oh damn i can see this being a big issue politicaly...becuase it could be used to force GLs to accept single pokemon teams like Sean's...we all know that Serp could trash almost anything up to and including Champion level.
Typechange Johto
- Thread starter E.I.G.
- Start date
-
- Tags
- pokemon sequel transformation
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
Honestly I've never found a pokemon setting that puts flat limits on what pokemon a trainer can have on their team to really make sense, because pokemon are damn well able to choose a trainer they like and want to hang out with on their own. And when, say, a pair of Meowth decide they like someone and want to hang around with him or her, all that going 'no you can only have one pokemon' does is make it easier to kidnap whichever Meowth isn't formerly registered. Or for the settings that go 'oh, no, that pokemon is too risky for anyone but a six badge trainer to train', like, what, you're going to tell Tyranitar that they can't decide that J Random Backwoods Trainer is their trainer now?
Restrictions like 'you have to be a four badge trainer to go into the Frozen Caverns of Frozen Ice' make more sense, because that's a 'well, maybe we should not let beginners go into a place that will kill them', or 'no, you can not go try to catch the dragons over in ye mountains because they do not tolerate idiots', I can see that. But I've never seen a restriction system that puts down flat limits shown in story in a way that would actually get me to believe it would work.
Restrictions like 'you have to be a four badge trainer to go into the Frozen Caverns of Frozen Ice' make more sense, because that's a 'well, maybe we should not let beginners go into a place that will kill them', or 'no, you can not go try to catch the dragons over in ye mountains because they do not tolerate idiots', I can see that. But I've never seen a restriction system that puts down flat limits shown in story in a way that would actually get me to believe it would work.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
He's a fun character to include in this journey.
I think it should be interesting to see.
It would only apply to the first Badge, and Shawn had issues with his third. Alexa is kind of saying it was a big issue politically.
... yes, that is kind of what Alexa is trying to say about that idea.
It is an insane political move that made very little sense that she didn't actually have to deal with because it got shot down easily for the League before her own, but as that was the League before her own it was also something she payed attention to and remembered.
I tried to have Alexa go over an insane unworkable extension of the more mundane requirements for a bit of flavor.
... wait, you aren't saying that you've seen this before, are you? Because that was supposed to be an insane idea that made literally no sense to anyone, although if some writer has tried it before I am willing to use it as a take down of the concept.
- Location
- United States
I've seen it a few times but almost always badly. In the good ones it's used in a world where pokemon are not intelligent. So you dont have cases of a pokemon choosing of their own will to be with a given trainer.
Not a good idea for little Tommy to jump from play fighting with a bidoof to trying to make make an 800 lbs obligate carnivore not eat him or peoples pets.
Not a good idea for little Tommy to jump from play fighting with a bidoof to trying to make make an 800 lbs obligate carnivore not eat him or peoples pets.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I can see how it is good in that situation specifically, but I'm still a bit dumbfounded that this wasn't just me being a bit silly with how politics can make a mess.
Do I want to know what a bad example actually looks like?
- Location
- United States
The one I remember had Team Rocket win and become the government in charge. They went around and took tons of people's pokemon that they said were dangerous.
Idea itself could have been good but it was all an excuse for Ash to be an edgy villain fight the power thing.
Idea itself could have been good but it was all an excuse for Ash to be an edgy villain fight the power thing.
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
The most sensible ways I've seen it done, if you narrow your vision to 'only considering the gym circuit and the trainers thereof', can make some sense, but the (in my encounters almost always existent) combination of 'everyone with pokemon fall under these requirements' without regard for pet owners, ranches, and the repeated examples of 'hey these people are friends with the local pokemon' seen in the anime tends to break my ability to take it as a realistic decree.
The last story I didn't go 'meh' and stop reading with one of these in it was a few years ago though.
I'm sure it'd be possible to do some system where 'what mon you can catch and formal limits to how many' could make enough sense not to immediately break my suspension of doubt, but the 'best' I've seen done tends to result in me eye rolling and trying to ignore it in favor of an otherwise well written story.
The last story I didn't go 'meh' and stop reading with one of these in it was a few years ago though.
Even in 'pokemon are not people' universes I've yet to see a take make much sense when I give it solid thought, because rarely ever seem to consider any other methods of recruiting a pokemon to your team besides a battle, and even in one where they're more animal then not 'kindness and access to food' is the sort of thing someone in a mountain village or whatever would totally exploit to win over an Onix or whatever at least once every few years. Or Ye Street Kid With Their Friendly Rattata.
I'm sure it'd be possible to do some system where 'what mon you can catch and formal limits to how many' could make enough sense not to immediately break my suspension of doubt, but the 'best' I've seen done tends to result in me eye rolling and trying to ignore it in favor of an otherwise well written story.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Well in this case most of the actual restrictions that survived contact with reality are about the kinds of things that are used in pokemon battles specifically.
I also established in DSS that the really fast acting potions and other battle medicines can have negative side effects from overexposure, so it is mostly a safety restriction there.
Additionally in the setting I am working with it is possible to get Badges without actually going on a League Run. So these restrictions are closer to showing you have the needed skill set then requirements to go on a Journey before you can do things.
That said there are still people who have funny ideas about what should and should not be allowed, but they don't have the power to just force some things through. Pokeball sales did not in the end get restricted to one Badge trainers and above because that was a silly idea that did not work with the Gym Leaders who give out those Badges.
On top of that the point of a pokeball is convenience. They are the latest in a long history of tools used by humans to transport pokemon around without those pokemon needing to walk. Older methods still exist in some areas and applications, and it is possible to have a pokemon pet/friend/ally that does not have a pokeball.
It is part of the systems used for registration of the pokemon to your team in League databases, but in DSS I made note that this universe does not have a restriction of one pokeball per pokemon. So that is mostly a paperwork issue that can be gotten around as well.
I also established in DSS that the really fast acting potions and other battle medicines can have negative side effects from overexposure, so it is mostly a safety restriction there.
Additionally in the setting I am working with it is possible to get Badges without actually going on a League Run. So these restrictions are closer to showing you have the needed skill set then requirements to go on a Journey before you can do things.
That said there are still people who have funny ideas about what should and should not be allowed, but they don't have the power to just force some things through. Pokeball sales did not in the end get restricted to one Badge trainers and above because that was a silly idea that did not work with the Gym Leaders who give out those Badges.
On top of that the point of a pokeball is convenience. They are the latest in a long history of tools used by humans to transport pokemon around without those pokemon needing to walk. Older methods still exist in some areas and applications, and it is possible to have a pokemon pet/friend/ally that does not have a pokeball.
It is part of the systems used for registration of the pokemon to your team in League databases, but in DSS I made note that this universe does not have a restriction of one pokeball per pokemon. So that is mostly a paperwork issue that can be gotten around as well.
Cherrygrove Gym
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- Cherrygrove Gym ---
The large wave shaped structure that housed the new Cherrygrove Gym had a few trainers around it, but not as many as Alexa had grown used to for a city this size during a League. Honestly, with how things looked it was very possible her first match against the Gym would be the event that made or broke the new Leader's status.
"Assistant Alexa Larch?" Leader Douglas questioned. From his waterproof outfit he was clearly a professional swimmer of some kind, and looked calmer than he probably should given the crowd's mood. It was a good sign, but unfortunately she probably wouldn't be the best help here.
"I've been informed that I'm going to need to get an updated Trainer Card to show that title," Alexa agreed jokingly and they made their way inside, soon followed by the small crowd who were likely headed to the stands.
"Well, the official recommended you for my first slot. I guess he wants to see me against a trainer that's already seen a League before I tackle some new trainers," Douglas explained easily as they moved through the entry room. It was very clean and organized, which was another awkward bit of being in a Gym so new she was the first challenger. "Although I have to warn you, I'm planning on being a tricky opponent for anyone who has earned at least three Badges anywhere."
"So, what is the challenge then?" she had to ask him as she looked over the Gym's main arena. It appeared this Water type Gym Leader had decided on a large open pool that looked almost connected to the water outside, although it likely wasn't actually connected, that had a number of various sized rectangular pillars extending out of the water connected to each other by floating bridges of wood. It left a good amount of room for most land based pokemon to maneuver, and the two platforms for the trainers to stand were actually large enough to force a fight at them even if non-Water types never left it. Alexa thought it was possibly a bit much for a first Badge arena, but she technically had a full set of eight so she couldn't be sure Douglas didn't plan on using other arenas for real first time trainers.
"A one on one for the Badge, but I might need a bit of an exhibition match here," the Leader admitted fairly quietly. "Would you be up for a three on three where you only need one win?"
"What level of pokemon do you plan on? I did make it to the Kanto League, but a League level team isn't exactly appropriate for a first Badge," Alexa noted uncomfortably. "My team is a bit out of shape, but I'm not sure they won't just sweep your lower level team."
"Might need to do a real exhibition then," Douglas considered. "How about a pair of one on ones, first for the Badge, second against what I've got for sixth Badge trainers?"
"Sounds like it might work," she agreed. This specific situation was a bit unusual, but having to go over what the match was with the Gym Leader did become more common after the first few Badges. The first four were supposed to be to show you could train pokemon at all, while the last four showed that you could train combat pokemon teams. Her team was smaller than the Leaders for both her seventh and eighth Badge challenges had anticipated, and as a result they had both requested a full five on five and five on six respectively. At first for the seventh she was asked to use some of her less used pokemon in a six verses six, which was more pokemon than she had total, and that had taught her to check with Gym Leaders first for her eighth and on.
Alexa was able to spot William in the stands as she moved onto the challenger's platform. It was clear to be that from how it didn't have a large half circle cut to give extra water access. Douglas went over the rules in detail, no items, one on one, Leader sends out first. She was glad that the timing had worked out, because Charizard had wanted his form to be a surprise and the 'no items' rule would prevent an in battle change to Water with their current options.
"Go Lanturn!" Douglas declared with a wide smile, and let out a large fish pokemon with an antenna topped with a pair of glowing yellow spheres, a yellow eye-mask marking, and a bit of yellow on their tail. It was clearly also an Electric type in addition to Water.
"Charizard," Alexa called out and released her pokemon forward a bit more than her opponent would likely expect, directly into the water.
"Soak!" the Gym Leader ordered before her pokemon had even materialized, and Alexa flinched as it crashed over the water where her pokemon had emerged.
"That, um, might have been a mistake," she informed her opponent as Charizard began to laugh darkly from the water. "Charizard, mirror it." The first glimpse those watching had of her pokemon was his fins emerging from the surface, just before a second wave of glowing water slammed into Lanturn.
"Quick, use Discharge!" Douglas responded with minimal confusion. The fish pokemon, managed to send a massive wave of electrical energy outward just before Charizard's move hit and wiped the glow and markings off of Lanturn, but Alexa's Starter quickly surged up and out of the water in an arc over it that clearly would follow up with a physical blow if Lanturn didn't move. "Counter them with Spark!"
Lanturn lit up with much weaker sparks, but clearly had actually trained while under the effect of Soak as well. Charizard took a bit of a hit from that as he landed on the fish, but Lanturn ended up crushed between her pokemon and Douglas' large platform. "Hydro Pump!" Alexa ordered quickly and Charizard quickly propelled Lanturn out of the water and onto the platform with a strong blast of water.
"I think I'll call that there," Douglas quickly declared. "Lanturn return," he added as he recalled the fish pokemon. "It kind of figures that the first person I tried that on was already prepared for it."
"Honestly, we're kind of in the same boat," Alexa laughed as Charizard emerged onto her platform and gave the crowd a better look at his pure Water type form. "Charizard was planning on giving your pokemon the Fire type, but he hasn't been able to manage when he isn't Fire typed himself."
"Suddenly I'm a bit more worried about the next pokemon," Douglas noted with an entertained smile, and Alexa finally had the spare focus to look at the crowd again. William looked nervous, but compared to the shocked look of the rest of the people present he seemed calm and collected. The crowd did briefly cheer for her victory, but they mostly just looked confused, although they did quickly shift into genuine interest with how the battles would play out. "Are you ready for that one? We're going items allowed, one on one, and I'll send my pokemon out first again."
"Sounds fine," Alexa agreed and returned her smug Starter. Kingler was her plan for who to use next, but she didn't have the setup from the Fire type changing move in the last fight to explain why she had a Fire/Dragon typed Kingler.
"You're up Golduck," Douglas stated, and this time the familiar bipedal blue humanoid duck monster appeared on the platform in front of the Leader. Unlike Lanturn, which was a species Alexa had never seen before, Golduck was familiar enough to tell that this was probably from whatever team Douglas had taken to a tournament to qualify to start up a Gym. A League level combatant, and probably a fairly even match for any of her team at their best.
The good news was that even if this pokemon also knew Soak that probably wouldn't have a major impact on Kingler, although with how layered it would be her pokemon probably wouldn't be as effective as Kingler had been during their last League.
"Kingler, see what you can do," Alexa said and let out her pokemon. Kingler's larger than normal armored form around glowing magma was still hot enough to make the closest water start to steam a bit, and Alexa could hear the crowd murmur about the appearance of her pokemon while Douglas and Golduck tensed at the sight. "Try to start off with Mercury Contagion!"
Kingler clicked at her darkly for the idea, they had not really worked on using that one in other forms yet. However her crab pokemon was able to form a pool of the silvery metal and quickly fling it over at their opponent. Golduck slid to the side rapidly and responded with a quick burst of Psychic energy that Alexa couldn't identify by sight that managed to land. "That armor looks Dragon, stick with Psychic moves," Douglas quickly ordered. "Keep a distance, I don't know what that 'Contagion' does."
"Force Golduck closer with some Dragon Breath," Alexa decided to try. Kingler clearly didn't think much of the first part of that idea, given the crab pokemon simply fired the blast of Dragon typed fire directly at the opponent pokemon, but it did cause Golduck to dive into the water.
For a short time they exchanged Psychic and Dragon type attacks while Alexa tried to work out a better response. Golduck was easily moving through the water, but Kingler was for once restricted and the plan to make the crab pokemon's new type work better had now clearly failed. She didn't want to have Kingler turn back yet to continue to test the new material, but what could she- "Use Mercury Contagion on yourself!" Alexa realized.
Kingler barely paused to splash herself with the silvery liquid, and the crab's magma quickly took on a more metallic sheen. "The Steel type," Douglas noted with a bit of a cringe. "Switch to Water type moves and keep avoiding that one."
Kingler took two harsh Water type attacks after that with only a few Dragon flames that were quickly smothered by the water, and Alexa returned her pokemon. "We still need to work on that form more," she said as a surrender. "Your Golduck is well trained."
"I think your team has mine beat on changing their type mid battle, which means you've more than completed my challenge," Douglas replied with a nod, and apparently the Leader had found a way to justify their prior agreement to the crowd. "The Badge is yours."
---
"We can not thank you enough Assistant Larch," one of the expert trainers working with Douglas told Alexa as they finished the paperwork while the Gym Leader went ahead with a couple more matches to make up for lost time. It was early enough in the League that the number of pokemon needed to handle that many challenges in one day was much smaller for the first Badge matches that would happen today. "I don't know how that League official found you so quick, but if it had not been for you we might have scared off a lot more trainers with Douglas' challenge. It's been a bit of a worry, but you just went and made it look perfectly normal for a battle."
Gym Leaders handled a number of jobs, and the experts they hired to help were necessary to help with all of them. Gyms tested trainers for Badges, instructed people on how to be trainers, gave specialist education on their given type, handled any local issues, and even gave out Starters to new trainers from the local area. More often than not a Gym Leader was the first person you went to in a town if you needed help with something related to pokemon, but for most problems a Gym's expert trainers would be the ones who actually handled the issue.
"Well, to be honest Charizard was kind of planning on pulling that trick on the Water type Gym in the first place," Alexa admitted sheepishly as she checked over the forms one last time. They were fairly simple things, especially in this case because it was quite clear her unusual tactics were valid if the Gym Leader himself had used them first. Which would help her going forward, if a Gym Leader in the region was using such things during a League then it was clearly valid in the same League. "He's probably fine with how that turned out, but it wasn't quite the surprise we had planned on."
"Oh it was a surprise all right, I got chills when you sent a Charizard out right into the water, let alone how shaken Golduck looked when you sent out that Fire/Dragon pokemon," the expert trainer said with a shake of his head. "The Steel type was also a nice touch there, just in time to force a switch in tactics and make the move more concerning. That kind of change throws a pokemon off a lot, and changing a resistance can be terrible for judging when you can take a hit or make an attack. Was that actually a Kingler?"
"Yes, we just worked out a new change and I want to see how long it lasts," Alexa said as she considered that bit of advice. "I think I probably should have used someone else since she was in the middle of that."
"Well, your Kingler handled that added weakness well then," the expert noted. "I know it probably wasn't too bad with the Dragon type I could see holding her at just neutral effectiveness, but different types have different ways they resist other types too. Just because a pokemon ends up pure Water type doesn't mean a hit from a Water type move won't still rattle them more, and Douglas wants us to test that kind of adaptability. It is just the kind of good surprise he needed after the last few days."
"I'm sure Kingler will be glad to hear that," Alexa managed to say, despite how she still wished she had handled that second fight better. There were only a few more papers after that, along with her larger than normal payout for the match and the added exhibition battle. It wasn't new tent money, but it was enough to pay for food if her current one got more damaged than she could just patch, and that was honestly typical for a Gym battle.
She left the Gym, not really in the mood to watch other matches, and decided she needed to get ready to hit the road again. Watching other trainers in their own Gym matches was a good way to check out a Leader's style before you faced them, a nice way to try and see what you could have done better in your own match, and sometimes a way to get a first look at a trainer who you would face later on during the League. Admittedly that last one was just her childhood rival, but that said more about how quickly she had been knocked out of the Tournament as she had recognized some other names from the rankings.
Alexa quickly made her way to the Pokemon center to call her parents about the battle and to speak with the staff about the next route and upcoming weather reports. Her father was a bit sarcastic about how she had used a still untested transformation with Kingler, but overall happy with how she described her first Gym match in the region. Her mother asked pointed and embarrassing questions about William because she made the mistake of pointing out how she had noticed him in the stands. Routes 30 and 31 did not sound like anything notable from what the Nurse Joy could tell her, and the weather was going to be clear for the next week at least so she had time to test and train while traveling it.
Like normal she let Charizard out to help her go over their supplies one last time before they left. Alexa decided she would just directly discuss their finances with her Starter this time, and they both ended up with more questions for the Nurse about what kinds of trainers, odd jobs, and forage results were common on the next two routes. Charizard wasn't too happy with the answers they got, but Alexa was able to point out that they had enough supplies unless something major happened. The weather was predicted to be calm enough, as long as too many pokemon didn't decide to use Rain Dance, to sleep without the tent if that finally gave out.
That discussion was then interrupted by the arrival of William at the Pokemon Center. "Alexa Larch, I cannot thank you enough for your help with that Gym," he immediately said as soon as he spotted the two of them.
"I don't think it was that big of a deal," Alexa tried to deflect. William sounded really serious, and looked it too. "We just had a lucky chance that we already trained for that situation."
The other trainer continued to approach and shook his head. "I've never even heard of that kind of move before I met you, and even if I had seen it used against another trainer first I would not have been as prepared for it," he explained. "You not only showed how to handle it being used against your pokemon, but also how it can be used to intimidate an opponent. Not to mention the way you had to adapt to a changed type with the second fight." He shook his head again. "You said that was a new one for your Kingler, something you had not really trained with yet?"
"We've started general work on training to shift in combat, and that means being adaptable," Alexa allowed, and Charizard chuffed smugly at her. "Okay, Charizard has been the one whose mostly worked on that, but Kingler is one of my two pokemon that got a long term change. She's always a Dragon type and that kind of makes up for things."
"Still, I was able to handle the fact that Leader Douglas has somehow found a way to make a Gym where all his opponents have to use the Water type much more easily than if I hadn't met you," William stated firmly. "Along with that information about human types? I owe you, a lot." He got out a wallet and removed a pair of cards. "If you need any help, don't be afraid to ask," he added as he handed them over.
They were both trainer cards, one with the image of the human appearance in front of her, the other with a large fox pokemon the card listed as a Zoroark. His contact ID was the same on both cards, the mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols that could be shared to easily contact the correct trainer using Pokemon Center phones. "Two cards?" she questioned even as she got out her Pokedex to record the ID. "You didn't have to show me both," she added but meant he had not needed to show the pokemon version to her if he didn't want to.
"The standard is one card for every illusion you commonly use or form you possess," William explained with a shrug. Charizard rumbled out a question in response. "If you only have one form and can't make any illusions then you only get one."
"Huh," Alexa said distractedly as she got out her own trainer card. "Well, I think I can say that I'd be willing to help out again too, even if I'm still not sure I really helped." She handed all three cards to him. "Mine is apparently a bit out of date, so I probably am going to have to get it updated soon."
"Because of your work with your father?" he questioned as he fumbled a bit to get out his own Pokedex and sort the cards out. "I heard that you are a proper Assistant."
"Yeah, it has to do with that," Alexa agreed and Charizard huffed at her with amusement.
---
[Author's Note]
I want to start off this note by asking my readers to take a moment to consider what it would be like to encounter a Gym Leader in a game who uses a Lanturn that knows Soak.
It is an interesting way to use a pokemon introduced in the Johto games, and a nice way to start things off for Alexa in an unexpected way, that I just had to do it here.
... if this seems a bit fast compared to the last few, then I can simply say is the next chapter went well to write.
The large wave shaped structure that housed the new Cherrygrove Gym had a few trainers around it, but not as many as Alexa had grown used to for a city this size during a League. Honestly, with how things looked it was very possible her first match against the Gym would be the event that made or broke the new Leader's status.
"Assistant Alexa Larch?" Leader Douglas questioned. From his waterproof outfit he was clearly a professional swimmer of some kind, and looked calmer than he probably should given the crowd's mood. It was a good sign, but unfortunately she probably wouldn't be the best help here.
"I've been informed that I'm going to need to get an updated Trainer Card to show that title," Alexa agreed jokingly and they made their way inside, soon followed by the small crowd who were likely headed to the stands.
"Well, the official recommended you for my first slot. I guess he wants to see me against a trainer that's already seen a League before I tackle some new trainers," Douglas explained easily as they moved through the entry room. It was very clean and organized, which was another awkward bit of being in a Gym so new she was the first challenger. "Although I have to warn you, I'm planning on being a tricky opponent for anyone who has earned at least three Badges anywhere."
"So, what is the challenge then?" she had to ask him as she looked over the Gym's main arena. It appeared this Water type Gym Leader had decided on a large open pool that looked almost connected to the water outside, although it likely wasn't actually connected, that had a number of various sized rectangular pillars extending out of the water connected to each other by floating bridges of wood. It left a good amount of room for most land based pokemon to maneuver, and the two platforms for the trainers to stand were actually large enough to force a fight at them even if non-Water types never left it. Alexa thought it was possibly a bit much for a first Badge arena, but she technically had a full set of eight so she couldn't be sure Douglas didn't plan on using other arenas for real first time trainers.
"A one on one for the Badge, but I might need a bit of an exhibition match here," the Leader admitted fairly quietly. "Would you be up for a three on three where you only need one win?"
"What level of pokemon do you plan on? I did make it to the Kanto League, but a League level team isn't exactly appropriate for a first Badge," Alexa noted uncomfortably. "My team is a bit out of shape, but I'm not sure they won't just sweep your lower level team."
"Might need to do a real exhibition then," Douglas considered. "How about a pair of one on ones, first for the Badge, second against what I've got for sixth Badge trainers?"
"Sounds like it might work," she agreed. This specific situation was a bit unusual, but having to go over what the match was with the Gym Leader did become more common after the first few Badges. The first four were supposed to be to show you could train pokemon at all, while the last four showed that you could train combat pokemon teams. Her team was smaller than the Leaders for both her seventh and eighth Badge challenges had anticipated, and as a result they had both requested a full five on five and five on six respectively. At first for the seventh she was asked to use some of her less used pokemon in a six verses six, which was more pokemon than she had total, and that had taught her to check with Gym Leaders first for her eighth and on.
Alexa was able to spot William in the stands as she moved onto the challenger's platform. It was clear to be that from how it didn't have a large half circle cut to give extra water access. Douglas went over the rules in detail, no items, one on one, Leader sends out first. She was glad that the timing had worked out, because Charizard had wanted his form to be a surprise and the 'no items' rule would prevent an in battle change to Water with their current options.
"Go Lanturn!" Douglas declared with a wide smile, and let out a large fish pokemon with an antenna topped with a pair of glowing yellow spheres, a yellow eye-mask marking, and a bit of yellow on their tail. It was clearly also an Electric type in addition to Water.
"Charizard," Alexa called out and released her pokemon forward a bit more than her opponent would likely expect, directly into the water.
"Soak!" the Gym Leader ordered before her pokemon had even materialized, and Alexa flinched as it crashed over the water where her pokemon had emerged.
"That, um, might have been a mistake," she informed her opponent as Charizard began to laugh darkly from the water. "Charizard, mirror it." The first glimpse those watching had of her pokemon was his fins emerging from the surface, just before a second wave of glowing water slammed into Lanturn.
"Quick, use Discharge!" Douglas responded with minimal confusion. The fish pokemon, managed to send a massive wave of electrical energy outward just before Charizard's move hit and wiped the glow and markings off of Lanturn, but Alexa's Starter quickly surged up and out of the water in an arc over it that clearly would follow up with a physical blow if Lanturn didn't move. "Counter them with Spark!"
Lanturn lit up with much weaker sparks, but clearly had actually trained while under the effect of Soak as well. Charizard took a bit of a hit from that as he landed on the fish, but Lanturn ended up crushed between her pokemon and Douglas' large platform. "Hydro Pump!" Alexa ordered quickly and Charizard quickly propelled Lanturn out of the water and onto the platform with a strong blast of water.
"I think I'll call that there," Douglas quickly declared. "Lanturn return," he added as he recalled the fish pokemon. "It kind of figures that the first person I tried that on was already prepared for it."
"Honestly, we're kind of in the same boat," Alexa laughed as Charizard emerged onto her platform and gave the crowd a better look at his pure Water type form. "Charizard was planning on giving your pokemon the Fire type, but he hasn't been able to manage when he isn't Fire typed himself."
"Suddenly I'm a bit more worried about the next pokemon," Douglas noted with an entertained smile, and Alexa finally had the spare focus to look at the crowd again. William looked nervous, but compared to the shocked look of the rest of the people present he seemed calm and collected. The crowd did briefly cheer for her victory, but they mostly just looked confused, although they did quickly shift into genuine interest with how the battles would play out. "Are you ready for that one? We're going items allowed, one on one, and I'll send my pokemon out first again."
"Sounds fine," Alexa agreed and returned her smug Starter. Kingler was her plan for who to use next, but she didn't have the setup from the Fire type changing move in the last fight to explain why she had a Fire/Dragon typed Kingler.
"You're up Golduck," Douglas stated, and this time the familiar bipedal blue humanoid duck monster appeared on the platform in front of the Leader. Unlike Lanturn, which was a species Alexa had never seen before, Golduck was familiar enough to tell that this was probably from whatever team Douglas had taken to a tournament to qualify to start up a Gym. A League level combatant, and probably a fairly even match for any of her team at their best.
The good news was that even if this pokemon also knew Soak that probably wouldn't have a major impact on Kingler, although with how layered it would be her pokemon probably wouldn't be as effective as Kingler had been during their last League.
"Kingler, see what you can do," Alexa said and let out her pokemon. Kingler's larger than normal armored form around glowing magma was still hot enough to make the closest water start to steam a bit, and Alexa could hear the crowd murmur about the appearance of her pokemon while Douglas and Golduck tensed at the sight. "Try to start off with Mercury Contagion!"
Kingler clicked at her darkly for the idea, they had not really worked on using that one in other forms yet. However her crab pokemon was able to form a pool of the silvery metal and quickly fling it over at their opponent. Golduck slid to the side rapidly and responded with a quick burst of Psychic energy that Alexa couldn't identify by sight that managed to land. "That armor looks Dragon, stick with Psychic moves," Douglas quickly ordered. "Keep a distance, I don't know what that 'Contagion' does."
"Force Golduck closer with some Dragon Breath," Alexa decided to try. Kingler clearly didn't think much of the first part of that idea, given the crab pokemon simply fired the blast of Dragon typed fire directly at the opponent pokemon, but it did cause Golduck to dive into the water.
For a short time they exchanged Psychic and Dragon type attacks while Alexa tried to work out a better response. Golduck was easily moving through the water, but Kingler was for once restricted and the plan to make the crab pokemon's new type work better had now clearly failed. She didn't want to have Kingler turn back yet to continue to test the new material, but what could she- "Use Mercury Contagion on yourself!" Alexa realized.
Kingler barely paused to splash herself with the silvery liquid, and the crab's magma quickly took on a more metallic sheen. "The Steel type," Douglas noted with a bit of a cringe. "Switch to Water type moves and keep avoiding that one."
Kingler took two harsh Water type attacks after that with only a few Dragon flames that were quickly smothered by the water, and Alexa returned her pokemon. "We still need to work on that form more," she said as a surrender. "Your Golduck is well trained."
"I think your team has mine beat on changing their type mid battle, which means you've more than completed my challenge," Douglas replied with a nod, and apparently the Leader had found a way to justify their prior agreement to the crowd. "The Badge is yours."
---
"We can not thank you enough Assistant Larch," one of the expert trainers working with Douglas told Alexa as they finished the paperwork while the Gym Leader went ahead with a couple more matches to make up for lost time. It was early enough in the League that the number of pokemon needed to handle that many challenges in one day was much smaller for the first Badge matches that would happen today. "I don't know how that League official found you so quick, but if it had not been for you we might have scared off a lot more trainers with Douglas' challenge. It's been a bit of a worry, but you just went and made it look perfectly normal for a battle."
Gym Leaders handled a number of jobs, and the experts they hired to help were necessary to help with all of them. Gyms tested trainers for Badges, instructed people on how to be trainers, gave specialist education on their given type, handled any local issues, and even gave out Starters to new trainers from the local area. More often than not a Gym Leader was the first person you went to in a town if you needed help with something related to pokemon, but for most problems a Gym's expert trainers would be the ones who actually handled the issue.
"Well, to be honest Charizard was kind of planning on pulling that trick on the Water type Gym in the first place," Alexa admitted sheepishly as she checked over the forms one last time. They were fairly simple things, especially in this case because it was quite clear her unusual tactics were valid if the Gym Leader himself had used them first. Which would help her going forward, if a Gym Leader in the region was using such things during a League then it was clearly valid in the same League. "He's probably fine with how that turned out, but it wasn't quite the surprise we had planned on."
"Oh it was a surprise all right, I got chills when you sent a Charizard out right into the water, let alone how shaken Golduck looked when you sent out that Fire/Dragon pokemon," the expert trainer said with a shake of his head. "The Steel type was also a nice touch there, just in time to force a switch in tactics and make the move more concerning. That kind of change throws a pokemon off a lot, and changing a resistance can be terrible for judging when you can take a hit or make an attack. Was that actually a Kingler?"
"Yes, we just worked out a new change and I want to see how long it lasts," Alexa said as she considered that bit of advice. "I think I probably should have used someone else since she was in the middle of that."
"Well, your Kingler handled that added weakness well then," the expert noted. "I know it probably wasn't too bad with the Dragon type I could see holding her at just neutral effectiveness, but different types have different ways they resist other types too. Just because a pokemon ends up pure Water type doesn't mean a hit from a Water type move won't still rattle them more, and Douglas wants us to test that kind of adaptability. It is just the kind of good surprise he needed after the last few days."
"I'm sure Kingler will be glad to hear that," Alexa managed to say, despite how she still wished she had handled that second fight better. There were only a few more papers after that, along with her larger than normal payout for the match and the added exhibition battle. It wasn't new tent money, but it was enough to pay for food if her current one got more damaged than she could just patch, and that was honestly typical for a Gym battle.
She left the Gym, not really in the mood to watch other matches, and decided she needed to get ready to hit the road again. Watching other trainers in their own Gym matches was a good way to check out a Leader's style before you faced them, a nice way to try and see what you could have done better in your own match, and sometimes a way to get a first look at a trainer who you would face later on during the League. Admittedly that last one was just her childhood rival, but that said more about how quickly she had been knocked out of the Tournament as she had recognized some other names from the rankings.
Alexa quickly made her way to the Pokemon center to call her parents about the battle and to speak with the staff about the next route and upcoming weather reports. Her father was a bit sarcastic about how she had used a still untested transformation with Kingler, but overall happy with how she described her first Gym match in the region. Her mother asked pointed and embarrassing questions about William because she made the mistake of pointing out how she had noticed him in the stands. Routes 30 and 31 did not sound like anything notable from what the Nurse Joy could tell her, and the weather was going to be clear for the next week at least so she had time to test and train while traveling it.
Like normal she let Charizard out to help her go over their supplies one last time before they left. Alexa decided she would just directly discuss their finances with her Starter this time, and they both ended up with more questions for the Nurse about what kinds of trainers, odd jobs, and forage results were common on the next two routes. Charizard wasn't too happy with the answers they got, but Alexa was able to point out that they had enough supplies unless something major happened. The weather was predicted to be calm enough, as long as too many pokemon didn't decide to use Rain Dance, to sleep without the tent if that finally gave out.
That discussion was then interrupted by the arrival of William at the Pokemon Center. "Alexa Larch, I cannot thank you enough for your help with that Gym," he immediately said as soon as he spotted the two of them.
"I don't think it was that big of a deal," Alexa tried to deflect. William sounded really serious, and looked it too. "We just had a lucky chance that we already trained for that situation."
The other trainer continued to approach and shook his head. "I've never even heard of that kind of move before I met you, and even if I had seen it used against another trainer first I would not have been as prepared for it," he explained. "You not only showed how to handle it being used against your pokemon, but also how it can be used to intimidate an opponent. Not to mention the way you had to adapt to a changed type with the second fight." He shook his head again. "You said that was a new one for your Kingler, something you had not really trained with yet?"
"We've started general work on training to shift in combat, and that means being adaptable," Alexa allowed, and Charizard chuffed smugly at her. "Okay, Charizard has been the one whose mostly worked on that, but Kingler is one of my two pokemon that got a long term change. She's always a Dragon type and that kind of makes up for things."
"Still, I was able to handle the fact that Leader Douglas has somehow found a way to make a Gym where all his opponents have to use the Water type much more easily than if I hadn't met you," William stated firmly. "Along with that information about human types? I owe you, a lot." He got out a wallet and removed a pair of cards. "If you need any help, don't be afraid to ask," he added as he handed them over.
They were both trainer cards, one with the image of the human appearance in front of her, the other with a large fox pokemon the card listed as a Zoroark. His contact ID was the same on both cards, the mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols that could be shared to easily contact the correct trainer using Pokemon Center phones. "Two cards?" she questioned even as she got out her Pokedex to record the ID. "You didn't have to show me both," she added but meant he had not needed to show the pokemon version to her if he didn't want to.
"The standard is one card for every illusion you commonly use or form you possess," William explained with a shrug. Charizard rumbled out a question in response. "If you only have one form and can't make any illusions then you only get one."
"Huh," Alexa said distractedly as she got out her own trainer card. "Well, I think I can say that I'd be willing to help out again too, even if I'm still not sure I really helped." She handed all three cards to him. "Mine is apparently a bit out of date, so I probably am going to have to get it updated soon."
"Because of your work with your father?" he questioned as he fumbled a bit to get out his own Pokedex and sort the cards out. "I heard that you are a proper Assistant."
"Yeah, it has to do with that," Alexa agreed and Charizard huffed at her with amusement.
---
[Author's Note]
I want to start off this note by asking my readers to take a moment to consider what it would be like to encounter a Gym Leader in a game who uses a Lanturn that knows Soak.
It is an interesting way to use a pokemon introduced in the Johto games, and a nice way to start things off for Alexa in an unexpected way, that I just had to do it here.
... if this seems a bit fast compared to the last few, then I can simply say is the next chapter went well to write.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I'm happy to hear that, and thank you for checking.
Crystal Syrup Mechanics and Production
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I have been asked a question about Crystal Syrup on SB that I felt needed an in depth explanation:
First off, let me explain a bit about how magic works in my pokemon settings. "Magic" is the catchall term for the practical use of metaphysics, in the same way "engineering" is the catchall term for the practical use of physics. It is the use of traditions and ideas about the function of things to produce effects based on those traditions and ideas.
For an example let's use the topic. Crystal Syrup is a magical medicine, one that is a specific instance of a general class of magical medicines. The base idea that is implemented specifically is to take life force or the representation of life force from willing donors, combine them together, and then process them into a new form that can be used to heal. There are many ways you can create a healing item or substance with this general method, of which Crystal Syrup is just one. The three steps are important to the process.
First there is the willing collection. Most Grass type pokemon either use sap instead of blood or alongside blood for their biological processes, with only a rare few natural Grass types who do not have sap at all. The creation of Crystal Syrup and lesser healing syrups is basically an equivalent to donating blood to make healing potions. "Willing" is a key part of the metaphysical aspect, as there are some serious side effects to using unwillingly harvested life force in a magical process. The locations that produce Crystal Syrup have a mixture of pokemon who have dedicated a part of their lives to donating to make medicine, and other pokemon who are donating on a one time or other shorter timescale. Before Alexa's discovery both of these would either need to be Grass types naturally or to use a method of transformation that weakened the Grass type connection and made the contribution less metaphysically potent. Use of Treated Chlorophyll Jade for one time donations is not going to stop here, but it will be cut down massively by the ability to make long term Grass types with a strong connection.
Which leads to the combination step. This is where the metaphysical aspects come into play the most. A single pokemon can technically be used in the general case for this magical application, but cooperation towards a goal is a powerful metaphysical aspect so just adding more donors to the operation increases the strength of the end result. All sap that is properly given and prepared in this way will result in some kind of Grass type medicine, but with more limitations in lesser cases. Crystal Syrup is created after the point where enough different Grass type pokemon have contributed that the metaphysical weight tips onto "general Grass type cure", with the word 'general' in its strong connotation meaning "cures everything for every Grass type". Syrups produced with fewer Grass types, or with too few of sufficient quality, will still be powerful medicine, but will work best on the species that contributed and not as well on other species.
Now, one thing to note is that the specification "Grass typed medicine" here is a side effect of the use of sap to create the result. The various Grass types that contribute to the project shift the life force into specifically Grass type life force. A side effect of this shift and the similar function sap has to blood is that the end result touches on another general magical effect kind for adopting another creature as kin, which results in the Grass type change side effect when used on a non-Grass type. The purpose of the creation of Crystal Syrup is not to change a pokemon's type, so this isn't a proper implementation of that other kind of magic, but it does serve as a good example of why it can be risky to work with magic. You need to be very careful how you set things up in order to account for possible side effects like that one.
Finally we have the processing step, and this is actually a physical process rather than a metaphysical one. The metaphysics involved are setup beforehand, but they are triggered and preformed by the physical act of reducing the sap into syrup. This is important because it is why sap is useful in this case. Plant sap can be physically converted into something that can be safely administered to a patient, and it can be given life force connotations with Grass type pokemon. As a result it is fairly easy to use as a way to implement the last critical step of the creation of this kind of medicine, and do so safely for both the donors and the patients.
It does give the downside that you need to use sap regardless of how the magical part of the process technically doesn't care what the life force representation is made of. Not using sap can easily throw off the physical process of creating syrup, and that would in turn interfere with the related metaphysical process.
Hopefully this has better explained things with regards to Crystal Syrup and its creation.
LostArchivist said:
Sap preforms a similar, but not quite the same, function to plants as blood does to animals. However to explain what is happening here more clearly let me go into some detail on what Crystal Syrup is and how it works.LostArchivist said:
First off, let me explain a bit about how magic works in my pokemon settings. "Magic" is the catchall term for the practical use of metaphysics, in the same way "engineering" is the catchall term for the practical use of physics. It is the use of traditions and ideas about the function of things to produce effects based on those traditions and ideas.
For an example let's use the topic. Crystal Syrup is a magical medicine, one that is a specific instance of a general class of magical medicines. The base idea that is implemented specifically is to take life force or the representation of life force from willing donors, combine them together, and then process them into a new form that can be used to heal. There are many ways you can create a healing item or substance with this general method, of which Crystal Syrup is just one. The three steps are important to the process.
First there is the willing collection. Most Grass type pokemon either use sap instead of blood or alongside blood for their biological processes, with only a rare few natural Grass types who do not have sap at all. The creation of Crystal Syrup and lesser healing syrups is basically an equivalent to donating blood to make healing potions. "Willing" is a key part of the metaphysical aspect, as there are some serious side effects to using unwillingly harvested life force in a magical process. The locations that produce Crystal Syrup have a mixture of pokemon who have dedicated a part of their lives to donating to make medicine, and other pokemon who are donating on a one time or other shorter timescale. Before Alexa's discovery both of these would either need to be Grass types naturally or to use a method of transformation that weakened the Grass type connection and made the contribution less metaphysically potent. Use of Treated Chlorophyll Jade for one time donations is not going to stop here, but it will be cut down massively by the ability to make long term Grass types with a strong connection.
Which leads to the combination step. This is where the metaphysical aspects come into play the most. A single pokemon can technically be used in the general case for this magical application, but cooperation towards a goal is a powerful metaphysical aspect so just adding more donors to the operation increases the strength of the end result. All sap that is properly given and prepared in this way will result in some kind of Grass type medicine, but with more limitations in lesser cases. Crystal Syrup is created after the point where enough different Grass type pokemon have contributed that the metaphysical weight tips onto "general Grass type cure", with the word 'general' in its strong connotation meaning "cures everything for every Grass type". Syrups produced with fewer Grass types, or with too few of sufficient quality, will still be powerful medicine, but will work best on the species that contributed and not as well on other species.
Now, one thing to note is that the specification "Grass typed medicine" here is a side effect of the use of sap to create the result. The various Grass types that contribute to the project shift the life force into specifically Grass type life force. A side effect of this shift and the similar function sap has to blood is that the end result touches on another general magical effect kind for adopting another creature as kin, which results in the Grass type change side effect when used on a non-Grass type. The purpose of the creation of Crystal Syrup is not to change a pokemon's type, so this isn't a proper implementation of that other kind of magic, but it does serve as a good example of why it can be risky to work with magic. You need to be very careful how you set things up in order to account for possible side effects like that one.
Finally we have the processing step, and this is actually a physical process rather than a metaphysical one. The metaphysics involved are setup beforehand, but they are triggered and preformed by the physical act of reducing the sap into syrup. This is important because it is why sap is useful in this case. Plant sap can be physically converted into something that can be safely administered to a patient, and it can be given life force connotations with Grass type pokemon. As a result it is fairly easy to use as a way to implement the last critical step of the creation of this kind of medicine, and do so safely for both the donors and the patients.
It does give the downside that you need to use sap regardless of how the magical part of the process technically doesn't care what the life force representation is made of. Not using sap can easily throw off the physical process of creating syrup, and that would in turn interfere with the related metaphysical process.
Hopefully this has better explained things with regards to Crystal Syrup and its creation.
Mephagic
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- Mephagic ---
They were on the road again, about a day out of Cherrygrove along Route 30, and Alexa had apparently decided that she wanted to get started on filling those breakable sphere things she had decided to buy. Charizard personally thought it was a strange idea, and that they could probably manage with just the move versions in any situation where they could legitimately use those things. He was going over their plans for the route with the rest of the team while she was a good ways away from their stuff as she filled the first set with Toxin Contagion to avoid contaminating anything. Alexa had let him use their Pokedex to review a local map they had downloaded from the Pokemon Center, and he was also checking over what she had recently been setting up in the scanner section.
There was a new folder Alexa had added since the last time he had looked at it, labeled simply "Forms" with a number of humanoid pokemon named and displayed. "Vespikiln", "Mephagic", and "Wendrago" were the first three. They seemed to strangely match Chitin Powder, Toxin Contagion, and a Frozen Flame respectively.
Charizard looked up at his trainer to question her about the topic just in time to see her spill some of the Poison type conversion material onto her hands from the fiddly design of those damn spheres. Then he felt his flame sputter as the touched skin began to shift in color and texture, and her clothes seemed to merge into her. Soon his trainer was covered in purple amphibian skin with green markings, and Alexa's shape began to change as well. Her face spreading outward into wide frog's head, with her hair melted down into a flowing curtain of Toxin Contagion. Her hands grew webbing and her fingers lengthened as they combined to just three and thumb, while her feet changed and expanded entirely to match her hands although with one fewer digit. Her legs bulked up, lengthened, and spread out further from her waist.
"Alexa!" Charizard called out in worry as she held herself still and finished becoming a large frog pokemon. He quickly started a scan on the Pokedex to try and figure out what happened while the rest of the team started moving to check on their trainer.
"Mephagic, Poison/Water type, a Legendary swamp pokemon said to change other pokemon into the Poison type and rumored to steal away humans as mates," the device started to explain, and Charizard quickly looked down to see that it was the second of those sorted pokemon. The picture had a different build and very different marking pattern, but was clearly the same pokemon his trainer had just become.
"What just happened?" Heracross asked sharply as the team reached Alexa, which caused her to flinch.
"Our trainer just spilled toxic materials on herself!" Bellossom complained. "What were you thinking being so careless with that stuff?" the Grass/Electric type demanded and pointed between Alexa and the dropped spheres. Charizard was fairly sure the movement was not needed for once.
"Sorry for worrying you guys," Alexa said with a slightly changed voice. "Ugh, that feels stranger than I thought it would."
"You knew this could happen," Kingler noted, and the magma crab's statement was not a question. "You told William that this could happen, and you knew when you started filling those things."
"This was on purpose?" Charizard had to ask at that information, and started to walk forward himself. "Alexa, please tell me you didn't just buy those stupid things to make this look like an accident."
"What? No, I just. I just wasn't being as careful with them because I knew it would happen eventually," his trainer replied with some shock, while the rest of their team froze at the clear response to his question.
At least until Bellossom processed that statement. "You! What!" the former Poison typed plant pokemon raged. "In that case everything else can wait! Because apparently you need to get the Poison type safety lecture right now!"
---
Alexa flexed her toes as she carefully listened to Bellossom's lecture, which admittedly she had sort of wanted to hear for herself. It was strange to be able to curl her toes like she could her fingers, and the texture of her skin was damp and slimy in a way that somehow wasn't uncomfortable. Even the way the world looked was different, although part of that was how the fluid her hair had turned into seemed to want to flow in front of her left eye. It wasn't like human hair, it simply flowed around her hands when she tried to brush it aside, and she could sort of see through it even though it was so thick. Alexa's skin had a number of green markings on it, which from what she could see were in the shape of a number of different kinds of type symbols all connected together. They weren't even all from the same set of such markings.
"So, review what I've said with me," Bellossom finished off, and Alexa fumbled a bit as the two of them went over the details of toxin safety when you were something that could make them. The strange part about that was the sense of having energy make stuff. The reports her father had sent since Viridian had attempted to describe the sensation of becoming a pokemon, but they had not quite captured the reality of how a human's typed energy was more tightly contained than a pokemon's.
"I think our trainer is still a bit too distracted for this, Bellossom," Rhydon rustled uncomfortably. "I mean, did Alexa even have a type before this?"
"I didn't, or well not any real type. Humans usually have a mix of types because they don't normally express one," Alexa tried to answer the question, with a flinch as she realized that she wasn't technically human at the moment. "That is one of the things dad checked before we started on stuff between Leagues."
"Did he know this could happen to humans?" Charizard asked in a dark tone, and Alexa had to admit she had asked her father the same question just as seriously after getting that first set of documents on the topic.
"He thought that if you were unaffected by one then none would work on you," Alexa had to complain about the answer she had gotten and moved to set a hand on her face. "Only to find out just after we left that it wasn't the case. I've-" she had to cut off as she discovered that her face was now both flat enough and wide enough that she couldn't cover both of her eyes with just one. "I've been trying to prepare-" with her hand so close to her face Alexa could clearly see the webbing between her fingers and count how many she had.
"Do you need to turn back?" Charizard asked quickly and moved closer.
"No, no I can handle it," Alexa said just as much to herself as to the rest of them. "I have to, even if we are more careful accidents are going to happen. I need to be able to handle this." She looked up and saw that her team wasn't happy with that thought.
"You could have been changed by the Groudon Ashes?" Heracross asked her as the rodent pokemon looked away, and Alexa flinched at the reminder. "I could have gotten you stuck like that too?"
"It could have, but that's one that I know doesn't work on me," Alexa admitted. Charizard's flame was sputtering, Kingler was a pool of magma with armor mixed in resting on the ground, and her two plant pokemon were drooping. "I've also tried Stable Cloud so far."
"We're going to have to check everything, aren't we?" Kingler glumly asked. "Or we won't know what you can and can't touch. I don't want to hit a trainer with something and transform them like that."
"The move versions should usually be resisted," Alexa admitted with a sigh. "The documents I've read so far say that, well for an example, a Mephagic like I am right now can only use attacks to change pokemon. The reports on my current species specify they need Toxin Contagion that has set for a bit to change humans."
"Chitin Powder lasts three days for us, is it different for humans?" Kingler critically questioned. "Or things like the Magma Contagion I am trying to find a time limit for?"
"The kinds of pokemon that are transformed humans from stuff with time limits tend to live around lots of it. Vespikiln flake off Chitin Powder, my hair and slime is Toxin Contagion, and the ones that aren't known to be pokemon tend to not have good sources of the stuff," Alexa had to admit. "It still needs to build up, so we shouldn't have to worry as much as long as we clean up while we are transformed, and I shouldn't get myself stuck easily."
"Did you warn the people at the flower shop about this?" Rhydon questioned carefully.
"Crystal Syrup works on humans too," she had to confess awkwardly. They had spoken about that fairly quietly while he had been distracted with a detailed explanation of soil qualities. "I would have included a risk guide dad finally sent me, but they already knew about it and even warned me against wearing the Chlorophyll Jade myself."
Charizard's tailflame had settled, but he looked tired. "We're going to have to test everything we want to use normally on you," he stated firmly. "And we know you will need new trainer cards for every form that we find happens." He sighed. "Are you planning on fighting with us?"
"Gym Leaders can request that I participate, especially given I am probably going to end up on the team listing," Alexa admitted, but she was fairly sure Charizard already knew at least part of that.
"I didn't mean 'are you going to end up fighting', I meant 'do you want to fight alongside us?'" Charizard clarified uneasily, and the rest of the team looked at the two of them with a lot of concern. "Not to mention that I personally know the Kanto League at least will let you specifically request to not participate."
That was a considerably harder question that Alexa had not actually considered before. She ribbited quietly as she considered the idea, but had to pause for a moment at the sound that came out of her body. "I- I didn't really think I would get a choice," she had to admit to her Starter. "When you were- When you were given the option to be a trainer, did you think you would fight like that?"
"That's kind of why I wanted to be a Starter more," Charizard replied thoughtfully. "If the trainer loses in a pokemon battle themselves the whole team loses, so it is only really worth it in official matches if you go last. I wanted to fight like my siblings, not to stand on the sidelines until it was down to just me."
---
The Acid move was in theory an easy one for Mephagic to learn, and Alexa honestly needed to know what fighting was like before she could really answer Charizard's question. There was a slight itch in her throat as the caustic goo built up in it, and she quickly spat out the glob in her first attempt at a proper move. The glob came out of her mouth fairly slowly, was poorly formed, and basically just splattered onto the ground in front of her and made the grass smoke a bit.
Charizard looked between the toxic material Alexa had actually just made and her for a moment, and then sighed. "You know, you might actually be a bit lucky here. This is going to take someone else training you to work well, and I know enough about how to be a trainer to help," he complained with another sigh.
"So you don't think the rest of us can help with that?" Kingler questioned a bit hotly before Alexa could try and wave off the offer. "It isn't like Alexa is the only one of us that needs help with multiple types. If anything we now can get her a better idea of what we need to pull this off."
"Given she's a Poison type right now I think I'm the better option all things considered. Maybe you can handle her Water type, since you're the only one we have until we get to the Fire type tests," Bellossom argued a bit snidely.
Alexa shared a look with Charizard about that tone, and her Starter shrugged a bit sheepishly. It was a look he had given her a lot of times when the rest of them argued with each other before. "I'm not sure the rest of you want me to be able to actually understand what you say to each other," she criticized both of them, and then looked Charizard in the eye. "But it is a good point, I should get help from the rest of you."
"Water Gun is another simple one," Rhydon suggested. "Not to mention knowing something without toxins makes it easier to work out Contagion Cure. That kind of change is more comfortable if you can turn yourself back."
"That sounds like a plan," Alexa agreed. Probably a bit too quickly, but the main reason she had handled things this well so far was that she knew her team could get her back to human as soon as she asked. The rest of her team actually flinched at the quick statement. "I'd definitely like to learn that one."
"Then start with as clear of water as you can," Charizard instructed, and this time her pokemon went in more detail instead of just having her use her instinct. With less time than she expected Alexa was able to produce a mediocre Water Gun, and a slightly better Acid, but could not get close to Contagion Cure. Using the move version of Toxin Contagion was near instant, it made up her hair and skin slime and was a Mephagic's natural move.
"Well," a Fire/Poison typed Charizard cut her off after she possibly resorted to the easy option a bit too quickly out of frustration. "I think you've got the bare basics down. Definitely need to figure out Contagion Cure, but that will probably take experiencing it."
"Sorry," she croaked with embarrassment. Suddenly the difficulty her team had with new moves had new context. "I think I'm done for tonight." She could move, although she had to hop more than walk like this, and it wasn't really uncomfortable, but she wanted to be human again.
Kingler didn't even wait to confirm anything before splashing her with the reversal move, and Alexa felt the change back to humanity start immediately. Her last finger split to give her a pinky again, her feet fused back together into the flat human ones with a lot more smaller toes, her hair became solid and shorter again, and her clothes returned to being on her body rather than somehow a part of it. It was quick, and felt quicker than the first time even if it might not have been.
The big part of the change was how Alexa felt her energy collapse in on itself into what she could now tell was a tight shell and become a bit of a mess of types. It was disorienting to suddenly lose the ability to move the stuff she had just been using to make acid and water. A part of her almost tried to pick it back apart, but she was able to hold back that desire. It was strange to suddenly lose an almost sense so quickly.
"I think I have some idea what a type feels like now," she commented, and Charizard replied with an unintelligible rumble and a motion towards the side of his head. "Oh. Humans can't understand pokemon." Somehow that almost hurt to remember. It had felt good to easily speak with her team. "Is it terrible that I almost want to change again just so we can talk?" She knew she was too tired for this.
Bellossom chirped a bit tiredly at that and pointed towards the tent, and the rest of her team clearly agreed. "Alright, I know, we need to be done for the day," Alexa admitted.
---
"You do know that you don't have to transform to understand us," Rhydon had to tell his trainer the next morning, as he emerged from his pokeball to find she was once again a pokemon herself. "Just like how Charizard doesn't need to write stuff."
"Not exactly the best argument, Rhydon, I've been writing quite a bit since that came out," Charizard grumbled with a bit of a harsh look at Kingler. "Although we probably need to get back on the road. This isn't a short route, so we will have plenty of time to try out the key ones. Mercury Contagion, Magma Contagion, and Chitin Powder are the three that are easy for you to get on yourself by accident," the Fire/Flying type then said to Alexa directly.
"I know, but I kind of wanted to go over things first, and maybe finish up those spheres," Alexa replied, and it had not stopped being strange to have her just understand, even if she was currently a massive poisonus frog pokemon. "To be honest, if I had really wanted to outright avoid this I would have had one of you use Toxin Contagion and then fill them for me."
"Charizard, can she just stay like that while we travel? Because I still need to finish that lecture," Bellossom asked darkly. "Especially if she thinks that was a good justification. What would have happened if it didn't work on you?"
"Minor poisoning at worst," Alexa and Charizard both said together, although Alexa had a tone Rhydon remembered from Bellossom back when she was a Gloom, while Charizard sounded more like Bellossom did now. "Easy to fix but not the best result."
"So what happens if the other three don't work?" Kingler added as a question before Bellossom could go off.
"The Mercury Contagion is just going to flow off," Rhydon tried to help his trainer out. They had done a bit of checking for travel safety right when they arrived in Viridian City to see which of the Contagions were actually safer, just in case the Steel type variant was also notably toxic. "The metal is a bit dangerous if a human accidentally drinks it or something, but it is safe enough on skin."
"Chitin Powder should also be safe enough if it doesn't work on her, but if it does that is a three day wait," Charizard agreed. "Which means we probably need that Magma Contagion test first so she has some Fire type practice before she's stuck with that for days. Unless only one of those works." Before they could continue to discuss the winged reptile changed topic. "However, we are also tight on money, and until Alexa has those new trainer cards she will need to be human for challenges. This road doesn't have good prospects for foraging things we can sell, so we need a human to handle the travel."
Rhydon wasn't really sure what 'tight' meant in this case. Finding rare minerals and plants was always something Alexa liked to see, but how that translated into supplies was something he didn't know. There had been a time or two in Kanto he had seen where they were looking for plants that could work as food too, or when they ran out of some other supplies and didn't get new ones until after a good Gym match.
"We aren't that bad off," Alexa countered strongly. "We have plenty of supplies to make it to Violet City and can sell off some of those if we need to when we get there."
Then there was a rustle from the nearby camp site. Kingler reacted quickly and splashed Alexa with Contagion Cure, and while that shocked their trainer it did mean she was human again before another trainer emerged from the brush between the locations. "Hello? I thought I heard some pokemon arguing and I wanted to make sure you're okay," the guy questioned as he froze at the sight of them.
"Sorry about that, I needed to work on something new with my team," Alexa answered, and now Rhydon was able to realize she had slipped out of human speech during their earlier conversation. "I didn't realize we were that loud."
"I heard a frog or toad pokemon," the other trainer noted curiously and more than a little confused.
"That's my latest option," Alexa said in a way that Rhydon thought was a bit too honest. "Just started working with that one."
---
[Author's Note]
Here we go. The reason that Frostbite did not continue is that I found the idea works much better with more time for Alexa to get used to transformation.
In this case she's had since Viridian to consider the idea, and the example of her team's transformations to get used to it being a good thing. Combined with a form she can more easily and painlessly reverse and you get an Alexa who is less wary of the topic.
With any luck this plot element works out for the story in the long run.
As for the delay in this chapter, well I got Covid and it is not conductive to writing. Hopefully this and the next haven't suffered from being reviewed and written partially under the effects.
They were on the road again, about a day out of Cherrygrove along Route 30, and Alexa had apparently decided that she wanted to get started on filling those breakable sphere things she had decided to buy. Charizard personally thought it was a strange idea, and that they could probably manage with just the move versions in any situation where they could legitimately use those things. He was going over their plans for the route with the rest of the team while she was a good ways away from their stuff as she filled the first set with Toxin Contagion to avoid contaminating anything. Alexa had let him use their Pokedex to review a local map they had downloaded from the Pokemon Center, and he was also checking over what she had recently been setting up in the scanner section.
There was a new folder Alexa had added since the last time he had looked at it, labeled simply "Forms" with a number of humanoid pokemon named and displayed. "Vespikiln", "Mephagic", and "Wendrago" were the first three. They seemed to strangely match Chitin Powder, Toxin Contagion, and a Frozen Flame respectively.
Charizard looked up at his trainer to question her about the topic just in time to see her spill some of the Poison type conversion material onto her hands from the fiddly design of those damn spheres. Then he felt his flame sputter as the touched skin began to shift in color and texture, and her clothes seemed to merge into her. Soon his trainer was covered in purple amphibian skin with green markings, and Alexa's shape began to change as well. Her face spreading outward into wide frog's head, with her hair melted down into a flowing curtain of Toxin Contagion. Her hands grew webbing and her fingers lengthened as they combined to just three and thumb, while her feet changed and expanded entirely to match her hands although with one fewer digit. Her legs bulked up, lengthened, and spread out further from her waist.
"Alexa!" Charizard called out in worry as she held herself still and finished becoming a large frog pokemon. He quickly started a scan on the Pokedex to try and figure out what happened while the rest of the team started moving to check on their trainer.
"Mephagic, Poison/Water type, a Legendary swamp pokemon said to change other pokemon into the Poison type and rumored to steal away humans as mates," the device started to explain, and Charizard quickly looked down to see that it was the second of those sorted pokemon. The picture had a different build and very different marking pattern, but was clearly the same pokemon his trainer had just become.
"What just happened?" Heracross asked sharply as the team reached Alexa, which caused her to flinch.
"Our trainer just spilled toxic materials on herself!" Bellossom complained. "What were you thinking being so careless with that stuff?" the Grass/Electric type demanded and pointed between Alexa and the dropped spheres. Charizard was fairly sure the movement was not needed for once.
"Sorry for worrying you guys," Alexa said with a slightly changed voice. "Ugh, that feels stranger than I thought it would."
"You knew this could happen," Kingler noted, and the magma crab's statement was not a question. "You told William that this could happen, and you knew when you started filling those things."
"This was on purpose?" Charizard had to ask at that information, and started to walk forward himself. "Alexa, please tell me you didn't just buy those stupid things to make this look like an accident."
"What? No, I just. I just wasn't being as careful with them because I knew it would happen eventually," his trainer replied with some shock, while the rest of their team froze at the clear response to his question.
At least until Bellossom processed that statement. "You! What!" the former Poison typed plant pokemon raged. "In that case everything else can wait! Because apparently you need to get the Poison type safety lecture right now!"
---
Alexa flexed her toes as she carefully listened to Bellossom's lecture, which admittedly she had sort of wanted to hear for herself. It was strange to be able to curl her toes like she could her fingers, and the texture of her skin was damp and slimy in a way that somehow wasn't uncomfortable. Even the way the world looked was different, although part of that was how the fluid her hair had turned into seemed to want to flow in front of her left eye. It wasn't like human hair, it simply flowed around her hands when she tried to brush it aside, and she could sort of see through it even though it was so thick. Alexa's skin had a number of green markings on it, which from what she could see were in the shape of a number of different kinds of type symbols all connected together. They weren't even all from the same set of such markings.
"So, review what I've said with me," Bellossom finished off, and Alexa fumbled a bit as the two of them went over the details of toxin safety when you were something that could make them. The strange part about that was the sense of having energy make stuff. The reports her father had sent since Viridian had attempted to describe the sensation of becoming a pokemon, but they had not quite captured the reality of how a human's typed energy was more tightly contained than a pokemon's.
"I think our trainer is still a bit too distracted for this, Bellossom," Rhydon rustled uncomfortably. "I mean, did Alexa even have a type before this?"
"I didn't, or well not any real type. Humans usually have a mix of types because they don't normally express one," Alexa tried to answer the question, with a flinch as she realized that she wasn't technically human at the moment. "That is one of the things dad checked before we started on stuff between Leagues."
"Did he know this could happen to humans?" Charizard asked in a dark tone, and Alexa had to admit she had asked her father the same question just as seriously after getting that first set of documents on the topic.
"He thought that if you were unaffected by one then none would work on you," Alexa had to complain about the answer she had gotten and moved to set a hand on her face. "Only to find out just after we left that it wasn't the case. I've-" she had to cut off as she discovered that her face was now both flat enough and wide enough that she couldn't cover both of her eyes with just one. "I've been trying to prepare-" with her hand so close to her face Alexa could clearly see the webbing between her fingers and count how many she had.
"Do you need to turn back?" Charizard asked quickly and moved closer.
"No, no I can handle it," Alexa said just as much to herself as to the rest of them. "I have to, even if we are more careful accidents are going to happen. I need to be able to handle this." She looked up and saw that her team wasn't happy with that thought.
"You could have been changed by the Groudon Ashes?" Heracross asked her as the rodent pokemon looked away, and Alexa flinched at the reminder. "I could have gotten you stuck like that too?"
"It could have, but that's one that I know doesn't work on me," Alexa admitted. Charizard's flame was sputtering, Kingler was a pool of magma with armor mixed in resting on the ground, and her two plant pokemon were drooping. "I've also tried Stable Cloud so far."
"We're going to have to check everything, aren't we?" Kingler glumly asked. "Or we won't know what you can and can't touch. I don't want to hit a trainer with something and transform them like that."
"The move versions should usually be resisted," Alexa admitted with a sigh. "The documents I've read so far say that, well for an example, a Mephagic like I am right now can only use attacks to change pokemon. The reports on my current species specify they need Toxin Contagion that has set for a bit to change humans."
"Chitin Powder lasts three days for us, is it different for humans?" Kingler critically questioned. "Or things like the Magma Contagion I am trying to find a time limit for?"
"The kinds of pokemon that are transformed humans from stuff with time limits tend to live around lots of it. Vespikiln flake off Chitin Powder, my hair and slime is Toxin Contagion, and the ones that aren't known to be pokemon tend to not have good sources of the stuff," Alexa had to admit. "It still needs to build up, so we shouldn't have to worry as much as long as we clean up while we are transformed, and I shouldn't get myself stuck easily."
"Did you warn the people at the flower shop about this?" Rhydon questioned carefully.
"Crystal Syrup works on humans too," she had to confess awkwardly. They had spoken about that fairly quietly while he had been distracted with a detailed explanation of soil qualities. "I would have included a risk guide dad finally sent me, but they already knew about it and even warned me against wearing the Chlorophyll Jade myself."
Charizard's tailflame had settled, but he looked tired. "We're going to have to test everything we want to use normally on you," he stated firmly. "And we know you will need new trainer cards for every form that we find happens." He sighed. "Are you planning on fighting with us?"
"Gym Leaders can request that I participate, especially given I am probably going to end up on the team listing," Alexa admitted, but she was fairly sure Charizard already knew at least part of that.
"I didn't mean 'are you going to end up fighting', I meant 'do you want to fight alongside us?'" Charizard clarified uneasily, and the rest of the team looked at the two of them with a lot of concern. "Not to mention that I personally know the Kanto League at least will let you specifically request to not participate."
That was a considerably harder question that Alexa had not actually considered before. She ribbited quietly as she considered the idea, but had to pause for a moment at the sound that came out of her body. "I- I didn't really think I would get a choice," she had to admit to her Starter. "When you were- When you were given the option to be a trainer, did you think you would fight like that?"
"That's kind of why I wanted to be a Starter more," Charizard replied thoughtfully. "If the trainer loses in a pokemon battle themselves the whole team loses, so it is only really worth it in official matches if you go last. I wanted to fight like my siblings, not to stand on the sidelines until it was down to just me."
---
The Acid move was in theory an easy one for Mephagic to learn, and Alexa honestly needed to know what fighting was like before she could really answer Charizard's question. There was a slight itch in her throat as the caustic goo built up in it, and she quickly spat out the glob in her first attempt at a proper move. The glob came out of her mouth fairly slowly, was poorly formed, and basically just splattered onto the ground in front of her and made the grass smoke a bit.
Charizard looked between the toxic material Alexa had actually just made and her for a moment, and then sighed. "You know, you might actually be a bit lucky here. This is going to take someone else training you to work well, and I know enough about how to be a trainer to help," he complained with another sigh.
"So you don't think the rest of us can help with that?" Kingler questioned a bit hotly before Alexa could try and wave off the offer. "It isn't like Alexa is the only one of us that needs help with multiple types. If anything we now can get her a better idea of what we need to pull this off."
"Given she's a Poison type right now I think I'm the better option all things considered. Maybe you can handle her Water type, since you're the only one we have until we get to the Fire type tests," Bellossom argued a bit snidely.
Alexa shared a look with Charizard about that tone, and her Starter shrugged a bit sheepishly. It was a look he had given her a lot of times when the rest of them argued with each other before. "I'm not sure the rest of you want me to be able to actually understand what you say to each other," she criticized both of them, and then looked Charizard in the eye. "But it is a good point, I should get help from the rest of you."
"Water Gun is another simple one," Rhydon suggested. "Not to mention knowing something without toxins makes it easier to work out Contagion Cure. That kind of change is more comfortable if you can turn yourself back."
"That sounds like a plan," Alexa agreed. Probably a bit too quickly, but the main reason she had handled things this well so far was that she knew her team could get her back to human as soon as she asked. The rest of her team actually flinched at the quick statement. "I'd definitely like to learn that one."
"Then start with as clear of water as you can," Charizard instructed, and this time her pokemon went in more detail instead of just having her use her instinct. With less time than she expected Alexa was able to produce a mediocre Water Gun, and a slightly better Acid, but could not get close to Contagion Cure. Using the move version of Toxin Contagion was near instant, it made up her hair and skin slime and was a Mephagic's natural move.
"Well," a Fire/Poison typed Charizard cut her off after she possibly resorted to the easy option a bit too quickly out of frustration. "I think you've got the bare basics down. Definitely need to figure out Contagion Cure, but that will probably take experiencing it."
"Sorry," she croaked with embarrassment. Suddenly the difficulty her team had with new moves had new context. "I think I'm done for tonight." She could move, although she had to hop more than walk like this, and it wasn't really uncomfortable, but she wanted to be human again.
Kingler didn't even wait to confirm anything before splashing her with the reversal move, and Alexa felt the change back to humanity start immediately. Her last finger split to give her a pinky again, her feet fused back together into the flat human ones with a lot more smaller toes, her hair became solid and shorter again, and her clothes returned to being on her body rather than somehow a part of it. It was quick, and felt quicker than the first time even if it might not have been.
The big part of the change was how Alexa felt her energy collapse in on itself into what she could now tell was a tight shell and become a bit of a mess of types. It was disorienting to suddenly lose the ability to move the stuff she had just been using to make acid and water. A part of her almost tried to pick it back apart, but she was able to hold back that desire. It was strange to suddenly lose an almost sense so quickly.
"I think I have some idea what a type feels like now," she commented, and Charizard replied with an unintelligible rumble and a motion towards the side of his head. "Oh. Humans can't understand pokemon." Somehow that almost hurt to remember. It had felt good to easily speak with her team. "Is it terrible that I almost want to change again just so we can talk?" She knew she was too tired for this.
Bellossom chirped a bit tiredly at that and pointed towards the tent, and the rest of her team clearly agreed. "Alright, I know, we need to be done for the day," Alexa admitted.
---
"You do know that you don't have to transform to understand us," Rhydon had to tell his trainer the next morning, as he emerged from his pokeball to find she was once again a pokemon herself. "Just like how Charizard doesn't need to write stuff."
"Not exactly the best argument, Rhydon, I've been writing quite a bit since that came out," Charizard grumbled with a bit of a harsh look at Kingler. "Although we probably need to get back on the road. This isn't a short route, so we will have plenty of time to try out the key ones. Mercury Contagion, Magma Contagion, and Chitin Powder are the three that are easy for you to get on yourself by accident," the Fire/Flying type then said to Alexa directly.
"I know, but I kind of wanted to go over things first, and maybe finish up those spheres," Alexa replied, and it had not stopped being strange to have her just understand, even if she was currently a massive poisonus frog pokemon. "To be honest, if I had really wanted to outright avoid this I would have had one of you use Toxin Contagion and then fill them for me."
"Charizard, can she just stay like that while we travel? Because I still need to finish that lecture," Bellossom asked darkly. "Especially if she thinks that was a good justification. What would have happened if it didn't work on you?"
"Minor poisoning at worst," Alexa and Charizard both said together, although Alexa had a tone Rhydon remembered from Bellossom back when she was a Gloom, while Charizard sounded more like Bellossom did now. "Easy to fix but not the best result."
"So what happens if the other three don't work?" Kingler added as a question before Bellossom could go off.
"The Mercury Contagion is just going to flow off," Rhydon tried to help his trainer out. They had done a bit of checking for travel safety right when they arrived in Viridian City to see which of the Contagions were actually safer, just in case the Steel type variant was also notably toxic. "The metal is a bit dangerous if a human accidentally drinks it or something, but it is safe enough on skin."
"Chitin Powder should also be safe enough if it doesn't work on her, but if it does that is a three day wait," Charizard agreed. "Which means we probably need that Magma Contagion test first so she has some Fire type practice before she's stuck with that for days. Unless only one of those works." Before they could continue to discuss the winged reptile changed topic. "However, we are also tight on money, and until Alexa has those new trainer cards she will need to be human for challenges. This road doesn't have good prospects for foraging things we can sell, so we need a human to handle the travel."
Rhydon wasn't really sure what 'tight' meant in this case. Finding rare minerals and plants was always something Alexa liked to see, but how that translated into supplies was something he didn't know. There had been a time or two in Kanto he had seen where they were looking for plants that could work as food too, or when they ran out of some other supplies and didn't get new ones until after a good Gym match.
"We aren't that bad off," Alexa countered strongly. "We have plenty of supplies to make it to Violet City and can sell off some of those if we need to when we get there."
Then there was a rustle from the nearby camp site. Kingler reacted quickly and splashed Alexa with Contagion Cure, and while that shocked their trainer it did mean she was human again before another trainer emerged from the brush between the locations. "Hello? I thought I heard some pokemon arguing and I wanted to make sure you're okay," the guy questioned as he froze at the sight of them.
"Sorry about that, I needed to work on something new with my team," Alexa answered, and now Rhydon was able to realize she had slipped out of human speech during their earlier conversation. "I didn't realize we were that loud."
"I heard a frog or toad pokemon," the other trainer noted curiously and more than a little confused.
"That's my latest option," Alexa said in a way that Rhydon thought was a bit too honest. "Just started working with that one."
---
[Author's Note]
Here we go. The reason that Frostbite did not continue is that I found the idea works much better with more time for Alexa to get used to transformation.
In this case she's had since Viridian to consider the idea, and the example of her team's transformations to get used to it being a good thing. Combined with a form she can more easily and painlessly reverse and you get an Alexa who is less wary of the topic.
With any luck this plot element works out for the story in the long run.
As for the delay in this chapter, well I got Covid and it is not conductive to writing. Hopefully this and the next haven't suffered from being reviewed and written partially under the effects.
IronLucario2012
<Verified Pokémon> <Licensed Mech Pilot>
- Location
- Ireland
Love the chapter! Neat to see more experimentation with the various Contagions, especially now Alexa can get in on it herself.
Sucks to hear about the covid though, you have my sympathies and I hope it ends up minor.
Sucks to hear about the covid though, you have my sympathies and I hope it ends up minor.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Thank you.
Glad to see a good response so far. There is some more experimentation coming, and Alexa's plot has now been fully revealed.
It has so far, I'm mostly recovered now and hopefully will be fully operational again soon.
Conclave
A still more glorious dawn
- Location
- Ravnica
Can I just say that I love how this both is in theme with the fic and feels just like a bunch of canon pokedex entries?
Last edited:
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
I am rather proud of that one, I'm glad to hear I managed to capture the feeling.
Magma Contagion
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- Magma Contagion ---
Kingler's opponent went down, and Alexa smiled at the half surprised look on the other trainer's face. They had made alright time the past couple of days, although they had only managed to find time to work on her Mephagic form and test Mercury Contagion. The silvery metal fluid had not affected Alexa, which made a degree of sense given how they had tested that one more than the others for travel purposes at the start of this League.
"That was a good match," Alexa told the other trainer, just in time for Kingler's Magma Contagion to wear off and the crab pokemon to solidify back into a Water/Dragon. "Are you coming from or going to Cherrygrove?" she then asked a bit embarrassed.
"Going to. I heard there was a new Gym there and wanted to see how it compared to the old Water type Gym," the other girl replied and recalled her Magneton. "Do I need to be worried about how you just got your pokemon a type advantage for that one?"
"Have you ever heard of the move Soak?" Alexa said to bring up the topic, and hoped that the trainer wouldn't be too unhappy with that much advice on Leader Douglas' trick. That led to a brief discussion of Alexa's new specialty and how the new Johto Water type Gym Leader used at least a part of it. Given how her team had not fought in their natural form against a trainer yet this League it was a discussion Alexa was getting used to giving.
"Well, my team has worked with some Electric type weakness situations," the other trainer said at the end of the conversation. "Thank you for the advice."
"Not a problem. I might even start up a Gym for it one day," Alexa joked without any real serious consideration of the idea. Once the other trainer had left she turned to Kingler. "So, that was a full week. I guess we can check work on going over Magma Contagion in detail now."
Kingler managed to pool a bit of said substance in her claw, and motioned at Alexa in a clear question. One that Alexa wasn't entirely sure she was ready to tackle, but had to anyway. "Yeah, I'm going to be trying it too," Alexa replied. "We'll wait until we reach a good campsite."
---
Alexa wasn't entirely ready for this. If Magma Contagion didn't work on her as a human then the plan she had was to test it on her Mephagic form. Either way that would let her actually talk to her team as the rest of them went over the effects of the material. Charizard looked unimpressed with her plan, but the others were merely dubious. "Okay, from what the Pokedex has been able to tell the Magma Contagion isn't hot enough to cause serious burns, but I do have a few human safe Burn Heal variants just because I have a Fire type," Alexa said mostly to psych herself up.
Charizard had the Pokedex, and again most of their stuff was at the tent. This time they were entirely alone, as they had found a camp site that was well removed from other trainers on the route at the edge of a medium sized pond. Alexa had a small vial of the stuff, cheap ones her father had given them a box of 200 of for use in this sort of test. Alexa didn't think they would go through that many in the League, but that would really depend on if they broke as easily as the price implied.
The vial was warm to the touch, and Alexa honestly considered using it as a heat pack for gloves if it didn't transform her into a Fire type. With that hopeful thought she opened the little stopper and poured it onto her arm. Her first surprise was that it felt cold, and even though she could feel her arm expand outward any detailed sensation was overwhelmed by a cold feeling that spread across her surface before slowly receding and a cool feeling from her not yet changed body as the effect rapidly spread.
As the sense hit the core of her body she lost track of it entirely, and it wasn't until it was over and she felt a comfortable temperature inside that she really could work out what had happened. She could feel and now see a shell of hardened pillow shaped rock that resembled some form of crab or lobster. She could feel a tail, so probably lobster, and three sets of limbs. Two pairs were legs, but Alexa couldn't work out how she ended up on four feet, but she only had two arms. They both ended in typical claws for a crustacean, but with a strange instinct she was able to melt the hardened rock down into magma and reform them into three more mobile hand-like claws. Her face was dome shaped, but she wasn't entirely sure she actually had a fixed mouth. It seemed that she had a crack that revealed her inner magma which might have counted, but she was more geology than biology at the moment.
"Alexa, are you alright there?" Charizard asked, and she finally started to move to look up at them.
As Alexa shifted to standing up with her tail against the ground she felt the shell of rock along her joints crack open and reform again with each movement. It was a strange cool sensation where she had expected to feel hot, although it sort of made sense that the rest of the world would feel colder if she was this hot inside. "Am I putting out a lot of heat? It feels too cool outside for me to tell," she said before she realized it wasn't an answer to his question.
"I think you're doing better than me or Heracross, but that might be a problem instead of a good thing," Kingler clicked and sighed. "We kind of were hoping this would help you work that issue out before we found out if you can be a Vespikiln."
"Fire/Rock typed unknown pokemon," Charizard sighed. "It is giving an unknown species unique ability, but it is asking for research. Your Water type resistance is giving a 'not enough information' error instead of a double weakness."
"I guess we will need to keep you away from the water now," Heracross noted and carefully got closer. "Kind of ironic for such a Water type shaped pokemon to be those types."
Alexa blinked, well it wasn't really a blink but she did feel her molten eye spots harden briefly, at the idea she would have some sort of issue with water. "I think I might actually like to take a dip in the pond," she carefully considered. "It doesn't feel like a dangerous idea."
"She looks like underwater lava," Rhydon contributed and motioned her to go ahead and try. "We can always splash her with Contagion Cure if there is a problem."
Bellossom gave her a critical look, and Kingler moved right up next to her as she walked forward at a moderate pace towards the pond. Alexa was able to feel that her overall body shape was not human at all, even ignoring the fact that her interior was entirely molten. She had a flat tail fan at the end of a broad segmented tail that transitioned into a slightly larger but still dome shaped main body that smoothly matched up with the part that was her head. Her limbs were moderately bulky by human standards, but quite thin compared to her main body, and simply extended off directly instead of having the more solid connection a human or Mephagic possessed.
"You don't seem to have much exposed heated portions," Charizard commented thoughtfully. "A normal Char can handle water as long as we don't hit our tailflame, although sand is usually safer to clean with. I don't think I need to tell this team that I liked baths as a 'mander," he joked, and Alexa had to laugh at the image.
A couple of small Poliwags looked at her curiously as she eased herself into the water. The cold actually felt fairly nice actually. Her outermost layer solidified even further as it contacted the water, and it became a bit more difficult to move. She moved entirely under the water despite complaints from her team, and rather slowly paced along the bottom of the pond as Magikarp and Poliwags swam over to inspect her.
"Well, now I need to see what happens when a Water type move hits you," Kingler suddenly clicked from right next to her. "Can you swim like that, or are you stuck on the bottom?"
Alexa considered the question, and then looked over at the very visible other side of the pond. "Not somewhere this small," she admitted after a moment of thought. "I need a bit more room with how I move down here."
"Then how about we get back to the surface for a bit?" Kingler suggested maybe with a bit of unneeded concern.
---
Heracross was fairly sure he now knew why Alexa had freaked out so much when he stopped being a Bug type. Alexa didn't look at all like a human as a whatever they were going to name this lobster pokemon. She wasn't biological anymore, and Heracross was quite sure she had changed more than he had. The ease she was moving around as a rock and magma crustacean was unnerving.
"So, I think I get why you freaked her out now," Bellossom agreed with his thoughts. "She is much less twitchy with this one."
"Alexa is better about her Mephagic form too," Heracross noted, and flinched as Charizard in his Fire/Water form sent a Scald at Alexa. "I think she needed to warm up to the idea more than we did." Alexa's body hardened where the water hit her, but she didn't seem to actually be hurt by the attack. At worst she was moving a bit slower where it had impacted.
"Humans don't normally use moves," Rhydon added as Alexa countered with a few flung bits of hardened rock shell. "That was a Rock Throw, even if it wasn't that great of one."
"We do still need to work on the Magma Contagion for the rest of us," Kingler shouted to their two pokemon-trainers.
"I think we've worked it out anyway," Charizard said loudly with a flick of his broad tail. "She has an ability that makes it so Water type moves modify her defense and agility. This-" Charizard paused to look at Alexa.
"I think Lobasalt is a good placeholder until we get an update on the actual name of what pokemon I am," Alexa answered the unasked question. Heracross wasn't entirely sure there was an update that would even tell them. It was possible Alexa was currently a brand new kind of pokemon.
"Lobasalt slow down when they get hit with water, but they aren't really hurt by it and it toughens them up," Charizard continued and walked over to Bellossom. The Grass/Electric type handed back the Pokedex. "We probably need real analysis to work out the exact details, but it is good enough to know Alexa has a surprise threat against Water types."
"I'm still fine without having the Fire type again," Heracross noted as they all collected around the jars of Magma Contagion. "Alexa may have avoided the heat issue for now, but I really don't want to try it again."
"I'm honestly interested in seeing if being a Fire/Grass type is possible," Rhydon continued with that topic easily. "The other two Contagions have worked so far."
"If you pull that off I'll risk turning into a Slugma," Bellossom commented, and given how she had entirely melted with Mercury Contagion it was a valid comparison. "Although if it somehow replaces my Electric type instead I'll be a bit upset."
"First time since Flying that I can't use it for obvious reasons," Charizard added with a smile. "Although it might be interesting to layer things a lot."
"I think that enough for you to lose the Fire type is too many for today," Alexa replied to the joke with a laugh that was more of a rumble, and reminded Heracross that his trainer was not currently human. "Seems like it will be Rhydon first then." The topiary pokemon nodded and spat a bit of Contagion Cure straight up to revert the Mercury Contagion Rhydon was currently using, and made the liquid metal in the bush pokemon solidify into dirt again. "I have got to finish learning how to do that. Being able to turn myself back would be a big weight off my mind." Heracross was sort of glad that Alexa was still uneasy about that. "Although, somehow this one feels a bit nicer than a Mephagic, which is weird because I don't actually have organs right now."
"Huh, I think I know what you mean by that," Rhydon agreed to Heracross' mild displeasure, soon followed by Bellossom and Kingler's comments on being molten.
---
Alexa looked over to where Charizard still had the Pokedex, then at the second little vial of Magma Contagion. She had apparently crushed the first one during her transformation into a Lobasalt. Being semi-liquid with a solid shell was different, but not worse than being human. Mephagic wasn't too bad either, but the slime coated skin of that form took more getting used to somehow. Even an extra pair of legs and a tail wasn't that strange somehow, although being more massive than Charizard was an uneasy change.
"Well, let's see if this works," Rhydon suggested with a rustle of his leaves. Alexa tried to smile at him, it was kind of hard to get the crack for her mouth to move other than to open it, and poured the rested Magma Contagion onto his core of dirt directly to hopefully minimize the danger of damage to his leaves from the hot substance if it didn't work. The dirt immediately melted down into magma, and Rhydon's leaves began to shift to an orange color as the patches of along his wooden interior changed to small rock ringed pits of magma. A number of other sharp rocks also formed as the process continued, and finally the main magma core hardened a thin layer of volcanic rock to hold it together.
"Huh, we have a Fire/Grass pokemon, but the thing says his ability is now Magma Armor," Charizard summarized the Pokedex findings.
"It worked," Bellossom said with surprise as Rhydon began to check his mobility. Rhydon was a bit stiffer in a way Alexa fundamentally understood given how the rock shells on his body cracked and reformed like her own. "It actually worked?"
"Alexa, is the stiff breaking feeling even worse underwater?" Rhydon questioned her, but seemed surprised at the question he had just asked. "I'm asking my trainer about a change."
"It is, but I think Lobasalt like the feeling," Alexa answered as she considered the idea of being asked herself. She had seen her pokemon discuss changes, and had a fairly good idea what each of them wanted out of a change. Charizard simply wanted to have fun with it, Kingler wanted power, Rhydon favored mobility, Bellossom often ended up with poor mobility, and Heracross didn't want to be his original form anymore. They had helped each other on small details they knew better, but she had only been able to help from observation before. "We can only move by- I just said 'we'." She was a pokemon right now. "I said 'we' because I am a Lobasalt and not a human."
"Unless someone else has made Magma Contagion before then the real problem with 'we' there is there might not be any other Lobasalt," Charizard joked, and it worked to calm her down. "Unless you've gone mad and want to make your own underwater kingdom of lobster pokemon out of some village. I'm willing to help with that, but the rest of the team might not have good undersea forms yet."
"Count me in," Kingler agreed easily.
"I'm going Mercury Steel type to handle that, but I would rather not have a Champion arrive to stop us and save a village," Bellossom complained with a bit of a laugh. "So maybe we can go for volunteers instead? I'm sure we can find enough humans that don't really like being human."
"I'm fine with being human," Alexa said half jokingly, and half as a realization of how she felt about the topic. "Huh. Is that how you feel about being your natural types, Charizard?"
"Not sure if I'm happy with the idea you're only 'fine' with being human, but yeah that's about how I feel about the default," the winged reptile admitted with a bit less amusement. "You don't need me to be a pair trainer, do you?"
Pair trainers were people who wanted to work together on the same team. You both basically did half the work, had equal power in the team, and typically ended up in a breakup or even a fight with each other when one worked out how they actually wanted to train pokemon was different that their partner. Twins and Psychic typed humans were usually the only ones Alexa knew about that could make it work, and even then it was only sometimes. "Does that work better for two pokemon than two humans?" she asked carefully.
"My parents tried to have me set that up with you at the start as a compromise," Charizard replied uneasily. "Although it should be human and pokemon, not two pokemon, and I really hope there isn't something we find that can turn me human too."
"How exactly would that be different from what you two are doing now?" Bellossom somewhat sarcastically asked. "Because I hate to say it, Charizard, but you kind of do all the stuff Alexa does with us too. You help train us, you go over our supplies, and about the only thing you haven't done is lead us in a battle against a trainer."
"Paperwork mostly, but important paperwork," Alexa admitted with a shake of her... upper body. "I'm not sure what Charizard would want as a trainer, and it really has sounded like he doesn't really want to be one. You can help out a team outside of official battles without being a pair trainer. Even if I do fight in an official match I'd rather go last."
"I think this one works for combat, but I don't really want to spend all day like this," Rhydon interrupted, clearly trying to help by changing the topic back to the transformation experiments. "It is a bit too stiff for me. Maybe I just need to warm up a bit more, but that seems like a lot of work to just move easily."
"Alright, I probably shouldn't handle Mercury Contagion like this until we have time to work that out, but Heracross could probably help you change back to that one," Alexa agreed.
---
Bellossom sighed as she realized she was up next unless she wanted to pass off on Magma Contagion entirely. It was a tempting idea, at least half the things she had tried had made moving around annoying, but both Rhydon and her trainer had been successful with the change so the Grass/Electric type couldn't really justify avoiding it to herself.
"You can say you don't want to try," Heracross said to her as he walked back to the packs after giving Rhydon a Steel type again. "Nobody is going to be mad about it," the rodent Fighting/Steel type former beetle added. "I think you've had worse luck overall than I have."
"I know, but I don't want to scare Alexa when she's been taking this whole thing better," Bellossom admitted with a glance towards their trainer, who had been taken aside by Kingler to continue to work on the Contagion Cure move. "I wish I could say we could just be more careful with this stuff so she didn't have to, but I know that there is a reason why we still have a stock of poison and burn cures that specifically work on humans."
"You didn't spill something that could have lasted a whole month on her," Heracross shot back with a huff. "I still can't stand that it might have been both of us stuck like that."
Bellossom was privately convinced that the two of them would be apologizing to each other about that event for the whole League. "Still, this is easier to handle than that one, and that means we will be using it more," she said. "Which is why I should at least try this one too. It isn't like it takes that long to fix."
Heracross nodded in acceptance of the idea, and Bellossom rolled her eyes at her teammate's now common attempts to move in ways that beetle pokemon usually couldn't. She danced over to her trainer's current bulky magma lobster form. "Well, I'm ready to try," Bellossom declared.
Alexa's eye spots hardened for a moment, which was probably a blink, and then the trainer nodded and moved to grab the third vial of Magma Contagion of the day. "Charizard, what happened to the second one we used?" the Lobasalt questioned.
"Your claws melted it a bit while you were handling it," Charizard replied and held up the destroyed item. "We probably need to work on that before you use this form much with our stuff." The three of them looked at the new vial in Alexa's claws now. "And maybe another box of those things. They're cheap, but they're also cheap." The reptile had a smug smile on his face for that wordplay.
"Okay, I'm ready to have the lava poured on me now," Bellossom complained about that joke. "Gah! Mention that it is cold!" she then managed to shout as she changed. She could feel the shift away from the Grass type, which was disappointing but expected, and then her face pushed forward into a muzzle which was honestly new. Her skin and limbs all felt like they were growing stiffer, and like some really solid stem material had formed inside of her. She was able to watch her hands grow four short clawed digits, and her feet three similar digits. Her skirt of leaves merged together into the same material as her skin, with what felt like a mobile thin digits that let her move it around a bit. Her color had become a brownish red over much of her body, with yellow zigzagged bands on her new skin-skirt. The only thing she couldn't see was her flowers, which a quick check with her new claws revealed had been turned into small rocky volcanic horns that had a bit of magma in them. Finally a short but thick tail developed behind her to a point about half her body length away from her main body.
"Sorry, I didn't realize that wasn't something the rest of you didn't know," Alexa apologized. "You seem to be a sort of lizard monster now."
Bellossom paused to consider that while Charizard went over her with the Pokedex. That would imply she was an animal pokemon for once, and she had to go over herself. "Uh," Bellossom hesitated and moved a claw to her neck. "There is this sort of pump-pump thing I'm feeling, is that normal?"
"Do you mean you didn't have a heart before? Not even during that Soak fiasco?" Alexa questioned and her trainer's claws moved up against Alexa's body. "Because that sounds like a heartbeat- and not having organs means not having a heart- I don't have a heart!"
Bellossom had to sigh at how she had just managed to restart the issue all over again.
---
[Author's Note]
Another chapter mostly about Alexa's changes, although this one has the team helping out with some new stuff too.
Interesting fact about a pokemon mentioned here: despite being a Gen II pokemon, Slugma and Magcargo are not in fact Johto pokemon. You can only find them in Kanto in those games.
Kingler's opponent went down, and Alexa smiled at the half surprised look on the other trainer's face. They had made alright time the past couple of days, although they had only managed to find time to work on her Mephagic form and test Mercury Contagion. The silvery metal fluid had not affected Alexa, which made a degree of sense given how they had tested that one more than the others for travel purposes at the start of this League.
"That was a good match," Alexa told the other trainer, just in time for Kingler's Magma Contagion to wear off and the crab pokemon to solidify back into a Water/Dragon. "Are you coming from or going to Cherrygrove?" she then asked a bit embarrassed.
"Going to. I heard there was a new Gym there and wanted to see how it compared to the old Water type Gym," the other girl replied and recalled her Magneton. "Do I need to be worried about how you just got your pokemon a type advantage for that one?"
"Have you ever heard of the move Soak?" Alexa said to bring up the topic, and hoped that the trainer wouldn't be too unhappy with that much advice on Leader Douglas' trick. That led to a brief discussion of Alexa's new specialty and how the new Johto Water type Gym Leader used at least a part of it. Given how her team had not fought in their natural form against a trainer yet this League it was a discussion Alexa was getting used to giving.
"Well, my team has worked with some Electric type weakness situations," the other trainer said at the end of the conversation. "Thank you for the advice."
"Not a problem. I might even start up a Gym for it one day," Alexa joked without any real serious consideration of the idea. Once the other trainer had left she turned to Kingler. "So, that was a full week. I guess we can check work on going over Magma Contagion in detail now."
Kingler managed to pool a bit of said substance in her claw, and motioned at Alexa in a clear question. One that Alexa wasn't entirely sure she was ready to tackle, but had to anyway. "Yeah, I'm going to be trying it too," Alexa replied. "We'll wait until we reach a good campsite."
---
Alexa wasn't entirely ready for this. If Magma Contagion didn't work on her as a human then the plan she had was to test it on her Mephagic form. Either way that would let her actually talk to her team as the rest of them went over the effects of the material. Charizard looked unimpressed with her plan, but the others were merely dubious. "Okay, from what the Pokedex has been able to tell the Magma Contagion isn't hot enough to cause serious burns, but I do have a few human safe Burn Heal variants just because I have a Fire type," Alexa said mostly to psych herself up.
Charizard had the Pokedex, and again most of their stuff was at the tent. This time they were entirely alone, as they had found a camp site that was well removed from other trainers on the route at the edge of a medium sized pond. Alexa had a small vial of the stuff, cheap ones her father had given them a box of 200 of for use in this sort of test. Alexa didn't think they would go through that many in the League, but that would really depend on if they broke as easily as the price implied.
The vial was warm to the touch, and Alexa honestly considered using it as a heat pack for gloves if it didn't transform her into a Fire type. With that hopeful thought she opened the little stopper and poured it onto her arm. Her first surprise was that it felt cold, and even though she could feel her arm expand outward any detailed sensation was overwhelmed by a cold feeling that spread across her surface before slowly receding and a cool feeling from her not yet changed body as the effect rapidly spread.
As the sense hit the core of her body she lost track of it entirely, and it wasn't until it was over and she felt a comfortable temperature inside that she really could work out what had happened. She could feel and now see a shell of hardened pillow shaped rock that resembled some form of crab or lobster. She could feel a tail, so probably lobster, and three sets of limbs. Two pairs were legs, but Alexa couldn't work out how she ended up on four feet, but she only had two arms. They both ended in typical claws for a crustacean, but with a strange instinct she was able to melt the hardened rock down into magma and reform them into three more mobile hand-like claws. Her face was dome shaped, but she wasn't entirely sure she actually had a fixed mouth. It seemed that she had a crack that revealed her inner magma which might have counted, but she was more geology than biology at the moment.
"Alexa, are you alright there?" Charizard asked, and she finally started to move to look up at them.
As Alexa shifted to standing up with her tail against the ground she felt the shell of rock along her joints crack open and reform again with each movement. It was a strange cool sensation where she had expected to feel hot, although it sort of made sense that the rest of the world would feel colder if she was this hot inside. "Am I putting out a lot of heat? It feels too cool outside for me to tell," she said before she realized it wasn't an answer to his question.
"I think you're doing better than me or Heracross, but that might be a problem instead of a good thing," Kingler clicked and sighed. "We kind of were hoping this would help you work that issue out before we found out if you can be a Vespikiln."
"Fire/Rock typed unknown pokemon," Charizard sighed. "It is giving an unknown species unique ability, but it is asking for research. Your Water type resistance is giving a 'not enough information' error instead of a double weakness."
"I guess we will need to keep you away from the water now," Heracross noted and carefully got closer. "Kind of ironic for such a Water type shaped pokemon to be those types."
Alexa blinked, well it wasn't really a blink but she did feel her molten eye spots harden briefly, at the idea she would have some sort of issue with water. "I think I might actually like to take a dip in the pond," she carefully considered. "It doesn't feel like a dangerous idea."
"She looks like underwater lava," Rhydon contributed and motioned her to go ahead and try. "We can always splash her with Contagion Cure if there is a problem."
Bellossom gave her a critical look, and Kingler moved right up next to her as she walked forward at a moderate pace towards the pond. Alexa was able to feel that her overall body shape was not human at all, even ignoring the fact that her interior was entirely molten. She had a flat tail fan at the end of a broad segmented tail that transitioned into a slightly larger but still dome shaped main body that smoothly matched up with the part that was her head. Her limbs were moderately bulky by human standards, but quite thin compared to her main body, and simply extended off directly instead of having the more solid connection a human or Mephagic possessed.
"You don't seem to have much exposed heated portions," Charizard commented thoughtfully. "A normal Char can handle water as long as we don't hit our tailflame, although sand is usually safer to clean with. I don't think I need to tell this team that I liked baths as a 'mander," he joked, and Alexa had to laugh at the image.
A couple of small Poliwags looked at her curiously as she eased herself into the water. The cold actually felt fairly nice actually. Her outermost layer solidified even further as it contacted the water, and it became a bit more difficult to move. She moved entirely under the water despite complaints from her team, and rather slowly paced along the bottom of the pond as Magikarp and Poliwags swam over to inspect her.
"Well, now I need to see what happens when a Water type move hits you," Kingler suddenly clicked from right next to her. "Can you swim like that, or are you stuck on the bottom?"
Alexa considered the question, and then looked over at the very visible other side of the pond. "Not somewhere this small," she admitted after a moment of thought. "I need a bit more room with how I move down here."
"Then how about we get back to the surface for a bit?" Kingler suggested maybe with a bit of unneeded concern.
---
Heracross was fairly sure he now knew why Alexa had freaked out so much when he stopped being a Bug type. Alexa didn't look at all like a human as a whatever they were going to name this lobster pokemon. She wasn't biological anymore, and Heracross was quite sure she had changed more than he had. The ease she was moving around as a rock and magma crustacean was unnerving.
"So, I think I get why you freaked her out now," Bellossom agreed with his thoughts. "She is much less twitchy with this one."
"Alexa is better about her Mephagic form too," Heracross noted, and flinched as Charizard in his Fire/Water form sent a Scald at Alexa. "I think she needed to warm up to the idea more than we did." Alexa's body hardened where the water hit her, but she didn't seem to actually be hurt by the attack. At worst she was moving a bit slower where it had impacted.
"Humans don't normally use moves," Rhydon added as Alexa countered with a few flung bits of hardened rock shell. "That was a Rock Throw, even if it wasn't that great of one."
"We do still need to work on the Magma Contagion for the rest of us," Kingler shouted to their two pokemon-trainers.
"I think we've worked it out anyway," Charizard said loudly with a flick of his broad tail. "She has an ability that makes it so Water type moves modify her defense and agility. This-" Charizard paused to look at Alexa.
"I think Lobasalt is a good placeholder until we get an update on the actual name of what pokemon I am," Alexa answered the unasked question. Heracross wasn't entirely sure there was an update that would even tell them. It was possible Alexa was currently a brand new kind of pokemon.
"Lobasalt slow down when they get hit with water, but they aren't really hurt by it and it toughens them up," Charizard continued and walked over to Bellossom. The Grass/Electric type handed back the Pokedex. "We probably need real analysis to work out the exact details, but it is good enough to know Alexa has a surprise threat against Water types."
"I'm still fine without having the Fire type again," Heracross noted as they all collected around the jars of Magma Contagion. "Alexa may have avoided the heat issue for now, but I really don't want to try it again."
"I'm honestly interested in seeing if being a Fire/Grass type is possible," Rhydon continued with that topic easily. "The other two Contagions have worked so far."
"If you pull that off I'll risk turning into a Slugma," Bellossom commented, and given how she had entirely melted with Mercury Contagion it was a valid comparison. "Although if it somehow replaces my Electric type instead I'll be a bit upset."
"First time since Flying that I can't use it for obvious reasons," Charizard added with a smile. "Although it might be interesting to layer things a lot."
"I think that enough for you to lose the Fire type is too many for today," Alexa replied to the joke with a laugh that was more of a rumble, and reminded Heracross that his trainer was not currently human. "Seems like it will be Rhydon first then." The topiary pokemon nodded and spat a bit of Contagion Cure straight up to revert the Mercury Contagion Rhydon was currently using, and made the liquid metal in the bush pokemon solidify into dirt again. "I have got to finish learning how to do that. Being able to turn myself back would be a big weight off my mind." Heracross was sort of glad that Alexa was still uneasy about that. "Although, somehow this one feels a bit nicer than a Mephagic, which is weird because I don't actually have organs right now."
"Huh, I think I know what you mean by that," Rhydon agreed to Heracross' mild displeasure, soon followed by Bellossom and Kingler's comments on being molten.
---
Alexa looked over to where Charizard still had the Pokedex, then at the second little vial of Magma Contagion. She had apparently crushed the first one during her transformation into a Lobasalt. Being semi-liquid with a solid shell was different, but not worse than being human. Mephagic wasn't too bad either, but the slime coated skin of that form took more getting used to somehow. Even an extra pair of legs and a tail wasn't that strange somehow, although being more massive than Charizard was an uneasy change.
"Well, let's see if this works," Rhydon suggested with a rustle of his leaves. Alexa tried to smile at him, it was kind of hard to get the crack for her mouth to move other than to open it, and poured the rested Magma Contagion onto his core of dirt directly to hopefully minimize the danger of damage to his leaves from the hot substance if it didn't work. The dirt immediately melted down into magma, and Rhydon's leaves began to shift to an orange color as the patches of along his wooden interior changed to small rock ringed pits of magma. A number of other sharp rocks also formed as the process continued, and finally the main magma core hardened a thin layer of volcanic rock to hold it together.
"Huh, we have a Fire/Grass pokemon, but the thing says his ability is now Magma Armor," Charizard summarized the Pokedex findings.
"It worked," Bellossom said with surprise as Rhydon began to check his mobility. Rhydon was a bit stiffer in a way Alexa fundamentally understood given how the rock shells on his body cracked and reformed like her own. "It actually worked?"
"Alexa, is the stiff breaking feeling even worse underwater?" Rhydon questioned her, but seemed surprised at the question he had just asked. "I'm asking my trainer about a change."
"It is, but I think Lobasalt like the feeling," Alexa answered as she considered the idea of being asked herself. She had seen her pokemon discuss changes, and had a fairly good idea what each of them wanted out of a change. Charizard simply wanted to have fun with it, Kingler wanted power, Rhydon favored mobility, Bellossom often ended up with poor mobility, and Heracross didn't want to be his original form anymore. They had helped each other on small details they knew better, but she had only been able to help from observation before. "We can only move by- I just said 'we'." She was a pokemon right now. "I said 'we' because I am a Lobasalt and not a human."
"Unless someone else has made Magma Contagion before then the real problem with 'we' there is there might not be any other Lobasalt," Charizard joked, and it worked to calm her down. "Unless you've gone mad and want to make your own underwater kingdom of lobster pokemon out of some village. I'm willing to help with that, but the rest of the team might not have good undersea forms yet."
"Count me in," Kingler agreed easily.
"I'm going Mercury Steel type to handle that, but I would rather not have a Champion arrive to stop us and save a village," Bellossom complained with a bit of a laugh. "So maybe we can go for volunteers instead? I'm sure we can find enough humans that don't really like being human."
"I'm fine with being human," Alexa said half jokingly, and half as a realization of how she felt about the topic. "Huh. Is that how you feel about being your natural types, Charizard?"
"Not sure if I'm happy with the idea you're only 'fine' with being human, but yeah that's about how I feel about the default," the winged reptile admitted with a bit less amusement. "You don't need me to be a pair trainer, do you?"
Pair trainers were people who wanted to work together on the same team. You both basically did half the work, had equal power in the team, and typically ended up in a breakup or even a fight with each other when one worked out how they actually wanted to train pokemon was different that their partner. Twins and Psychic typed humans were usually the only ones Alexa knew about that could make it work, and even then it was only sometimes. "Does that work better for two pokemon than two humans?" she asked carefully.
"My parents tried to have me set that up with you at the start as a compromise," Charizard replied uneasily. "Although it should be human and pokemon, not two pokemon, and I really hope there isn't something we find that can turn me human too."
"How exactly would that be different from what you two are doing now?" Bellossom somewhat sarcastically asked. "Because I hate to say it, Charizard, but you kind of do all the stuff Alexa does with us too. You help train us, you go over our supplies, and about the only thing you haven't done is lead us in a battle against a trainer."
"Paperwork mostly, but important paperwork," Alexa admitted with a shake of her... upper body. "I'm not sure what Charizard would want as a trainer, and it really has sounded like he doesn't really want to be one. You can help out a team outside of official battles without being a pair trainer. Even if I do fight in an official match I'd rather go last."
"I think this one works for combat, but I don't really want to spend all day like this," Rhydon interrupted, clearly trying to help by changing the topic back to the transformation experiments. "It is a bit too stiff for me. Maybe I just need to warm up a bit more, but that seems like a lot of work to just move easily."
"Alright, I probably shouldn't handle Mercury Contagion like this until we have time to work that out, but Heracross could probably help you change back to that one," Alexa agreed.
---
Bellossom sighed as she realized she was up next unless she wanted to pass off on Magma Contagion entirely. It was a tempting idea, at least half the things she had tried had made moving around annoying, but both Rhydon and her trainer had been successful with the change so the Grass/Electric type couldn't really justify avoiding it to herself.
"You can say you don't want to try," Heracross said to her as he walked back to the packs after giving Rhydon a Steel type again. "Nobody is going to be mad about it," the rodent Fighting/Steel type former beetle added. "I think you've had worse luck overall than I have."
"I know, but I don't want to scare Alexa when she's been taking this whole thing better," Bellossom admitted with a glance towards their trainer, who had been taken aside by Kingler to continue to work on the Contagion Cure move. "I wish I could say we could just be more careful with this stuff so she didn't have to, but I know that there is a reason why we still have a stock of poison and burn cures that specifically work on humans."
"You didn't spill something that could have lasted a whole month on her," Heracross shot back with a huff. "I still can't stand that it might have been both of us stuck like that."
Bellossom was privately convinced that the two of them would be apologizing to each other about that event for the whole League. "Still, this is easier to handle than that one, and that means we will be using it more," she said. "Which is why I should at least try this one too. It isn't like it takes that long to fix."
Heracross nodded in acceptance of the idea, and Bellossom rolled her eyes at her teammate's now common attempts to move in ways that beetle pokemon usually couldn't. She danced over to her trainer's current bulky magma lobster form. "Well, I'm ready to try," Bellossom declared.
Alexa's eye spots hardened for a moment, which was probably a blink, and then the trainer nodded and moved to grab the third vial of Magma Contagion of the day. "Charizard, what happened to the second one we used?" the Lobasalt questioned.
"Your claws melted it a bit while you were handling it," Charizard replied and held up the destroyed item. "We probably need to work on that before you use this form much with our stuff." The three of them looked at the new vial in Alexa's claws now. "And maybe another box of those things. They're cheap, but they're also cheap." The reptile had a smug smile on his face for that wordplay.
"Okay, I'm ready to have the lava poured on me now," Bellossom complained about that joke. "Gah! Mention that it is cold!" she then managed to shout as she changed. She could feel the shift away from the Grass type, which was disappointing but expected, and then her face pushed forward into a muzzle which was honestly new. Her skin and limbs all felt like they were growing stiffer, and like some really solid stem material had formed inside of her. She was able to watch her hands grow four short clawed digits, and her feet three similar digits. Her skirt of leaves merged together into the same material as her skin, with what felt like a mobile thin digits that let her move it around a bit. Her color had become a brownish red over much of her body, with yellow zigzagged bands on her new skin-skirt. The only thing she couldn't see was her flowers, which a quick check with her new claws revealed had been turned into small rocky volcanic horns that had a bit of magma in them. Finally a short but thick tail developed behind her to a point about half her body length away from her main body.
"Sorry, I didn't realize that wasn't something the rest of you didn't know," Alexa apologized. "You seem to be a sort of lizard monster now."
Bellossom paused to consider that while Charizard went over her with the Pokedex. That would imply she was an animal pokemon for once, and she had to go over herself. "Uh," Bellossom hesitated and moved a claw to her neck. "There is this sort of pump-pump thing I'm feeling, is that normal?"
"Do you mean you didn't have a heart before? Not even during that Soak fiasco?" Alexa questioned and her trainer's claws moved up against Alexa's body. "Because that sounds like a heartbeat- and not having organs means not having a heart- I don't have a heart!"
Bellossom had to sigh at how she had just managed to restart the issue all over again.
---
[Author's Note]
Another chapter mostly about Alexa's changes, although this one has the team helping out with some new stuff too.
Interesting fact about a pokemon mentioned here: despite being a Gen II pokemon, Slugma and Magcargo are not in fact Johto pokemon. You can only find them in Kanto in those games.
Last edited:
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
I suspect this is supposed to be a thick tail, not a think tail.
Other then that, some nice new pokemon forms. I'm hoping we can see a full battle where Alexa and her team use the type changing madness to the max sometime, because we haven't seen it yet and I want to see the look on the other team's faces when they have to figure out what all these new pokemon forms are. Especially when some of them are super not in the pokedex yet.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Thank you for the correction.
I will have to handle this eventually, but I've kind of been waiting for Alexa to get her new trainer cards so she can be less careful about handling the materials to pull it off.
Vespikiln
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- Vespikiln ---
Dark Pass was a fairly young town. While there had been some inhabitation on Routes 30 and 31 for a long time it had not been until the Hoenn disaster that there was real need for development at the intersection of the two. There had been a trainer accessible cave pass at the corner of those routes that led to Route 45 near Blackthorn City, but during the disaster the creation of the Cherrygrove port had caused the development of a proper cargo path towards that mountain city in order to aid in travel and supply.
Dark Pass itself was split between a few buildings in the area at the front of the cave, and a larger number of locations inside of the caverns. It was not a very large town, little more than a place where some people had set up a couple of shops, a few locals who maintained the passage, the houses for those inhabitants, and energy restoration machines for pokemon in the two town halls at either end. It was, notably for Alexa, too small to have the official League representation she needed to update her trainer cards.
It also had been filed in her downloaded map as being next to Blackthorn City instead of Violet City, so finding the town came as a bit of a surprise she needed to discuss with her team before changing back from her Mephagic form.
"While it is an easy pass to Blackthorn, I personally want to see if we could find another method for the Dragon or Ice type before we take on the Dragon Clan's Gym," Charizard admitted while Alexa looked over the road into town from a tree she probably would not have climbed up if not for her frog form.
"Agreed, I don't want to have to face that one alone, and we have a theme to keep up," Kingler agreed with him. "After all, the plan was for Rhydon and Bellossom to both confuse the Flying type Gym. We're ready for that one now, Dragons can wait until we get more Frozen Flames or something better."
"We do have the Ice typed Flame with us too," Alexa had to uncomfortably admit. "It sort of got forgotten because everyone had something at that time and we ended up waiting for Rhydon to turn back first."
Heracross looked down at her from the higher branch the former-insect current-mammal pokemon had far more easily climbed to. "Do you need to be worried about that one working on you?" he questioned about her tone.
"You've handled mine quite a bit, isn't that enough to know?" Kingler added with concern. "Because I can tell you that I do not like the idea of my trainer going through the pain of one of these."
"Frozen Flames are attuned instead of just a works or doesn't thing," Alexa started to explain as she shifted on the branch to face the rest of the team better. "A specific one will work on a specific human. There is no way to tell if the other one will work on me, but I'm a bit worried. Dad never handled Kingler's, and I've never touched the other one. The chance we just happened to get two that were attuned is higher than my dad is comfortable with."
"We are going to avoid Blackthorn until we have a better option than Alexa being our other Dragon type," Charizard complained. "Right, with that out of the way, what is the plan for this town? We still have time on Route 31 to test Chitin Powder."
"The tent hasn't appreciated my other forms much," Alexa admitted with a glance at the now slightly stained, a bit melted, and very patched mess. "And the weather is looking a bit like rain. I don't want to ruin our canopy tent too just to keep from getting too wet. We might need to find one that is Fire type inhabitation safe now if they have one."
"You seem really sure that you're going to become one," Kingler noted, and she froze at being called out. "Either that or you really want to use the Lobasalt form more."
Alexa ribbited at the idea, because yes Lobasalt was a fairly nice form, and Fire and Rock typed attacks had been easier to figure out so far, but that wasn't the actual reason. "Dad figured out that it wasn't an all or nothing immunity for humans because he spilled Chitin Powder on himself," she quietly replied. "He knows that he becomes one, and sent me the information with that one as the first for a reason."
"We could just not use Chitin Powder," Rhydon suggested at that admission. "I mean, I- No seriously I do not want to see Alexa break out of bug shell. It isn't like the Bug type is all that great really."
"Just because I'm not using it anymore doesn't mean it can't be useful," Heracross sighed, as Alexa jumped down easily from the tree to the ground. "Although maybe you should have started with 'it will probably work on me' instead of letting us think you were just nervous about if it worked or not."
"My dad sent me an article about a Bug typed human form instead of telling me he accidentally transformed himself," she croaked dully. "I didn't find that out until after he had turned back and I started to check that literature more for details. I asked him if humans really did turn back differently than pokemon, just shifting instead of shedding, and he admitted he was personally happy that it wasn't the same. These transformations tend to run in families, so if it works on dad it probably works on me." Rhydon looked a bit relieved at that news, even if the others clearly agreed that they didn't like how she had found out.
"Alright, I say Alexa spends a day or two at this town doing human things, and then we can work out if we want to try that form before or after Violet City," Bellossom argued, and Alexa rolled her eyes as the rest of the team agreed. It had only been a few days of going between her two tested pokemon forms to get them into shape to move around and maybe fight in an emergency.
---
Being human among humans again after a while as a pokemon among pokemon was stranger than Alexa had anticipated. Maybe it was just the feeling of being effectively stuck as a human because of paperwork after being able to just change herself whenever there weren't humans around. Other humans she reminded herself as she looked over the hiking supply store that clearly mostly existed for the inhabitants of the town who monitored the side paths for any risks to the main route. The rare Dunsparce and Wobbuffet found here were not the most hazardous on their own, but they did cause fairly unusual problems for the prospect of navigation.
"We don't really have the most call specifically for Fire type resistance of that quality, but there is a bit of overlap in materials that resist the Dragon type flames that some of our route clearers from Blackthorn have to buy," the supply store owner admitted a bit happily. He was an older man who seemed amused at the topic. "The Dragon Clan there is really big on letting their partners stay outside their pokeballs on trips, so it is a more common issue than you'd think." The old man leaned in as if to tell a secret. "Honestly, they seem Dragon enough that I wonder how much of that is an excuise for their own damage to the things."
Alexa, who knew that she was buying this tent for that exact issue, managed to laugh at it a bit, but she didn't think he missed how she couldn't quite find it that amusing. "Well, then I'm glad you have good options," she said and tried to keep her face calm with how much this was going to cost. The one she could afford was a quarter more expensive than her old model, but could stand up to her new forms and the weather better. The other option that looked to be the best was too expensive by far, and she just couldn't scrape enough together to work out how to get that one instead. She already sold off a few jars of the rare materials her team specialized in and could produce, but now that turned out to only be enough to keep a food budget after this instead of a last minute boost to make up for the tent.
"Only the best," he boasted, and with great regret she paid for the new tent and made her way back into the main cavern. It was still fairly dark off the main path, but that path was broad enough for some fairly large cargo to pass through and framed by artificially carved chamber-buildings that from a brief conversation extended most of the length of the route. Most were concentrated at the two ends, but both were considered to be the town of Dark Pass officially, and Alexa learned that the reason for her map issue was that this end was actually the smaller part of the town.
There was another, possibly larger and more stocked, shop that sold tents and such at the other end, but that was at least one full day of cave travel away. She didn't have time for that trip, and the damp cave felt like a place she would prefer to travel as a Lobasalt when she finally updated her trainer cards. So as she left she simply listened to rumors about the possible excavation of the long collapsed Route 46 branch and complaints about the higher price of the older model of lights that worked better with the local pokemon than the new ones.
It was different, because a part of Alexa still expected to understand the pokemon who were having their own discussions, and the way some humans spoke about pokemon was a new kind of uncomfortable. Alexa had thought she was a bit too pokemon centered in thought before, but now that she was sort of counting herself as one the way some of the people around her spoke hit harder than before. Casual comments about the difference between pokemon and humans that she had passed off easily as just ignorant before now seemed a bit less understandable.
"I almost wanted to say that there is less difference between humans and pokemon than that," she mumbled as she got back on the road and started to look for a new camp site to start her time as a Vespikiln.
---
"Alexa, that was barely a day," Bellossom noted as the team set up a tent well off of the normal path. "Do we have a new problem?" She had decided to try out being a Fire/Electric lizard pokemon again since they were testing Fire types anyway. It was strange being an animal, somehow it was a bit more noticeable than being liquid metal instead of a plant, but for once it wasn't that hard to move and dance like this.
"I don't know if I like how humans talk about pokemon," Alexa rumbled as the Lobasalt carefully worked with Charizard to test their new tent while the 'warranty' was still useful. Apparently it came with one of those things that said it could handle pokemon inhabitation or it would be replaced with a better one.
"So that old problem, just with more to it," Kingler sighed, and Bellossom rolled her currently reptilian eyes. "Alexa, you didn't get into an argument about talking with pokemon again, did you?"
"I don't mind our trainer pointing out that we're people too," Bellossom had to say to her teammate, because it was one of the nice parts of being one of Alexa's pokemon. "I do mind her running away from humans because of it."
"They were talking about me too this time," Alexa finally replied after a bit too long, and that silenced everyone. Bellossom did not really understand what that could even mean. "I'm a pokemon right now. I can be a pokemon just like the rest of you."
"They've been talking about me the whole time, and I could have been another trainer around them," Charizard joked to a bit of success. It at least got the crack that was Alexa's mouth to twist into more of a smile, even though Bellossom wasn't entirely happy with the thought that Alexa really counted as a pokemon now.
"It was already annoying, but I'm mostly nervous about a few days without a trainer card as a pokemon," Alexa admitted and nodded at the tent being unharmed despite how a magma lobster had set it up. "For three days I'm going to be just a pokemon, not a human at all, and I have no idea what other trainers are going to do if I try and talk to them."
"Maybe we should have gotten some fireproof clothes to go with the tent?" Heracross suggested. "I mean, that would be easier to find good ones if you were already a Vespikiln, but there might have been some things." Bellossom leveled the rodent pokemon a dark glare at going for such a silly sounding idea.
"The tent cost most of our money," Charizard said seriously. "I really hope we don't need to get Alexa new clothes unless her dad can help us out there."
"There are too many things that are waiting for me to get those new trainer cards," Alexa said once again. "Dad does want to buy me some trainer basics for each of my forms, but he needs official recognition to pay for them. Some stuff should stay when I change if it is made to be able to work on a different form." Their trainer looked over the camp site, and sighed. "Let's get this done now."
Bellossom kind of wanted to stall a bit longer, but Alexa had worked out Contagion Cure enough to use it to collapse back down into a human form before she could respond to her trainer. The rest of the team looked similarly uneasy with that declaration. Not being understood as easily was strangely hard even though they had managed so well before. It was a bit harsh to realize how much time they had taken before to talk to Alexa, how much effort went into finding a way to get across an idea, and now to know there was an easy solution to tell their trainer something as easily as if they had said it to each other.
There was a brief pause as they cleared an area and Charizard got out the Pokedex again, because Alexa wanted to get as much data as possible on this whole topic. Another of those small vials, which were too fragile for Alexa to really be using herself at this point, full of Chitin Powder was then sprinkled onto their trainer. Alexa's body immediately started to harden and shift in profile. Their trainer's head extended forward into a teardrop shape with the pointed end at the front, and grew a pair of thick fuzzy antenna and wide flat black eyes. Alexa's main body grew into a rounder fuzzy oval shape as it took on an orange color with light blue bands, and a large abdomen grew out from the base of her spine with a good sized jagged stinger at the end. Her legs thinned dramatically, and a set of four brilliant clear orange wings emerged from her back, while her arms split into two thinner identical pairs with three short claws at the end of each.
Their trainer's new large bee pokemon form then surged out a wave of heat that made Bellossom glad she was currently a Fire type herself even as Rhydon and Heracross both took a large step back.
---
It wasn't much different from her other pokemon forms in general, Lobasalt had the same number of extra body parts and Mephagic was also a non-mammal, but it was something she couldn't stop on her own. They had spent the afternoon on trying to keep her cooler so they could travel safely, but it really felt like rain, and Alexa was a bit worried she was going to be stuck in the tent all day. Stuck as a giant bug that had already coated the bottom of the tent in flakes of the blueish grey powder that caused the change.
"Cleaning this is going to be a nightmare, Alexa," Kingler informed her with a claw-thump. "I think I might need to clean this whole thing out myself before you use it again just so nobody else gets changed by accident too."
"I think I misunderstood what the reports meant when they said the hives were 'filled' with piles of Chitin Powder," Alexa admitted with a click of her mandibles that was the closest she could manage to a frown. "Thought it meant as storage, not that it is impossible to keep a place you stay clear of the stuff."
"What did the explorers all end up Vespikiln as soon as they cracked the place open?" Kingler grumbled and made an attempt to clean up some of the powder.
"Three of the five did, but the other two were immune," Alexa complained and checked over her slightly fluffy form. "The report had an entire statistical segment on how that was more than normally are effected. It also had a few really confused segments taken from the original report I've been trying to use to deal with this whole development." Her body wasn't uncomfortable like this, but she could actually feel the soon to arrive rain that had her more worried than she had ever been by water before.
"And your dad didn't think to mention that when he gave you the stuff?" her pokemon questioned with a body shake.
"He apparently even let me try this stuff before he worked with it at all," Alexa had to agree, then flinched at the sound of the first few drops on the tent. "I'm going to try and get some sleep, hopefully wait out the storm."
"Alright, good night, Alexa," Kingler replied and then the crab pokemon returned herself to her pokeball.
The rain got more intense, and while the tight confines of the tent were sort of comforting, Alexa simply could not get to sleep with the sound of it. A part of her shivered at the sound, and she wasn't sure if they would even get somewhere tomorrow as a result. Which meant she was putting out a good amount of heat and light, and that just made it harder to try and calm down in order to sleep.
After a while of just laying down she heard someone approach and tensed up a bit. "Excuse me, Pokemon Ranger, just checking in to make sure you're alright," a male probably-human voice said from the front of the tent. "You have a light on pretty late and this is quite a ways off the path."
Reluctantly Alexa opened the tent to see the now definitely human trainer, who stepped back at the wave of heat that let out. "I'm having some trouble getting to sleep," she quickly and tiredly admitted as he blinked at her appearance. "It is my first night in this form, and we didn't get a forecast long enough ahead to know it would rain."
"I, do not actually understand what you mean, but I apologize for misunderstanding the situation," the Ranger replied. "The storm is supposed to get harsh, but it should be done by morning. Your tent looks like it can handle that for tonight."
"So I will just need to worry about puddles tomorrow. Well, Charizard will be happy," Alexa thought out loud. "Thank you."
"Yeah, sure, have a nice night," the Ranger said with confusion and let her close her tent.
---
"I was so tired I didn't even try to explain to him," Alexa buzzed unhappily the next morning, after a fitful night of barely any sleep.
"It's sort of funny," Charizard chuckled as he took a drink of Clearwater Geode enhanced water. He quickly shifted to his finned Fire/Water form, and Alexa tossed her head at the display. "Wanna try?" he offered with a smug smile.
"I don't want to try anything that makes this last longer until I have those cards," she complained, and that made the rest of the team laugh as they finished packing up the camp site. "But I still don't believe I just left a Ranger in the middle of nowhere with no idea what I was."
"You could talk and had a tent," Bellossom noted as the temporary lizard pokemon finished packing the tent's mounting pegs. "I think that is enough for him to have an idea at least."
"I guess," Alexa admitted while Charizard took up her pack. She still was not able to regulate her temperature enough to safely carry everything.
"Ready to try flying at least?" Heracross suggested to change topic. "I know my old set of wings is about the only thing I miss, but the bat ones from Stable Cloud are better."
Alexa's wings buzzed a bit at the suggestion. Walking was a bit harder in this form than she had expected, even if the reports had noted that Vespikiln preferred to move by hovering around. "I guess so," she admitted as she tried to lift herself with just the air around her. It took a lot of motion to get enough under her wings and get them down fast enough, but somehow the much faster and more in depth movement was a bit less tiring than walking on her thin legs.
"Huh," she noted as she lifted off properly, and something in her Bug typed energy clicked and suddenly it was a lot easier to get enough air. "I'm going to have to look into what exactly the Bug type does, because it might have some flight aspects too."
"Kind of already figured that one out," Rhydon pointed out with a yawn. "You sure you are up for travel like that Charizard?"
"I can handle the road, although we might end up a bit slower the next three days," the Fire/Water type replied with a roll of his eyes.
---
[Author's Note]
This one changed a bit during planning, and after review of the next chapter I had to make a major decision about how the Vespikiln form worked.
On one hand I kind of wanted to keep Chitin Powder consistent in function, but on the other hand changes to the plan for next chapter mean that would have me describe the prior method of turning back directly or rewriting a big bit of next chapter. I'm not sure how comfortable to read a description of molting into human form would be from the perspective of someone doing it would be, but I suspect it isn't entirely desired. This change also makes it so there is less need both historically and in the story to clean up Vespikiln husks.
Let me know if you think that consistency is important enough to make those changes. I'm still a bit uncertain about it, and while it would disappoint Rhydon I am still open to changing it.
Dark Pass was a fairly young town. While there had been some inhabitation on Routes 30 and 31 for a long time it had not been until the Hoenn disaster that there was real need for development at the intersection of the two. There had been a trainer accessible cave pass at the corner of those routes that led to Route 45 near Blackthorn City, but during the disaster the creation of the Cherrygrove port had caused the development of a proper cargo path towards that mountain city in order to aid in travel and supply.
Dark Pass itself was split between a few buildings in the area at the front of the cave, and a larger number of locations inside of the caverns. It was not a very large town, little more than a place where some people had set up a couple of shops, a few locals who maintained the passage, the houses for those inhabitants, and energy restoration machines for pokemon in the two town halls at either end. It was, notably for Alexa, too small to have the official League representation she needed to update her trainer cards.
It also had been filed in her downloaded map as being next to Blackthorn City instead of Violet City, so finding the town came as a bit of a surprise she needed to discuss with her team before changing back from her Mephagic form.
"While it is an easy pass to Blackthorn, I personally want to see if we could find another method for the Dragon or Ice type before we take on the Dragon Clan's Gym," Charizard admitted while Alexa looked over the road into town from a tree she probably would not have climbed up if not for her frog form.
"Agreed, I don't want to have to face that one alone, and we have a theme to keep up," Kingler agreed with him. "After all, the plan was for Rhydon and Bellossom to both confuse the Flying type Gym. We're ready for that one now, Dragons can wait until we get more Frozen Flames or something better."
"We do have the Ice typed Flame with us too," Alexa had to uncomfortably admit. "It sort of got forgotten because everyone had something at that time and we ended up waiting for Rhydon to turn back first."
Heracross looked down at her from the higher branch the former-insect current-mammal pokemon had far more easily climbed to. "Do you need to be worried about that one working on you?" he questioned about her tone.
"You've handled mine quite a bit, isn't that enough to know?" Kingler added with concern. "Because I can tell you that I do not like the idea of my trainer going through the pain of one of these."
"Frozen Flames are attuned instead of just a works or doesn't thing," Alexa started to explain as she shifted on the branch to face the rest of the team better. "A specific one will work on a specific human. There is no way to tell if the other one will work on me, but I'm a bit worried. Dad never handled Kingler's, and I've never touched the other one. The chance we just happened to get two that were attuned is higher than my dad is comfortable with."
"We are going to avoid Blackthorn until we have a better option than Alexa being our other Dragon type," Charizard complained. "Right, with that out of the way, what is the plan for this town? We still have time on Route 31 to test Chitin Powder."
"The tent hasn't appreciated my other forms much," Alexa admitted with a glance at the now slightly stained, a bit melted, and very patched mess. "And the weather is looking a bit like rain. I don't want to ruin our canopy tent too just to keep from getting too wet. We might need to find one that is Fire type inhabitation safe now if they have one."
"You seem really sure that you're going to become one," Kingler noted, and she froze at being called out. "Either that or you really want to use the Lobasalt form more."
Alexa ribbited at the idea, because yes Lobasalt was a fairly nice form, and Fire and Rock typed attacks had been easier to figure out so far, but that wasn't the actual reason. "Dad figured out that it wasn't an all or nothing immunity for humans because he spilled Chitin Powder on himself," she quietly replied. "He knows that he becomes one, and sent me the information with that one as the first for a reason."
"We could just not use Chitin Powder," Rhydon suggested at that admission. "I mean, I- No seriously I do not want to see Alexa break out of bug shell. It isn't like the Bug type is all that great really."
"Just because I'm not using it anymore doesn't mean it can't be useful," Heracross sighed, as Alexa jumped down easily from the tree to the ground. "Although maybe you should have started with 'it will probably work on me' instead of letting us think you were just nervous about if it worked or not."
"My dad sent me an article about a Bug typed human form instead of telling me he accidentally transformed himself," she croaked dully. "I didn't find that out until after he had turned back and I started to check that literature more for details. I asked him if humans really did turn back differently than pokemon, just shifting instead of shedding, and he admitted he was personally happy that it wasn't the same. These transformations tend to run in families, so if it works on dad it probably works on me." Rhydon looked a bit relieved at that news, even if the others clearly agreed that they didn't like how she had found out.
"Alright, I say Alexa spends a day or two at this town doing human things, and then we can work out if we want to try that form before or after Violet City," Bellossom argued, and Alexa rolled her eyes as the rest of the team agreed. It had only been a few days of going between her two tested pokemon forms to get them into shape to move around and maybe fight in an emergency.
---
Being human among humans again after a while as a pokemon among pokemon was stranger than Alexa had anticipated. Maybe it was just the feeling of being effectively stuck as a human because of paperwork after being able to just change herself whenever there weren't humans around. Other humans she reminded herself as she looked over the hiking supply store that clearly mostly existed for the inhabitants of the town who monitored the side paths for any risks to the main route. The rare Dunsparce and Wobbuffet found here were not the most hazardous on their own, but they did cause fairly unusual problems for the prospect of navigation.
"We don't really have the most call specifically for Fire type resistance of that quality, but there is a bit of overlap in materials that resist the Dragon type flames that some of our route clearers from Blackthorn have to buy," the supply store owner admitted a bit happily. He was an older man who seemed amused at the topic. "The Dragon Clan there is really big on letting their partners stay outside their pokeballs on trips, so it is a more common issue than you'd think." The old man leaned in as if to tell a secret. "Honestly, they seem Dragon enough that I wonder how much of that is an excuise for their own damage to the things."
Alexa, who knew that she was buying this tent for that exact issue, managed to laugh at it a bit, but she didn't think he missed how she couldn't quite find it that amusing. "Well, then I'm glad you have good options," she said and tried to keep her face calm with how much this was going to cost. The one she could afford was a quarter more expensive than her old model, but could stand up to her new forms and the weather better. The other option that looked to be the best was too expensive by far, and she just couldn't scrape enough together to work out how to get that one instead. She already sold off a few jars of the rare materials her team specialized in and could produce, but now that turned out to only be enough to keep a food budget after this instead of a last minute boost to make up for the tent.
"Only the best," he boasted, and with great regret she paid for the new tent and made her way back into the main cavern. It was still fairly dark off the main path, but that path was broad enough for some fairly large cargo to pass through and framed by artificially carved chamber-buildings that from a brief conversation extended most of the length of the route. Most were concentrated at the two ends, but both were considered to be the town of Dark Pass officially, and Alexa learned that the reason for her map issue was that this end was actually the smaller part of the town.
There was another, possibly larger and more stocked, shop that sold tents and such at the other end, but that was at least one full day of cave travel away. She didn't have time for that trip, and the damp cave felt like a place she would prefer to travel as a Lobasalt when she finally updated her trainer cards. So as she left she simply listened to rumors about the possible excavation of the long collapsed Route 46 branch and complaints about the higher price of the older model of lights that worked better with the local pokemon than the new ones.
It was different, because a part of Alexa still expected to understand the pokemon who were having their own discussions, and the way some humans spoke about pokemon was a new kind of uncomfortable. Alexa had thought she was a bit too pokemon centered in thought before, but now that she was sort of counting herself as one the way some of the people around her spoke hit harder than before. Casual comments about the difference between pokemon and humans that she had passed off easily as just ignorant before now seemed a bit less understandable.
"I almost wanted to say that there is less difference between humans and pokemon than that," she mumbled as she got back on the road and started to look for a new camp site to start her time as a Vespikiln.
---
"Alexa, that was barely a day," Bellossom noted as the team set up a tent well off of the normal path. "Do we have a new problem?" She had decided to try out being a Fire/Electric lizard pokemon again since they were testing Fire types anyway. It was strange being an animal, somehow it was a bit more noticeable than being liquid metal instead of a plant, but for once it wasn't that hard to move and dance like this.
"I don't know if I like how humans talk about pokemon," Alexa rumbled as the Lobasalt carefully worked with Charizard to test their new tent while the 'warranty' was still useful. Apparently it came with one of those things that said it could handle pokemon inhabitation or it would be replaced with a better one.
"So that old problem, just with more to it," Kingler sighed, and Bellossom rolled her currently reptilian eyes. "Alexa, you didn't get into an argument about talking with pokemon again, did you?"
"I don't mind our trainer pointing out that we're people too," Bellossom had to say to her teammate, because it was one of the nice parts of being one of Alexa's pokemon. "I do mind her running away from humans because of it."
"They were talking about me too this time," Alexa finally replied after a bit too long, and that silenced everyone. Bellossom did not really understand what that could even mean. "I'm a pokemon right now. I can be a pokemon just like the rest of you."
"They've been talking about me the whole time, and I could have been another trainer around them," Charizard joked to a bit of success. It at least got the crack that was Alexa's mouth to twist into more of a smile, even though Bellossom wasn't entirely happy with the thought that Alexa really counted as a pokemon now.
"It was already annoying, but I'm mostly nervous about a few days without a trainer card as a pokemon," Alexa admitted and nodded at the tent being unharmed despite how a magma lobster had set it up. "For three days I'm going to be just a pokemon, not a human at all, and I have no idea what other trainers are going to do if I try and talk to them."
"Maybe we should have gotten some fireproof clothes to go with the tent?" Heracross suggested. "I mean, that would be easier to find good ones if you were already a Vespikiln, but there might have been some things." Bellossom leveled the rodent pokemon a dark glare at going for such a silly sounding idea.
"The tent cost most of our money," Charizard said seriously. "I really hope we don't need to get Alexa new clothes unless her dad can help us out there."
"There are too many things that are waiting for me to get those new trainer cards," Alexa said once again. "Dad does want to buy me some trainer basics for each of my forms, but he needs official recognition to pay for them. Some stuff should stay when I change if it is made to be able to work on a different form." Their trainer looked over the camp site, and sighed. "Let's get this done now."
Bellossom kind of wanted to stall a bit longer, but Alexa had worked out Contagion Cure enough to use it to collapse back down into a human form before she could respond to her trainer. The rest of the team looked similarly uneasy with that declaration. Not being understood as easily was strangely hard even though they had managed so well before. It was a bit harsh to realize how much time they had taken before to talk to Alexa, how much effort went into finding a way to get across an idea, and now to know there was an easy solution to tell their trainer something as easily as if they had said it to each other.
There was a brief pause as they cleared an area and Charizard got out the Pokedex again, because Alexa wanted to get as much data as possible on this whole topic. Another of those small vials, which were too fragile for Alexa to really be using herself at this point, full of Chitin Powder was then sprinkled onto their trainer. Alexa's body immediately started to harden and shift in profile. Their trainer's head extended forward into a teardrop shape with the pointed end at the front, and grew a pair of thick fuzzy antenna and wide flat black eyes. Alexa's main body grew into a rounder fuzzy oval shape as it took on an orange color with light blue bands, and a large abdomen grew out from the base of her spine with a good sized jagged stinger at the end. Her legs thinned dramatically, and a set of four brilliant clear orange wings emerged from her back, while her arms split into two thinner identical pairs with three short claws at the end of each.
Their trainer's new large bee pokemon form then surged out a wave of heat that made Bellossom glad she was currently a Fire type herself even as Rhydon and Heracross both took a large step back.
---
It wasn't much different from her other pokemon forms in general, Lobasalt had the same number of extra body parts and Mephagic was also a non-mammal, but it was something she couldn't stop on her own. They had spent the afternoon on trying to keep her cooler so they could travel safely, but it really felt like rain, and Alexa was a bit worried she was going to be stuck in the tent all day. Stuck as a giant bug that had already coated the bottom of the tent in flakes of the blueish grey powder that caused the change.
"Cleaning this is going to be a nightmare, Alexa," Kingler informed her with a claw-thump. "I think I might need to clean this whole thing out myself before you use it again just so nobody else gets changed by accident too."
"I think I misunderstood what the reports meant when they said the hives were 'filled' with piles of Chitin Powder," Alexa admitted with a click of her mandibles that was the closest she could manage to a frown. "Thought it meant as storage, not that it is impossible to keep a place you stay clear of the stuff."
"What did the explorers all end up Vespikiln as soon as they cracked the place open?" Kingler grumbled and made an attempt to clean up some of the powder.
"Three of the five did, but the other two were immune," Alexa complained and checked over her slightly fluffy form. "The report had an entire statistical segment on how that was more than normally are effected. It also had a few really confused segments taken from the original report I've been trying to use to deal with this whole development." Her body wasn't uncomfortable like this, but she could actually feel the soon to arrive rain that had her more worried than she had ever been by water before.
"And your dad didn't think to mention that when he gave you the stuff?" her pokemon questioned with a body shake.
"He apparently even let me try this stuff before he worked with it at all," Alexa had to agree, then flinched at the sound of the first few drops on the tent. "I'm going to try and get some sleep, hopefully wait out the storm."
"Alright, good night, Alexa," Kingler replied and then the crab pokemon returned herself to her pokeball.
The rain got more intense, and while the tight confines of the tent were sort of comforting, Alexa simply could not get to sleep with the sound of it. A part of her shivered at the sound, and she wasn't sure if they would even get somewhere tomorrow as a result. Which meant she was putting out a good amount of heat and light, and that just made it harder to try and calm down in order to sleep.
After a while of just laying down she heard someone approach and tensed up a bit. "Excuse me, Pokemon Ranger, just checking in to make sure you're alright," a male probably-human voice said from the front of the tent. "You have a light on pretty late and this is quite a ways off the path."
Reluctantly Alexa opened the tent to see the now definitely human trainer, who stepped back at the wave of heat that let out. "I'm having some trouble getting to sleep," she quickly and tiredly admitted as he blinked at her appearance. "It is my first night in this form, and we didn't get a forecast long enough ahead to know it would rain."
"I, do not actually understand what you mean, but I apologize for misunderstanding the situation," the Ranger replied. "The storm is supposed to get harsh, but it should be done by morning. Your tent looks like it can handle that for tonight."
"So I will just need to worry about puddles tomorrow. Well, Charizard will be happy," Alexa thought out loud. "Thank you."
"Yeah, sure, have a nice night," the Ranger said with confusion and let her close her tent.
---
"I was so tired I didn't even try to explain to him," Alexa buzzed unhappily the next morning, after a fitful night of barely any sleep.
"It's sort of funny," Charizard chuckled as he took a drink of Clearwater Geode enhanced water. He quickly shifted to his finned Fire/Water form, and Alexa tossed her head at the display. "Wanna try?" he offered with a smug smile.
"I don't want to try anything that makes this last longer until I have those cards," she complained, and that made the rest of the team laugh as they finished packing up the camp site. "But I still don't believe I just left a Ranger in the middle of nowhere with no idea what I was."
"You could talk and had a tent," Bellossom noted as the temporary lizard pokemon finished packing the tent's mounting pegs. "I think that is enough for him to have an idea at least."
"I guess," Alexa admitted while Charizard took up her pack. She still was not able to regulate her temperature enough to safely carry everything.
"Ready to try flying at least?" Heracross suggested to change topic. "I know my old set of wings is about the only thing I miss, but the bat ones from Stable Cloud are better."
Alexa's wings buzzed a bit at the suggestion. Walking was a bit harder in this form than she had expected, even if the reports had noted that Vespikiln preferred to move by hovering around. "I guess so," she admitted as she tried to lift herself with just the air around her. It took a lot of motion to get enough under her wings and get them down fast enough, but somehow the much faster and more in depth movement was a bit less tiring than walking on her thin legs.
"Huh," she noted as she lifted off properly, and something in her Bug typed energy clicked and suddenly it was a lot easier to get enough air. "I'm going to have to look into what exactly the Bug type does, because it might have some flight aspects too."
"Kind of already figured that one out," Rhydon pointed out with a yawn. "You sure you are up for travel like that Charizard?"
"I can handle the road, although we might end up a bit slower the next three days," the Fire/Water type replied with a roll of his eyes.
---
[Author's Note]
This one changed a bit during planning, and after review of the next chapter I had to make a major decision about how the Vespikiln form worked.
On one hand I kind of wanted to keep Chitin Powder consistent in function, but on the other hand changes to the plan for next chapter mean that would have me describe the prior method of turning back directly or rewriting a big bit of next chapter. I'm not sure how comfortable to read a description of molting into human form would be from the perspective of someone doing it would be, but I suspect it isn't entirely desired. This change also makes it so there is less need both historically and in the story to clean up Vespikiln husks.
Let me know if you think that consistency is important enough to make those changes. I'm still a bit uncertain about it, and while it would disappoint Rhydon I am still open to changing it.
IronLucario2012
<Verified Pokémon> <Licensed Mech Pilot>
- Location
- Ireland
Interesting chapter! Wonder if we'll see that ranger again?
as for the change to Vespikiln, it seems like it would give more things for Alexa to deal with. So, if you already have plenty, keeping it changed makes sense, but if you thought you could use more, the old way might help.
as for the change to Vespikiln, it seems like it would give more things for Alexa to deal with. So, if you already have plenty, keeping it changed makes sense, but if you thought you could use more, the old way might help.
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Alexa already has plenty of problems and complications, possibly already has a few too many, so by that metric it is a good change. It definitely simplifies the next chapter, which already is a complicated one.
Hi. I accidentally found my way to your initial Typechanges story from a mention in another story, then read your DSS story, and then to here. I've enjoyed these stories a lot, and wish I'd found them much sooner. I love your complex worldbuilding, and the interesting variations on different topics. I just wanted to let you know you've got a new reader, hanging onto your every chapter.