1, then he would need something special.
-/-
There had been little change to Joey's schedule in the past months, however there was one significant thing that had to be mentioned. Instead of going to the job board during the day after a training session or before a battle he had started doing so first thing in the morning. This was because it was in the morning that the person responsible hung up on the board the jobs that had accumulated in her registry on the previous day. This meant that on the first come first serve basis, the best jobs were often gone by the time he'd gotten there during the past. He was done making that mistake.
The issue was of course that he wasn't the only person with this idea.
If he'd thought that the League season was popular before. All the trainers running from the gym and to the pokecenter, and the trainers that hung around the routes surrounding Saffron challenging everything that moved and breathed to a battle, and the general business of the public battle square where fights were easier to get that fresh air. Well, trying to get a good job from the board so early in the morning gave him a whole new appreciation for how many people were attempting the circuit every year.
He used his small size, and not so rarely, his ghost TE slightly boosting his physicality, to get ahead in the rumbling mass of youngsters, trainers, and general poor people who surrounded the job board every morning. He shoved his way, as was common, past a slightly chubby man in jogging clothes who he knew only trained spearows, and a green haired girl with an electric yellow tank-top and shorts, to briefly read through the listings.
There weren't many jobs that interested him, by default of them either being not paid well enough, or not even offering an interesting experience which consisted of either a cool challenge, or leaving the city, and still giving him the opportunity to find a third team member
Briefly scanning through the jobs he discarded all of those which were to find place in Saffron, and all of those which were not likely to take him off route. There was one however, in the quickly dwindling pile on the corkboard wall that grabbed his attention.
On route 6 towards Vermillion there was apparently a group of diglett who were terrorising the local community, eating vegetables off farms and being general nuisances. The poster of the job notice wanted someone to go and beat them in a battle, which according to him would make them return to their cave. Joey grabbed at the notice, he was after all quite confident in rattata. However, just as his hand came into contact with the notice, another hand joined his, shocking him with a bit of electrical static. He followed the hand up to the forearm to the elbow and the shoulder and the curve of the neck to the face of a green haired girl who looked to be a year or two older than him, cradling a hideously twitching grin on her face.
"I was there first," she said with a growl and pulled at the paper which they had both managed to take off the board with their combined efforts. Joey for his part wasn't about to get bullied and similarly pulled at the paper.
"Younger people first," he said.
"Older people first," the girl brusquely replied.
"I saw it first," Joey argued.
"With how short you are, I sincerely doubt that," the girl retorted.
"With how old you are I doubt that you were even able to make out the words before I was already finished reading," Joey shot back.
"Shouldn't you be in kindergarten right about now?"
"I'm sorry, should I call the retirement home to come and collect you?"
Sparks flew between the two of them, not the nice ones. They both pulled one last time, ripping the paper ripped clean down the middle.
"You know," Joey said with a hateful frown. "There's not really a limit on how many people can try to do this job." He didn't want to team up, there was just something about her that triggered him, something about her frowning lips, and her yellow and black colour scheme. Perhaps it reminded him of a pikachu. With how much he'd been preparing against Surge, anything even remotely resembling the species likely elicited an aggressive response at this point. Nevertheless, he was willing to compromise.
"I'm not sharing the mission with some brat." The girl frowned, apparently unwilling to compromise.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Joey cursed, retracting his previous offer. "It was never going to end any differently," Joey said. "I challenge you to a battle. Whoever wins gets the job."
"You're on, kid."
Joey sent out the challenge request on his PokeNav as the two of them extradited themselves from the large crowd surrounding the job board to take this outside. He noted on his PokeNav that she had three badges. The Boulder badge, the Cascade badge, and the Dynamic badge. She must have been in Saffron as a transitory phase between either Celadon or Vermilion.
"Only two badges?" the girl said with a laugh. "This will be too easy."
"Only three badges?" Joey asked with a laugh. "The season's already been going on for almost 6 months. That's just sad."
Serena, which was the name of the girl, sent him glare as the two of them exited the pokecenter and took up space in the battling field behind it. The gravelly small square of white chalk in which Joey had lost his first battle against that guy with the pidgey, whatever his name was.
"You're going to have to put your pokemon where your mouth is, before I start caring about your insults, brat," Serena said as she started throwing a pokeball up and down.
Joey noted that she had three on her belt.
"2 v 2," Joey said and pulled out a pokeball. He was thinking of leading with rattata this time. The girl looked like she might have an electric type and he didn't want to miss the opportunity to let his starter train his dig in a real scenario. If he sent out metapod, he was genuinely afraid of wiping the girls team before he got the chance to give his starter any match time.
He threw out the pokemon as his opponent did the same. A rattata and a pikachu emerged onto the field. He grinned. This was the perfect practice match, in fact.
Instead of any notions of chivalry or mutual respect standing in between him and victory, Joey shouted his first command while the pikachu was still looking around verifying the fact that it was indeed in a battle. "Rattata, quick attack!"
"Pikachu, respond with your own quick attack," Serena said in reply, causing rat and mouse to shoot at each other, trailing white energy and screaming their respective names.
While it looked like a typical test of strength, Joey knew that Serena's attack was a trap. The danger involved in physical contests with electric types was getting paralyzed. Pikachu, especially, often had the ability static. Assuming similar physical strength and attack usage, it would always come out on top.
"Slip underneath," Joey ordered right before the collision. One moment rattata was there, the next he wasn't, disappearing underground.
Serena frowned while her pikachu aborted the attack and looked around. It went on its hind legs and seemed to be wary of the now underground rattata.
"Thunder shock when it's out," Serena ordered.
Joey meanwhile, grinned. Him and rattata had gained enough experience using dig in battles that they'd worked out a code to communicate while the rat was under. Supposedly ground types were able to hear well enough even when underground, but rattata was a normal type so he wasn't quite there yet. The youngster tapped both his heels on the ground at once. The signal for rattata to wait for a few seconds before initiating attack.
Serena's grown more severe with every second that rattata failed to appear, and her pikachu started looking around nervously and jumping in little circles in an attempt to dodge what wasn't coming.
"Did your rat run away?" she asked Joey derisively to the laughter of some people from the crowd.
The youngster, for his part, immediately tapped the ground once when she opened her mouth. She'd distracted her pokemon by speaking, which allowed rattata to burst out of the ground underneath it in an explosion of ground type energy and smack the pikachu straight into the air.
The pikachu sent out a thunder shock, bright yellow electricity striking out from the pouches on his cheeks and travelling through the air towards Joey's starter. However, the latter was already underground again. It was here that the girl's inexperience started showing and she started fretting in place while her pikachu nursed its wounds.
If one didn't have an answer for an opponent going underground, one could hardly defeat them. It was similar to how the Celadon gym leader had lost to a pidgey by virtue of the latter simply staying in the air and not taking any risks.
Joey wasn't feeling particularly merciful today, and wasn't going to make this into anything but an efficient and brutal takedown.
He tapped his foot on the ground and rattata once again emerged, striking at the pikachu. However, this time Serena seemed to have an actual answer prepared.
"Latch on!" she shouted and pikachu through the pain of being struck in that single brief burst of contact between the two pokemon grabbed its enemy and without having to be ordered, unleashed its next move. A point blank thunder shock.
"Dig!" Joey shouted, not wasting any time trying to figure out a counter strategy. What went up, had to come down. Dig involved striking the enemy into the air which had happened, the next thing that had to happen was the two pokemon falling to the ground, lighting up with electrical discharge. Rather than wasting trying to remove himself from the hold, rattata simply channelled ground type energy and submerged himself and the pikachu underground on impact. This was probably the only thing that allowed him to survive the consecutive thunder shocks being channelled into him, the electricity getting grounded slightly. They didn't go all the way through, rattata being too weak to bury both of them. They were just stuck together in a hole.
"Hyperfang," the youngster said mercilessly, causing his starter to bite down on the pikachu still entwining him in a hug, trying to charge up another thunder shock.
It would never come. The hyper fang was enough to make the electric type fall unconscious and Serena recalled it seeming thoughtful.
The crowd muttered appreciatively at the tactics, but none of them probably knew how close to losing rattata had actually been. Joey's starter did not have particularly amazing defences against what had just happened, and if he had been unlucky enough to be paralyzed by static he would have become unable to execute hyper fang. The match would have ended right there.
Joey didn't like to rely on luck, but this was still a win in his book. He smirked arrogantly at the girl, feeling like he probably had this in the bag.
His smile lasted just until Serena revealed her next pokemon.
A magnemite.
The girl grinned sadistically at her choice, likely patting herself on the back at the strategic value of the pick. Her magnemite in contrast simply floated around aimlessly waiting for the match to reconvene.
Both trainers knew what this match-up meant, and while rattata stood arrogantly on the field, Joey knew that that confidence would soon disappear. A magnemite was one of the worst possible matchups that they could encounter, right after perhaps a magnetone, its evolution.
The issue was that rattata was still a purely physical attacker. He didn't really have any moves with which he could use to harm a steel type. In addition to that, every touch of an electric type was a dangerous flirtation with paralyzation and a quick counter attack. In fact, Joey could count himself lucky that Surge's third badge challenge only consists of a raichu, and not of his wide selection of magnemites and magnetones.
"Aw, are you scared? Winning against Pikachu was just a fluke. You obviously got lucky not getting paralyzed," Serena said and flipped up her green hair so that it rested on her back as she struck a pose, drawing a few jeers from the people spectating the match.
Joey scoffed. He wasn't afraid of losing, but in this case a loss would hurt more than usual.
"Rattata, use quick attack," he ordered without much preamble.
"Magnemite, thunder shock," the girl ordered. The grey floating ball of steel sparked up sending out a fizzle of electricity towards rattata who was attacking one directionally.
"Dodge using dig," Joey ordered and the rat slipped under the ground. Just because the ground type move would likely never reach magnemite due to the fact that it was floating in the air, did not mean that it was not still useful as a method of dodging. His right foot slid to the side, digging into the gravel and rattata emerged to the right of magnemite who was spinning around its own axis in search of its enemy.
"Quick attack," Joy ordered undeterred by the fact that even if he managed to get in close, neither hyper fang, nor bite would truly damage the pokemon. The only thing he could hope for was dragging the magnemite to the ground somehow and hitting it with a dig.
However, he wouldn't get the chance.
"Metal sound, as loud as possible!" his opponent shouted. Magnemite started emitting a horrible screech at the order, the move penetrated not only rattata's ears, but also Joey's.
The youngster grimaced as his starter stopped its attack and crouched down in pain from the sound waves assaulting his sense of hearing. Was there even the point in ordering something? Could rattata even hear him? He had to try, didn't he?
"Cover your ears and quick attack, get it to the ground and dig!" he shouted as loud as he could, projecting some TE through his voice.
The rat seemed to hear him and put up its paws to its ears from where it was rolling around in the ground in pain. It sprang at the Magnemite again, much slower this time due to only using his hind legs. However, it was here that the frustrating strategy already used by pikachu resurfaced.
"Meet it head on magnemite. Tackle into thunder Wave."
Joey cursed internally, and almost futilely called for rattata to detect, as the two Pokemon met in midair with their normal type moves. However, while detect was an incredibly useful move in their arsenal, it wasn't really something that could help them dodge a mid-air wave of electricity, which sacrificed all its power to be faster. The two pokemon collided, neither getting much damage from the exchange of quick attack and tackle. Magnemite didn't even wobble in the air, but it did eject a stream of electricity which caught rattata in its path no matter how hard the Pokemon tried to dodge.
It became apparent to Joey, as his starter crashed on the ground, muscles twitching wildly, that he needed to teach the rat a ranged move as quickly as possible. Swift would have perhaps somehow been able to block that misfortunate thunder wave.
"Sonic boom!" his opponent ordered. Magnemite stopped in place and from its x-like mouth a concentrated blast of air was ejected.
"Dig," Joey tried to order, getting sick of this match. It didn't look like they would win this one, but perhaps if he exhausted the magnemite enough then maybe metapod could make it.
However, any thoughts of exhausting magnemite suddenly disappeared as rattata seized up in the attempted dodge. The sonic boom hit him frontally and threw him back, tumbling along the floor.
Before the rat could regain his bearings and dig on their ground, a thunder shock aimed straight for the head almost reached him if it hadn't been for the red light of the recall button.
"I'm forfeiting rattata," Joey said as he considered his next move.
Serena's smirk faded as she realised that all she had left on the field was a slightly tired magnemite on the field, while Joey still had one fresh Pokemon.
It really was an unfair pokemon, magnemite, Joey considered. The steel typing and electric typing made it vulnerable to ground, however it levitated bringing it out of the range of effect of moves such as dig and earthquake. The electric typing even countered the steel weakness to fighting, considering that with every touch it was possible to paralyse an opponent relying on physical attacks.
The only downside of the whole thing was the fact that magnemite wasn't known to be very affectionate, considering their simplistic personality. They obviously had some emotions, but in comparison to organics they were harder to motivate and to build a connection with.
"Any day now?" the girl shouted. It was funny how someone trying to specialise in electric types was impatient. Truly specialisations told much about a person. Or did people mould their personalities towards their specialisations?
Joey sighed and threw out his next pokemon. Metapod materialised on the field and immediately started to synthesise poison TE. Joey couldn't blame her, considering that this was usually their training time and this was the first priority of the day, but this was not the time to waste unnecessary stamina.
"We're in a battle metapod," he said, causing the pokemon to stop in her training and glance around confusedly at the crowd of people jeering at her and at the floating grey magnet pokemon looking at her curiously.
"Really? That's your pick?" his opponent asked derogatorily, but Joey only rolled his eyes. He and metapod had already heard it all before.
Their only chance to win this battle was for metapod to somehow exhaust her opponent with string shot and finish them off with consecutive bug bites. A very unlikely possibility, but they had to try where they had to try.
"Metapod, string shot, weigh it down!" he shouted. A barrage of string shots exited metapod's mouth like a machine gun.
Magnemite, for its part, simply dropped its levitation, falling a bit to the ground and avoiding everything in a very elegant manner.
Joey didn't care. He was too busy staring at the purple colour of the string shot that had just left his Pokemon's mouth, which fell to the ground uselessly and unleashed a slight sizzling sound as the residue poison TE burned at the gravel and the earth.
Was this? Toxic thread? Joey asked himself. The move mostly reserved for the spinarak evolution line? Well, not necessarily. The pokemon world was much more complicated than a simple TV show or a video game could showcase. Why couldn't a pokemon who knew string shot and knew how to channel poison type energy create their own variety of the move?
"Sonic boom, rapid fire," his opponent ordered.
Magnemite jerked back, before surging forward and ejecting a multiplicity of shock waves.
Joey was distracted, but not distracted enough to not know the only option he had available to him.
"Wide field string shot into harden," he ordered. A not-purple anymore blanket of strings were shot in the air capturing and dissipating the sonic booms. Metapod started glistening a white light indicating that her physical defences were getting higher. It wouldn't defend her against the electric attacks, but at least sonic boom would be counteracted if it ever hit.
A small stalemate developed between the two pokémon, as ranged attacks were exchanged and were all either blocked or dodged.
Metapod was showing herself fully capable of cutting off the string shot in mid-air, so the electricity wouldn't travel through it. This led to magnemite exhausting itself with futile attacks, while metapod pushed her hardening further and further.
However, while this could have maybe ended a battle in the wild, magnemite was still being ordered around by a trainer of at least below-average human intelligence. The girl noticed that at this point it would be a double knockout from exhaustion, and ordered another, "metal sound!"
The horrible screeching commenced, however the decision had been wrong. Metapod didn't have such sensitive ears as rattata did, and the short break allowed her to get off a few hardens.
Naturally, however, metal sound was also a stat-afflicting move, which lowered metapod's ability to resist special attacks. But, there wasn't anything they could do about that. If only Magnemite hadn't been a steel type, then perhaps playing around with the idea of toxic thread, would have gotten them somewhere.
In the end the battle ended in its inevitable conclusion. Joey lost, swept by a magnemite. The little magnet had never bothered risking Itself by flying too close to Metapod who for her part couldn't even attach a string shot to her enemy in fear of getting electrocuted.
The girl smugly announced her victory, took the job that they had fought over, running off.
However, it was Joey who was the real winner.
He'd always known that a magnemite would be a big issue for his team as it was currently, and this gave him some valuable experience in case he ever had to face the pokemon again when stakes were actually on the table.
Also, he's been complaining recently about the fact that without a third team member he would be severely disadvantaged against Surge. However, the discovery of the fact that metapod could poison her string shots opened up a new strategy against Surge.
If they could poison the man's raichu, then perhaps rattata hiding underground and not taking any hits could simply exhaust the pokemon.
Overall, Joey wasn't that butthurt about losing the job. The possibility of developing his own take on toxic thread was much more important than any amount of money, and he was slowly developing the solution for his inability to find a proper third team member.
Strengthening the team that he had right now became a much higher priority.
He had two weeks before the bus left for Vermillion and during this time he would have to teach rattata swift, to give the rat at least some range possibilities and train metapod as hard as he physically could in her new ability.
-/-
At the end of the day, after a hard training session and some more battles in the public training field, Joey was once again at the pokecenter. Ironically enough he ended up in the queue in front of the desk right next to the girl who'd beaten him in the morning. She crossed her arms and refused to meet his gaze, admitting with a grumble at some point that she failed the job, and that it might have been stupid of her to challenge a group of diglett with a team full of electric types.
-/-
AN: Joey has lost another battle, will he ever win? Find out on the next episode, coming to Blockbusters near you next year. Magnemite kinda op tbh. nerf please.
-/-
As the deadline for the next gym battle approached, Joey nervously started to consider the possibility that he would be facing Surge with just two pokemon. No matter how open he tried to be to the idea of a new team member, he never quite managed to meet a pokemon that really fit his idea of what a professional battler should act like. Unwilling to compromise on this issue he simply put himself more and more into the training of the team that he did have.
Missions became a useful source of money, which was immediately put into the pot for Lance's victory over Bruno. Leisure activities such as visiting Constance and playing with the misdreavus served as brief interludes in between the gruelling switches between training, battling and working.
"Come on rattata, dig, dig, dig" Joey encouraged as his starter, after two months of trying was finally beginning to achieve a level of the move that would actually be useful. The rat could now burrow underground in a moment's notice, almost as fast as if it initiated quick attack, and then came out from underneath just as quickly and accurately.
"No!" Joey screamed, correcting himself. "I want you to swim! The earth is simply a body of water which you are traversing as if you were a fish," he called enthusiastically as rattata frantically moved through the earth of the training ground, turning into a swamp. The session eventually concluded with the rat laying on his back and staring at the sun, completely exhausted, but satisfied.
Joey went over, and force fed his starter a concentrate of oran berries, sugar and proteins. A workout milkshake essentially.
"15 minutes of rest, then again," he commented, receiving an exhausted nod.
Joey turned towards metapod and watched as she swung from tree to tree in a slow, but controlled fashion. Brief flashes of harden interspersed the movements when she was in the air without being attached to anything. Turning her into what was essentially the bug equivalent of spider-man, or a morning star. It was definitely still a work in progress. Joey knew, however, that with the bug's limited move pool, making her dodge one move that she otherwise couldn't would be a victory in itself.
If she managed to accurately throw herself at an enemy with her hardened body, then that would just be the cherry on top.
However, that was still a long way off. For the moment he was satisfied by the fact that her poison TE practice was still at the stage where her skill grew steadily. She was still only dissolving organic material in her mouth, but much faster now. The bullet seed hardened string was also getting somewhere, and was starting to break the things it hit.
Like branches, and discarded beer bottles.
The youngster watched his team giving their all and bit his fingernails at the fact that without a third team member, his previous plans for the next gym might very well have to be thrown out.
He wished that he could function as a third team member himself. He did train his ghostly powers almost daily now. Koga had with his explanation of the poison type reignites the passion for his own exploration of aura, however this would not help in the gym battle. He couldn't compete.
If he actually wanted to stand a chance against Surge's raichu in a 2 vs 1, then he would need something special.
-/-
There had been little change to Joey's schedule in the past months, however there was one significant thing that had to be mentioned. Instead of going to the job board during the day after a training session or before a battle he had started doing so first thing in the morning. This was because it was in the morning that the person responsible hung up on the board the jobs that had accumulated in her registry on the previous day. This meant that on the first come first serve basis, the best jobs were often gone by the time he'd gotten there during the past. He was done making that mistake.
The issue was of course that he wasn't the only person with this idea.
If he'd thought that the League season was popular before. All the trainers running from the gym and to the pokecenter, and the trainers that hung around the routes surrounding Saffron challenging everything that moved and breathed to a battle, and the general business of the public battle square where fights were easier to get that fresh air. Well, trying to get a good job from the board so early in the morning gave him a whole new appreciation for how many people were attempting the circuit every year.
He used his small size, and not so rarely, his ghost TE slightly boosting his physicality, to get ahead in the rumbling mass of youngsters, trainers, and general poor people who surrounded the job board every morning. He shoved his way, as was common, past a slightly chubby man in jogging clothes who he knew only trained spearows, and a green haired girl with an electric yellow tank-top and shorts, to briefly read through the listings.
There weren't many jobs that interested him, by default of them either being not paid well enough, or not even offering an interesting experience which consisted of either a cool challenge, or leaving the city, and still giving him the opportunity to find a third team member
Briefly scanning through the jobs he discarded all of those which were to find place in Saffron, and all of those which were not likely to take him off route. There was one however, in the quickly dwindling pile on the corkboard wall that grabbed his attention.
On route 6 towards Vermillion there was apparently a group of diglett who were terrorising the local community, eating vegetables off farms and being general nuisances. The poster of the job notice wanted someone to go and beat them in a battle, which according to him would make them return to their cave. Joey grabbed at the notice, he was after all quite confident in rattata. However, just as his hand came into contact with the notice, another hand joined his, shocking him with a bit of electrical static. He followed the hand up to the forearm to the elbow and the shoulder and the curve of the neck to the face of a green haired girl who looked to be a year or two older than him, cradling a hideously twitching grin on her face.
"I was there first," she said with a growl and pulled at the paper which they had both managed to take off the board with their combined efforts. Joey for his part wasn't about to get bullied and similarly pulled at the paper.
"Younger people first," he said.
"Older people first," the girl brusquely replied.
"I saw it first," Joey argued.
"With how short you are, I sincerely doubt that," the girl retorted.
"With how old you are I doubt that you were even able to make out the words before I was already finished reading," Joey shot back.
"Shouldn't you be in kindergarten right about now?"
"I'm sorry, should I call the retirement home to come and collect you?"
Sparks flew between the two of them, not the nice ones. They both pulled one last time, ripping the paper ripped clean down the middle.
"You know," Joey said with a hateful frown. "There's not really a limit on how many people can try to do this job." He didn't want to team up, there was just something about her that triggered him, something about her frowning lips, and her yellow and black colour scheme. Perhaps it reminded him of a pikachu. With how much he'd been preparing against Surge, anything even remotely resembling the species likely elicited an aggressive response at this point. Nevertheless, he was willing to compromise.
"I'm not sharing the mission with some brat." The girl frowned, apparently unwilling to compromise.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Joey cursed, retracting his previous offer. "It was never going to end any differently," Joey said. "I challenge you to a battle. Whoever wins gets the job."
"You're on, kid."
Joey sent out the challenge request on his PokeNav as the two of them extradited themselves from the large crowd surrounding the job board to take this outside. He noted on his PokeNav that she had three badges. The Boulder badge, the Cascade badge, and the Dynamic badge. She must have been in Saffron as a transitory phase between either Celadon or Vermilion.
"Only two badges?" the girl said with a laugh. "This will be too easy."
"Only three badges?" Joey asked with a laugh. "The season's already been going on for almost 6 months. That's just sad."
Serena, which was the name of the girl, sent him glare as the two of them exited the pokecenter and took up space in the battling field behind it. The gravelly small square of white chalk in which Joey had lost his first battle against that guy with the pidgey, whatever his name was.
"You're going to have to put your pokemon where your mouth is, before I start caring about your insults, brat," Serena said as she started throwing a pokeball up and down.
Joey noted that she had three on her belt.
"2 v 2," Joey said and pulled out a pokeball. He was thinking of leading with rattata this time. The girl looked like she might have an electric type and he didn't want to miss the opportunity to let his starter train his dig in a real scenario. If he sent out metapod, he was genuinely afraid of wiping the girls team before he got the chance to give his starter any match time.
He threw out the pokemon as his opponent did the same. A rattata and a pikachu emerged onto the field. He grinned. This was the perfect practice match, in fact.
Instead of any notions of chivalry or mutual respect standing in between him and victory, Joey shouted his first command while the pikachu was still looking around verifying the fact that it was indeed in a battle. "Rattata, quick attack!"
"Pikachu, respond with your own quick attack," Serena said in reply, causing rat and mouse to shoot at each other, trailing white energy and screaming their respective names.
While it looked like a typical test of strength, Joey knew that Serena's attack was a trap. The danger involved in physical contests with electric types was getting paralyzed. Pikachu, especially, often had the ability static. Assuming similar physical strength and attack usage, it would always come out on top.
"Slip underneath," Joey ordered right before the collision. One moment rattata was there, the next he wasn't, disappearing underground.
Serena frowned while her pikachu aborted the attack and looked around. It went on its hind legs and seemed to be wary of the now underground rattata.
"Thunder shock when it's out," Serena ordered.
Joey meanwhile, grinned. Him and rattata had gained enough experience using dig in battles that they'd worked out a code to communicate while the rat was under. Supposedly ground types were able to hear well enough even when underground, but rattata was a normal type so he wasn't quite there yet. The youngster tapped both his heels on the ground at once. The signal for rattata to wait for a few seconds before initiating attack.
Serena's grown more severe with every second that rattata failed to appear, and her pikachu started looking around nervously and jumping in little circles in an attempt to dodge what wasn't coming.
"Did your rat run away?" she asked Joey derisively to the laughter of some people from the crowd.
The youngster, for his part, immediately tapped the ground once when she opened her mouth. She'd distracted her pokemon by speaking, which allowed rattata to burst out of the ground underneath it in an explosion of ground type energy and smack the pikachu straight into the air.
The pikachu sent out a thunder shock, bright yellow electricity striking out from the pouches on his cheeks and travelling through the air towards Joey's starter. However, the latter was already underground again. It was here that the girl's inexperience started showing and she started fretting in place while her pikachu nursed its wounds.
If one didn't have an answer for an opponent going underground, one could hardly defeat them. It was similar to how the Celadon gym leader had lost to a pidgey by virtue of the latter simply staying in the air and not taking any risks.
Joey wasn't feeling particularly merciful today, and wasn't going to make this into anything but an efficient and brutal takedown.
He tapped his foot on the ground and rattata once again emerged, striking at the pikachu. However, this time Serena seemed to have an actual answer prepared.
"Latch on!" she shouted and pikachu through the pain of being struck in that single brief burst of contact between the two pokemon grabbed its enemy and without having to be ordered, unleashed its next move. A point blank thunder shock.
"Dig!" Joey shouted, not wasting any time trying to figure out a counter strategy. What went up, had to come down. Dig involved striking the enemy into the air which had happened, the next thing that had to happen was the two pokemon falling to the ground, lighting up with electrical discharge. Rather than wasting trying to remove himself from the hold, rattata simply channelled ground type energy and submerged himself and the pikachu underground on impact. This was probably the only thing that allowed him to survive the consecutive thunder shocks being channelled into him, the electricity getting grounded slightly. They didn't go all the way through, rattata being too weak to bury both of them. They were just stuck together in a hole.
"Hyperfang," the youngster said mercilessly, causing his starter to bite down on the pikachu still entwining him in a hug, trying to charge up another thunder shock.
It would never come. The hyper fang was enough to make the electric type fall unconscious and Serena recalled it seeming thoughtful.
The crowd muttered appreciatively at the tactics, but none of them probably knew how close to losing rattata had actually been. Joey's starter did not have particularly amazing defences against what had just happened, and if he had been unlucky enough to be paralyzed by static he would have become unable to execute hyper fang. The match would have ended right there.
Joey didn't like to rely on luck, but this was still a win in his book. He smirked arrogantly at the girl, feeling like he probably had this in the bag.
His smile lasted just until Serena revealed her next pokemon.
A magnemite.
The girl grinned sadistically at her choice, likely patting herself on the back at the strategic value of the pick. Her magnemite in contrast simply floated around aimlessly waiting for the match to reconvene.
Both trainers knew what this match-up meant, and while rattata stood arrogantly on the field, Joey knew that that confidence would soon disappear. A magnemite was one of the worst possible matchups that they could encounter, right after perhaps a magnetone, its evolution.
The issue was that rattata was still a purely physical attacker. He didn't really have any moves with which he could use to harm a steel type. In addition to that, every touch of an electric type was a dangerous flirtation with paralyzation and a quick counter attack. In fact, Joey could count himself lucky that Surge's third badge challenge only consists of a raichu, and not of his wide selection of magnemites and magnetones.
"Aw, are you scared? Winning against Pikachu was just a fluke. You obviously got lucky not getting paralyzed," Serena said and flipped up her green hair so that it rested on her back as she struck a pose, drawing a few jeers from the people spectating the match.
Joey scoffed. He wasn't afraid of losing, but in this case a loss would hurt more than usual.
"Rattata, use quick attack," he ordered without much preamble.
"Magnemite, thunder shock," the girl ordered. The grey floating ball of steel sparked up sending out a fizzle of electricity towards rattata who was attacking one directionally.
"Dodge using dig," Joey ordered and the rat slipped under the ground. Just because the ground type move would likely never reach magnemite due to the fact that it was floating in the air, did not mean that it was not still useful as a method of dodging. His right foot slid to the side, digging into the gravel and rattata emerged to the right of magnemite who was spinning around its own axis in search of its enemy.
"Quick attack," Joy ordered undeterred by the fact that even if he managed to get in close, neither hyper fang, nor bite would truly damage the pokemon. The only thing he could hope for was dragging the magnemite to the ground somehow and hitting it with a dig.
However, he wouldn't get the chance.
"Metal sound, as loud as possible!" his opponent shouted. Magnemite started emitting a horrible screech at the order, the move penetrated not only rattata's ears, but also Joey's.
The youngster grimaced as his starter stopped its attack and crouched down in pain from the sound waves assaulting his sense of hearing. Was there even the point in ordering something? Could rattata even hear him? He had to try, didn't he?
"Cover your ears and quick attack, get it to the ground and dig!" he shouted as loud as he could, projecting some TE through his voice.
The rat seemed to hear him and put up its paws to its ears from where it was rolling around in the ground in pain. It sprang at the Magnemite again, much slower this time due to only using his hind legs. However, it was here that the frustrating strategy already used by pikachu resurfaced.
"Meet it head on magnemite. Tackle into thunder Wave."
Joey cursed internally, and almost futilely called for rattata to detect, as the two Pokemon met in midair with their normal type moves. However, while detect was an incredibly useful move in their arsenal, it wasn't really something that could help them dodge a mid-air wave of electricity, which sacrificed all its power to be faster. The two pokemon collided, neither getting much damage from the exchange of quick attack and tackle. Magnemite didn't even wobble in the air, but it did eject a stream of electricity which caught rattata in its path no matter how hard the Pokemon tried to dodge.
It became apparent to Joey, as his starter crashed on the ground, muscles twitching wildly, that he needed to teach the rat a ranged move as quickly as possible. Swift would have perhaps somehow been able to block that misfortunate thunder wave.
"Sonic boom!" his opponent ordered. Magnemite stopped in place and from its x-like mouth a concentrated blast of air was ejected.
"Dig," Joey tried to order, getting sick of this match. It didn't look like they would win this one, but perhaps if he exhausted the magnemite enough then maybe metapod could make it.
However, any thoughts of exhausting magnemite suddenly disappeared as rattata seized up in the attempted dodge. The sonic boom hit him frontally and threw him back, tumbling along the floor.
Before the rat could regain his bearings and dig on their ground, a thunder shock aimed straight for the head almost reached him if it hadn't been for the red light of the recall button.
"I'm forfeiting rattata," Joey said as he considered his next move.
Serena's smirk faded as she realised that all she had left on the field was a slightly tired magnemite on the field, while Joey still had one fresh Pokemon.
It really was an unfair pokemon, magnemite, Joey considered. The steel typing and electric typing made it vulnerable to ground, however it levitated bringing it out of the range of effect of moves such as dig and earthquake. The electric typing even countered the steel weakness to fighting, considering that with every touch it was possible to paralyse an opponent relying on physical attacks.
The only downside of the whole thing was the fact that magnemite wasn't known to be very affectionate, considering their simplistic personality. They obviously had some emotions, but in comparison to organics they were harder to motivate and to build a connection with.
"Any day now?" the girl shouted. It was funny how someone trying to specialise in electric types was impatient. Truly specialisations told much about a person. Or did people mould their personalities towards their specialisations?
Joey sighed and threw out his next pokemon. Metapod materialised on the field and immediately started to synthesise poison TE. Joey couldn't blame her, considering that this was usually their training time and this was the first priority of the day, but this was not the time to waste unnecessary stamina.
"We're in a battle metapod," he said, causing the pokemon to stop in her training and glance around confusedly at the crowd of people jeering at her and at the floating grey magnet pokemon looking at her curiously.
"Really? That's your pick?" his opponent asked derogatorily, but Joey only rolled his eyes. He and metapod had already heard it all before.
Their only chance to win this battle was for metapod to somehow exhaust her opponent with string shot and finish them off with consecutive bug bites. A very unlikely possibility, but they had to try where they had to try.
"Metapod, string shot, weigh it down!" he shouted. A barrage of string shots exited metapod's mouth like a machine gun.
Magnemite, for its part, simply dropped its levitation, falling a bit to the ground and avoiding everything in a very elegant manner.
Joey didn't care. He was too busy staring at the purple colour of the string shot that had just left his Pokemon's mouth, which fell to the ground uselessly and unleashed a slight sizzling sound as the residue poison TE burned at the gravel and the earth.
Was this? Toxic thread? Joey asked himself. The move mostly reserved for the spinarak evolution line? Well, not necessarily. The pokemon world was much more complicated than a simple TV show or a video game could showcase. Why couldn't a pokemon who knew string shot and knew how to channel poison type energy create their own variety of the move?
"Sonic boom, rapid fire," his opponent ordered.
Magnemite jerked back, before surging forward and ejecting a multiplicity of shock waves.
Joey was distracted, but not distracted enough to not know the only option he had available to him.
"Wide field string shot into harden," he ordered. A not-purple anymore blanket of strings were shot in the air capturing and dissipating the sonic booms. Metapod started glistening a white light indicating that her physical defences were getting higher. It wouldn't defend her against the electric attacks, but at least sonic boom would be counteracted if it ever hit.
A small stalemate developed between the two pokémon, as ranged attacks were exchanged and were all either blocked or dodged.
Metapod was showing herself fully capable of cutting off the string shot in mid-air, so the electricity wouldn't travel through it. This led to magnemite exhausting itself with futile attacks, while metapod pushed her hardening further and further.
However, while this could have maybe ended a battle in the wild, magnemite was still being ordered around by a trainer of at least below-average human intelligence. The girl noticed that at this point it would be a double knockout from exhaustion, and ordered another, "metal sound!"
The horrible screeching commenced, however the decision had been wrong. Metapod didn't have such sensitive ears as rattata did, and the short break allowed her to get off a few hardens.
Naturally, however, metal sound was also a stat-afflicting move, which lowered metapod's ability to resist special attacks. But, there wasn't anything they could do about that. If only Magnemite hadn't been a steel type, then perhaps playing around with the idea of toxic thread, would have gotten them somewhere.
In the end the battle ended in its inevitable conclusion. Joey lost, swept by a magnemite. The little magnet had never bothered risking Itself by flying too close to Metapod who for her part couldn't even attach a string shot to her enemy in fear of getting electrocuted.
The girl smugly announced her victory, took the job that they had fought over, running off.
However, it was Joey who was the real winner.
He'd always known that a magnemite would be a big issue for his team as it was currently, and this gave him some valuable experience in case he ever had to face the pokemon again when stakes were actually on the table.
Also, he's been complaining recently about the fact that without a third team member he would be severely disadvantaged against Surge. However, the discovery of the fact that metapod could poison her string shots opened up a new strategy against Surge.
If they could poison the man's raichu, then perhaps rattata hiding underground and not taking any hits could simply exhaust the pokemon.
Overall, Joey wasn't that butthurt about losing the job. The possibility of developing his own take on toxic thread was much more important than any amount of money, and he was slowly developing the solution for his inability to find a proper third team member.
Strengthening the team that he had right now became a much higher priority.
He had two weeks before the bus left for Vermillion and during this time he would have to teach rattata swift, to give the rat at least some range possibilities and train metapod as hard as he physically could in her new ability.
-/-
At the end of the day, after a hard training session and some more battles in the public training field, Joey was once again at the pokecenter. Ironically enough he ended up in the queue in front of the desk right next to the girl who'd beaten him in the morning. She crossed her arms and refused to meet his gaze, admitting with a grumble at some point that she failed the job, and that it might have been stupid of her to challenge a group of diglett with a team full of electric types.
-/-
AN: Joey has lost another battle, will he ever win? Find out on the next episode, coming to Blockbusters near you next year. Magnemite kinda op tbh. nerf please.
- Location
- The City of Tears, Hallownest
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I feel like you're kind of ridiculously wanking magnemite here. Yes, I know this isn't the games, but Magnemite never has access to Levitate OR static, yes it can magnet rise to dodge ground, but that takes active effort to use. "All electric types risk paralyzing if you hit them" just removes the uniqueness of electric types who actually get static.
Why is she calling for sonic boom, and it's firing shock waves.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good fight. After reviewing Gen 1, I've concluded I'm hoping for Cubone but would be okay with Diglett or maybe Sandshrew. If he even gets a ground type, seems like that may not happen and his running pattern of having some serious disadvantage in every gym battle will continue, which I also like. He beat a fighting gym with a normal type rattata, he beat a grass gym pokemon with a metapod, having a ground type to hard-counter the third gym might feel wrong. He has a path to victory, even if I doubt that Raichu will just allow Rattata to stay hidden and untouched until he gets his incredibly anti-climactic win.
I don't think translating the game mechanics so literally that "the Pokemon who canonically always levitates off the ground is somehow hit by ground-borne because he technically doesn't have the Levitate ability, which describes the act of levitating off the ground" is made canon to this fic is would be a good approach to the worldbuilding. If you're levitating all the time, congrats you have Levitate until someone drags you down to earth.
I don't think translating the game mechanics so literally that "the Pokemon who canonically always levitates off the ground is somehow hit by ground-borne because he technically doesn't have the Levitate ability, which describes the act of levitating off the ground" is made canon to this fic is would be a good approach to the worldbuilding. If you're levitating all the time, congrats you have Levitate until someone drags you down to earth.
- Location
- The City of Tears, Hallownest
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You're missing the point. "Being immune to ground type attacks" requires more than "Isn't touching the ground" There's a reason that just flinching or paralyzing a flying type pokemon doesn't make them vulnerable, but subjecting them to Smack down or Gravity does, or Mold Breaker piercing Levitate. It's not obeying "game mechanics" it's obeying game balance.