A thread where I post snippets that would otherwise have never seen the light of day.
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Pokemon/Xianxia - The Pride Before 0-1
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
Solarium: A room fitted with extensive areas of glass to admit sunlight. Fitting, I suppose, for a thread where I post snippets that would otherwise have never seen the light of day.
It's been a few years. Please take care of me.
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The Pride Before
Pokemon / Xianxia Fusion
If Red had known how momentous the Icy Path would later prove to be, he would have bitched slightly less about the cold.
"Keep watch for anyone out of place, sweetheart," he told Espeon, despite knowing the words were pointless. The voyeur needed to be specifically commanded to keep her psychic eyes out of other people's heads, and even then he was sure she only pretended to obey. "That goes for unusual Pokémon, too. There should be nothing but Ice-types and Zubat for kilometers, maybe a few Diglett or an Onix. See anything that looks out of place, you let me know."
Espeon looked at him with too-intelligent eyes, then nodded and slunk into the shadows with an ease better fitting her Dark-type sister. He could feel her through their Aura bond, ten meters away and counting a hand's breadth from the frost-slick wall, but despite locking his eyes on where he knew she was he couldn't see a thing. If Espeon had picked up the stealth aspect of Faint Attack from her sister she would let him know, right? …Of course she would.
Red put it out of his mind. He was in these frigid, subterranean depths for a reason, and there was no use delaying it. Quicker he's done, quicker he can unfreeze his bones in the sunlight above.
He released Venusaur, his immense bulk only barely fitting in the narrow confines of the tunnel, the pleasantly sweet scent emenating from the tree on his back cloying and unpleasant in these humid, murky depths. There was still a feeling of… not quite surprise, but something similar every team he released him; Venusaur had refused to evolve from Ivysaur for months, and he wasn't yet accustomed to the evolution himself. In the darkness of the underground, lit only by the glow from Pikachu's zigzag tail, Venusaur's sheer mass and unfamiliar shape Pokéd at the back of his mind, set alight instincts from the time before humans had learned to bond with Pokémon.
Venusaur stomped a heavy foot, and through the vibrations in the earth – some powerful enough to make Red stumble – a perfect map of the labyrinth formed in his mind. With a grumble deep enough to feel Venusaur led the way deeper and deeper down.
Red couldn't say how long or how far beneath the surface they traveled, the four of them; his Pokégear had lost connection long before they veered off the Ranger-surveiled 'safe path,' and the clock widget's been broken since September. Two hours, maybe three. The temperature dropped as they did, the Ice power in the heart of Mount Whitegrave drawing near, and Red was eventually left with no choice but to summon Charizard.
The red dragon looked at his surroundings with all the contempt of a Clan Head at peasants, breathing a plume of fire at a wall to melt it and scorch them all with steam. If Red wasn't in the Third Realm himself, his skin would've been flash-cooked. He couldn't chastise Charizard for it, though: to imply that the steam was a problem would be to admit weakness, and Charizard hadn't tolerated weakness since his evolution.
Privately, Red was grateful that these twisting tunnels were too small for the most recent member of his team. Still in the Third Realm as he was, he couldn't yet sustain that many bonds in his Aura, and Charizard wouldn't approve.
Venusaur eventually came to a stop with a deep growl of discontent. They had reached the deepest point of Mount Whitegrave's frozen interior.
Red put a hand on Venusaur's back, knowing he would feel his Aura if not the touch. "Good job, buddy. Your part here is done. Take a quick rest and then you'll be able to lead us out and back up to the sunlight, okay?"
Venusaur nuzzled into his hand with enough force to topple Red to the ground. With a laugh and twin flashes of red, Venusaur was gone, and Blastoise stood in his place. Unlike the rest of his team, the armored tortoise seemed anticipatory, almost eager to be here.
"Let's get started."
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Meditation was rarely fun. Meditation while in the heart of an Ice Nexus kilometers under the ground, damp, dirty, and in the dark?
Deeply unpleasant.
They had succeeded, at least, and so in less than a week (hopefully) they were headed back topside, Venusaur leading the way with considerably less temper. Red now had a tiny patch of Ice in his Aura, Blastoise much, much more, and they were excited to see her new super-effective moves in action against the dragons of Blackthorn.
When Venusaur stopped, turning to look in a shadowy corner and growl, deep and dangerous, Red's only thought was:
I was wondering when it would all go wrong.
He could feel Espeon's alarm in his mind- whoever or whatever this was, Espeon had not noticed them before Venusaur's tremorsense had, which meant Dark-type. There was no saying how long their stalker had been following them; they might have been surveilled for mere minutes, hours, or even days. For all Red knows, it could have began before they entered Mount Whitegrave at all, and it wouldn't have been the first time, either.
It could just be a local wilder… but, no. Wild Dark-type (and, indeed, most trained Dark-types too) shrouded their presence in shadows so effectively that a Psychic like Espeon could sense their absence. Their stalker was able to spoof enough Ice-type presence to blend into the ambient Aura. Skill like that was rarely found in wild Pokémon.
Whatever the reality was, Venusaur had given away that he had noticed their presence – something he would have to train out of the Grass-type, he put it on the list – so he was only left with one real course of action. As he often told his rival during their battles, no amount of skill could surmount overwhelming power.
"Earthquake," Red commanded.
Mount Whitegrave shook. Red himself immediately dropped to his knees, the ground vibrating with enough force to rattle his bones, only avoiding injury by channeling Aura into his body. Pikachu had recalled himself into his Pokéball a moment before Red gave the command, Espeon had the foresight to hide behind a Protect barrier, and Charizard stood strong, adamantly pretending the wings on his back protected him from the force of Venusaur's mastery of the Ground-type.
The mysterious Dark-type enjoyed no such protections, nor the strength to withstand it or agility to flee it. There was a shriek and then a yowl of pain, and where before there had been shadows now lay the twitching body of a small, black-furred Pokémon.
"A Sneasel?" Red wondered aloud, then choked back a laugh. Being Ice-type as well as Dark-type, it must blend into the ambient Aura by shrouding only its Dark nature and merely muffling the Ice part: a technique that would work well in Icy Path or a hailstorm but otherwise be worse than useless. That Espeon had been fooled by it was hilarious, and Red was glad this weakness of her technique had been revealed before it could be used against them in a meaningful battle or, gods forbid, by Team Rocket.
Espeon appeared, then, and Red readied himself for a merciless round of teasing, but to his surprise found a second small, dark figure crumpled on the ground, this one being dragged by Espeon's teeth. The figure was so grimy and wild-looking it took him a second to realize it was a human and not a second Sneasel.
So, it had been a trainer-raised Pokémon after all. Huh.
Red approached the quietly-moaning trainer and nudged them onto their back with the toe of his shoe. All the humor in the situation withered away when he saw the harsh lines and gaunt look to too-young cheeks, and felt an Aura that was barely in the First Realm. Their clothes were torn and dirty, and the stress of far too much time spent trying to survive the harsh climate of Icy Path was engraved onto their body.
No one had ever accused Red of being too sympathetic. Still, it was his duty as a fellow trainer to escort this unfortunate idiot topside, and it cost him nothing to do so, so hero he would be.
"Did you see a Pokéball perchance, sweetheart?" he asked Espeon, who shook her head no. That crossed out several theories as to this trainer's circumstances. Unfortunately, it left only the more problematic theories.
Trainers had to cultivate Aura bonds with Pokémon in order to communicate with and understand them. It was integral to the process. In the ancient days, trainers were limited with the number of Pokémon they could command by the capacity of their soul, but the stasis fields of Pokéballs had changed everything. As a human in the Third Realm, he could manage four bonds at once, five at a stretch – provided none of them were Dragon-type, or something as mighty as his last team member – and that number would double once he finally broke through to the Fourth Realm, which was near the peak of human potential. With Pokéballs, however, even a Trainer in the First Realm could harness the power of six Pokémon, granted they only released one from stasis at a time.
For this trainer to not have a Pokéball meant a few things, and none of them were good. It shouldn't matter to Red, but he was curious, now, and he intended to get to the bottom of this mystery.
If he was lucky, he might get a few enemies out of it.
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The trainer awoke around an hour later.
To their credit, they gave no physical sign of it. The Dark in their Aura hid them from Espeon's gaze and their breathing, slow and laborious, didn't hiccup at all. Red was an old pro, though, and he could feel the faint tremble in their Aura's Ice half, standing less than a meter away as he was.
He didn't let on that he knew. An old adage: knowledge could be shared but not taken. He could always reveal that he knew they were awake later, and for now, he wanted to see how they acted.
The kid didn't act for a long time: thirty, maybe forty-five minutes. Red wondered what this must look like from their perspective. Carried on the hard back of a Venusaur, Psychic, Electric, and Fire-type Aura blazing like suns in a triangle around them, and Red's own amalgam soul two Realms advanced, with their only ally unconscious in the claws of a Charizard- Red had faced direr straits, and he knew well the despair and terror that came hand-in-hand with such ruinous circumstances. The kid's lack of any tells was impressive, as was their patience in waiting for an opportune moment. The Ice in them, perhaps? Every Ice Specialist he had faced had been cold and calculating in the most aggravating of ways.
Then, they sighed, sat up, and said, "What do you want?"
Red smiled in delight. "How about a name, and then we launch straight into story time?"
"Tch. Fine." The kid looked adorably put out. Red decided he rather liked dealing with Ice trainers when their cool logic tells them the solution is 'total and unconditional surrender.' "I'll spill, but I want Razor back. Not like he's a threat to your Charizard, anyways."
Red hummed in thought. He was tempted to deny them just because he could, but it wasn't a bargain, not really. He knew and they knew that Red had all the power, here. Realizing with their Sneasel back in their arms they would feel more comfortable and thus would be more likely to hold nothing back, Red gave his assent.
Charizard's claws drew long scratches on the Sneasel's flesh as he was let go, Red noticed disapprovingly. He had been much kinder as a Charmeleon, but the infusion of Dragon-type power with his evolution had made him into a petty tyrant, cruel and capricious. They would need to work on that. Circumstances had demanded Red focus all their training on power and skill and leave good behavior to the wayside.
They were far enough from the Ice Nexus that the temperature was merely freezing, so he recalled Charizard without warning. The implied chastisement would do for now. There was no exposing vulnerabilities in front of a stranger, even ones as green and weak as these.
Red saw much of the tension in the kid's spine melt away as fingers corded through dark fur. Not all of it, they were still surrounded by Fifth Realm Pokémon, but enough that Red imagined a traumatic backstory was incoming.
"I was born heiress of the Fantasia branch of the Blackthorn Clan," they- she said, and Red listened with interest.
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We Blackthorns are the most powerful clan in Indigo, but we aren't as monolithic as we appear to outsiders. Our strength was not grown or forged, but rather seized through conquest, as the ruling branch – the true Blackthorns – subjugated every clan they did not burn to ashes.
My own clan was no exception. The records were destroyed by the ancient Blackthorns, but enough has been preserved through oral tradition that I know our founder came from distant Unova, and had been exiled from a Dark Specialist clan there. This was a time before international commerce, so this was highly unusual. Even more uncommon was her bonded Pokémon: a Hydreigon, a very powerful Dark and Dragon-type. Within a year of arriving in Johto, our founder bent the knee to Blackthorn.
Seven hundred years of faithful service means little to the tyrants who rule the clan in these modern times. One of our number – a Second Realm trainer of little renown and no place of leadership – attempted to unlawfully sell a Dratini egg to Team Rocket in exchange for favors and influence within the organization. Our only failure was in not discovering the transgression before the Blackthorns did.
My father, Head of the Clan, offered up his life in penance for the misdeeds of our cousin, despite my arguments. In the end, it made no difference. The Council of Elders declared that endangering the Blackthorns' iron grip on the Dragonite line was a crime far in excess of the value our centuries of service had earned. A single Dratini egg was more valuable than the entirety of our clan.
They struck at night. Elder Anders was there, I saw his face, but Lance commanded the assault. It was like a scene out of our histories: a dragonflight breathing fire in a strafing run, and in moments our entire compound was aflame. Most of us perished in the razing. They only descended when our spirit was well and truly broken. To call it a fight would be dishonest praise: what happened was pest control, my clan the scurrying vermin.
My father commanded me to flee, and with my Dragonair in her ball and a Deino egg in my arms, I did. The Blackthorns would call it cowardice and shameful, but my clan has a saying: Pride is in the past. If, by fleeing, I could later return and the histories would declare me the victor, then the pride of the Fantasia clan would be unbroken.
This saying is what I used to comfort myself, up until Lance found me.
I am ashamed to say his presence – and that of his Dragonite – put me on my knees. He defeated my Dragonair with a single move, then took her ball from my belt and the egg from my hands. I awaited certain death.
I'm not sure if it was insult or mercy, but he hesitated. Instead, he shattered my cultivation and left me broken on the mountainside. He urged me to hide, lest the Blackthorns scouts find me and do what Lance thought himself too good to do.
I eventually made my way into Mount Whitegrave, then deeper within, knowing the Blackthorns branch could pass through the Ranger-patrolled areas at any time. My soul had been far into the Second Realm before it was destroyed, cultivating equally the Dragon and Dark-types, so I knew enough theory and was familiar enough with the process that I could begin cultivating Icy Path's Ice and Dark-type Aura.
My survival was tenuous for a long time. I owe my life to a little-known fact of Ice-type cultivation: I can slow my bodily processes enough to go days without food or rest, though my reflexes were shot and my thoughts came sluggish and blunted. Yet, I was able to complete Soul Consolidation for a second time, then force a bond with the only Dark-type Pokémon I could find. A Sneasel makes for a talented sneak thief, and Razor has kept me fed ever since. Water, at least, is never in short supply, here.
… No, I haven't tried to leave Mount Whitegrave. There is an Indigo outpost on every exit, and the Blackthorn clan would know of my survival within hours of the report being made. Where would I even go? I will make no obfuscations: I intend to bring vengeance upon my enemies, and to the last they specialize in Dragon and Flying-types. Within this mountain lies the only Ice Nexus in Indigo. It will take years, but I will eventually reach the Third Realm, and can bond with three more Ice-types. Only then I will consider leaving, and only to search for one of Kanto's elusive Fairies, and then return.
You have my gratitude for offering rescue, but I am not in need of it, nor am I affiliated with your enemies, whoever they may be. If that is all, I will be on my way. Should we ever meet again, consider me in your debt, if you wish.
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Red gave the girl's story his full attention, nodding at all the right times, making little sad noises when she described the razing, and wondered how much of the story was bullshit.
At least twenty five percent, he concluded. If nothing else, the story was certainly slanted to make the girl and her branch clan out to be utterly blameless. He wouldn't be surprised if the Fantasias had a more meaningful connection to Team Rocket than just that, or if this was but one of many such offenses, but there was more to the story, there had to be. He was dying to find out.
He could also see the conclusion she was leading him to make: help her, and the Blackthorn will hurt you. He privately thought the Blackthorn clan wouldn't do more than apply a little legal pressure, make him uncomfortable, but if he bought into the story of an extra-judicial wholesale slaughter of her clan, then knocking off a lone trainer in the Third Realm is nothing.
There was just one problem with that conclusion: Red was, as his rival would put it, a reckless lunatic.
"That's terrible," Red said, voice full of totally real sorrow. "Don't worry, little girl. I'll help you avenge your clan. In fact, I was just headed to Blackthorn City right now!"
Her eyes widened. "You will?" Her voice was heavy with dread.
Red smiled at her, containing the entirely inappropriate giggle when she shuddered. "I was moved to tears by your tale. What kind of trainer – no, what kind of person – would I be if I left you to your quest for justice alone? No! It is my duty – nay, my honor – to help you in your noble fight against the wicked Blackthorn clan."
"Did you just say 'nay…'" the girl said, entirely bewildered.
Red got that reaction a lot. He made sure to look off in the middle distance, one hand clenched in a fist in front of him, as he imagined all the amazing, glorious battles he would get into, as he made himself an enemy of the most powerful clan of Indigo.
Really, Red considered himself to be oh-so-very lucky to meet the wayward Fantasia heiress. It had taken him months of tireless effort to be put on Team Rocket's Most Wanted list, and even now only Admin Archer puts any real effort into attempting to crush him. If antagonizing the Blackthorn clan only requires helping someone he was going to help anyway, then he was just saved a lot of time and effort.
Red has always been a follower of the ancient axiom that a trainer's worth is measured by the worth of his enemies. It's why he sought out the honored grandson of the Indigo Champion and made an honest and concerted effort to make Gary Oak hate him. It's why he stormed Team Rocket's Celadon Base himself instead of reporting it to the League.
If he remembers correctly, Lance is the name of Blackthorn City's Gym Leader. He's being groomed for Elite Four membership.
A most worthy enemy, Red thought, and plotted the best way to antagonize him.
"Hey. Think we can steal your Deino egg back, little girl?"
She sucked in a breath, and like that, Red found himself a conspirator.
It's been a few years. Please take care of me.
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The Pride Before
Pokemon / Xianxia Fusion
If Red had known how momentous the Icy Path would later prove to be, he would have bitched slightly less about the cold.
"Keep watch for anyone out of place, sweetheart," he told Espeon, despite knowing the words were pointless. The voyeur needed to be specifically commanded to keep her psychic eyes out of other people's heads, and even then he was sure she only pretended to obey. "That goes for unusual Pokémon, too. There should be nothing but Ice-types and Zubat for kilometers, maybe a few Diglett or an Onix. See anything that looks out of place, you let me know."
Espeon looked at him with too-intelligent eyes, then nodded and slunk into the shadows with an ease better fitting her Dark-type sister. He could feel her through their Aura bond, ten meters away and counting a hand's breadth from the frost-slick wall, but despite locking his eyes on where he knew she was he couldn't see a thing. If Espeon had picked up the stealth aspect of Faint Attack from her sister she would let him know, right? …Of course she would.
Red put it out of his mind. He was in these frigid, subterranean depths for a reason, and there was no use delaying it. Quicker he's done, quicker he can unfreeze his bones in the sunlight above.
He released Venusaur, his immense bulk only barely fitting in the narrow confines of the tunnel, the pleasantly sweet scent emenating from the tree on his back cloying and unpleasant in these humid, murky depths. There was still a feeling of… not quite surprise, but something similar every team he released him; Venusaur had refused to evolve from Ivysaur for months, and he wasn't yet accustomed to the evolution himself. In the darkness of the underground, lit only by the glow from Pikachu's zigzag tail, Venusaur's sheer mass and unfamiliar shape Pokéd at the back of his mind, set alight instincts from the time before humans had learned to bond with Pokémon.
Venusaur stomped a heavy foot, and through the vibrations in the earth – some powerful enough to make Red stumble – a perfect map of the labyrinth formed in his mind. With a grumble deep enough to feel Venusaur led the way deeper and deeper down.
Red couldn't say how long or how far beneath the surface they traveled, the four of them; his Pokégear had lost connection long before they veered off the Ranger-surveiled 'safe path,' and the clock widget's been broken since September. Two hours, maybe three. The temperature dropped as they did, the Ice power in the heart of Mount Whitegrave drawing near, and Red was eventually left with no choice but to summon Charizard.
The red dragon looked at his surroundings with all the contempt of a Clan Head at peasants, breathing a plume of fire at a wall to melt it and scorch them all with steam. If Red wasn't in the Third Realm himself, his skin would've been flash-cooked. He couldn't chastise Charizard for it, though: to imply that the steam was a problem would be to admit weakness, and Charizard hadn't tolerated weakness since his evolution.
Privately, Red was grateful that these twisting tunnels were too small for the most recent member of his team. Still in the Third Realm as he was, he couldn't yet sustain that many bonds in his Aura, and Charizard wouldn't approve.
Venusaur eventually came to a stop with a deep growl of discontent. They had reached the deepest point of Mount Whitegrave's frozen interior.
Red put a hand on Venusaur's back, knowing he would feel his Aura if not the touch. "Good job, buddy. Your part here is done. Take a quick rest and then you'll be able to lead us out and back up to the sunlight, okay?"
Venusaur nuzzled into his hand with enough force to topple Red to the ground. With a laugh and twin flashes of red, Venusaur was gone, and Blastoise stood in his place. Unlike the rest of his team, the armored tortoise seemed anticipatory, almost eager to be here.
"Let's get started."
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Meditation was rarely fun. Meditation while in the heart of an Ice Nexus kilometers under the ground, damp, dirty, and in the dark?
Deeply unpleasant.
They had succeeded, at least, and so in less than a week (hopefully) they were headed back topside, Venusaur leading the way with considerably less temper. Red now had a tiny patch of Ice in his Aura, Blastoise much, much more, and they were excited to see her new super-effective moves in action against the dragons of Blackthorn.
When Venusaur stopped, turning to look in a shadowy corner and growl, deep and dangerous, Red's only thought was:
I was wondering when it would all go wrong.
He could feel Espeon's alarm in his mind- whoever or whatever this was, Espeon had not noticed them before Venusaur's tremorsense had, which meant Dark-type. There was no saying how long their stalker had been following them; they might have been surveilled for mere minutes, hours, or even days. For all Red knows, it could have began before they entered Mount Whitegrave at all, and it wouldn't have been the first time, either.
It could just be a local wilder… but, no. Wild Dark-type (and, indeed, most trained Dark-types too) shrouded their presence in shadows so effectively that a Psychic like Espeon could sense their absence. Their stalker was able to spoof enough Ice-type presence to blend into the ambient Aura. Skill like that was rarely found in wild Pokémon.
Whatever the reality was, Venusaur had given away that he had noticed their presence – something he would have to train out of the Grass-type, he put it on the list – so he was only left with one real course of action. As he often told his rival during their battles, no amount of skill could surmount overwhelming power.
"Earthquake," Red commanded.
Mount Whitegrave shook. Red himself immediately dropped to his knees, the ground vibrating with enough force to rattle his bones, only avoiding injury by channeling Aura into his body. Pikachu had recalled himself into his Pokéball a moment before Red gave the command, Espeon had the foresight to hide behind a Protect barrier, and Charizard stood strong, adamantly pretending the wings on his back protected him from the force of Venusaur's mastery of the Ground-type.
The mysterious Dark-type enjoyed no such protections, nor the strength to withstand it or agility to flee it. There was a shriek and then a yowl of pain, and where before there had been shadows now lay the twitching body of a small, black-furred Pokémon.
"A Sneasel?" Red wondered aloud, then choked back a laugh. Being Ice-type as well as Dark-type, it must blend into the ambient Aura by shrouding only its Dark nature and merely muffling the Ice part: a technique that would work well in Icy Path or a hailstorm but otherwise be worse than useless. That Espeon had been fooled by it was hilarious, and Red was glad this weakness of her technique had been revealed before it could be used against them in a meaningful battle or, gods forbid, by Team Rocket.
Espeon appeared, then, and Red readied himself for a merciless round of teasing, but to his surprise found a second small, dark figure crumpled on the ground, this one being dragged by Espeon's teeth. The figure was so grimy and wild-looking it took him a second to realize it was a human and not a second Sneasel.
So, it had been a trainer-raised Pokémon after all. Huh.
Red approached the quietly-moaning trainer and nudged them onto their back with the toe of his shoe. All the humor in the situation withered away when he saw the harsh lines and gaunt look to too-young cheeks, and felt an Aura that was barely in the First Realm. Their clothes were torn and dirty, and the stress of far too much time spent trying to survive the harsh climate of Icy Path was engraved onto their body.
No one had ever accused Red of being too sympathetic. Still, it was his duty as a fellow trainer to escort this unfortunate idiot topside, and it cost him nothing to do so, so hero he would be.
"Did you see a Pokéball perchance, sweetheart?" he asked Espeon, who shook her head no. That crossed out several theories as to this trainer's circumstances. Unfortunately, it left only the more problematic theories.
Trainers had to cultivate Aura bonds with Pokémon in order to communicate with and understand them. It was integral to the process. In the ancient days, trainers were limited with the number of Pokémon they could command by the capacity of their soul, but the stasis fields of Pokéballs had changed everything. As a human in the Third Realm, he could manage four bonds at once, five at a stretch – provided none of them were Dragon-type, or something as mighty as his last team member – and that number would double once he finally broke through to the Fourth Realm, which was near the peak of human potential. With Pokéballs, however, even a Trainer in the First Realm could harness the power of six Pokémon, granted they only released one from stasis at a time.
For this trainer to not have a Pokéball meant a few things, and none of them were good. It shouldn't matter to Red, but he was curious, now, and he intended to get to the bottom of this mystery.
If he was lucky, he might get a few enemies out of it.
.
.
.
The trainer awoke around an hour later.
To their credit, they gave no physical sign of it. The Dark in their Aura hid them from Espeon's gaze and their breathing, slow and laborious, didn't hiccup at all. Red was an old pro, though, and he could feel the faint tremble in their Aura's Ice half, standing less than a meter away as he was.
He didn't let on that he knew. An old adage: knowledge could be shared but not taken. He could always reveal that he knew they were awake later, and for now, he wanted to see how they acted.
The kid didn't act for a long time: thirty, maybe forty-five minutes. Red wondered what this must look like from their perspective. Carried on the hard back of a Venusaur, Psychic, Electric, and Fire-type Aura blazing like suns in a triangle around them, and Red's own amalgam soul two Realms advanced, with their only ally unconscious in the claws of a Charizard- Red had faced direr straits, and he knew well the despair and terror that came hand-in-hand with such ruinous circumstances. The kid's lack of any tells was impressive, as was their patience in waiting for an opportune moment. The Ice in them, perhaps? Every Ice Specialist he had faced had been cold and calculating in the most aggravating of ways.
Then, they sighed, sat up, and said, "What do you want?"
Red smiled in delight. "How about a name, and then we launch straight into story time?"
"Tch. Fine." The kid looked adorably put out. Red decided he rather liked dealing with Ice trainers when their cool logic tells them the solution is 'total and unconditional surrender.' "I'll spill, but I want Razor back. Not like he's a threat to your Charizard, anyways."
Red hummed in thought. He was tempted to deny them just because he could, but it wasn't a bargain, not really. He knew and they knew that Red had all the power, here. Realizing with their Sneasel back in their arms they would feel more comfortable and thus would be more likely to hold nothing back, Red gave his assent.
Charizard's claws drew long scratches on the Sneasel's flesh as he was let go, Red noticed disapprovingly. He had been much kinder as a Charmeleon, but the infusion of Dragon-type power with his evolution had made him into a petty tyrant, cruel and capricious. They would need to work on that. Circumstances had demanded Red focus all their training on power and skill and leave good behavior to the wayside.
They were far enough from the Ice Nexus that the temperature was merely freezing, so he recalled Charizard without warning. The implied chastisement would do for now. There was no exposing vulnerabilities in front of a stranger, even ones as green and weak as these.
Red saw much of the tension in the kid's spine melt away as fingers corded through dark fur. Not all of it, they were still surrounded by Fifth Realm Pokémon, but enough that Red imagined a traumatic backstory was incoming.
"I was born heiress of the Fantasia branch of the Blackthorn Clan," they- she said, and Red listened with interest.
.
.
.
We Blackthorns are the most powerful clan in Indigo, but we aren't as monolithic as we appear to outsiders. Our strength was not grown or forged, but rather seized through conquest, as the ruling branch – the true Blackthorns – subjugated every clan they did not burn to ashes.
My own clan was no exception. The records were destroyed by the ancient Blackthorns, but enough has been preserved through oral tradition that I know our founder came from distant Unova, and had been exiled from a Dark Specialist clan there. This was a time before international commerce, so this was highly unusual. Even more uncommon was her bonded Pokémon: a Hydreigon, a very powerful Dark and Dragon-type. Within a year of arriving in Johto, our founder bent the knee to Blackthorn.
Seven hundred years of faithful service means little to the tyrants who rule the clan in these modern times. One of our number – a Second Realm trainer of little renown and no place of leadership – attempted to unlawfully sell a Dratini egg to Team Rocket in exchange for favors and influence within the organization. Our only failure was in not discovering the transgression before the Blackthorns did.
My father, Head of the Clan, offered up his life in penance for the misdeeds of our cousin, despite my arguments. In the end, it made no difference. The Council of Elders declared that endangering the Blackthorns' iron grip on the Dragonite line was a crime far in excess of the value our centuries of service had earned. A single Dratini egg was more valuable than the entirety of our clan.
They struck at night. Elder Anders was there, I saw his face, but Lance commanded the assault. It was like a scene out of our histories: a dragonflight breathing fire in a strafing run, and in moments our entire compound was aflame. Most of us perished in the razing. They only descended when our spirit was well and truly broken. To call it a fight would be dishonest praise: what happened was pest control, my clan the scurrying vermin.
My father commanded me to flee, and with my Dragonair in her ball and a Deino egg in my arms, I did. The Blackthorns would call it cowardice and shameful, but my clan has a saying: Pride is in the past. If, by fleeing, I could later return and the histories would declare me the victor, then the pride of the Fantasia clan would be unbroken.
This saying is what I used to comfort myself, up until Lance found me.
I am ashamed to say his presence – and that of his Dragonite – put me on my knees. He defeated my Dragonair with a single move, then took her ball from my belt and the egg from my hands. I awaited certain death.
I'm not sure if it was insult or mercy, but he hesitated. Instead, he shattered my cultivation and left me broken on the mountainside. He urged me to hide, lest the Blackthorns scouts find me and do what Lance thought himself too good to do.
I eventually made my way into Mount Whitegrave, then deeper within, knowing the Blackthorns branch could pass through the Ranger-patrolled areas at any time. My soul had been far into the Second Realm before it was destroyed, cultivating equally the Dragon and Dark-types, so I knew enough theory and was familiar enough with the process that I could begin cultivating Icy Path's Ice and Dark-type Aura.
My survival was tenuous for a long time. I owe my life to a little-known fact of Ice-type cultivation: I can slow my bodily processes enough to go days without food or rest, though my reflexes were shot and my thoughts came sluggish and blunted. Yet, I was able to complete Soul Consolidation for a second time, then force a bond with the only Dark-type Pokémon I could find. A Sneasel makes for a talented sneak thief, and Razor has kept me fed ever since. Water, at least, is never in short supply, here.
… No, I haven't tried to leave Mount Whitegrave. There is an Indigo outpost on every exit, and the Blackthorn clan would know of my survival within hours of the report being made. Where would I even go? I will make no obfuscations: I intend to bring vengeance upon my enemies, and to the last they specialize in Dragon and Flying-types. Within this mountain lies the only Ice Nexus in Indigo. It will take years, but I will eventually reach the Third Realm, and can bond with three more Ice-types. Only then I will consider leaving, and only to search for one of Kanto's elusive Fairies, and then return.
You have my gratitude for offering rescue, but I am not in need of it, nor am I affiliated with your enemies, whoever they may be. If that is all, I will be on my way. Should we ever meet again, consider me in your debt, if you wish.
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Red gave the girl's story his full attention, nodding at all the right times, making little sad noises when she described the razing, and wondered how much of the story was bullshit.
At least twenty five percent, he concluded. If nothing else, the story was certainly slanted to make the girl and her branch clan out to be utterly blameless. He wouldn't be surprised if the Fantasias had a more meaningful connection to Team Rocket than just that, or if this was but one of many such offenses, but there was more to the story, there had to be. He was dying to find out.
He could also see the conclusion she was leading him to make: help her, and the Blackthorn will hurt you. He privately thought the Blackthorn clan wouldn't do more than apply a little legal pressure, make him uncomfortable, but if he bought into the story of an extra-judicial wholesale slaughter of her clan, then knocking off a lone trainer in the Third Realm is nothing.
There was just one problem with that conclusion: Red was, as his rival would put it, a reckless lunatic.
"That's terrible," Red said, voice full of totally real sorrow. "Don't worry, little girl. I'll help you avenge your clan. In fact, I was just headed to Blackthorn City right now!"
Her eyes widened. "You will?" Her voice was heavy with dread.
Red smiled at her, containing the entirely inappropriate giggle when she shuddered. "I was moved to tears by your tale. What kind of trainer – no, what kind of person – would I be if I left you to your quest for justice alone? No! It is my duty – nay, my honor – to help you in your noble fight against the wicked Blackthorn clan."
"Did you just say 'nay…'" the girl said, entirely bewildered.
Red got that reaction a lot. He made sure to look off in the middle distance, one hand clenched in a fist in front of him, as he imagined all the amazing, glorious battles he would get into, as he made himself an enemy of the most powerful clan of Indigo.
Really, Red considered himself to be oh-so-very lucky to meet the wayward Fantasia heiress. It had taken him months of tireless effort to be put on Team Rocket's Most Wanted list, and even now only Admin Archer puts any real effort into attempting to crush him. If antagonizing the Blackthorn clan only requires helping someone he was going to help anyway, then he was just saved a lot of time and effort.
Red has always been a follower of the ancient axiom that a trainer's worth is measured by the worth of his enemies. It's why he sought out the honored grandson of the Indigo Champion and made an honest and concerted effort to make Gary Oak hate him. It's why he stormed Team Rocket's Celadon Base himself instead of reporting it to the League.
If he remembers correctly, Lance is the name of Blackthorn City's Gym Leader. He's being groomed for Elite Four membership.
A most worthy enemy, Red thought, and plotted the best way to antagonize him.
"Hey. Think we can steal your Deino egg back, little girl?"
She sucked in a breath, and like that, Red found himself a conspirator.
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Welcome back to writing~
It's a good day, really. It's not every day that you get to inadvertently kick off a Quest when you just headed somewhere for the power boost. Quests means good xp and shinies, after all. Very proud of Red's murderhoboing ways.
- Location
- A single human dimension
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh, welcome back! I'm glad you're at least okay-ish.
Doing this move in a cave system. Brilliant.
I don't think we're supposed to comment on that, Red, but it made me grin anyway.
Okay, you might have been hesitant to share this, but I actually really enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek tone of the snippet. Thanks for writing and sharing it! It's great.
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Pokemon/Xianxia - The Pride Before 0-2
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
I have two more after this, then I hit a wall. It's why it's being posted here instead of a dedicated thread, I suppose.
Also: Thank you for your kind words.
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The Pride Before
Blackthorn City
Pokémon / Xianxia
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"If there's League rangers at every exit," Red had said, his trademark infuriating smile on his face, "Then we'll just need to make our own."
Little Girl had seemed dubious, but she hadn't said anything, so Red took that as assent.
As always, Venusaur did much of the heavy lifting. In this case, it was as much physical as it was metaphorical, as Little Girl and her Sneasel were too weak and/or injured to make the multi-hour trek on their tiny feet. Venusaur's tremorsense led the way to the surface, then some precise application of Earth Power knocked holes in a few walls and like that, they were now on the side of Mount Whitegrave, and not stuck within its icy depths.
It was a gorgeous view. They found themselves on the northern side, so they saw a towering mountain range, the Spine of Giratina, untouched by human civilization. This late in October more than the peaks were blanketed in snow, and the sky was thick with heavy clouds threatening a storm. He could see flocks of Fearow and Spearow carving winds, and between two mountains a meandering river flowed.
Red adored scenes such as this. There was a part of him, animal and growing stronger every day, that wanted to ignore his deadlines and promises and vanish into the wilderness for years on end, nothing but him, his Pokémon, and the pursuit of power to take his attention. Nothing and no one would stop him: the Indigo League would eventually mark him as a missing person and move on, he had no family, and his many enemies wouldn't believe him dead anyways. He could return as a Fourth Realm trainer, perhaps even reach the peak of human potential at the Fifth, then return and take a later Conference by storm.
Not for the first time, he let the feelings go. Pure and simple as it would be, even the dangers of the Wild Lands didn't compare to the might of other trainers, and he'd advance faster sharpening his steel against the steel of Team Rocket, Blue, and the Indigo Conference. And the Blackthorn clan if he's lucky.
He chanced a glance at Little Girl. She, like him, was gazing longingly out at the untamed nature. He imagined much different thoughts were in her mind, though.
"Know a route into town where we won't be bothered?" he asked.
She nodded. "We'll have to circle around west, but it's not uncommon for trainers to make the hike from Lake of Rage instead of bothering with the Dark Cave. There's no trail for it, so trainers can arrive anywhere on the northwestern edge of the city. The clan doesn't bother keeping track of them all."
"Then lead the way, Little Guide."
She threw him a dirty look, but did as ordered.
It quickly became clear that she was an old pro at navigating these mountain paths. Her footing was easy and sure, and she never once hesitated when it came time to take a turn or fork. This clearly was no official trail – the hike was too perilous and, at times, nearly vertical, both up and down – but for a clan kid, she was more rugged and, for lack of a better word, wild than her clear diction and snooty vocabulary would imply. She clearly had the local mountain terrain memorized.
Red knew very little about the Blackthorn clan. Oh, he knew as much as the average Indigo citizen: the Blackthorns are indeed the eldest and most powerful clan in Johto, the peer of Kanto's Whitegrave clan, who had been forced to flee Mount Whitegrave hundreds of years before eventually signing the Treaty of Indigo and bringing an end to the Warring Clans Era. The Indigo Plateau was chosen as the site for the Pokémon World League outpost precisely because it was the territory between the Blackthorn and Whitegrave clans, and today, well over fifty years later, Blackthorn was still a name that commanded respect and prestige. To be Blackthorn meant to be at the top of the world.
He didn't know how the Blackthorns raised their kids, though, nor what their duties and responsibilities actually were, besides maintain a Gym and keep a lid on any local problems. Did Little Girl spend all her time in a fancy house, reading books and learning at the knee of the finest tutors around, like how he knows the Whitegraves do it? Or do they let their kids have the run of the place, city and wilds both, learning through trial and error like Red himself had?
And: if the Blackthorn clan was willing to annihilate the Fantasias instead of arrest them in the name of the Indigo League, what else have they done?
Red was getting excited just thinking about it. He couldn't wait.
"How much longer?" he whined, and Little Girl ignored him. Rude.
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They arrived in Blackthorn by nightfall.
The city was built on the side of Mount Blackthorn, every building a single-story, traditional-style house set into the rock face. Even traversing the streets was perilous: the city was harshly vertical, and he had to ascend numerous narrow stairs and cross a half-dozen rope bridges, twice climbing a sheer wall for a shortcut. They passed over the same river three times in the fifteen minutes it took to reach the Pokémon Center. This was all done in near-total darkness, as unlike even Pallet Town the city slept with the sun and there was zero light pollution.
That's not to say they crossed paths with no one. Thrice they saw a resident seated atop their home, staring out southwest at the rest of Johto, arrayed before them like a startlingly lifelike map. Once they saw a trainer leap off the mountain side, releasing a Dragonite midair and vanishing to the west with all of a lightning bolt's speed but none of the thunder.
Blackthorn boasted the highest elevation of every city in Indigo, and beside the thin air, the view made that clear: he could see every badge-holding city save Cianwood from here. To the west, Mahogany built on the ashes of its predecessor, destroyed by the Gyarados of the Lake of Rage to its north, and Ecruteak further west still, the legendary Bell Tower where Ho'oh was said to roost. He could see Goldenrod twinkling like stars, the beating heart of Johtonian commerce, the harbor of Olivine to its west and Violet to its east, dim only in comparison. Azalea did not glow, but he saw the coast and the Ilex Forest it was hidden within. If he lived in Blackthorn, could ever set down roots for more than a scattered few weeks at a time, he, too, would sit on his home's roof and look out upon this every night.
"It's easy to think yourself the Lord of Johto, with a view like this," Little Girl said, voice sour with contempt. Red hummed in response.
The view might play a role, but Red thinks the culprit is both more unobtrusive and more undeniable: there's a Dragon Nexus here. It's not as potent as the Ice Nexus within Mount Whitegrave, but it's also a lot closer to the surface. Its presence makes cultivating Dragon-type Aura much easier, but for the same reason Red himself has all seventeen types in his soul, he thinks an overabundance of Dragon in the souls of the Blackthorn clan explains a lot about their… their everything, really. Red stared through the earth at his feet with narrowed eyes, and wondered if the Blackthorn clan had truly been so arrogant as to build their seat of power in the heart of the Nexus.
"So you can sense the Dragon's Den," Little Girl said, and Red had to laugh. "It's a reservoir of water inside Mount Blackthorn. The Blackthorns have their secret base there. It's where they keep all their treasure: their wealth, their kids, their Dratini. My Deino is in there, whether it's hatched or not. Still want to risk it?"
"More than anything," Red answered, and it was the truth.
By the time they arrived at the Pokémon Center, Red had the skeleton of a plan. The night shift clerk never took her eyes off her book as she gestured at the Trainer ID scanner then tossed a key at him underhand, and Red didn't hesitate to reserve the grandest, most luxurious suite they had, which while spacious was spartan and undecorated compared to the rooms he stayed in for the Saffron Second-Realm Tournament.
Little Girl gave him a suspicious look when she saw there was only one bedroom, but he merely gestured towards it grandly, saying, "If you keep squinting like that, it'll give you wrinkles. See you come morning."
Red never could sleep the night before a good battle.
He left the Center, knowing Little Girl would rest better if he wasn't around, and he had things to do, regardless. Like survey the terrain of tomorrow's battles: both the Rising Gym and the Dragon's Den.
He was down his guide, but the Gym was obvious at a glance. The building was the biggest in the city, built out of thick stone with an open roof, a kind of vaulting structure arrayed diagonally against the cliff face: it could have anywhere between three and seven floors, he estimated, depending on how much flight space they allowed inside the Gym itself. If nothing else, Blackthorn's vertical terrain made the surveillance easier, as he could simply climb towards the peak and look down from on high.
Charizard would make this a breeze, Red thought with longing, but revealing his roster to any Blackthorn trainers would be a poor idea- and Charizard only consented to cross-continental flights, and even then only for the sake of his own impatience. Asking for a ride up would only make Charizard huff disparagingly and recall himself.
He made it eventually, taking one or two more breaks than he really needed to enjoy the panoramic view of all Johto. There were a scattered few buildings even higher up, each one a house with what appeared to be a Pidgeot Courier Service nest highest up, but it was enough.
From up here, even Blackthorn City looked no more grand or majestic than the rest of Johto. The air was thin enough that a hardened Third Realm trainer like himself was left gasping for breath, and the clouds above, dark with stormy intent, looked close enough to touch. He imagined, for a moment, being one of the Blackthorn lords of the Warring Clans Era, commanding flights of Dragonite to raze villages, subjugate rival clans, and burn Unovan ships. It was a heady image- or, no, that was the lack of oxygen.
He saw into the Rising Gym. The battleground was League standard, large, flat, and rectangular, marked with scattered rock pillars and trenches in the dirt like he'd experienced in Pewter City, what seemed like nine years rather than nine months ago. There was a pair of trainers using it, by their matching dress and bright blue hair both Blackthorn scions, and likely Gym Trainers as well.
He sat down to watch, still taking big gulps of air. Blue Side was commanding a Dragonair, serpentine body wrapped around its opponent and blue-white energy spiraling around them both in what appeared to be a Twister – Wrap combo. Red Side looked sure to lose, but their Pokémon – which Red, to his surprise, didn't recognize – was able to topple the Dragonair with sheer, physical force, then bear down on it with a rapid-fire series of savage Dragon-infused bites and claws.
The unfamiliar Pokémon had the bipedal, winged form of a Dragonite, but was a dark blue in shade with a fire-red head and sharp spikes along its tail and arms. Its wings were larger than a Dragonite's, too, scaled instead of Zubat-like, and jagged, coarse-looking. A fearsome, foreign beast, though Red's Aura sense told him it was pure Dragon-type. His anti-Dragonair strategies should, for the most part, work on it, assuming Lance used the same creature.
He also took note of something else: on the south side of the mountain, a small basin of water surrounded an entrance to a cave within the mountain's depths. A torii gate, sunset-red and well cared for, stood imposingly in front of it. As a Kantonian, Red was largely unfamiliar with Johtonian myth, but he knew enough to know a shrine lay beyond. Nothing else could be the entrance to the Dragon's Den.
Espeon was released in a flash of red light, and they got to work. They only had so many hours until daybreak.
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"I'm not going into the Gym, are you insane?" Little Girl asked impolitely.
"Yes."
"That- what? Why? What purpose could it possible serve?"
Red had a few reasons, but he didn't feel like sharing. "I need someone to cheer me on or I'll get nervous."
"That- that's dumb! You're dumb!" Little Girl even stomped her feet.
How amusing. Red wondered if shows of temper like this were more common when she cultivated Dragon-type energy, before Lance shattered her Aura. Did she even realize that her behavior had changed? Even now, though there was anger in her eyes, it wasn't the hot kind of anger Red associated with Dragon Specialists. More like… though she was angry, she was behaving on habit, not on behalf of her anger.
"They're going to recognize me, then our plan is shot," she said, though it sounded less like a warning and more like an ultimatum.
"Have no fear, Little Girl. I brought you a disguise."
Espeon had liberated some cosmetics from the Pokémart while they were closed. Red knew all the tricks to use powders and creams to bespell the contours of someone's face, had used these talents to get into places he didn't belong time and again, and he had acquired some hair bleach and clothing, as well. Little Girl looked every bit the Dark clan princess with her black hair and stormy grey eyes, sharp cheekbones – perhaps a little too sharp, after a few months surviving in Icy Path – and haughty, pursed-lip frown. He could change that.
An hour later, she had blonde hair clipped to both sides in the style of his rival Green with black hair accessories that may or may not be real Murkrow feathers. She also wore an all-black outfit of leggings, skirt, and sweater, with gold laces on her ankle boots and gold thread on the sleeves and skirt hem. It was very stylish and also screamed I am a Dark-type trainer, but was sturdy enough fabric that a little traipsing through wilderness wouldn't tear it apart, like he had seen some rookies wear.
After a long rest in a soft bed, a bath, and a change of clothes, Little Girl looked adorable and not like a wild Houndour. Red looked upon his works and felt accomplishment. She hadn't even complained much! Red decided to pretend it's because she trusted in his keen eye for fashion, and not because he was two Realms above her, hadn't ever given his name, and she was entirely dependent on his good will.
He hadn't given his name because she hadn't given hers, even though he asked, but the nuance was probably lost on her. She looked, what, thirteen, fourteen? When he was that age, he was setting fires in the wilderness and getting into fights, not listening to his elders. He was still doing that, but he was doing that back then, too. He didn't expect good manners from her, is what he was saying.
"They're really not going to recognize me?" she asked, in a soft, trembling voice, seeming more vulnerable than when he knocked her around with an Earthquake and interrogated her in the frozen depths of Mount Whitegrave.
"Little Girl, the only one there who doesn't think you're dead is Lance himself, and he must expect you to be on the far side of Kanto by now. The last place he'll expect you is in the stands of his Gym, with blonde hair, a stylish new outfit, and with a Sneasel on your lap. People see what they expect to see: and what they expect to see is my aggravating little sister who tagged along on my Journey and is barely a step in the First Realm. Besides. Even if Lance does recognize you, he'd hardly going to call you on it, is he?"
She thought for a moment, eyes trained on the floor. "…I suppose, if he pointed me out, he'd have to admit to leaving me alive, first. And that'd endanger his place in the Clan. And I was never close to the Gym Trainers."
"Exactly. Now, speaking of your Sneasel…"
He rooted around in his bag until he unearthed the final reward from last night's escapades. She took it from him with trembling hands.
"It'd be strange if they saw you didn't have a ball for your starter, wouldn't they? And strange things invite attention. Go on. I know you know how to use it."
Little Girl looked towards the Sneasel, who was lazing about on the bed and swaddled in his body weight in blankets. She seemed to hesitate for a second- but then she steeled herself, scrunched her face in that scowl he was so used to seeing from her, and threw the thing at her Pokémon with no warning.
He was laughing all the way to the Gym.
Little Girl was showing no shame, head held high and Pokéball clutched in both hands. Red made sure to only tease her a little bit. The more upbeat and confident she acted, the less likely that the Blackthorn scions at the Gym would recognize her. Their gambit wouldn't work if everyone was wondering what she had to be nervous or secretive about.
Blackthorn City looked different in the warm light of dawn. There was a bustle in the air that, while nothing compared to even some rural towns he's visited, gave the city a more innocent, friendly demeanor. At night, it was easy to convince himself that this was the seat of power for that most ancient of clans, regal and reverent, with an ironclad grip on the reigns of power; at dawn, it became clear that the residents of Blackthorn were still just ordinary people. Half of them weren't even Blackthorns.
A few even waved at them, or shouted encouraging words at a trainer so obviously about to challenge the Rising Gym. Red cheerily waved back.
As they entered the open doorway into the Gym, a blue-haired trainer behind a desk stood and offered a shallow bow. "Welcome to the Rising Gym. Are you here to challenge the Dragon Master, Lance?"
"I am," he said with easy confidence. "Will there be seating for my little sister? She wasn't allowed to watch at Cinnabar, and she's still complaining about it."
The trainer laughed. Red peered at her Aura, and saw she was early Third Realm, Dragon primary with Water secondary and weak shades of Flying. A Kingdra trainer, presumably, with a Dragonair. This high up, everyone here probably had Flying in their souls.
Within moments, his ID was scanned and he was ushered towards the battlefield, Little Girl at his heels. Their presence, the upcoming heist, his plans for the future: it all fell away as he felt the overwhelming Aura waiting on the far side of the battlefield.
Fifth Realm. The Dragon-type power was so strong, it blinded his Aura sight to the fine details, like gazing at the sun. There were shades of Flying and Water, what looked like it might be Rock or Ground, maybe a little Fire, but it was hard to tell. Easily ninety percent of it was Dragon, and the quality of power was enough to make him tremble. He had only seen the like of it once before.
Champion Oak had the same kind of soul. Fifth Realm is its own beast, and if there were more trainers at that peak in Indigo than he could count on both hands, he'd jump off Mount Blackthorn.
Red didn't notice the bloodthirsty grin on his face until he saw Little Girl edge away, wary. He paid her no mind.
He was drawn to his side of the battleground like magnetism. Lance stood opposite him, fifty meters away, radiance outmatching the sun.
"Psychic barriers: set!" the blue-haired trainer announced, voice echoing, and his view was tinted pink. "Sonic barriers: set! Aura barriers: set! Master Lance has been challenged for the Rising Badge by Trainer Red. The rules are as follows:
"Both sides are allowed six Pokémon, as registered before the match. Use of additional Pokémon is grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed one switch. Switch-forcing moves are grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed one held item per Pokémon. All other item use is grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed a thirty second period between knockout and summon. Exceeding this limit is grounds for disqualification.
"Trainers acknowledge!"
"I acknowledge!" Lance called.
"Let's get on with it!" Red shouted.
"Battle: begin!"
Twin flashes of red lit the battlefield.
Also: Thank you for your kind words.
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The Pride Before
Blackthorn City
Pokémon / Xianxia
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"If there's League rangers at every exit," Red had said, his trademark infuriating smile on his face, "Then we'll just need to make our own."
Little Girl had seemed dubious, but she hadn't said anything, so Red took that as assent.
As always, Venusaur did much of the heavy lifting. In this case, it was as much physical as it was metaphorical, as Little Girl and her Sneasel were too weak and/or injured to make the multi-hour trek on their tiny feet. Venusaur's tremorsense led the way to the surface, then some precise application of Earth Power knocked holes in a few walls and like that, they were now on the side of Mount Whitegrave, and not stuck within its icy depths.
It was a gorgeous view. They found themselves on the northern side, so they saw a towering mountain range, the Spine of Giratina, untouched by human civilization. This late in October more than the peaks were blanketed in snow, and the sky was thick with heavy clouds threatening a storm. He could see flocks of Fearow and Spearow carving winds, and between two mountains a meandering river flowed.
Red adored scenes such as this. There was a part of him, animal and growing stronger every day, that wanted to ignore his deadlines and promises and vanish into the wilderness for years on end, nothing but him, his Pokémon, and the pursuit of power to take his attention. Nothing and no one would stop him: the Indigo League would eventually mark him as a missing person and move on, he had no family, and his many enemies wouldn't believe him dead anyways. He could return as a Fourth Realm trainer, perhaps even reach the peak of human potential at the Fifth, then return and take a later Conference by storm.
Not for the first time, he let the feelings go. Pure and simple as it would be, even the dangers of the Wild Lands didn't compare to the might of other trainers, and he'd advance faster sharpening his steel against the steel of Team Rocket, Blue, and the Indigo Conference. And the Blackthorn clan if he's lucky.
He chanced a glance at Little Girl. She, like him, was gazing longingly out at the untamed nature. He imagined much different thoughts were in her mind, though.
"Know a route into town where we won't be bothered?" he asked.
She nodded. "We'll have to circle around west, but it's not uncommon for trainers to make the hike from Lake of Rage instead of bothering with the Dark Cave. There's no trail for it, so trainers can arrive anywhere on the northwestern edge of the city. The clan doesn't bother keeping track of them all."
"Then lead the way, Little Guide."
She threw him a dirty look, but did as ordered.
It quickly became clear that she was an old pro at navigating these mountain paths. Her footing was easy and sure, and she never once hesitated when it came time to take a turn or fork. This clearly was no official trail – the hike was too perilous and, at times, nearly vertical, both up and down – but for a clan kid, she was more rugged and, for lack of a better word, wild than her clear diction and snooty vocabulary would imply. She clearly had the local mountain terrain memorized.
Red knew very little about the Blackthorn clan. Oh, he knew as much as the average Indigo citizen: the Blackthorns are indeed the eldest and most powerful clan in Johto, the peer of Kanto's Whitegrave clan, who had been forced to flee Mount Whitegrave hundreds of years before eventually signing the Treaty of Indigo and bringing an end to the Warring Clans Era. The Indigo Plateau was chosen as the site for the Pokémon World League outpost precisely because it was the territory between the Blackthorn and Whitegrave clans, and today, well over fifty years later, Blackthorn was still a name that commanded respect and prestige. To be Blackthorn meant to be at the top of the world.
He didn't know how the Blackthorns raised their kids, though, nor what their duties and responsibilities actually were, besides maintain a Gym and keep a lid on any local problems. Did Little Girl spend all her time in a fancy house, reading books and learning at the knee of the finest tutors around, like how he knows the Whitegraves do it? Or do they let their kids have the run of the place, city and wilds both, learning through trial and error like Red himself had?
And: if the Blackthorn clan was willing to annihilate the Fantasias instead of arrest them in the name of the Indigo League, what else have they done?
Red was getting excited just thinking about it. He couldn't wait.
"How much longer?" he whined, and Little Girl ignored him. Rude.
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They arrived in Blackthorn by nightfall.
The city was built on the side of Mount Blackthorn, every building a single-story, traditional-style house set into the rock face. Even traversing the streets was perilous: the city was harshly vertical, and he had to ascend numerous narrow stairs and cross a half-dozen rope bridges, twice climbing a sheer wall for a shortcut. They passed over the same river three times in the fifteen minutes it took to reach the Pokémon Center. This was all done in near-total darkness, as unlike even Pallet Town the city slept with the sun and there was zero light pollution.
That's not to say they crossed paths with no one. Thrice they saw a resident seated atop their home, staring out southwest at the rest of Johto, arrayed before them like a startlingly lifelike map. Once they saw a trainer leap off the mountain side, releasing a Dragonite midair and vanishing to the west with all of a lightning bolt's speed but none of the thunder.
Blackthorn boasted the highest elevation of every city in Indigo, and beside the thin air, the view made that clear: he could see every badge-holding city save Cianwood from here. To the west, Mahogany built on the ashes of its predecessor, destroyed by the Gyarados of the Lake of Rage to its north, and Ecruteak further west still, the legendary Bell Tower where Ho'oh was said to roost. He could see Goldenrod twinkling like stars, the beating heart of Johtonian commerce, the harbor of Olivine to its west and Violet to its east, dim only in comparison. Azalea did not glow, but he saw the coast and the Ilex Forest it was hidden within. If he lived in Blackthorn, could ever set down roots for more than a scattered few weeks at a time, he, too, would sit on his home's roof and look out upon this every night.
"It's easy to think yourself the Lord of Johto, with a view like this," Little Girl said, voice sour with contempt. Red hummed in response.
The view might play a role, but Red thinks the culprit is both more unobtrusive and more undeniable: there's a Dragon Nexus here. It's not as potent as the Ice Nexus within Mount Whitegrave, but it's also a lot closer to the surface. Its presence makes cultivating Dragon-type Aura much easier, but for the same reason Red himself has all seventeen types in his soul, he thinks an overabundance of Dragon in the souls of the Blackthorn clan explains a lot about their… their everything, really. Red stared through the earth at his feet with narrowed eyes, and wondered if the Blackthorn clan had truly been so arrogant as to build their seat of power in the heart of the Nexus.
"So you can sense the Dragon's Den," Little Girl said, and Red had to laugh. "It's a reservoir of water inside Mount Blackthorn. The Blackthorns have their secret base there. It's where they keep all their treasure: their wealth, their kids, their Dratini. My Deino is in there, whether it's hatched or not. Still want to risk it?"
"More than anything," Red answered, and it was the truth.
By the time they arrived at the Pokémon Center, Red had the skeleton of a plan. The night shift clerk never took her eyes off her book as she gestured at the Trainer ID scanner then tossed a key at him underhand, and Red didn't hesitate to reserve the grandest, most luxurious suite they had, which while spacious was spartan and undecorated compared to the rooms he stayed in for the Saffron Second-Realm Tournament.
Little Girl gave him a suspicious look when she saw there was only one bedroom, but he merely gestured towards it grandly, saying, "If you keep squinting like that, it'll give you wrinkles. See you come morning."
Red never could sleep the night before a good battle.
He left the Center, knowing Little Girl would rest better if he wasn't around, and he had things to do, regardless. Like survey the terrain of tomorrow's battles: both the Rising Gym and the Dragon's Den.
He was down his guide, but the Gym was obvious at a glance. The building was the biggest in the city, built out of thick stone with an open roof, a kind of vaulting structure arrayed diagonally against the cliff face: it could have anywhere between three and seven floors, he estimated, depending on how much flight space they allowed inside the Gym itself. If nothing else, Blackthorn's vertical terrain made the surveillance easier, as he could simply climb towards the peak and look down from on high.
Charizard would make this a breeze, Red thought with longing, but revealing his roster to any Blackthorn trainers would be a poor idea- and Charizard only consented to cross-continental flights, and even then only for the sake of his own impatience. Asking for a ride up would only make Charizard huff disparagingly and recall himself.
He made it eventually, taking one or two more breaks than he really needed to enjoy the panoramic view of all Johto. There were a scattered few buildings even higher up, each one a house with what appeared to be a Pidgeot Courier Service nest highest up, but it was enough.
From up here, even Blackthorn City looked no more grand or majestic than the rest of Johto. The air was thin enough that a hardened Third Realm trainer like himself was left gasping for breath, and the clouds above, dark with stormy intent, looked close enough to touch. He imagined, for a moment, being one of the Blackthorn lords of the Warring Clans Era, commanding flights of Dragonite to raze villages, subjugate rival clans, and burn Unovan ships. It was a heady image- or, no, that was the lack of oxygen.
He saw into the Rising Gym. The battleground was League standard, large, flat, and rectangular, marked with scattered rock pillars and trenches in the dirt like he'd experienced in Pewter City, what seemed like nine years rather than nine months ago. There was a pair of trainers using it, by their matching dress and bright blue hair both Blackthorn scions, and likely Gym Trainers as well.
He sat down to watch, still taking big gulps of air. Blue Side was commanding a Dragonair, serpentine body wrapped around its opponent and blue-white energy spiraling around them both in what appeared to be a Twister – Wrap combo. Red Side looked sure to lose, but their Pokémon – which Red, to his surprise, didn't recognize – was able to topple the Dragonair with sheer, physical force, then bear down on it with a rapid-fire series of savage Dragon-infused bites and claws.
The unfamiliar Pokémon had the bipedal, winged form of a Dragonite, but was a dark blue in shade with a fire-red head and sharp spikes along its tail and arms. Its wings were larger than a Dragonite's, too, scaled instead of Zubat-like, and jagged, coarse-looking. A fearsome, foreign beast, though Red's Aura sense told him it was pure Dragon-type. His anti-Dragonair strategies should, for the most part, work on it, assuming Lance used the same creature.
He also took note of something else: on the south side of the mountain, a small basin of water surrounded an entrance to a cave within the mountain's depths. A torii gate, sunset-red and well cared for, stood imposingly in front of it. As a Kantonian, Red was largely unfamiliar with Johtonian myth, but he knew enough to know a shrine lay beyond. Nothing else could be the entrance to the Dragon's Den.
Espeon was released in a flash of red light, and they got to work. They only had so many hours until daybreak.
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.
.
"I'm not going into the Gym, are you insane?" Little Girl asked impolitely.
"Yes."
"That- what? Why? What purpose could it possible serve?"
Red had a few reasons, but he didn't feel like sharing. "I need someone to cheer me on or I'll get nervous."
"That- that's dumb! You're dumb!" Little Girl even stomped her feet.
How amusing. Red wondered if shows of temper like this were more common when she cultivated Dragon-type energy, before Lance shattered her Aura. Did she even realize that her behavior had changed? Even now, though there was anger in her eyes, it wasn't the hot kind of anger Red associated with Dragon Specialists. More like… though she was angry, she was behaving on habit, not on behalf of her anger.
"They're going to recognize me, then our plan is shot," she said, though it sounded less like a warning and more like an ultimatum.
"Have no fear, Little Girl. I brought you a disguise."
Espeon had liberated some cosmetics from the Pokémart while they were closed. Red knew all the tricks to use powders and creams to bespell the contours of someone's face, had used these talents to get into places he didn't belong time and again, and he had acquired some hair bleach and clothing, as well. Little Girl looked every bit the Dark clan princess with her black hair and stormy grey eyes, sharp cheekbones – perhaps a little too sharp, after a few months surviving in Icy Path – and haughty, pursed-lip frown. He could change that.
An hour later, she had blonde hair clipped to both sides in the style of his rival Green with black hair accessories that may or may not be real Murkrow feathers. She also wore an all-black outfit of leggings, skirt, and sweater, with gold laces on her ankle boots and gold thread on the sleeves and skirt hem. It was very stylish and also screamed I am a Dark-type trainer, but was sturdy enough fabric that a little traipsing through wilderness wouldn't tear it apart, like he had seen some rookies wear.
After a long rest in a soft bed, a bath, and a change of clothes, Little Girl looked adorable and not like a wild Houndour. Red looked upon his works and felt accomplishment. She hadn't even complained much! Red decided to pretend it's because she trusted in his keen eye for fashion, and not because he was two Realms above her, hadn't ever given his name, and she was entirely dependent on his good will.
He hadn't given his name because she hadn't given hers, even though he asked, but the nuance was probably lost on her. She looked, what, thirteen, fourteen? When he was that age, he was setting fires in the wilderness and getting into fights, not listening to his elders. He was still doing that, but he was doing that back then, too. He didn't expect good manners from her, is what he was saying.
"They're really not going to recognize me?" she asked, in a soft, trembling voice, seeming more vulnerable than when he knocked her around with an Earthquake and interrogated her in the frozen depths of Mount Whitegrave.
"Little Girl, the only one there who doesn't think you're dead is Lance himself, and he must expect you to be on the far side of Kanto by now. The last place he'll expect you is in the stands of his Gym, with blonde hair, a stylish new outfit, and with a Sneasel on your lap. People see what they expect to see: and what they expect to see is my aggravating little sister who tagged along on my Journey and is barely a step in the First Realm. Besides. Even if Lance does recognize you, he'd hardly going to call you on it, is he?"
She thought for a moment, eyes trained on the floor. "…I suppose, if he pointed me out, he'd have to admit to leaving me alive, first. And that'd endanger his place in the Clan. And I was never close to the Gym Trainers."
"Exactly. Now, speaking of your Sneasel…"
He rooted around in his bag until he unearthed the final reward from last night's escapades. She took it from him with trembling hands.
"It'd be strange if they saw you didn't have a ball for your starter, wouldn't they? And strange things invite attention. Go on. I know you know how to use it."
Little Girl looked towards the Sneasel, who was lazing about on the bed and swaddled in his body weight in blankets. She seemed to hesitate for a second- but then she steeled herself, scrunched her face in that scowl he was so used to seeing from her, and threw the thing at her Pokémon with no warning.
He was laughing all the way to the Gym.
Little Girl was showing no shame, head held high and Pokéball clutched in both hands. Red made sure to only tease her a little bit. The more upbeat and confident she acted, the less likely that the Blackthorn scions at the Gym would recognize her. Their gambit wouldn't work if everyone was wondering what she had to be nervous or secretive about.
Blackthorn City looked different in the warm light of dawn. There was a bustle in the air that, while nothing compared to even some rural towns he's visited, gave the city a more innocent, friendly demeanor. At night, it was easy to convince himself that this was the seat of power for that most ancient of clans, regal and reverent, with an ironclad grip on the reigns of power; at dawn, it became clear that the residents of Blackthorn were still just ordinary people. Half of them weren't even Blackthorns.
A few even waved at them, or shouted encouraging words at a trainer so obviously about to challenge the Rising Gym. Red cheerily waved back.
As they entered the open doorway into the Gym, a blue-haired trainer behind a desk stood and offered a shallow bow. "Welcome to the Rising Gym. Are you here to challenge the Dragon Master, Lance?"
"I am," he said with easy confidence. "Will there be seating for my little sister? She wasn't allowed to watch at Cinnabar, and she's still complaining about it."
The trainer laughed. Red peered at her Aura, and saw she was early Third Realm, Dragon primary with Water secondary and weak shades of Flying. A Kingdra trainer, presumably, with a Dragonair. This high up, everyone here probably had Flying in their souls.
Within moments, his ID was scanned and he was ushered towards the battlefield, Little Girl at his heels. Their presence, the upcoming heist, his plans for the future: it all fell away as he felt the overwhelming Aura waiting on the far side of the battlefield.
Fifth Realm. The Dragon-type power was so strong, it blinded his Aura sight to the fine details, like gazing at the sun. There were shades of Flying and Water, what looked like it might be Rock or Ground, maybe a little Fire, but it was hard to tell. Easily ninety percent of it was Dragon, and the quality of power was enough to make him tremble. He had only seen the like of it once before.
Champion Oak had the same kind of soul. Fifth Realm is its own beast, and if there were more trainers at that peak in Indigo than he could count on both hands, he'd jump off Mount Blackthorn.
Red didn't notice the bloodthirsty grin on his face until he saw Little Girl edge away, wary. He paid her no mind.
He was drawn to his side of the battleground like magnetism. Lance stood opposite him, fifty meters away, radiance outmatching the sun.
"Psychic barriers: set!" the blue-haired trainer announced, voice echoing, and his view was tinted pink. "Sonic barriers: set! Aura barriers: set! Master Lance has been challenged for the Rising Badge by Trainer Red. The rules are as follows:
"Both sides are allowed six Pokémon, as registered before the match. Use of additional Pokémon is grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed one switch. Switch-forcing moves are grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed one held item per Pokémon. All other item use is grounds for disqualification.
"Both sides are allowed a thirty second period between knockout and summon. Exceeding this limit is grounds for disqualification.
"Trainers acknowledge!"
"I acknowledge!" Lance called.
"Let's get on with it!" Red shouted.
"Battle: begin!"
Twin flashes of red lit the battlefield.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Kind of hectic for me at the moment, so I don't have time to sit down and read the segment, but the basic premise reminds me of an old quest from Anonkun/Fiction.Live, where the idea was that Pokemon were more like mystic spirits. The setting's feudal aristocracy rose from individual humans who managed to either earn a Pokemon's trust/patronage, or defeat one in battle and bind it into an object, in either case gaining various powers connected to the Pokemon's nature as a result; over generations, these became dynastic lineages of mystic knights, passing the power down from parent to child.
Definitely interested to read about a xianxia take on the Pokeverse (when I have time)
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Red, you can't just make up an edgier backstory for yourself because you think it'll give you more power, it'll make your mom sad ;P
That implies some interesting things about the other types. (Would you ever feel safe trying to date a Poison master?)
To be fair, it's a very skeezy looking setup in cultivation and cultivation-adjacent verses.
Snrk, how adorable. But did he remember to include the right shades of eyeshadow and lipstick and the silver jewelry?
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
If there was a theft and you have two suspects, one with a Dark soul and one with a Fire, who do you think did it?
I have a love hate relationship with this genre.
I had a huge crush on Cynthia as a kid. I found art of a young Cynthia online the other day, so I kind of just used that, tbh.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
That's profiling olol
Well, if it was a smash and grab, maybe the Fire one? XD
I assure you that many people remain incredibly downbad for Cynthia to this day.
Pokemon/Xianxia - The Pride Before 0-3
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
This story was inspired in part by all the Pokémon Journey stories on RoyalRoad and other sites, like The Type Specialist, so I wanted to write a battle scene of my own. I hope it's half as entertaining to read as it was to write - battle scenes aren't my forte, and when I've written them in the past, they always served as a backdrop for something I found more important. ...Additionally, I used the Pokémon TTRPG rules that a few friends and I made, so there's more variance within a species and Pokémon might know unique moves or abilities that aren't canon to the games or shows. It's more fun for me this way, and I suppose more Xianxia, though that's a justification I made up right now.
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The Pride Before
Rising Gym
Pokémon / Xianxia
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Red's Venusaur hit the field with a roar, one leg stomping on the ground and cratering it, tendrils of Ground power snaking across the field in anticipation of an attack. He immediately began channeling Fire Aura into the sky above them, filtering the dawn sunlight until it was many times more powerful.
Lance's Dragonair had begun its Dragon Dance before the red light had faded and it fully manifested from stasis. The gorgeous blue serpent looked especially stunning as it soared through the air with regal movements, a cooing cry like bells ringing.
Neither trainer shouted a command; micro-managing Pokémon is a trademark of the weak and inexperienced. Venusaur fired off a potent Solar Beam as soon as he had strengthened the sunlight enough with Sunny Day to skip the charge time, and hid a package of Poison Aura within the ray as they had practiced all those months ago, before Saffron. Dragonair was able to dodge, already so much faster thanks to Dragon Dance, but the Solar Beam was never intended to hit: the Poison energies detonated mid-air a meter away from Dragonair's body, and the corrosive poison of Toxic was splattered on its flesh.
To Red's consternation, he saw the Aura in Dragonair's scales suddenly spike in strength. He recognized Marvel Scale when he saw it: he saw Leader Misty's Milotic in action back in Cerulean, though he was too weak to challenge it at the time. His research hadn't revealed that Dragonair could develop that ability, too! Now Dragonair had the defenses to match its increased speed and power, and there was no saying how long the Toxic would last before it could Shed its Skin. He would have had Venusaur open with Worry Seed if he knew.
Actually, I can use this, he realized, and commanded, "Keep applying Leech Seed and Toxic. Its Shed Skin will cure it."
Lance saw no need to interrupt his enemy while he's making a mistake. Dragonair used Dragon Dance twice more, Marvel Scale activating twice more to Leech Seed and a second Toxic, until Lance spoke his first command of the battle: "Outrage."
Dragonair had been in the late Fourth Realm when it was released. Buffed by three Dragon Dances and three applications of Marvel Scale, it had power befitting a Pokémon in the mid Sixth Realm as it flashed across the battlefield with speed and power rarely seen outside the Indigo Plateau. If Red closed his eyes and saw with his Aura, it looked only a Realm shy of Champion Oak's prized Dragonite's Draco Meteor.
Venusaur fainted in a single hit.
His hat's brim covered his face in shadow and he smiled. It was considered disreputable, but he waited out the full thirty seconds he was allotted to let Outrage end and for confusion to set in Dragonair's battle-crazed mind. As soon as he saw the waves of emanating Dragon-type power end, he released Espeon.
Maybe she read his mind, maybe she saw the power before her and drew her own conclusions; it didn't matter. As Dragonair blitzed in for a sudden Dragon Rush and struck the ground in its confusion, shaking the earth like a full-power Magnitude, Espeon used Trick Room.
Psychic power snapped out and thickened into walls, a cube fifty meters wide, and in that space a headache-inducing effect warped time. Dragonair moved faster – Red saw that, Lance did too – but Espeon somehow acted first.
Power Swap stole all of Dragonair's boosted physical might, then Guard Swap, learned from Blue's Umbreon, stole all of Marvel Scale's defenses. The second Dragon Rush hit, and though Espeon was knocked back a handful of meters by the raw kinetic force, she was unharmed. Hardly scuffed, even. And then, to tie a neat little bow on the unfair combo: Stored Power.
The Psychic move drew extra oomph from the stockpiled boosts, and Dragonair, already weakened from Leech Seed and Toxic, let out a shriek of pain as it writhed and fell unconscious.
Lance recalled Dragonair with a nod of acknowledgement, and Espeon took the opportunity to dispel Trick Room, now that she had the Dragon Dance speed boost.
"I usually save Dragonite for last, in battles such as these," Lance said, voice resonating through the psychic barriers on the battlefield. "Consider this a sign of respect. I trained this dragon myself."
Red's adrenaline spiked at those words. He expected every foe he faced today to belong to a Gym Trainer, or perhaps the Blackthorn clan as a whole; to face one of the sixteen Pokémon a Fifth Realm trainer has bonded with is a compliment and threat both.
Dragonite arrived with a roar and a flap of wings that summoned a small Hurricane. The most legendary species in Indigo emenated a potent Pressure that almost put Red on his knees. He still remembered his first encounter with a creature such as this, seeing Champion Oak battle Elite Four Agatha for the throne over ten years ago, and he knew he would remember this just as long.
The dragon was Fifth Realm, like his own team, but he could see with his Aura that it was faster, more powerful, better trained. Some of that was due to birthright as a Dragonite, but not all of it. The realization stung like alcohol on a wound.
"No tricks, go for the throat," Red ordered, and Espeon obeyed.
The might of a twelve-times-boosted Stored Power lashed out like a Psychic whipcrack, and it broke against some kind of barrier on Dragonite's scales, failing to so much as draw blood. An ability he doesn't know about?
Extreme Speed saw Dragonite cross the battlefield in the blink of an eye, then Espeon was crushed between the rock floor and hundreds of pounds of dragon. There was no time to use Protect. She gave a yowl of pain that made Red grit his teeth, then she fled into the earth with a reflexive Dig.
Dragonite took to the skies, already buffing with Dragon Dance.
Red could see the Aura in the air distort, slightly, and slowly untensed. He recognized the flow of Morning Sun in action; better yet, Venusaur's Sunny Day was still active, though fading.
Lance could see it, too. "It's healing. Flush it out."
Once more Dragonite corkscrewed into the earth, a ruinous Bulldoze shaking the ground. Then, it rose- and came down again. And again.
"Espeon is unable to battle," the referee called. She's linked to the Psychics maintaining the barriers, so Red didn't doubt the call.
Focused, Red attempted to peer into the earth with his Aura sight. Was Espeon able to use their contingency? He couldn't tell. If he was wrong, then he'd be making a terrible mistake, and he'd almost certainly throw the whole match.
He'd have to trust.
"Pikachu, Pick Up." A nonsense order, but his starter would understand the in-joke.
The Electric mouse, tiny and adorable and not at all common on the competitive scene, dashed into the Dug warrens with Agility-enhanced speed.
Blue and him had spent weeks exploring the nuances of Power Swap, Guard Swap, Psych Up, and Stored Power. Pokémon have Auras not at all unlike the Aura of humans, and one of the most common expressions of that power is with so-called 'boosting moves.' The mechanics of such moves are, on the surface, simple: Pokémon have large capacity for Aura but only so much throughput, and can thus only call upon a fraction of their power at once. Instead of an offensive move that is a simple, damaging expression of that power, they can shape that spent power into a kind of second Aura, or battery, and then draw upon that power and their own power simultaneously, not unlike harnessing a held item. In theory, this then doubles their throughput at the cost of needing set-up time. In practice, it's a lot easier and more convenient to make specialized boosts that enhance speed, power, or defenses then it is to make a wide-ranging boost, like the prototypical Ancient Power, the move from which all boost moves originate.
But when a Pokémon faints, where do the boosts go? Without a mind and soul to hold onto it, the package of Aura power dissolves into the ambient Aura flow. What if a Pokémon was able to stabilize this boost before letting go, by protecting it in a membrane of sturdier Aura?
Red and Blue called it Baton Pass.
"Whatever it's planning, stop it," Lance commanded, and Dragonite came crashing down for another Bulldoze.
Pikachu leapt from the tunnels with triple his already ludicrous speed, cloaked himself in the Electric cage of Volt Tackle, and struck Dragonite with Dragon Dance-boosted strength. Dragon is resistant to Electric, but Flying isn't.
Lance's beast was flying straight downwards when it was struck; Pikachu's might arrested its momentum entirely, and both mouse and dragon crashed against the eastern wall and the Psychic barriers reinforcing it. An ominous cracking sound reverberated in the air.
"Hold nothing back!" Lance shouted in a rush, voice tight.
Red felt as if he could take a step onto air and fly. To take the premier Dragon Master of Indigo so off guard by a move of his own creation- he was going to ride this high for the rest of his life.
Dragonite grabbed the mouse on its back and began to Outrage. Pikachu was smashed against the wall, the floor, gripped and torn between claws and battered by powerful Dragon-type energies, but half that Baton Pass was Marvel Scale's steel-like defense, and Pikachu held on. More, Pikachu unleashed a long, point-blank Thunder, the infamous booming sound that accompanied the move deafening all commands either he or Lance could have made.
It went on for a long time. In the end, Dragonite gave first.
Vindication! Red had rarely felt such triumph. Going to mock my starter, are you, Blue? Going to doubt our potential again, Old Man? Pikachu is going to sweep the Indigo Conference. All will know our power.
Lance recalled Dragonite, then paused, as if to say something. The moment passed.
The dragon he had seen last night appeared, blue-scaled with a jagged, red head. He still didn't know what it was called and he didn't know what it would do, but that didn't change their strategy at all. Overwhelming power was Red's forte.
Pikachu blitzed across the battlefield in a Volt Tackle, and the dragon stood to receive it, opening its maw wide in a Scary Face. Pikachu slowed to a mere blur as he smashed into it.
Thanks to the tiny opening provided by Scary Face, the dragon softened the rock at its feet with Dig or some other expression of Ground Aura, transforming a solid hit into a glancing blow. Pikachu skid across the battlefield as the dragon fell on its back with a roar of anger.
Pikachu's immense speed worked against him here; he wasn't yet accustomed to maneuvering at such insane speeds, and his agility suffered for it. In the time it took for Pikachu to differentiate up from down, turn, and break out into another run, the dragon was back on its feet and… throwing a tantrum?
It was a Fifth Realm dragon and trained by the Blackthorns, so Red assumed it was a real move, and he could see the Ground-type power rolling off it in waves, but he didn't recognize it.
Pikachu lost his footing, picked up speed again, then leapt in another Volt Tackle. This time, he was wise to the dragon's Ground-type tricks.
To Red's surprise, the unknown Pokémon made no move to dodge or deflect this second Volt Tackle. Shrieking in rage and pain, the dragon grabbed onto Pikachu in a move shockingly reminiscent of Dragonite's Outrage and continued its tantrum.
Between the Outrage earlier, the recoil from the three Volt Tackles, and now this strange Ground-type onslaught, Pikachu was being pushed precariously close to the edge. Only the stolen Marvel Scale toughness kept him in the battle. Worse, the spikes and jagged edges to the unknown Pokémon were doing surprising damage. Rough Skin, maybe?
Pikachu wasn't using Nuzzle, just maintaining his maximum electrical discharge while in the dragon's clawed grip, but his Static should have paralyzed it by now. Did the thing have Mold Breaker, too? Or was it actually Ground-type, and not just specialized in it?
Red hated battling foreign Pokémon. The Pokémon World League was the worst thing ever. If he had known, he would've ordered a Thunder Wave, then a slower strategy of using the enhanced speed from Dragon Dance and Agility to space the thing and wear it down over time with Discharge and Thunderbolts.
It was too late for that, but not too late to switch to a different track.
"Electric Terrain, then take it with you," he shouted. Pikachu was moving too quickly and chaotically earlier for Electric Terrain to be useful, but it was time to look ahead.
Pikachu was too much of a team player to mind making suicide plays. Holding nothing back, he blinded everyone in the Gym with a flash of lightning that knocked out both him and the foreign dragon while electrifying the earth in a ten-meter radius.
Both him and Lance were down three Pokémon, neither using their switch. The good news was that the terrain was in his favor. The bad news is he's pretty sure Lance has a Kingdra, a Gyarados, or both, and he's down his Electric-type.
Red stared Lance down as the thirty seconds trickled by, the only sound the crackling static of the Electric Terrain. Since both Pokémon fainted at the same time and both trainers are allowed thirty seconds before sending out their next team member, the only way for one side not to get an advantage over the other is if both wait out the timer. This fact was in Lance's favor as Pikachu's set-up wouldn't persist forever; already, it was getting weaker.
That didn't matter. He only needed it for a moment.
"Five seconds remaining!"
"Dragonair, the floor is yours."
"Snorlax! Pikachu left you a present!"
Red expected the second Dragonair; Lance wouldn't send out a Kingdra or Gyarados if he thought the Electric Terrain signaled a second Electric-type waiting in the wings. Red wanted the terrain for its second purpose, though.
Snorlax gave a pleased laugh that was so deep, the earth shook. With slow, laborious movements, the gargantuan Pokémon smacked her hands against her stomach in a Belly Drum- once, twice, thrice, the echo like the strike of a gong. The recoil allowed much more power to be channeled much quicker than usual, and Snorlax was soon carrying a boost with twice the offensive might that Espeon and Pikachu had been abusing, though it lacked any speed or defenses.
"Quickly!" Lance shouted, and Dragonair began using what was obviously the Blackthorn clan's favorite move, Outrage. No time was wasted on Dragon Dance or a Thunder Wave or any other kind of set-up; Lance knew the danger he was in.
To its credit, the Fifth Realm dragon was more powerful than the Dragonair he had fought at the beginning of the battle. It must be close to evolution. It didn't make a difference. Red had trained Snorlax on defense above and beyond anything else. Its superior speed let it get in one Outrage strike, then two-
Then Snorlax fell asleep.
Now, Red knows the Electric Terrain plus Rest combo isn't supposed to work. If the Pokémon is prevented from falling asleep, such as from Worry Seed giving it Insomnia or from electrified current, the powerful restorative effect of Rest won't activate.
Snorlax is simply so gargantuan that she can be sitting down, fall asleep, land flat on her face, and lay spread eagled on the Electric Terrain. Then she wakes up, fully healed.
Red let out a childish giggle.
"Sap it," Lance ordered, and a confused Dragonair began firing Thunder Waves every which way. Snorlax's immense size meant it was hit entirely by happenstance.
"Amnesia, then let loose."
Snorlax took a few seconds to create the elemental defense boost, losing the control required due to the current in her body. It was the right call, but it gave Dragonair enough time to snap out of her confusion and use Agility.
Red had honestly expected yet another Dragon Dance. For a battle of attrition, however, Agility made more sense.
Snorlax was well-rested, boasting incredible power, and was sturdy enough to shake off most hits. However, she was painfully, agonizingly slow, and Dragonair could fly.
This next phase of the battle took longer than the entire rest of the battle preceding it. Snorlax stomped around with a playful menace, every swipe a Hammer Arm, every step a Body Slam, every pratfall a Giga Impact, and if Dragonair was struck once that'd be it, one-hit knockout.
Dragonair didn't get hit.
Fire Spin and strafing runs of Dragonbreath slowly whittled away at Snorlax's health, and when she got low, Yawned, popped her Chesto Berry in her mouth, and prepared to Rest, Lance called for a variant Safeguard. Neither Snorlax nor Dragonair fell asleep, and the battle of attrition wore on.
Dragonair exhausted itself of energy before its Fire and Dragon-type attacks exhausted Snorlax of health. It went for a strafing run, was a hair too slow, and Snorlax fell on top of it in a Giga Impact that boomed like thunder.
It took Lance a few seconds to recall Dragonair from underneath her bulk, but when he did, he immediately sent out a Kingdra. From the glow on the referee's face, the blue, man-sized seahorse Pokémon was hers.
Kingdra had the first move as Snorlax was still recovering from Giga Impact. Cloud cover shrouded the battlefield in darkness, grey and heavy with rain that began to fall in thick sheets. Kingdra began to move and harness its power much more quickly – Swift Swim? – and used a bizarre utility move that Red had, again, never seen before. The Aura flow was Normal-dominant and seemed almost like Focus Energy, but much more potent. The power concentrated in its cannon-like mouth.
Snorlax was a clever girl. She knew that move, whatever it was, spelled her doom. She compressed the Belly Drum boost into a sphere of raw power in her mouth, then used Spit Up.
Kingdra's Hydro Pump was far more impressive than anything he'd seen from Blastoise, empowered as it was by that strange move, and Snorlax was knocked cold. So focused was it, though, that it took Snorlax's final surprise right to its center mass.
We have the tempo. He sent out Blastoise immediately, and commanded her own Hydro Pump.
Red had just Charizard left, and Lance had what was almost assuredly a Gyarados. That was a bad matchup for him, but if he sent Charizard out in this rain, he was doomed. With luck, Blastoise's Rain Dish would see her with enough strength left to make the difference in that final fight.
Blastoise must have thought herself in the perfect scenario. Released into a heavy rainstorm, her target flung into a wall and off-balance, and the move she had just learned was the only one in her repertoire that wouldn't be resisted or have a nasty side effect. An Ice Beam was launched as if from a cannon, freezing every rain drop in its path.
Icicles from the Beam's path broke against the floor in a shattering sound drowned out only by Kingdra's cry of pain. The battle was Blastoise's.
Then, a flash of light, and a familiar, echoing boom: Thunder. Kingdra can't learn that move!
Unerringly accurate in the rain, Blastoise writhed in pain. Her only saving grace was her Shell Armor, transforming a one-hit knockout into merely a crippling blow and- yes, paralysis too.
"I'm using my recall," Lance announced, and out came the Gyarados. "Hurricane."
Impossibly, this Gyarados wasn't blue; its scales were a brilliant red like the dawn. Red didn't believe that the Blackthorn clan would have a mutant Gyarados and not have it be raised by the Dragon Master Lance himself. How lucky was he, to face two of Lance's own Pokémon, even if neither were yet past the Fifth Realm?
As the Hurricane buffeted the heavy downpour, its accuracy raised in much the same way as Thunder had been, Red wondered how he could turn this all around.
He had no ideas.
He had rarely felt so alive.
Back on her feet due to her Rain Dish, in her preferred weather, and desperate enough to grasp onto the hysterical strength of Torrent, Blastoise launched the fastest, most powerful Hydro Pump he had ever seen from her. It wounded the red Gyarados but did nothing to stave off the Hurricane. And-
Red saw Gyarados siphon power from Blastoise as she fell unconscious. Moxie. He should have used his recall; the resisted damage of even an empowered Hydro Pump isn't worth giving a Gyarados a power boost.
He tossed Charizard's Pokéball in the air and caught it, once, then twice, three times. He mulled over strategies in his head. Nothing clever came to mind.
Oh, well.
"Charizard! Give it all you've got."
His own dragon roared with all the fury and pride of a tyrant who found his reign contested by another. The Gyarados roared back. Charizard dispelled the rain with a Sunny Day, then Gyarados began its own Rain Dance, the two fighting over control of the skies. The result was something bizarre: patches of black cloud belching rain while spears of hot sunlight slipped between, creating steam in the air.
Red believed that a trainer's purpose was to bring out a Pokémon's inner potential. This meant training a Pokémon how they wanted to be trained. He wanted Charizard to have at least moderately sturdy defenses, but all Charizard cared for was power, speed, and flame, and so that is what he trained.
Charizard burned with a Flare Blitz, his unique Reckless ability supercharging the move. Gyarados flew to meet him, the Waterfall echo trailing behind it. When they clashed in the air, Charizard's flames seared Gyarados' serpentine scales and his claws gouged trenches in its flesh. The water trail hit a moment later. At those speeds, the water was as solid as earth, and where it found fire it created steam that burned them both.
Charizard was a Fire-type, though; he could handle a burn. Gyarados couldn't.
A crackle of lightning, and Charizard's Thunder Punch was countered by a wicked Crunch. Gyarados Flailed wildly, its length lashing against Charizard's wings in an Aqua Tail, and Charizard tore it apart, lightning in one clawed hand and Dragon-type energy in the other.
It was short, and brutal, and inelegant. Red was entranced.
Both Pokémon fell to the floor, unconscious before they hit the ground.
"Both Pokémon are unable to battle! Master Lance is the victor!"
As both Pokémon were recalled, support Pokémon dealt with the weather and cleared the battlefield, and Lance walked over to shake his hand, Red found he didn't mind losing, if it was in a battle like that.
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The Pride Before
Rising Gym
Pokémon / Xianxia
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Red's Venusaur hit the field with a roar, one leg stomping on the ground and cratering it, tendrils of Ground power snaking across the field in anticipation of an attack. He immediately began channeling Fire Aura into the sky above them, filtering the dawn sunlight until it was many times more powerful.
Lance's Dragonair had begun its Dragon Dance before the red light had faded and it fully manifested from stasis. The gorgeous blue serpent looked especially stunning as it soared through the air with regal movements, a cooing cry like bells ringing.
Neither trainer shouted a command; micro-managing Pokémon is a trademark of the weak and inexperienced. Venusaur fired off a potent Solar Beam as soon as he had strengthened the sunlight enough with Sunny Day to skip the charge time, and hid a package of Poison Aura within the ray as they had practiced all those months ago, before Saffron. Dragonair was able to dodge, already so much faster thanks to Dragon Dance, but the Solar Beam was never intended to hit: the Poison energies detonated mid-air a meter away from Dragonair's body, and the corrosive poison of Toxic was splattered on its flesh.
To Red's consternation, he saw the Aura in Dragonair's scales suddenly spike in strength. He recognized Marvel Scale when he saw it: he saw Leader Misty's Milotic in action back in Cerulean, though he was too weak to challenge it at the time. His research hadn't revealed that Dragonair could develop that ability, too! Now Dragonair had the defenses to match its increased speed and power, and there was no saying how long the Toxic would last before it could Shed its Skin. He would have had Venusaur open with Worry Seed if he knew.
Actually, I can use this, he realized, and commanded, "Keep applying Leech Seed and Toxic. Its Shed Skin will cure it."
Lance saw no need to interrupt his enemy while he's making a mistake. Dragonair used Dragon Dance twice more, Marvel Scale activating twice more to Leech Seed and a second Toxic, until Lance spoke his first command of the battle: "Outrage."
Dragonair had been in the late Fourth Realm when it was released. Buffed by three Dragon Dances and three applications of Marvel Scale, it had power befitting a Pokémon in the mid Sixth Realm as it flashed across the battlefield with speed and power rarely seen outside the Indigo Plateau. If Red closed his eyes and saw with his Aura, it looked only a Realm shy of Champion Oak's prized Dragonite's Draco Meteor.
Venusaur fainted in a single hit.
His hat's brim covered his face in shadow and he smiled. It was considered disreputable, but he waited out the full thirty seconds he was allotted to let Outrage end and for confusion to set in Dragonair's battle-crazed mind. As soon as he saw the waves of emanating Dragon-type power end, he released Espeon.
Maybe she read his mind, maybe she saw the power before her and drew her own conclusions; it didn't matter. As Dragonair blitzed in for a sudden Dragon Rush and struck the ground in its confusion, shaking the earth like a full-power Magnitude, Espeon used Trick Room.
Psychic power snapped out and thickened into walls, a cube fifty meters wide, and in that space a headache-inducing effect warped time. Dragonair moved faster – Red saw that, Lance did too – but Espeon somehow acted first.
Power Swap stole all of Dragonair's boosted physical might, then Guard Swap, learned from Blue's Umbreon, stole all of Marvel Scale's defenses. The second Dragon Rush hit, and though Espeon was knocked back a handful of meters by the raw kinetic force, she was unharmed. Hardly scuffed, even. And then, to tie a neat little bow on the unfair combo: Stored Power.
The Psychic move drew extra oomph from the stockpiled boosts, and Dragonair, already weakened from Leech Seed and Toxic, let out a shriek of pain as it writhed and fell unconscious.
Lance recalled Dragonair with a nod of acknowledgement, and Espeon took the opportunity to dispel Trick Room, now that she had the Dragon Dance speed boost.
"I usually save Dragonite for last, in battles such as these," Lance said, voice resonating through the psychic barriers on the battlefield. "Consider this a sign of respect. I trained this dragon myself."
Red's adrenaline spiked at those words. He expected every foe he faced today to belong to a Gym Trainer, or perhaps the Blackthorn clan as a whole; to face one of the sixteen Pokémon a Fifth Realm trainer has bonded with is a compliment and threat both.
Dragonite arrived with a roar and a flap of wings that summoned a small Hurricane. The most legendary species in Indigo emenated a potent Pressure that almost put Red on his knees. He still remembered his first encounter with a creature such as this, seeing Champion Oak battle Elite Four Agatha for the throne over ten years ago, and he knew he would remember this just as long.
The dragon was Fifth Realm, like his own team, but he could see with his Aura that it was faster, more powerful, better trained. Some of that was due to birthright as a Dragonite, but not all of it. The realization stung like alcohol on a wound.
"No tricks, go for the throat," Red ordered, and Espeon obeyed.
The might of a twelve-times-boosted Stored Power lashed out like a Psychic whipcrack, and it broke against some kind of barrier on Dragonite's scales, failing to so much as draw blood. An ability he doesn't know about?
Extreme Speed saw Dragonite cross the battlefield in the blink of an eye, then Espeon was crushed between the rock floor and hundreds of pounds of dragon. There was no time to use Protect. She gave a yowl of pain that made Red grit his teeth, then she fled into the earth with a reflexive Dig.
Dragonite took to the skies, already buffing with Dragon Dance.
Red could see the Aura in the air distort, slightly, and slowly untensed. He recognized the flow of Morning Sun in action; better yet, Venusaur's Sunny Day was still active, though fading.
Lance could see it, too. "It's healing. Flush it out."
Once more Dragonite corkscrewed into the earth, a ruinous Bulldoze shaking the ground. Then, it rose- and came down again. And again.
"Espeon is unable to battle," the referee called. She's linked to the Psychics maintaining the barriers, so Red didn't doubt the call.
Focused, Red attempted to peer into the earth with his Aura sight. Was Espeon able to use their contingency? He couldn't tell. If he was wrong, then he'd be making a terrible mistake, and he'd almost certainly throw the whole match.
He'd have to trust.
"Pikachu, Pick Up." A nonsense order, but his starter would understand the in-joke.
The Electric mouse, tiny and adorable and not at all common on the competitive scene, dashed into the Dug warrens with Agility-enhanced speed.
Blue and him had spent weeks exploring the nuances of Power Swap, Guard Swap, Psych Up, and Stored Power. Pokémon have Auras not at all unlike the Aura of humans, and one of the most common expressions of that power is with so-called 'boosting moves.' The mechanics of such moves are, on the surface, simple: Pokémon have large capacity for Aura but only so much throughput, and can thus only call upon a fraction of their power at once. Instead of an offensive move that is a simple, damaging expression of that power, they can shape that spent power into a kind of second Aura, or battery, and then draw upon that power and their own power simultaneously, not unlike harnessing a held item. In theory, this then doubles their throughput at the cost of needing set-up time. In practice, it's a lot easier and more convenient to make specialized boosts that enhance speed, power, or defenses then it is to make a wide-ranging boost, like the prototypical Ancient Power, the move from which all boost moves originate.
But when a Pokémon faints, where do the boosts go? Without a mind and soul to hold onto it, the package of Aura power dissolves into the ambient Aura flow. What if a Pokémon was able to stabilize this boost before letting go, by protecting it in a membrane of sturdier Aura?
Red and Blue called it Baton Pass.
"Whatever it's planning, stop it," Lance commanded, and Dragonite came crashing down for another Bulldoze.
Pikachu leapt from the tunnels with triple his already ludicrous speed, cloaked himself in the Electric cage of Volt Tackle, and struck Dragonite with Dragon Dance-boosted strength. Dragon is resistant to Electric, but Flying isn't.
Lance's beast was flying straight downwards when it was struck; Pikachu's might arrested its momentum entirely, and both mouse and dragon crashed against the eastern wall and the Psychic barriers reinforcing it. An ominous cracking sound reverberated in the air.
"Hold nothing back!" Lance shouted in a rush, voice tight.
Red felt as if he could take a step onto air and fly. To take the premier Dragon Master of Indigo so off guard by a move of his own creation- he was going to ride this high for the rest of his life.
Dragonite grabbed the mouse on its back and began to Outrage. Pikachu was smashed against the wall, the floor, gripped and torn between claws and battered by powerful Dragon-type energies, but half that Baton Pass was Marvel Scale's steel-like defense, and Pikachu held on. More, Pikachu unleashed a long, point-blank Thunder, the infamous booming sound that accompanied the move deafening all commands either he or Lance could have made.
It went on for a long time. In the end, Dragonite gave first.
Vindication! Red had rarely felt such triumph. Going to mock my starter, are you, Blue? Going to doubt our potential again, Old Man? Pikachu is going to sweep the Indigo Conference. All will know our power.
Lance recalled Dragonite, then paused, as if to say something. The moment passed.
The dragon he had seen last night appeared, blue-scaled with a jagged, red head. He still didn't know what it was called and he didn't know what it would do, but that didn't change their strategy at all. Overwhelming power was Red's forte.
Pikachu blitzed across the battlefield in a Volt Tackle, and the dragon stood to receive it, opening its maw wide in a Scary Face. Pikachu slowed to a mere blur as he smashed into it.
Thanks to the tiny opening provided by Scary Face, the dragon softened the rock at its feet with Dig or some other expression of Ground Aura, transforming a solid hit into a glancing blow. Pikachu skid across the battlefield as the dragon fell on its back with a roar of anger.
Pikachu's immense speed worked against him here; he wasn't yet accustomed to maneuvering at such insane speeds, and his agility suffered for it. In the time it took for Pikachu to differentiate up from down, turn, and break out into another run, the dragon was back on its feet and… throwing a tantrum?
It was a Fifth Realm dragon and trained by the Blackthorns, so Red assumed it was a real move, and he could see the Ground-type power rolling off it in waves, but he didn't recognize it.
Pikachu lost his footing, picked up speed again, then leapt in another Volt Tackle. This time, he was wise to the dragon's Ground-type tricks.
To Red's surprise, the unknown Pokémon made no move to dodge or deflect this second Volt Tackle. Shrieking in rage and pain, the dragon grabbed onto Pikachu in a move shockingly reminiscent of Dragonite's Outrage and continued its tantrum.
Between the Outrage earlier, the recoil from the three Volt Tackles, and now this strange Ground-type onslaught, Pikachu was being pushed precariously close to the edge. Only the stolen Marvel Scale toughness kept him in the battle. Worse, the spikes and jagged edges to the unknown Pokémon were doing surprising damage. Rough Skin, maybe?
Pikachu wasn't using Nuzzle, just maintaining his maximum electrical discharge while in the dragon's clawed grip, but his Static should have paralyzed it by now. Did the thing have Mold Breaker, too? Or was it actually Ground-type, and not just specialized in it?
Red hated battling foreign Pokémon. The Pokémon World League was the worst thing ever. If he had known, he would've ordered a Thunder Wave, then a slower strategy of using the enhanced speed from Dragon Dance and Agility to space the thing and wear it down over time with Discharge and Thunderbolts.
It was too late for that, but not too late to switch to a different track.
"Electric Terrain, then take it with you," he shouted. Pikachu was moving too quickly and chaotically earlier for Electric Terrain to be useful, but it was time to look ahead.
Pikachu was too much of a team player to mind making suicide plays. Holding nothing back, he blinded everyone in the Gym with a flash of lightning that knocked out both him and the foreign dragon while electrifying the earth in a ten-meter radius.
Both him and Lance were down three Pokémon, neither using their switch. The good news was that the terrain was in his favor. The bad news is he's pretty sure Lance has a Kingdra, a Gyarados, or both, and he's down his Electric-type.
Red stared Lance down as the thirty seconds trickled by, the only sound the crackling static of the Electric Terrain. Since both Pokémon fainted at the same time and both trainers are allowed thirty seconds before sending out their next team member, the only way for one side not to get an advantage over the other is if both wait out the timer. This fact was in Lance's favor as Pikachu's set-up wouldn't persist forever; already, it was getting weaker.
That didn't matter. He only needed it for a moment.
"Five seconds remaining!"
"Dragonair, the floor is yours."
"Snorlax! Pikachu left you a present!"
Red expected the second Dragonair; Lance wouldn't send out a Kingdra or Gyarados if he thought the Electric Terrain signaled a second Electric-type waiting in the wings. Red wanted the terrain for its second purpose, though.
Snorlax gave a pleased laugh that was so deep, the earth shook. With slow, laborious movements, the gargantuan Pokémon smacked her hands against her stomach in a Belly Drum- once, twice, thrice, the echo like the strike of a gong. The recoil allowed much more power to be channeled much quicker than usual, and Snorlax was soon carrying a boost with twice the offensive might that Espeon and Pikachu had been abusing, though it lacked any speed or defenses.
"Quickly!" Lance shouted, and Dragonair began using what was obviously the Blackthorn clan's favorite move, Outrage. No time was wasted on Dragon Dance or a Thunder Wave or any other kind of set-up; Lance knew the danger he was in.
To its credit, the Fifth Realm dragon was more powerful than the Dragonair he had fought at the beginning of the battle. It must be close to evolution. It didn't make a difference. Red had trained Snorlax on defense above and beyond anything else. Its superior speed let it get in one Outrage strike, then two-
Then Snorlax fell asleep.
Now, Red knows the Electric Terrain plus Rest combo isn't supposed to work. If the Pokémon is prevented from falling asleep, such as from Worry Seed giving it Insomnia or from electrified current, the powerful restorative effect of Rest won't activate.
Snorlax is simply so gargantuan that she can be sitting down, fall asleep, land flat on her face, and lay spread eagled on the Electric Terrain. Then she wakes up, fully healed.
Red let out a childish giggle.
"Sap it," Lance ordered, and a confused Dragonair began firing Thunder Waves every which way. Snorlax's immense size meant it was hit entirely by happenstance.
"Amnesia, then let loose."
Snorlax took a few seconds to create the elemental defense boost, losing the control required due to the current in her body. It was the right call, but it gave Dragonair enough time to snap out of her confusion and use Agility.
Red had honestly expected yet another Dragon Dance. For a battle of attrition, however, Agility made more sense.
Snorlax was well-rested, boasting incredible power, and was sturdy enough to shake off most hits. However, she was painfully, agonizingly slow, and Dragonair could fly.
This next phase of the battle took longer than the entire rest of the battle preceding it. Snorlax stomped around with a playful menace, every swipe a Hammer Arm, every step a Body Slam, every pratfall a Giga Impact, and if Dragonair was struck once that'd be it, one-hit knockout.
Dragonair didn't get hit.
Fire Spin and strafing runs of Dragonbreath slowly whittled away at Snorlax's health, and when she got low, Yawned, popped her Chesto Berry in her mouth, and prepared to Rest, Lance called for a variant Safeguard. Neither Snorlax nor Dragonair fell asleep, and the battle of attrition wore on.
Dragonair exhausted itself of energy before its Fire and Dragon-type attacks exhausted Snorlax of health. It went for a strafing run, was a hair too slow, and Snorlax fell on top of it in a Giga Impact that boomed like thunder.
It took Lance a few seconds to recall Dragonair from underneath her bulk, but when he did, he immediately sent out a Kingdra. From the glow on the referee's face, the blue, man-sized seahorse Pokémon was hers.
Kingdra had the first move as Snorlax was still recovering from Giga Impact. Cloud cover shrouded the battlefield in darkness, grey and heavy with rain that began to fall in thick sheets. Kingdra began to move and harness its power much more quickly – Swift Swim? – and used a bizarre utility move that Red had, again, never seen before. The Aura flow was Normal-dominant and seemed almost like Focus Energy, but much more potent. The power concentrated in its cannon-like mouth.
Snorlax was a clever girl. She knew that move, whatever it was, spelled her doom. She compressed the Belly Drum boost into a sphere of raw power in her mouth, then used Spit Up.
Kingdra's Hydro Pump was far more impressive than anything he'd seen from Blastoise, empowered as it was by that strange move, and Snorlax was knocked cold. So focused was it, though, that it took Snorlax's final surprise right to its center mass.
We have the tempo. He sent out Blastoise immediately, and commanded her own Hydro Pump.
Red had just Charizard left, and Lance had what was almost assuredly a Gyarados. That was a bad matchup for him, but if he sent Charizard out in this rain, he was doomed. With luck, Blastoise's Rain Dish would see her with enough strength left to make the difference in that final fight.
Blastoise must have thought herself in the perfect scenario. Released into a heavy rainstorm, her target flung into a wall and off-balance, and the move she had just learned was the only one in her repertoire that wouldn't be resisted or have a nasty side effect. An Ice Beam was launched as if from a cannon, freezing every rain drop in its path.
Icicles from the Beam's path broke against the floor in a shattering sound drowned out only by Kingdra's cry of pain. The battle was Blastoise's.
Then, a flash of light, and a familiar, echoing boom: Thunder. Kingdra can't learn that move!
Unerringly accurate in the rain, Blastoise writhed in pain. Her only saving grace was her Shell Armor, transforming a one-hit knockout into merely a crippling blow and- yes, paralysis too.
"I'm using my recall," Lance announced, and out came the Gyarados. "Hurricane."
Impossibly, this Gyarados wasn't blue; its scales were a brilliant red like the dawn. Red didn't believe that the Blackthorn clan would have a mutant Gyarados and not have it be raised by the Dragon Master Lance himself. How lucky was he, to face two of Lance's own Pokémon, even if neither were yet past the Fifth Realm?
As the Hurricane buffeted the heavy downpour, its accuracy raised in much the same way as Thunder had been, Red wondered how he could turn this all around.
He had no ideas.
He had rarely felt so alive.
Back on her feet due to her Rain Dish, in her preferred weather, and desperate enough to grasp onto the hysterical strength of Torrent, Blastoise launched the fastest, most powerful Hydro Pump he had ever seen from her. It wounded the red Gyarados but did nothing to stave off the Hurricane. And-
Red saw Gyarados siphon power from Blastoise as she fell unconscious. Moxie. He should have used his recall; the resisted damage of even an empowered Hydro Pump isn't worth giving a Gyarados a power boost.
He tossed Charizard's Pokéball in the air and caught it, once, then twice, three times. He mulled over strategies in his head. Nothing clever came to mind.
Oh, well.
"Charizard! Give it all you've got."
His own dragon roared with all the fury and pride of a tyrant who found his reign contested by another. The Gyarados roared back. Charizard dispelled the rain with a Sunny Day, then Gyarados began its own Rain Dance, the two fighting over control of the skies. The result was something bizarre: patches of black cloud belching rain while spears of hot sunlight slipped between, creating steam in the air.
Red believed that a trainer's purpose was to bring out a Pokémon's inner potential. This meant training a Pokémon how they wanted to be trained. He wanted Charizard to have at least moderately sturdy defenses, but all Charizard cared for was power, speed, and flame, and so that is what he trained.
Charizard burned with a Flare Blitz, his unique Reckless ability supercharging the move. Gyarados flew to meet him, the Waterfall echo trailing behind it. When they clashed in the air, Charizard's flames seared Gyarados' serpentine scales and his claws gouged trenches in its flesh. The water trail hit a moment later. At those speeds, the water was as solid as earth, and where it found fire it created steam that burned them both.
Charizard was a Fire-type, though; he could handle a burn. Gyarados couldn't.
A crackle of lightning, and Charizard's Thunder Punch was countered by a wicked Crunch. Gyarados Flailed wildly, its length lashing against Charizard's wings in an Aqua Tail, and Charizard tore it apart, lightning in one clawed hand and Dragon-type energy in the other.
It was short, and brutal, and inelegant. Red was entranced.
Both Pokémon fell to the floor, unconscious before they hit the ground.
"Both Pokémon are unable to battle! Master Lance is the victor!"
As both Pokémon were recalled, support Pokémon dealt with the weather and cleared the battlefield, and Lance walked over to shake his hand, Red found he didn't mind losing, if it was in a battle like that.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Aha, that was Red's 6th. Makes sense, what even are his likely other options? Kingler or Muk? Maybe Butterfree or Pidgeot if this Red isn't in the habit of releasing Pokemon.
Alas, poor Red, while you had shenanigans, you couldn't break limits as hard as Lance.
They really didn't hold back much, that must be an incredibly hard badge to get. (Are there even badges? Do they mean something different here?)
Fun fight to read. Now the real question is what Red was setting up for afterwards?
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
Red's team is a match to what he has in the highest level battle of Gold/Silver, at the peak of Mt Silver. In the G/S remakes, he replaces Espeon with Lapras- that Lapras is mentioned next chapter, actually.
I'll post the last snippet tomorrow morning, but it (hopefully) satisfactorily answers all the questions i.e. why he's in/around Blackthorn at all. I tried to make these four chapters self-contained, for the most part, as an unofficial Arc 0 or Prologue for a story with Little Girl as the protagonist, which I have a few k written for, but it's... harder to write, than the Red chapters. I probably won't post any Arc 1 things unless I get a little deeper in.
(Originally, these chapters were from Little Girl's perspective. Needless to say, I struggled through them for months and eventually gave up and switched POV. Red has more agency here, for one, and opening up pre-Fantasia Massacre, during, or after... well, the writing was low quality.
On the flipside, I've been steadily accruing worldbuilding progress all those months, so that's nice. I can tell you how Unova founded the Pokemon World League and how it mirrors America's influence on Japan during their isolationist period (and that's referenced in a single line in chapter two, where Red fantasizes on the mountain's peak about burning Unovan ships), and how that lead to Lance having both a Johtonian and Unovan given name, but couldn't write coherent prose more than 500 words long until the POV switch, but it is what it is.)
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Ooooooooooh.
Well, if nothing else, Red and Lance dueling helped remind Little Girl just how big a mountain (ha) she has to climb.
Pokemon/Xianxia - The Pride Before 0-4
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
Emotional conversation scenes have always been hit-or-miss, for me. Has it been built up enough? Are the feelings portrayed genuine, and portrayed genuinely? It's hard for me, as the author, to have an unbiased perspective of it.
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The Pride Before
Dragon's Den
Pokemon/Xianxia
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"I don't want it," Red whined.
"No one ever beats the Rising Gym," Little Girl said in a tone like she was explaining something very simple to a particularly stupid child. It was cute. "We intentionally raise the difficulty. They saw you had mid-to-early Fifth Realm Pokémon, so they one-upped you with mid-to-late Fifth Realm Pokémon. That you performed so well is a mark in your favor. If actually winning was a requirement for the Rising Badge, no Johtonian would ever make it to the Indigo Conference- at least, not without dipping into Kanto."
Red gave her a pitifully hopeful look. "You think I did well? Really?"
"Ah… yes?" She seemed uncertain.
"Waaah!" Red cried out melodramatically, falling to his knees next to her and grabbing onto her hand. She reared back in surprise. "My little sister is so nice to me! Whatever did I do to deserve this?!"
"Cut it out, you weirdo," she hissed, drawing her hand back.
Thirty feet away and one ridge up, the Blackthorn trainer shook his head, smiled, and continued on his walk.
Red stood back up, dusting off his pants with a casual air like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Little Girl gave him wary looks.
"Lance offered me a reward, in acknowledgement of my abilities," he lied. "I'm to visit Dragon's Den. Said that meditating on that Dragon Nexus with Charizard would help me break through into the Fourth Realm, and Charizard into the Sixth. He accepted."
"That's nice," Little Girl said. She had the good sense not to look around shiftily. A Dark Aura thing, natural talent, or a relic of her Fantasia education? He wasn't sure.
"We can steal the Deino egg then," Red said with none of her subtlety.
She hissed at him again. "Keep it down! Do you want us to get caught?"
"A little bit," he admitted, and she glowered. So cute! "Relax," he told her, drawing it out in that patronizing way he knew she hated. "Espeon is keeping watch. She always is, the creep."
"Don't say such mean things about your Pokémon," Little Girl said disapprovingly, but did indeed relax.
"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, Espeon is key. I'll bring you along because 'I can't leave her anywhere without her making a mess of the place, you know how it is,' the Blackthorn guide laughs, I laugh, Espeon hypnotizes everyone and you sneak off into Dragon's Den. You already know the layout of the place, so finding wherever they keep the eggs should be a cinch. Once you're back, I'll act like I've had some huge breakthrough with Charizard, and we'll leave in a right hurry. Check out?"
"That… should work," she said slowly, like she doesn't want to believe it but can't deny it, either. "All our anti-theft protections are in the torii gate and in the mountain's earth. We don't have much in the way of Psychic or Ghost-type guards, though we have some, and it was we Fantasia that was historically tasked with protecting it. The reason no one ever steals from the vaults or the nursery is because no one can get in or out without a pass- that, and we have a rather fearsome reputation, I suppose." That was an understatement. "When's our pass for?"
"Right now," Red admitted.
"What!"
"The best time to meditate and break through is after a good battle, when your muscles are sore and your Aura depleted," Red informed her. "It's like putting air in a balloon. It's easier to put air in an empty balloon then a full one. If Charizard and me want to acclimate to a greater level of Dragon-type power, we can't do it when our power stores are full."
"I know how breakthroughs work, I've done it before," she said disparagingly, but she was thinking. Eventually, she nodded. "Okay. You're kind of weird, but I'll trust you. I'm super dead if I get caught, so my life's in your hands, okay? I'll be in your debt forever if this works."
"I know how you can pay off that debt," Red said mysteriously, and when she blanched, his eyes widened and he waved his hands in a panic. "I meant you can become my student! I'll be your mentor! My rival Blue showed off his student last time we met and I was super jealous. He said he's a better mentor than I could ever be, and I took that personally. I want to wipe that smug smile off his stupid face. If I can teach a student that can defeat Blue's, I'll be able to hold that against him for the rest of our lives. Okay? I didn't mean anything bad!"
Slowly, she uncoiled, looking away before hesitantly meeting his eyes. He couldn't decipher the thoughts behind her cool, Ice trainer façade.
The walk to Dragon's Den was slow and awkward.
Eventually, she spoke. "Fine. I believe you. I don't know why you want a student who lost her starter and cultivation, but I'll do my best."
The joy he felt at hearing those words was entirely unlike the joy he felt in the Rising Gym, but he cherished it just as much. He'd try to be a little more straightforward with her. Not quite upright – he was still who he was, and he made no apologies for that – but like a young Pokémon, he needed to cultivate her heart and mind as much as her power.
That was a good way of looking at it, actually. He had taught all his Pokémon not just to improve their power and might, but a variety of strategies and when to use which ones, how to keep their cool in a heated battle, and the right attitude to keep morale up when faced with failure. As entertaining as messing with her was, he needed to build up her confidence, establish a bond of trust, all that jazz. He just… hasn't had to do that, in a while.
He'll work on it.
They arrived at Dragon's Den before long. There was no bridge across the small lake to the strip of land – presumably, Blackthorns landed on it on dragonback – and after looking, he saw no sign of their guard.
Charizard didn't usually consent to short flights like this, but he was eager for the chance to channel a Dragon Nexus, and he was always much more mellow after a good brawl, anyway. He let him out in a flash of red.
The fire dragon raised both arms towards the sky in a triumphant pose, flexing and stretching and breathing small plumes of smoke. He looked satisfied, content. The Blackthorn's Chansey had healed him up, so he showed few physical marks of the battle – a few scratches here, the Crunch mark on his left shoulder there – but Red could feel his Aura exhaustion.
He had the right to be happy, Red supposed. Gyarados is a tough matchup. And a Gyarados like that? Even though they lost in the end, none of his team have anything to be ashamed of. They would have won if Red had intelligently used his switch or not outmaneuvered himself into having to use a Water and Fire/Flying-type against a Kingdra and Gyarados. If he had used Blastoise and Charizard earlier, saved Pikachu for later, they could've won. Of course, he had to use Pikachu because none of his other Pokémon were small enough to pick up the Baton Pass in the Dug tunnels-
"You were amazing out there," Little Girl said with stars in her eyes, looking up at a Charizard that looked increasingly smug. "I've never seen a Charizard contest a Rain Dance while using a complicated move like Flare Blitz to its full potential. And, when you used both Dragon Claw and Thunder Punch- that Gyarados had as much Dragon in it as it did Flying, so it was the right call to make, and neither element flickered at all, despite how difficult it is to channel opposing elements like that-"
"Charizard is wonderfully trained," Red humble-bragged, not even slightly jealous of all the praise going to a prick like Charizard. Honest. "And we're going to break through to the next Realm together as soon as we get across that lake."
A rumbling laugh. Charizard knelt to allow Little Girl onto his back, which was uncharacteristically sweet of him, then he grabbed Red between his claws, which wasn't. Seconds later, they were across.
Red felt the pressure as he passed the torii gate: Ghost, mostly, with a decent amount of Psychic. Either the Dark is in the earth, was too subtle for him to notice – not impossible – or Dragon's Den is vulnerable to Dark, now that the Fantasia are all gone. He was no good at advanced sensory stuff like this.
Their guide was kneeling just beyond the first turn, in near-complete blackness. Dressed in the blue and red traditional garb of the Blackthorn clan, what might have been a kimono before centuries of minor adjustments and warfare made it almost into a tracksuit, the only thing unusual about her was that she's the first Blackthorn he's seen with only a Second Realm soul. It was primary Water, too, which made him wonder if she was from a branch clan like Little Girl. It was hard to tell without any lights save Charizard's burning tail.
"Please follow me, honored guests," she said in a pretty contralto, then rose.
Part of Dragon's Den's defense must come from its labyrinthine structure, because Red was lost in minutes. The tunnels all led deeper into the mountain, but there were numerous forks, twists, and turns, and not a single torch or electric light to be seen. Did they all navigate based on Aura sense? Red could do that in Mt Moon, but they were so close to the Dragon Nexus that all sense of detail in the Rock and Ground was overshadowed. Would he be able to look past that burning light after enough years spent in close proximity to it? How much would it change him, if he could?
There was a power in so completely giving yourself over to a single Type. Red couldn't deny that, not when twenty of the twenty-one strongest trainers in Indigo were Type Masters. He couldn't do it, though. He likes being Red, and doesn't know who'd he be if he specialized in Electric like he so easily could have. It would have made him more impulsive, obsessive, and cruel, would have made him not-Red, and the thought of his cultivation changing who he was on that fundamental level horrified him. It's why he had such a Type-diverse team, why he makes sure to cultivate even Types he doesn't have a bond with like Dragon and Ice, and why he could never understand how casually other trainers devote themselves to a single Type.
Was their guide always so zen and chill, or did she have more passion before creating for herself a soul of Water? If Little Girl still had her Dragon soul, earlier, when she told him to cut it out and called him a weirdo, would there have been real anger? He can get a rise out of her pretty easily, but her scowls and biting words lack any heat; they seem performative, even, like a habit and not an actual emotional response. Like it was her emotional response, before Lance broke her cultivation, and she started anew with Ice.
He made a mental note to make sure she cultivated more than just Ice and Dark. For her own sake. If he ever teased her and she just looked at him blankly, like Lyra Whitegrave does, he's breaking off his mentorship immediately.
With all that being said, it's time to add a twelfth Type to his hybrid soul. The Dragon Nexus awaits, hot like the core of the earth.
"The Nexus lies beyond this door, honored guests," their guide said in a hushed, reverent voice. "Neither I nor the honored trainer's sister are permitted entry. We shall wait for you here."
'Here' being yet another black stone hallway, looking clawed out of the earth rather than cut or carved, entirely lacking in decoration, light, or heat save the Dragon Nexus' ephemeral heat. He gave his 'sister' a dubious look.
"I'll be alright," Little Girl said, looking sick. "Miss Whisperain will look after me."
Their guide – presumably of the Whisperain branch clan – blinked in surprise, and Red thought, Now!
Espeon appeared in a flash of red light, and their guide fell to the floor like a doll, fast asleep. Espeon's red gem glinted ominously, and Whisperain's body contorted unnaturally until she was seated in a stock-standard seiza, back against the wall, appearing for all the world like she was in meditation.
"I thought you were going to modify her memory," Little Girl said, eyes on their guide.
"Never taught Espeon the skill. That kind of thing isn't really my style." The extent of his subterfuge is delaying an alarm being raised for a few hours. Standard Hypnosis is enough for that. "Besides. Memory modification is against the Indigo Legal Code. Tsk, tsk, Little Girl."
"Like you care about the law," she muttered, but her gaze moved back up to him. "I can reach the nursery from here in fifteen minutes. Should be back in forty at the most, if Espeon and I need to wait out any passersby. Miss Whisperain took us on a back path away from most traffic, so that works in our favor."
"I'll see you then," Red said, a promise. Little Girl nodded and ran.
Red took a deep breath, fortifying himself, then pushed open the door.
The Nexus chamber was a grand thing, a vertical shaft three hundred meters tall with tiered steps like an upside-down pyramid. It was hot like a sauna and nearly as humid, a tension in the air like a dragon looking over his shoulder and thick enough to cut, but he knew it was all in his mind. With every step further down, the Dragon Aura grew deeper, more potent, and he felt his pulse race. He was afraid.
Afraid of the chamber. Afraid of the Nexus. Afraid of who awaited him down there, too, and their own Aura, just as fierce and powerful. To inspire fear in others: this is the nature of the Dragon type.
Three quarters of the way down, he could go no further. He fell to a knee then onto his ass, pushed his back up against the step, and, for a minute, just… breathed.
"You never get used to it," Lance said, seated next to him cross-legged. At the deepest point, in the heart of the Nexus, a Dragonite in the Seventh Realm stood, wing beats kicking up a lazy wind.
"I'm sure Charizard… is appreciating it," Red said pointedly.
Lance was quiet for a long moment. Eventually, he said, "It was never my intention to cause Blake such pain. I did what little I could to shelter her from it. It wasn't enough."
"I'm going to be honest, Lance," Red said, voice carefully neutral. "I don't think I'm the right person to be telling this to."
"Yeah. Me neither."
They were quiet for a moment. Charizard was cultivating the Dragon Nexus with vigor, and Red should be, too, but he was too distracted. Less than twenty-four hours since he met the kid and already it's getting in the way of his advancement; if Blue were here, he would laugh himself sick. By all rights, as soon as Lance told him that he's had a Ghost tag the girl since the Fantasia Massacre, and he wants Red to step in as her mentor, he should have cut and ran.
The path to the peak of human potential is a lonely one. You could get there with the help of others, like Lance has, but it came at a cost: the kind of cost that made you watch helplessly as a kid you loved like a sister lost her family and had to scrounge for scraps in a place like Icy Path. Red much prefered the path that he, and Blue, and the Old Man took, where you relied on no one and nothing but yourself, and no one suffered the punishment of failure or earned the rewards of success but you.
He empathized with Lance. He really did. He didn't like empathizing with people, but he's been where Lance is: eager to make a change, powerful where it doesn't matter and weak where it does. And it's entirely because he understands so well that he knows the Dragon Master is betting on the wrong Rapidash.
"I was born to take over the Blackthorn clan, but I had always been exceptional, and I knew I could do so much more," Lance began, and Red sat and listened to the trainer two Realms above him.
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I was ambitious. Arrogant. These traits only made me better suited to the Dragon-type. I wanted to change things; I saw how Blackthorn City and our clan and our nation was ran, and I thought, 'I could do better;' then I thought, 'I will do better.'
My little sister, Claire, was born to helm the Rising Gym. If I were to be Champion of Indigo, though, then she would need to step up and lead the clan in my place. I couldn't do both, after all, not without dropping the ball on one. That left a vacancy in the Gym.
Blake was just Claire's attendant back then. The Fantasia clan were the only Dark specialists under the auspices of the Blackthorn, so children from that clan were raised to be servants of mine; they would protect against thieves, assassins, and spies, manage the wardings around Dragon's Den, and occasionally perform espionage. I never came to trust mine, but Claire trusted Blake. It had been her idea, in the beginning; what would be a better sign of change in Blackthorn then putting a branch clan scion in charge of the Rising Gym?
There was going to be pushback. If we were to pull this off, then Blake's cultivation had to be peerless, her team beyond reproach, and there could be no better aspirant to the position. The Fantasias didn't have the resources to invest in her as we needed, so I began spending more and more time with them. Before long, I began to see Blake as my own sister, as well.
The three of us were going to change the future, change Blackthorn. Change Indigo. I still don't know where it all went wrong.
… Blake's mother is an executive in Team Rocket. Her name is Ariana.
I see you've heard of her. She leads the Johto chapter; ironically, we've been chasing her for years.
She was the leader of the Fantasia clan's external affairs, in charge of protecting Dragon's Den from infiltration among other duties. She had been my mother's personal attendant, in their youth. It was a security breach the likes of which Blackthorn hasn't experienced in six hundred years, when we were almost destroyed by the Whitegraves. It made my mother – the Clan Head – and the Council of Elders… panic.
We mobilized within the hour. It was still enough time for the Fantasia malefactors to realize their treachery was discovered and scatter. Ariana wasn't at the compound when we arrived, and neither was half the clan. I don't know if Blake and her father being left behind was intentional or a mistake, don't know how much her father knew or, really, how much Blake knew. I want to say she was entirely ignorant, told my mother as much when she questioned me, but… in my heart of hearts, I doubted.
The others knew how close I was to Blake, and as heir, when I told them I would go after her myself, they let me. I didn't know what I would do or say as I flew after her on Dragonite. I questioned her, pleaded with her, told her I would believe whatever she had to say, and… when she told me that she knew nothing, I didn't believe her. But I couldn't kill her. Didn't have it in me.
I could sense Elder Anders approach on dragonback. I knew my clan would expect me to return with Blake's Dragonair and Deino egg, so I took those. Anders was close enough to sense her Aura, so if she was to escape alive, she… couldn't have that, either. I told her to run, then had my Drakloak – that's a half-Ghost Dragon, they're foreign – follow her, keep her safe, without her knowing. Had Dragonite blast the earth with Dragonbreath.
When Anders arrived, I told him that I gave her a Blackthorn funeral: cremation by dragonfire. He said she didn't deserve it, but I had her starter and egg, and he couldn't sense her Aura, so it all checked out and he believed me. I was still kept under a close watch all of this past month. I contented myself with the knowledge that Blake got out alive and Drakloak was keeping her safe. Told myself I didn't care if she regrouped with her mother and used what I taught her to live a life of terrorism and parasitic cultivation, so long as she was living at all.
Imagine my surprise when he returned to me yesterday, reporting a mysterious, red-eyed trainer had come across her in Icy Path, and they were plotting to steal back that egg.
I don't consider myself to be especially intelligent. I know where my strengths lie, and they aren't in schemes, or reading people, or predicting fallout. That's always been Blake's thing. Still, I know that if Blake spent this past month in Icy Path, then she couldn't have been a Rocket conspirator. That I doubted her… I'm ashamed of myself. I failed as her brother.
I intend for you to do better.
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"What's in it for me?" Red asked, because it has always been easier to play the role of greedy, self-interested trainer than admit to… anything, really. "You're asking for me to take on a lot of risk for negative gain."
"I gave your description to my secretary at dusk, and by dawn, she gave me a ten-page dossier," Lance said, and the words were a threat even if the tone wasn't. "The trainer who stormed the Rocket Base hidden under the Celadon Game Corner doesn't need an excuse to forge the daughter of an Executive into an anti-Rocket weapon."
Red acknowledged the point. He had also offered to help Blake steal a dragon egg from the Blackthorn clan and he sure as fuck wasn't getting anything out of that. "You'd be okay with that? Letting your precious sister be used like that?"
"I want her to be happy, but I know a fool's quest when I see one. She won't let herself be happy until she feels she's been properly avenged."
That made sense.
"I'm also lacking in options," Lance admitted, and that made more. "All my contacts and resources are Blackthorn, and I can't trust them with this. You were taught Pokémon lore at the knee of Champion Oak, and I witnessed your prowess in battle myself. I can trust in your strength if nothing else."
"Fine, fine, I'll do it," Red said. It had taken months of tireless effort to make Executive Archer hate him and dedicate a small Rocket team to harrassing and attempting to murder him, and though this whole adventure hadn't earned him the enmity of Lance like he hoped it would, eventually getting on Executive Ariana's shitlist makes for a decent consolation prize.
He had also meant what he said to Blake earlier, about showing up Blue and his student. Taking her on in this way may have been Lance's idea, spoken with a toothy grin during the most terrifying handshake of his life, but that made him no less genuine in meaning it.
"I'm still asking for compensation, though," Red added. "Just think of it this way: anything you give to me, you indirectly give to Blake."
Lance gave him a considering look. "It's… uncommon, but not unheard of, for the Blackthorn clan to sponsor trainers. Doing so for a Kantonian would be new, but I'm considered something of a maverick within the clan."
Red's eyes gleamed with greed.
Lance gave a small laugh and stood. "I'll leave you to your cultivation then. It's best I'm gone before Blake returns. And… thank you, Red. We'll be meeting again."
"That we will. If you're going to be Champion, I'll be coming for your throne."
"I'm looking forward to it," the Dragon Master said with an earnest smile.
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Breaking through to the Fourth Realm was easier than he thought it would be.
Charizard roared beside him, breathing dragonfire upwards, blue and sparking. As the trainer bond was meant to be, Charizard broke through the Sixth at the same time.
"Yes," he said through grit teeth, sweet triumph in his veins. "Yes! Finally."
His Aura expanded within his soul- or, rather, decompressed, from where the past few months of cultivation had seen it become tighter and denser. He could now easily release his entire team and maintain their bonds with room to spare for two more Charizards, if he so wished.
He held out a hand and cupped within it, flickered a small dragonflame. As he gazed into the fire, he could maybe, kind of, sort of understand why someone could pursue this strength to the exclusion of all else.
He shook it out, then set his finger to crackling with electric current. The infusion of Dragon-type power hadn't shifted his Aura out of alignment any, which was good.
The Old Man had all seventeen Types balanced in his soul. A worthless achievement, most people would say, but then most people weren't Champion of Indigo.
Red spent the remaining time before Blake's return in a calmer, more quiet meditation. When the tentative knock came at the door, the draconic euphoria had faded and he was left feeling… still pretty good, naturally, but he wasn't going to weird her out more than he usually does.
He looked down the steps of the Nexus chamber and wondered how much deeper he could go, now. Hesitantly, he turned and walked up instead.
Beyond the door stood Blake, looking frazzled with a black-specked egg in her arms, their Whisperain clan guide nowhere to be seen.
"Congratulations on the advancement," Blake said politely, then struggled to say anything else. Eventually, "I would like to leave, now."
Red nodded understandingly and followed her out. Blake's steps were no less sure than Whisperain's had been on the way down, but her demeanor radiated anxiety and uncertainty. Red didn't like it.
He didn't know what to do about it, though. He was never good at this kind of thing, not like Green was. He was good at cultivating, and training, and memorizing obscure Pokémon lore, not at offering comfort to traumatized teen girls. What would Green do, if she were here?
… Give her a hug, and offer to listen without judgment, then physically assault everyone who had hurt her.
Red could do one and a half of those things.
"Did something happen in the nursery?" he asked, voice inquiring but not, like, too curious.
Blake twitched. "Nothing. I handled it."
Red could still assault Ariana, at least. It was bound to happen eventually.
The trek to the surface passed in silence. The route was just as incomprehensible as it had been before, and Red still didn't know if the lack of human presence was Lance's influence or just the nature of Dragon's Den. How deep did it go, really? Blake hadn't described it except in the barest of terms. Her natural shiftiness, or lingering loyalty to Blackthorn?
Did she know her mother was a Rocket Executive?
"Did you know your mother is a Rocket Executive?"
Blake tripped and fell. She shot him a look of shock and disbelief. So, no, she didn't- unless she was surprised that he knew, not at the information itself.
"Lance told me everything," Red continued, voice pitched in a pleasant cadence. He kept walking. "He said he knew who you were, as he shook my hand, and that he was on your side and to come to Dragon's Den. Turns out he had a Ghost tailing you, so he knew all along. Surprise!"
"Why…" She hesitated, shook her head, then glared at him with a hot, Dragon-like fury. "Why are you telling me this? So you can gloat? Take my Pokémon again, leave me here, fuck off to the conference and your own hopes and dreams?"
"It would have been wrong to keep you in the dark," he said honestly. He didn't hold her rage against her; relished seeing it, even. "I'm a simple soul, Blake. I intend to reach the peak of human potential, raise a team of Seventh Realm monsters, and become Indigo Champion. No more, no less. I seek out enemies and rivalries because I believe it is through challenge and adversity that we surpass our limits. I avoid allies and friends because I was raised to think that other people could only ever hold me back.
"A few weeks ago, my oldest rival and I… no, my first friend and I, involved ourselves in a plot to destroy Team Rocket's Kanto chapter. Long story short, we publicly exposed the identity of Team Rocket's leader, Giovanni. Blue ended up taking on his son as a student. Giovanni is also the leader of the Viridian Gym, which is why I had to detour into Johto for my eighth badge.
"Near the end, I battled Giovanni one-on-one. I performed well. Damn well. Giovanni crushed me like a bug beneath his heel, and if Blue hadn't been there, despite me attempting to push him away to keep all the glory and challenge for myself, I'd be dead.
"I'm not going to say it made me reflect on my ways and decide to change. It'd be a lie. I'm… open, though, to the idea that my aversion to other people is born of my own fear, and not a logical certitude that I'd be better off alone. I refuse to be a coward. Blue challenged me to find and raise my own student, and I took him up on it. I intend for you to be that student."
Blake mulled it over. After several minutes of walking, she said, "So, ultimately, this is all about you and not about me at all."
Red laughed. "Yep. Green always said I knew how to make everything be about me."
"She sounds wise." Blake looked at him seriously, and nodded. "You're a Fourth Realm generalist with a Fifth Realm team and eight badges. You don't have any clan ties, you don't seem to have any responsibilities or obligations at all, and you're selfishly motivated to see me succeed as both a cultivator and a trainer. You're also not entirely unbearable in personality. This is probably as good as it gets, for me, so I accept. I'll do you proud, if only because I intend to do myself proud and our goals align."
"Awh, you do like me," Red cooed. He could see beyond her prickly clan-heiress attitude to the gooey feelings within! She looked up to him! She thought he was cool! "First rule of being Red's student: you have to call me big brother."
"I refuse."
"Agree to calling me your big brother and I'll give you a Lapras."
"I… I accept," she said, like the words physically pained her.
Success! "Second rule of being Red's student: you need a color name. How about Black?"
"Like Blackthorn? No."
"So you're willing to accept a color name," Red said, seizing the moment. "Yellow."
Her face scrunched up in distaste. "That's far too bright a color. I'll tolerate Gold."
"But- no, wait, this is perfect," Red realized. Blue's protégé's name was Silver. How better to tell Blue that his student was better than by naming her after the prettier, more precious metal?
Gold gave him a side-eye. "I agree, but why are you so pleased?"
"Hmm. That's a secret."
"You just said it'd be wrong to keep me in the dark-"
They didn't stop bickering once as they left Dragon's Den and Blackthorn behind.
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The Pride Before
Dragon's Den
Pokemon/Xianxia
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"I don't want it," Red whined.
"No one ever beats the Rising Gym," Little Girl said in a tone like she was explaining something very simple to a particularly stupid child. It was cute. "We intentionally raise the difficulty. They saw you had mid-to-early Fifth Realm Pokémon, so they one-upped you with mid-to-late Fifth Realm Pokémon. That you performed so well is a mark in your favor. If actually winning was a requirement for the Rising Badge, no Johtonian would ever make it to the Indigo Conference- at least, not without dipping into Kanto."
Red gave her a pitifully hopeful look. "You think I did well? Really?"
"Ah… yes?" She seemed uncertain.
"Waaah!" Red cried out melodramatically, falling to his knees next to her and grabbing onto her hand. She reared back in surprise. "My little sister is so nice to me! Whatever did I do to deserve this?!"
"Cut it out, you weirdo," she hissed, drawing her hand back.
Thirty feet away and one ridge up, the Blackthorn trainer shook his head, smiled, and continued on his walk.
Red stood back up, dusting off his pants with a casual air like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Little Girl gave him wary looks.
"Lance offered me a reward, in acknowledgement of my abilities," he lied. "I'm to visit Dragon's Den. Said that meditating on that Dragon Nexus with Charizard would help me break through into the Fourth Realm, and Charizard into the Sixth. He accepted."
"That's nice," Little Girl said. She had the good sense not to look around shiftily. A Dark Aura thing, natural talent, or a relic of her Fantasia education? He wasn't sure.
"We can steal the Deino egg then," Red said with none of her subtlety.
She hissed at him again. "Keep it down! Do you want us to get caught?"
"A little bit," he admitted, and she glowered. So cute! "Relax," he told her, drawing it out in that patronizing way he knew she hated. "Espeon is keeping watch. She always is, the creep."
"Don't say such mean things about your Pokémon," Little Girl said disapprovingly, but did indeed relax.
"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, Espeon is key. I'll bring you along because 'I can't leave her anywhere without her making a mess of the place, you know how it is,' the Blackthorn guide laughs, I laugh, Espeon hypnotizes everyone and you sneak off into Dragon's Den. You already know the layout of the place, so finding wherever they keep the eggs should be a cinch. Once you're back, I'll act like I've had some huge breakthrough with Charizard, and we'll leave in a right hurry. Check out?"
"That… should work," she said slowly, like she doesn't want to believe it but can't deny it, either. "All our anti-theft protections are in the torii gate and in the mountain's earth. We don't have much in the way of Psychic or Ghost-type guards, though we have some, and it was we Fantasia that was historically tasked with protecting it. The reason no one ever steals from the vaults or the nursery is because no one can get in or out without a pass- that, and we have a rather fearsome reputation, I suppose." That was an understatement. "When's our pass for?"
"Right now," Red admitted.
"What!"
"The best time to meditate and break through is after a good battle, when your muscles are sore and your Aura depleted," Red informed her. "It's like putting air in a balloon. It's easier to put air in an empty balloon then a full one. If Charizard and me want to acclimate to a greater level of Dragon-type power, we can't do it when our power stores are full."
"I know how breakthroughs work, I've done it before," she said disparagingly, but she was thinking. Eventually, she nodded. "Okay. You're kind of weird, but I'll trust you. I'm super dead if I get caught, so my life's in your hands, okay? I'll be in your debt forever if this works."
"I know how you can pay off that debt," Red said mysteriously, and when she blanched, his eyes widened and he waved his hands in a panic. "I meant you can become my student! I'll be your mentor! My rival Blue showed off his student last time we met and I was super jealous. He said he's a better mentor than I could ever be, and I took that personally. I want to wipe that smug smile off his stupid face. If I can teach a student that can defeat Blue's, I'll be able to hold that against him for the rest of our lives. Okay? I didn't mean anything bad!"
Slowly, she uncoiled, looking away before hesitantly meeting his eyes. He couldn't decipher the thoughts behind her cool, Ice trainer façade.
The walk to Dragon's Den was slow and awkward.
Eventually, she spoke. "Fine. I believe you. I don't know why you want a student who lost her starter and cultivation, but I'll do my best."
The joy he felt at hearing those words was entirely unlike the joy he felt in the Rising Gym, but he cherished it just as much. He'd try to be a little more straightforward with her. Not quite upright – he was still who he was, and he made no apologies for that – but like a young Pokémon, he needed to cultivate her heart and mind as much as her power.
That was a good way of looking at it, actually. He had taught all his Pokémon not just to improve their power and might, but a variety of strategies and when to use which ones, how to keep their cool in a heated battle, and the right attitude to keep morale up when faced with failure. As entertaining as messing with her was, he needed to build up her confidence, establish a bond of trust, all that jazz. He just… hasn't had to do that, in a while.
He'll work on it.
They arrived at Dragon's Den before long. There was no bridge across the small lake to the strip of land – presumably, Blackthorns landed on it on dragonback – and after looking, he saw no sign of their guard.
Charizard didn't usually consent to short flights like this, but he was eager for the chance to channel a Dragon Nexus, and he was always much more mellow after a good brawl, anyway. He let him out in a flash of red.
The fire dragon raised both arms towards the sky in a triumphant pose, flexing and stretching and breathing small plumes of smoke. He looked satisfied, content. The Blackthorn's Chansey had healed him up, so he showed few physical marks of the battle – a few scratches here, the Crunch mark on his left shoulder there – but Red could feel his Aura exhaustion.
He had the right to be happy, Red supposed. Gyarados is a tough matchup. And a Gyarados like that? Even though they lost in the end, none of his team have anything to be ashamed of. They would have won if Red had intelligently used his switch or not outmaneuvered himself into having to use a Water and Fire/Flying-type against a Kingdra and Gyarados. If he had used Blastoise and Charizard earlier, saved Pikachu for later, they could've won. Of course, he had to use Pikachu because none of his other Pokémon were small enough to pick up the Baton Pass in the Dug tunnels-
"You were amazing out there," Little Girl said with stars in her eyes, looking up at a Charizard that looked increasingly smug. "I've never seen a Charizard contest a Rain Dance while using a complicated move like Flare Blitz to its full potential. And, when you used both Dragon Claw and Thunder Punch- that Gyarados had as much Dragon in it as it did Flying, so it was the right call to make, and neither element flickered at all, despite how difficult it is to channel opposing elements like that-"
"Charizard is wonderfully trained," Red humble-bragged, not even slightly jealous of all the praise going to a prick like Charizard. Honest. "And we're going to break through to the next Realm together as soon as we get across that lake."
A rumbling laugh. Charizard knelt to allow Little Girl onto his back, which was uncharacteristically sweet of him, then he grabbed Red between his claws, which wasn't. Seconds later, they were across.
Red felt the pressure as he passed the torii gate: Ghost, mostly, with a decent amount of Psychic. Either the Dark is in the earth, was too subtle for him to notice – not impossible – or Dragon's Den is vulnerable to Dark, now that the Fantasia are all gone. He was no good at advanced sensory stuff like this.
Their guide was kneeling just beyond the first turn, in near-complete blackness. Dressed in the blue and red traditional garb of the Blackthorn clan, what might have been a kimono before centuries of minor adjustments and warfare made it almost into a tracksuit, the only thing unusual about her was that she's the first Blackthorn he's seen with only a Second Realm soul. It was primary Water, too, which made him wonder if she was from a branch clan like Little Girl. It was hard to tell without any lights save Charizard's burning tail.
"Please follow me, honored guests," she said in a pretty contralto, then rose.
Part of Dragon's Den's defense must come from its labyrinthine structure, because Red was lost in minutes. The tunnels all led deeper into the mountain, but there were numerous forks, twists, and turns, and not a single torch or electric light to be seen. Did they all navigate based on Aura sense? Red could do that in Mt Moon, but they were so close to the Dragon Nexus that all sense of detail in the Rock and Ground was overshadowed. Would he be able to look past that burning light after enough years spent in close proximity to it? How much would it change him, if he could?
There was a power in so completely giving yourself over to a single Type. Red couldn't deny that, not when twenty of the twenty-one strongest trainers in Indigo were Type Masters. He couldn't do it, though. He likes being Red, and doesn't know who'd he be if he specialized in Electric like he so easily could have. It would have made him more impulsive, obsessive, and cruel, would have made him not-Red, and the thought of his cultivation changing who he was on that fundamental level horrified him. It's why he had such a Type-diverse team, why he makes sure to cultivate even Types he doesn't have a bond with like Dragon and Ice, and why he could never understand how casually other trainers devote themselves to a single Type.
Was their guide always so zen and chill, or did she have more passion before creating for herself a soul of Water? If Little Girl still had her Dragon soul, earlier, when she told him to cut it out and called him a weirdo, would there have been real anger? He can get a rise out of her pretty easily, but her scowls and biting words lack any heat; they seem performative, even, like a habit and not an actual emotional response. Like it was her emotional response, before Lance broke her cultivation, and she started anew with Ice.
He made a mental note to make sure she cultivated more than just Ice and Dark. For her own sake. If he ever teased her and she just looked at him blankly, like Lyra Whitegrave does, he's breaking off his mentorship immediately.
With all that being said, it's time to add a twelfth Type to his hybrid soul. The Dragon Nexus awaits, hot like the core of the earth.
"The Nexus lies beyond this door, honored guests," their guide said in a hushed, reverent voice. "Neither I nor the honored trainer's sister are permitted entry. We shall wait for you here."
'Here' being yet another black stone hallway, looking clawed out of the earth rather than cut or carved, entirely lacking in decoration, light, or heat save the Dragon Nexus' ephemeral heat. He gave his 'sister' a dubious look.
"I'll be alright," Little Girl said, looking sick. "Miss Whisperain will look after me."
Their guide – presumably of the Whisperain branch clan – blinked in surprise, and Red thought, Now!
Espeon appeared in a flash of red light, and their guide fell to the floor like a doll, fast asleep. Espeon's red gem glinted ominously, and Whisperain's body contorted unnaturally until she was seated in a stock-standard seiza, back against the wall, appearing for all the world like she was in meditation.
"I thought you were going to modify her memory," Little Girl said, eyes on their guide.
"Never taught Espeon the skill. That kind of thing isn't really my style." The extent of his subterfuge is delaying an alarm being raised for a few hours. Standard Hypnosis is enough for that. "Besides. Memory modification is against the Indigo Legal Code. Tsk, tsk, Little Girl."
"Like you care about the law," she muttered, but her gaze moved back up to him. "I can reach the nursery from here in fifteen minutes. Should be back in forty at the most, if Espeon and I need to wait out any passersby. Miss Whisperain took us on a back path away from most traffic, so that works in our favor."
"I'll see you then," Red said, a promise. Little Girl nodded and ran.
Red took a deep breath, fortifying himself, then pushed open the door.
The Nexus chamber was a grand thing, a vertical shaft three hundred meters tall with tiered steps like an upside-down pyramid. It was hot like a sauna and nearly as humid, a tension in the air like a dragon looking over his shoulder and thick enough to cut, but he knew it was all in his mind. With every step further down, the Dragon Aura grew deeper, more potent, and he felt his pulse race. He was afraid.
Afraid of the chamber. Afraid of the Nexus. Afraid of who awaited him down there, too, and their own Aura, just as fierce and powerful. To inspire fear in others: this is the nature of the Dragon type.
Three quarters of the way down, he could go no further. He fell to a knee then onto his ass, pushed his back up against the step, and, for a minute, just… breathed.
"You never get used to it," Lance said, seated next to him cross-legged. At the deepest point, in the heart of the Nexus, a Dragonite in the Seventh Realm stood, wing beats kicking up a lazy wind.
"I'm sure Charizard… is appreciating it," Red said pointedly.
Lance was quiet for a long moment. Eventually, he said, "It was never my intention to cause Blake such pain. I did what little I could to shelter her from it. It wasn't enough."
"I'm going to be honest, Lance," Red said, voice carefully neutral. "I don't think I'm the right person to be telling this to."
"Yeah. Me neither."
They were quiet for a moment. Charizard was cultivating the Dragon Nexus with vigor, and Red should be, too, but he was too distracted. Less than twenty-four hours since he met the kid and already it's getting in the way of his advancement; if Blue were here, he would laugh himself sick. By all rights, as soon as Lance told him that he's had a Ghost tag the girl since the Fantasia Massacre, and he wants Red to step in as her mentor, he should have cut and ran.
The path to the peak of human potential is a lonely one. You could get there with the help of others, like Lance has, but it came at a cost: the kind of cost that made you watch helplessly as a kid you loved like a sister lost her family and had to scrounge for scraps in a place like Icy Path. Red much prefered the path that he, and Blue, and the Old Man took, where you relied on no one and nothing but yourself, and no one suffered the punishment of failure or earned the rewards of success but you.
He empathized with Lance. He really did. He didn't like empathizing with people, but he's been where Lance is: eager to make a change, powerful where it doesn't matter and weak where it does. And it's entirely because he understands so well that he knows the Dragon Master is betting on the wrong Rapidash.
"I was born to take over the Blackthorn clan, but I had always been exceptional, and I knew I could do so much more," Lance began, and Red sat and listened to the trainer two Realms above him.
.
.
.
I was ambitious. Arrogant. These traits only made me better suited to the Dragon-type. I wanted to change things; I saw how Blackthorn City and our clan and our nation was ran, and I thought, 'I could do better;' then I thought, 'I will do better.'
My little sister, Claire, was born to helm the Rising Gym. If I were to be Champion of Indigo, though, then she would need to step up and lead the clan in my place. I couldn't do both, after all, not without dropping the ball on one. That left a vacancy in the Gym.
Blake was just Claire's attendant back then. The Fantasia clan were the only Dark specialists under the auspices of the Blackthorn, so children from that clan were raised to be servants of mine; they would protect against thieves, assassins, and spies, manage the wardings around Dragon's Den, and occasionally perform espionage. I never came to trust mine, but Claire trusted Blake. It had been her idea, in the beginning; what would be a better sign of change in Blackthorn then putting a branch clan scion in charge of the Rising Gym?
There was going to be pushback. If we were to pull this off, then Blake's cultivation had to be peerless, her team beyond reproach, and there could be no better aspirant to the position. The Fantasias didn't have the resources to invest in her as we needed, so I began spending more and more time with them. Before long, I began to see Blake as my own sister, as well.
The three of us were going to change the future, change Blackthorn. Change Indigo. I still don't know where it all went wrong.
… Blake's mother is an executive in Team Rocket. Her name is Ariana.
I see you've heard of her. She leads the Johto chapter; ironically, we've been chasing her for years.
She was the leader of the Fantasia clan's external affairs, in charge of protecting Dragon's Den from infiltration among other duties. She had been my mother's personal attendant, in their youth. It was a security breach the likes of which Blackthorn hasn't experienced in six hundred years, when we were almost destroyed by the Whitegraves. It made my mother – the Clan Head – and the Council of Elders… panic.
We mobilized within the hour. It was still enough time for the Fantasia malefactors to realize their treachery was discovered and scatter. Ariana wasn't at the compound when we arrived, and neither was half the clan. I don't know if Blake and her father being left behind was intentional or a mistake, don't know how much her father knew or, really, how much Blake knew. I want to say she was entirely ignorant, told my mother as much when she questioned me, but… in my heart of hearts, I doubted.
The others knew how close I was to Blake, and as heir, when I told them I would go after her myself, they let me. I didn't know what I would do or say as I flew after her on Dragonite. I questioned her, pleaded with her, told her I would believe whatever she had to say, and… when she told me that she knew nothing, I didn't believe her. But I couldn't kill her. Didn't have it in me.
I could sense Elder Anders approach on dragonback. I knew my clan would expect me to return with Blake's Dragonair and Deino egg, so I took those. Anders was close enough to sense her Aura, so if she was to escape alive, she… couldn't have that, either. I told her to run, then had my Drakloak – that's a half-Ghost Dragon, they're foreign – follow her, keep her safe, without her knowing. Had Dragonite blast the earth with Dragonbreath.
When Anders arrived, I told him that I gave her a Blackthorn funeral: cremation by dragonfire. He said she didn't deserve it, but I had her starter and egg, and he couldn't sense her Aura, so it all checked out and he believed me. I was still kept under a close watch all of this past month. I contented myself with the knowledge that Blake got out alive and Drakloak was keeping her safe. Told myself I didn't care if she regrouped with her mother and used what I taught her to live a life of terrorism and parasitic cultivation, so long as she was living at all.
Imagine my surprise when he returned to me yesterday, reporting a mysterious, red-eyed trainer had come across her in Icy Path, and they were plotting to steal back that egg.
I don't consider myself to be especially intelligent. I know where my strengths lie, and they aren't in schemes, or reading people, or predicting fallout. That's always been Blake's thing. Still, I know that if Blake spent this past month in Icy Path, then she couldn't have been a Rocket conspirator. That I doubted her… I'm ashamed of myself. I failed as her brother.
I intend for you to do better.
.
.
.
"What's in it for me?" Red asked, because it has always been easier to play the role of greedy, self-interested trainer than admit to… anything, really. "You're asking for me to take on a lot of risk for negative gain."
"I gave your description to my secretary at dusk, and by dawn, she gave me a ten-page dossier," Lance said, and the words were a threat even if the tone wasn't. "The trainer who stormed the Rocket Base hidden under the Celadon Game Corner doesn't need an excuse to forge the daughter of an Executive into an anti-Rocket weapon."
Red acknowledged the point. He had also offered to help Blake steal a dragon egg from the Blackthorn clan and he sure as fuck wasn't getting anything out of that. "You'd be okay with that? Letting your precious sister be used like that?"
"I want her to be happy, but I know a fool's quest when I see one. She won't let herself be happy until she feels she's been properly avenged."
That made sense.
"I'm also lacking in options," Lance admitted, and that made more. "All my contacts and resources are Blackthorn, and I can't trust them with this. You were taught Pokémon lore at the knee of Champion Oak, and I witnessed your prowess in battle myself. I can trust in your strength if nothing else."
"Fine, fine, I'll do it," Red said. It had taken months of tireless effort to make Executive Archer hate him and dedicate a small Rocket team to harrassing and attempting to murder him, and though this whole adventure hadn't earned him the enmity of Lance like he hoped it would, eventually getting on Executive Ariana's shitlist makes for a decent consolation prize.
He had also meant what he said to Blake earlier, about showing up Blue and his student. Taking her on in this way may have been Lance's idea, spoken with a toothy grin during the most terrifying handshake of his life, but that made him no less genuine in meaning it.
"I'm still asking for compensation, though," Red added. "Just think of it this way: anything you give to me, you indirectly give to Blake."
Lance gave him a considering look. "It's… uncommon, but not unheard of, for the Blackthorn clan to sponsor trainers. Doing so for a Kantonian would be new, but I'm considered something of a maverick within the clan."
Red's eyes gleamed with greed.
Lance gave a small laugh and stood. "I'll leave you to your cultivation then. It's best I'm gone before Blake returns. And… thank you, Red. We'll be meeting again."
"That we will. If you're going to be Champion, I'll be coming for your throne."
"I'm looking forward to it," the Dragon Master said with an earnest smile.
.
.
.
Breaking through to the Fourth Realm was easier than he thought it would be.
Charizard roared beside him, breathing dragonfire upwards, blue and sparking. As the trainer bond was meant to be, Charizard broke through the Sixth at the same time.
"Yes," he said through grit teeth, sweet triumph in his veins. "Yes! Finally."
His Aura expanded within his soul- or, rather, decompressed, from where the past few months of cultivation had seen it become tighter and denser. He could now easily release his entire team and maintain their bonds with room to spare for two more Charizards, if he so wished.
He held out a hand and cupped within it, flickered a small dragonflame. As he gazed into the fire, he could maybe, kind of, sort of understand why someone could pursue this strength to the exclusion of all else.
He shook it out, then set his finger to crackling with electric current. The infusion of Dragon-type power hadn't shifted his Aura out of alignment any, which was good.
The Old Man had all seventeen Types balanced in his soul. A worthless achievement, most people would say, but then most people weren't Champion of Indigo.
Red spent the remaining time before Blake's return in a calmer, more quiet meditation. When the tentative knock came at the door, the draconic euphoria had faded and he was left feeling… still pretty good, naturally, but he wasn't going to weird her out more than he usually does.
He looked down the steps of the Nexus chamber and wondered how much deeper he could go, now. Hesitantly, he turned and walked up instead.
Beyond the door stood Blake, looking frazzled with a black-specked egg in her arms, their Whisperain clan guide nowhere to be seen.
"Congratulations on the advancement," Blake said politely, then struggled to say anything else. Eventually, "I would like to leave, now."
Red nodded understandingly and followed her out. Blake's steps were no less sure than Whisperain's had been on the way down, but her demeanor radiated anxiety and uncertainty. Red didn't like it.
He didn't know what to do about it, though. He was never good at this kind of thing, not like Green was. He was good at cultivating, and training, and memorizing obscure Pokémon lore, not at offering comfort to traumatized teen girls. What would Green do, if she were here?
… Give her a hug, and offer to listen without judgment, then physically assault everyone who had hurt her.
Red could do one and a half of those things.
"Did something happen in the nursery?" he asked, voice inquiring but not, like, too curious.
Blake twitched. "Nothing. I handled it."
Red could still assault Ariana, at least. It was bound to happen eventually.
The trek to the surface passed in silence. The route was just as incomprehensible as it had been before, and Red still didn't know if the lack of human presence was Lance's influence or just the nature of Dragon's Den. How deep did it go, really? Blake hadn't described it except in the barest of terms. Her natural shiftiness, or lingering loyalty to Blackthorn?
Did she know her mother was a Rocket Executive?
"Did you know your mother is a Rocket Executive?"
Blake tripped and fell. She shot him a look of shock and disbelief. So, no, she didn't- unless she was surprised that he knew, not at the information itself.
"Lance told me everything," Red continued, voice pitched in a pleasant cadence. He kept walking. "He said he knew who you were, as he shook my hand, and that he was on your side and to come to Dragon's Den. Turns out he had a Ghost tailing you, so he knew all along. Surprise!"
"Why…" She hesitated, shook her head, then glared at him with a hot, Dragon-like fury. "Why are you telling me this? So you can gloat? Take my Pokémon again, leave me here, fuck off to the conference and your own hopes and dreams?"
"It would have been wrong to keep you in the dark," he said honestly. He didn't hold her rage against her; relished seeing it, even. "I'm a simple soul, Blake. I intend to reach the peak of human potential, raise a team of Seventh Realm monsters, and become Indigo Champion. No more, no less. I seek out enemies and rivalries because I believe it is through challenge and adversity that we surpass our limits. I avoid allies and friends because I was raised to think that other people could only ever hold me back.
"A few weeks ago, my oldest rival and I… no, my first friend and I, involved ourselves in a plot to destroy Team Rocket's Kanto chapter. Long story short, we publicly exposed the identity of Team Rocket's leader, Giovanni. Blue ended up taking on his son as a student. Giovanni is also the leader of the Viridian Gym, which is why I had to detour into Johto for my eighth badge.
"Near the end, I battled Giovanni one-on-one. I performed well. Damn well. Giovanni crushed me like a bug beneath his heel, and if Blue hadn't been there, despite me attempting to push him away to keep all the glory and challenge for myself, I'd be dead.
"I'm not going to say it made me reflect on my ways and decide to change. It'd be a lie. I'm… open, though, to the idea that my aversion to other people is born of my own fear, and not a logical certitude that I'd be better off alone. I refuse to be a coward. Blue challenged me to find and raise my own student, and I took him up on it. I intend for you to be that student."
Blake mulled it over. After several minutes of walking, she said, "So, ultimately, this is all about you and not about me at all."
Red laughed. "Yep. Green always said I knew how to make everything be about me."
"She sounds wise." Blake looked at him seriously, and nodded. "You're a Fourth Realm generalist with a Fifth Realm team and eight badges. You don't have any clan ties, you don't seem to have any responsibilities or obligations at all, and you're selfishly motivated to see me succeed as both a cultivator and a trainer. You're also not entirely unbearable in personality. This is probably as good as it gets, for me, so I accept. I'll do you proud, if only because I intend to do myself proud and our goals align."
"Awh, you do like me," Red cooed. He could see beyond her prickly clan-heiress attitude to the gooey feelings within! She looked up to him! She thought he was cool! "First rule of being Red's student: you have to call me big brother."
"I refuse."
"Agree to calling me your big brother and I'll give you a Lapras."
"I… I accept," she said, like the words physically pained her.
Success! "Second rule of being Red's student: you need a color name. How about Black?"
"Like Blackthorn? No."
"So you're willing to accept a color name," Red said, seizing the moment. "Yellow."
Her face scrunched up in distaste. "That's far too bright a color. I'll tolerate Gold."
"But- no, wait, this is perfect," Red realized. Blue's protégé's name was Silver. How better to tell Blue that his student was better than by naming her after the prettier, more precious metal?
Gold gave him a side-eye. "I agree, but why are you so pleased?"
"Hmm. That's a secret."
"You just said it'd be wrong to keep me in the dark-"
They didn't stop bickering once as they left Dragon's Den and Blackthorn behind.
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
I know but a few tropes about the xianxia/cultivation genre (happy to see the bad one's poked fun an) which doesn't diminish my enjoyment of this story in the slightest.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Haha, just as I poked at. Yeah, you'd have to be basically challenging the Elite 4 in order to get the Rising Badge otherwise, which wouldn't be the worst requirement if it was tacitly understood at least that it's supposed to be the last Gym you challenge.
Let us not speak of the depravities that Espeon has witnessed.
It's refreshing that he isn't a dense idiot and knows what that sounded like.
Teaching someone is also a good way of expanding one's own knowledge, so double the gain. (Triple the gain as we see later.)
Judging by Sabrina, I imagine he'd want to steer her away from Psychic, that'd just reinforce her existing habits.
Yeah but that's a coward's move.
It's funny because that's inherently false here, given that they're still carting around their Pokemon. If you fail, your own Pokemon are still going to suffer.
And there's the other shoe.
Phrasing, Red?
Poor Lapras, you're more than a Surf bot, really.
Also, I know you said you're working on this as a story, but it also strikes me that it would work equally as a prologue to a Quest starring Blake instead.
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
If the Realms of a soul are built on top of each other like layers, with the lower layers being the foundation for higher layers, then some Types serve as better or worse foundations for certain types; it's part of why most high-ranking trainers are Specialists, because a Type is always a good foundation for itself. Blake would struggle to cultivate Fire (because of her Ice) and Psychic (because of her Dark) more than any other Types. Not impossible, but difficult. Blake would naturally avoid cultivating Psychic and would need to be prodded into doing so by Red.
I wanted to make being a Generalist something of a mixed bag, with more cons then pros. Being able to cycle any Aura without needing to filter out the types you don't want would make you advance faster, but having an eclectic foundation would make each subsequent breakthrough - and cultivating additional 'layers' - harder; Generalist would thus be seen as the quick and easy path to power, but lacking in potential. (Of course, the most powerful trainer in Indigo, here, is Samuel Oak, who has an all-types-equal soul. So it's doable. But not for 'normal people.')
I... suppose that's true. That honestly didn't occur to me. It also wouldn't be out of character, for me, to begin a Quest like this by skipping the character creation phase and deciding the main character's personality, background, appearance, goals, and type affinities by myself, would it? Ahaha. A Pokemon journey would also be a lot easier to run a Quest for then... whatever Be The Eldritch Abomination was about.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Interesting, I was interpreting it the other way, I suppose through the lens of other series and theories. (Ex: Naruto, looking at most of top tier ninja who really have one 'trick' they leverage vs the Sandaime Hokage)
I would have said that going heavy in one element is easier because someone would have natural affinities and/or access to aspected cultivation resources primarily of one type. You would get power but you'd be predictable.
The other way would be that going generalist is harder because it would take so much more effort to learn how to do everything, source all the resources you need, and be less likely to have a home base. But in trade you wouldn't be flat hard countered one day by someone who researched you (or someone random) and you might get self synergies that otherwise wouldn't be possible. Also not pigeonholing yourself personality-wise.
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
That would all be true as well. The Blackthorn had a Dragon Nexus: specializing in Dragon would be quicker and easier than going the route of the Generalist, not even mentioning the social pressure to do as your clansmen do.
Additionally, Red did so well against Lance because he was a Generalist and thus had unique tricks and strategies. If Red had six Poison or Grass types like the Venusaur he would've been in genuine trouble against a team with multiple Marvel Scale / Shed Skin abusers; when he had Pikachu use Electric Terrain, Lance was caught completely by surprise by Snorlax instead of a second Electric Type. Red fumbled his strategy, but he could predict that Lance had a Kingdra and Gyarados and align an Electric against them, while internally Lance was thinking "There are three hundred unique Pokemon in Indigo and this guy could have any of them."
... I keep thinking about the Quest idea. I already made character sheets for Red's team and plan to do so for Blake's; I already have rules for training Pokemon in the TTRPG I run; adding numbers to cultivation is the easiest thing ever. I suppose I'm a little nervous about running a Quest again, so there's that. I'll think about it some more.
Additionally, Red did so well against Lance because he was a Generalist and thus had unique tricks and strategies. If Red had six Poison or Grass types like the Venusaur he would've been in genuine trouble against a team with multiple Marvel Scale / Shed Skin abusers; when he had Pikachu use Electric Terrain, Lance was caught completely by surprise by Snorlax instead of a second Electric Type. Red fumbled his strategy, but he could predict that Lance had a Kingdra and Gyarados and align an Electric against them, while internally Lance was thinking "There are three hundred unique Pokemon in Indigo and this guy could have any of them."
... I keep thinking about the Quest idea. I already made character sheets for Red's team and plan to do so for Blake's; I already have rules for training Pokemon in the TTRPG I run; adding numbers to cultivation is the easiest thing ever. I suppose I'm a little nervous about running a Quest again, so there's that. I'll think about it some more.
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Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Oh dear no, that was more of an observation than a wish for one. Getting out of Questing is a good escape, you don't have to get sucked back in. XD
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
Don't feel pressured to run a Quest on [our] behalf, just take your time writing what your muse dictates. Which at the moment seems to be a story you could later use as setting/background information, if you so desired.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Speaking for myself, but I think you handled the conversations in this chapter quite well; Lance is a fairly guarded/phlegmatic individual and Red is a quasi-egomaniac, and their dialogue here sounds about right for what two people like that trying to have a moment of honesty with a relative stranger would sound like.
Overall, this has been an absolutely stellar set of snippets, and I'm interested to see more out of you, whatever the topic.
Pokemon - Claw Six Feet Up 0-1
SolarFall
Totally not a cat in disguise.
I wrote this one before The Pride Before, and it's lacking the Xianxia elements or... any plan of where it would go, actually. The sister-brother dynamic, some worldbuilding, and some of the Aura mechanics survived through to The Pride Before, but I ultimately abandoned most of the emotional themes. There's ~2k more after this I probably won't post, seeing as it's just the family saying goodbye in their dysfunctional way, and then I promptly stalled for months.
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Claw Six Feet Up
Pokemon AU
Indigo Plateau
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"Gengar."
There was a flash of red, then a mass of purple shadow appeared on the battlefield. It writhed more like a stormcloud than a thing alive, burning red eyes and too-wide toothy grins appearing here and there on its form. By the time wispy legs and arms stretched out from the mass, two of each and for a flicker of a moment three or even four, the Ghost's challenger was well and truly intimidated- the scarred, spade-tailed Houndoom pressing his belly to the ground and growling. Amelia understood. Even a weak, unmotivated Ghost can birth nightmares with a touch, and Agatha's Gengar reigns supreme over all of its type on the continent.
Amelia couldn't look away as the one-sided slaughter began. Ten thousand people had gathered in the stands to watch the Indigo Conference Champion challenge Agatha of the Elite Four, each attempting to outcheer and outscream the rest, but Amelia felt isolated- all she could hear was the drumbeat of her heart in her ears, feel the scratchy fabric of her dress between her fingers, taste the acrid tang of Ghost power in the air. She had come to witness the ultimate evolution of the Ghost-type, see the peak she had yet to climb, and every move and flex of its power both terrified her and ignited her ambition.
The challenger's Houndoom was a beast, having taken down two of Elite Four Lorelei's Ice-types by itself with vigor to spare. Gengar wasn't impressed; its laughter never abated, echoing and high-pitched and heavy with Ghost power that wrecked havoc on Houndoom's soul and mind. Every time a Dark Pulse or Flamethrower punctured Gengar's form, the Ghost evaporated and left its smile for last, mocking and taunting. To the uninitiated – and, indeed, most who were watching today – Gengar seemed on the backfoot, never launching an attack of its own, but Amelia could recognize the tell-tale signs of a Curse on Houndoom, like a fatal illness on fast-forward.
Houndoom was fighting an enemy that couldn't be touched, could be in multiple places at once or in his shadow or underneath the ground, that could turn his body against itself and that reveled in his suffering. A Gengar was a malevolent demon, a nightmare in the waking world, and there was little even a Dark Specialist like Karen could do. Within two or three minutes, Houndoom collapsed like a ragdoll, bleeding from old scars and wounds it had never gotten.
Karen sent out the rest of her team. Mightyena, Umbreon, Honchkrow, Weavile, Crawdaunt- none could lay so much as a single blow on Agatha's Gengar. For a Conference Champion that had defeated all challengers across the continent and the first of the Elite Four, it was a humiliating defeat.
Amelia watched it all with ambition. Agatha had been a fixture of the Elite Four since it was founded eighty years ago, but exposure to Ghost power could sustain her life for only so long. One day – maybe not this year, or even this decade, but soon – Agatha's time would come. When it did, Amelia intended to be there.
She would become the continent's premier Ghost Master.
Or she would die again trying.
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Amelia, like many Ghosts, had dim memories of her past life.
She remembered growing flowers and watching sunsets and hot chocolate. She remembered warm hugs, genuine love, honest affection. She remembered growing up and getting old and waiting, waiting, waiting. She remembered this is it, one last breath, beep-beep-beeeep.
She remembered the Distortion World. Time didn't flow in the Distortion World, but the longer she lingered, the more her past life faded, became colder. By the time she found her way out, she no longer had any desire to leave. Neither did she have desire to stay, and idle curiosity saw her passing through to the Material Realms once more.
A Ghost and a Pokemon but not a particular Ghost-type Pokemon, she found it difficult to remain cohesive in the Material Realm. There were… grooves, divots, in the slate of reality, and like water flowing downhill she found herself spilling into them. She was halfway to becoming a Misdreavus when she realized what they were- molds, the hollowed-out shape of a Pokemon, skin but no substance. When wet clay is poured into a mold of a pot, when does it stop being clay and start being a pot? As a cloud of deathly energy and psychic impulses she was Louise, though that construction came closer to toppling every day, but if her shape was forced into that of a Misdreavus, a Misdreavus she would become.
It scared her. She, who devoured the emotions of the unwary out of envy for what she could no longer feel; she, who had died already, was afraid of dying again.
… Perhaps that's why, as she consumed the fear, regret, and sorrow of a dying girl, that she did what she did.
(Or, maybe, the dying girl said all the right – or wrong – words. They had conversed, this they remember, but what was said, they don't recall. And no one else was in the room when it happened.)
It was her hope – and what a nostalgic feeling! – that wearing the girl like a cloak would protect her from dissolution. That her heartbeat and vitality and aura would be a cliff's edge for her to hang on to, such that she didn't fall back into the mold of Misdreavus. Instead, Amelia became Louise's new mold- and, before either of them could protest, two had become one.
How much of them was Louise, and how much Amelia Whitegrave? Who knows.
But everyone would know their name, regardless.
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She was grounded for sneaking out of the house.
"I disagree with this punishment," she said pointlessly.
"Your mother and I understand why you disagree," Father said, will like an iron wall, "And your need to escape the house every once in a while is valid. However."
Amelia gave up the argument. When Father says 'however,' there is no convincing him. There is human stubborn, and then there is Steel Specialist stubborn – she'd have greater luck squeezing blood out of his Aggron.
Father saw this and finished his declaration anyway, the tyrant. "You didn't bring any Pokemon guards, and your Dusk Pendant wouldn't stop a powerful or determined enough Psychic-type from whisking you away. You have enemies: monsters who wouldn't hesitate to use you for their own ends. If you were abducted, we'd be lucky if they only ransomed you back, and what do we say about luck?"
"The Blackthorns stole it all," Amelia answered dutifully.
"Exactly. If you wanted to see Agatha, all you had to do was say and we could've reserved a box."
And then Father would've been there, and Mother, and Grayson, and Mouser, and Shazam, and about six men in sunglasses and black outfits, each with a Ghost in their shadow or a Psychic behind a Light Screen. Attending the Elite match with an entourage defeated the entire point. How can she determine if she wants the freedom of becoming a Pokemon trainer if she can't taste that freedom for even a moment? How could a human know the god's ambrosia is worth dying for, if they're not allowed a single sip?
Becoming a trainer had been Amelia's dream, once. That dream had been lost in the possession. She had snuck out to see if the shadow of that dream yet remained- and in so doing, had discovered a burning ambition to become something, someone. Amelia and Louise had both been dreamers, but neither had been ambitious. This- this was something new, something that had not merely survived the possession, but been born from it. It was the first proof she discovered that she was not merely the sum of her shattered parts, but something greater.
She had to pursue it. It would be a betrayal of both Amelia and Louise if she didn't.
Father saw this in her eyes. He sighed. Perhaps he, too, knew the signs of a Whitegrave drawing a line in the sand- and though a Ghost Specialist was less stubborn than a Steel, they were no less tenacious.
She said the words anyway. "I want to participate in the next Circuit."
"Fine," he said, and Amelia could almost taste the ashes that must be on his tongue. "However."
Amelia blinked slowly. "I'll abide… reasonable conditions."
It was better than slipping away in the middle of the night, and they both knew she would. The League didn't require parental permission, and she would be of-age – fourteen – before February. Besides.
A Ghost couldn't be caged for long.
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Clad in pricey athletic wear just the right shade of blue to bring some color out of her slate-gray eyes, her blonde hair in a tail and her Pikachu doll held in both hands, Amelia felt out of place.
It was bright out. Brilliant, even. The sun had risen not half an hour ago, casting warmth and malevolent light across the snowy park behind their manse, and though she wanted to be inside she had promised. Her word meant little to her, but her relationship with her steel wall of a father meant much, and this was a much more reasonable condition than she rightfully expected.
"We'll start with some stretches: they're the most important part of a workout. After, we'll run a lap to warm our blood, and then we'll begin for real. Do try your hardest, darling. If you slack off, Shazam will know."
Amelia gave her mother a dry look. "How much did you bribe him to be awake at this hour?" And was it more or less than it would've cost to hire an actual physical trainer, she didn't ask.
"It is uncouth to pry into the bond between a trainer and her Pokemon."
So, a lot.
Mother ran her hard- whether out of a genuine desire to prepare her for the rigors of a Journey, sadistic amusement, or as petty revenge for the comment, Amelia didn't know and didn't care to figure out. It was likely a mixture of all three and more besides. Psychic Specialists were like that, saying one thing and meaning three other things and that first thing too, sometimes. If Amelia held affinity for the Dark type, she might be able to twist her own mind into a pretzel to induce some kind of comprehension, or just intuit it based off of vibes, but Amelia had long ago given up on understanding how her mother worked.
… That was common among Psychics and their families, Amelia had learned. It had only gotten worse when Amelia's gentle Fairy and Water affinities had been consumed by a near-overwhelming Ghost affinity. While Dark-types could bend and twist themselves to present their minds a certain way, Ghost-types were just static, screaming, and raw emotion. Some Psychics claimed that Ghost Specialists didn't think or reason at all, their higher brain function devoured piecemeal by their own wicked type energies, acting entirely off instinct and animal cunning. If her mother held that belief, Amelia didn't know.
So, as she worked herself into a sprawling mess on the snow an hour later, slick with hot sweat and panting like a dog, she minded the physical exercise a lot less than she had expected. It was time spent with her mother. That had been uncommon for a few years now, and was only liable to become as rare as Milotic once she set off in three months.
She had to do this three times a week? That's thirty-six hours. If Father's other conditions were like this, then she might need to try the emotional honesty thing more often.
"What starter do you want, darling?"
Amelia blinked, but wasn't surprised. Sudden changes in topic were common for Mother. "I don't suppose a Spiritomb is on the shortlist."
"Unlikely, seeing as I don't recognize the species," Mother said through a smile. "We can do rare and we can do foreign, but both is a bit much even on our badget, sweet thing."
Figures. With a little experimentation and a lot more power, she could probably create one, anyway.
"If you need time to think about it, that's fine," Mother continued, "But keep in mind that the sooner you tell us, the sooner we can acquire one, and the sooner we can begin training. The Indigo Conference is only eleven months away!"
Amelia sat up and immediately fell back into her slouch. "I don't need time. Sableye. They're Hoennian."
"I'm familiar. Dark primary- a good choice. Your affinity allows you to fight back against hostile Psychics, but a little Dark stealth… as they say, an ounce of prevention. Gender, age, pedigree?"
"Don't care, an egg, don't care. At least a month away from hatching, please."
"Consider it done, darling. I've always loved Sableye, they have the most gorgeous eyes." Mother paused for a moment, maybe to ask why so long from hatching, maybe something else. "If you have any questions about the Circuit, I'm an open book."
Amelia didn't have any, but she made some up anyway.
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Amelia's brother is the most intolerable fool in Kanto.
"-and that's when Mouser revealed she knew Stored Power. The blast of Psychic energy almost tore the poor Arbok to shreds, for a moment there I was worried she had killed the damn thing! Of course, the League has the best medical care, and in the end, I had the Soul Badge and a new fan in Koga's daughter. She really took a shine to me, and I was quite flattered… of course, I had one more badge to collect off in Cinnabar, and the Conference was only a month out, so it couldn't be. Ah, and here I am rambling on! What were we talking about?"
"A Chandelure in the Safari Zone," Amelia prompted.
"Ah, yes. Unfortunately, it was just a Misdreavus with Will-o-Wisp, I was really quite disappointed, if I brought back a Chandelure for my sweet little sister I would've been the best big brother in Kanto! No, all of Indigo! Not that I already aren't. That swaggering Blackthorn moron doesn't hold a candle to my big-brothering bonfire-"
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Day after day passed in a kind of mind-numbing rhythm. She'd spend the mornings with Mother or Father, either exhausting her body or her mind, until she knew every route and danger-spot in Kanto and the certitude she could run them all faster than an Arcanine. In the afternoons, she studied for the Trainer Licensure Exam, mostly playing catch-up as until this point she had been in tutoring to join the family business. At night, when the manse fell quiet and the only light and sound came from a burning candle and her own breath, she played with her aura.
Trained. She trained her aura. It wasn't easy. Some days, she wished she had caved and let Father hire a Specialist to instruct her in the auric arts. Amelia never let the dangerous thought become more than just that- Steels and Fires and even Psychics like Mother might be able to reach phantasmal tendrils into each other's souls and play guide, but Ghosts like Amelia didn't have it so easy. If ever another Ghost Specialist cupped her soul in their hands, Amelia would be far too terrified of them taking a bite to learn a single thing.
Amelia stared into the candle flame. It had been one of her brother's few good ideas, though she wasn't using it the way he did. She didn't become the fire, or make the shadows it cast dance, but instead kept her eyes on the wax- watched as the fire ate, and ate, and ate, and the candle shortened inch by inch.
She fed herself to the candle flame, and as it grew bigger, brighter, hungrier, she felt cold. Her breath misted in the air, and for a split-second she feared she would fall through the bed and into the kitchens below again. She kept her body in the Material while willing her soul out of it, and as frost crept across her bedsheets and her conscious mind was consumed by the dark desires underneath, Amelia fell to pieces.
To the north-east, Mother made a carnival of dolls dance while in meditation with Shazam. Which limbs each controlled differed between dolls, but the synchronicity was at most a hair off, and as the reenactment of Beauregard's Disaster Foretold progressed towards the final act more dolls joined the fray. On impulse she knocked the Absol doll on its side, and Mother knocked on the side of her soul in a chiding manner.
To the south, Father signed paperwork at his desk, muttering promises of retribution as he once more lamented becoming a businessman and not opening up a Gym. His soul was a pillar of shining steel, unyielding and reflective, and she reared back from her own haunting visage. Father didn't notice, soul as unfeeling and insensitive as the rest of his personality.
To the west, Grayson burned.
Amelia sucked in a breath and with it, the vapor-cloud of her soul and Ghostly energies. The breath quickly became two and three, four, five, rapidfire, before her heart calmed and she reached blindly for the hot chocolate on her bedside. The warmth chased away the Ghostly frost on her inside, and the sweetness cemented her in the here-and-now.
… Grayson was an intolerable fool. His soul, though, was the warmest, brightest thing she had ever felt, and it never failed to jolt her out of a trance. His presence in the manse was the only reason she could practice so brazenly. Without a safeguard like him around, she might become one of the horror stories mothers tell their children about those unlucky few with too strong of a Ghost affinity.
Amelia wanted to be a horror story. She didn't want to be a tragic one, though.
"… I'm scared," she admitted. Voicing it aloud felt like a betrayal and a release, all at once.
Her Pikachu doll had fallen on the floor during her astral projection. She picked it up, dusted it off, then held it in what would have been a bone-creaking hug. It… helped. Her doll wasn't as warm as a real Pikachu would be, but she didn't want a real Pikachu anyway, and her mother had knit it for her when she was a child, frail and infirm and one step closer to death with every hospital stay.
"I'm scared, Cherish," she said again, a little stronger. "Sometimes I wish that I was born healthier, so Louise never came for me and I still had Water and Fairy affinities. Maybe more than sometimes. I'm sure Mother could source me a Popplio, and I would learn to sing along with it when it became a Primarina, and I'd catch a Marill, and Father would hatch me a Mawile and we'd bond over its shared types, and we can afford a Prism Scale for a Milotic, and we'd perform in as many Contests as we fought in Gyms, and bring honor to the Whitegraves in a way my brother couldn't…"
She took another sip of her hot chocolate. Then another, and another, and soon enough it was all gone, and as she looked into the empty mug she wanted to cry.
"This is the part where I say this is unlike a Ghost specialist, but it actually is," she said with an unhappy laugh. "We're the weepy, anxious sort, in our head when we're not out of our bodies, and I never feel more attuned to my affinity then when I'm stewing in regret that it's my affinity at all. A normal girl wouldn't be this miserable and spiteful at fourteen, but a normal girl wouldn't accept a Ghost into her soul, would she?
"Brother offered to help me work through it. Mother offered a more active solution. Father would hire the finest therapists money could buy. None of them get it, of course- not a drop of Ghost in any of their souls. If I worked through my nonsense, learned to let go and move on and all that cheery foolishness, then I'd grow weaker, and I wouldn't achieve my dream. I'm a Ghost. Pain is power, and power is pain… the more twisted my head is, the more in tune with this type I am. Why ever would I fix myself?
"But, Cherish. You love me anyways, don't you? Spite and curses and all."
Cherish didn't nod, or shake her head. Of course she didn't. She's a doll.
Amelia smiled. She pressed a sweet kiss to Cherish's head, right between the cloth Pikachu ears, and sank back into a trance.
It was dangerous, but being weak around a full team of Ghosts was infinitely more so. If she wanted to raise nightmares the rival of Agatha's, then she had to be strong enough they wouldn't eat her, first.
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The Sableye egg arrived on a Friday.
"If you need any advice on caring for an egg, don't hesitate to come ask your big brother!" Grayson said boisterously. He had volunteered to fly out on Regal and pick it up, saving her the frustration of having to wait until Monday for a delivery, so she allowed him a few minutes to talk himself up. Never let it be said she was an ungrateful sister. "Why, I raised Mouser from an egg myself when I was only a little older than you are now, and I picked up a dozen or three tricks to smooth the process along. If you want a Fire-type to curl up around it every now and then to shave a few days off, just say the word, sweet sister, and you'll have your choice of six to do the deed. Except Spitfire, she'll probably eat it."
"Warming up a Sableye egg will kill it," Amelia said matter-of-factly.
Grayson floundered for a bit before making a ludicrous promise to catch an Ice-type. Amelia hid a smile.
True to Mother's word, the egg didn't hatch for almost five weeks. Her whole life had to be structured around the egg, and she knew it would only get worse once it hatched. When she exercised with her mother or sat across from her father, the egg was there, kept in a box for shade and fed ice cubes through a latch in the side every few hours. When she studied in the library or talked to Cherish on her bed or… well, she didn't do anything else, really, the egg was there.
"I hope you don't feel jealous," Amelia told Cherish, one day. "There's no need, really. Sableye will learn to confide in you as I have, and you'll always be my first friend, okay? I'll always love and have time for you, so don't go feeling neglected, now."
With two months and change left until the next League season, she plotted out her Journey. Her family each had different, often conflicting advice for how to go about it, and the many books and journals in the house library offered another thousand perspectives besides.
Father seemed to have his finger on the pulse of popular opinion on the subject: a Journey lived and died on preparation and foreknowledge, and a trainer with a heavy pack, thorough plan, and reasonable limits was a successful trainer. He sat down with her and helped her plot out a route through each of Kanto's eight badge-holding settlements, ignoring the lesser Gyms with all the thoughtless condescension of an ex-Ace. His plan was around seven pages long, detailed enough to include the departure and arrival dates for convoys and transport ships, and with multiple sub-plans should she need to switch direction on a dime seven or so months in the future. Amelia almost felt bad for her intention to utterly disregard it and travel entirely off vibes.
Mother's advice was both more and less practical: "Decide what six Pokemon your Conference team will include," she had said, "And then acquire those Pokemon as quickly as you can." The longer she has the Pokemon in her roster, the more time she has to train them up to a Conference standard, and the less likely she is to be one of those moronic greenhorns who have three or even four competitive Pokemon and two that just aren't up to snuff. There's nothing more humiliating than losing to an inferior Trainer in front of the entire continent because of something so ludicrous as time constraints. (Amelia politely didn't inquire into her own Conference performance.)
Grayson's advice was the simplest, as she had expected, but also well-thought out and philosophical, which she hadn't. His Journey was the cause of his glorious transformation from boy-with-potential to man-of-talent (his words), but it wasn't because of Gym victories, the accumulation of power, or even his admittedly impressive showing on the world stage, but because of the experiences he had and the freedom that had allowed him to have them. He told a long, intricately detailed story about getting lost in Mt. Moon and not being able to find his way out for three months, which had given him only three more to collect six badges if he wanted to complete the Circuit in time for the Conference.
Amelia remembered that time, vaguely. It was before the possession and so fractured, but both of their parents had been sick with worry, and Amelia herself had become increasingly convinced that her brother was dead or worse. It had been a dark time, and the stress had driven her into the hospital more than usual.
"I found Spitfire in those tunnels, back when she was only a Magby," he continued, "And though she's become the powerhouse of my team and I love her dearly- she's not the most valuable thing to happen to me in those months. With my flashlight out of battery, rations long gone, and all attempts to navigate foiled by Ghosts and wicked Clefairy, I fell to despair. In that time, I wasn't the heir of our Whitegrave branch, or a future Fire Specialist, or a Championship competitor: I was just Grayson, a human in a world of beings with real power, and everything else was just so much dross. That experience woke me up, and I emerged a grown man."
Grayson gazed into the middle distance, eyes shadowed over by haunting memories. In that moment, Amelia realized that for all his wacky tales and childish antics, he very rarely mentioned Mt. Moon at all.
Then he grinned. "I looked so cool there, didn't I, Amelia?! Come on! Admit your big brother is cool!"
"Never!"
That night, as she brainstormed with Cherish and wrote notes in her journal by candlelight, she flipped to the page marked JOURNEY PLANS and underlined twice. Underneath it, she wrote:
Go wherever. Try and hit one Gym a month so you're not left floundering like Grayson.
"Spontaneity doesn't come naturally," she admitted to Cherish, "But maybe it's something I could learn? Calculated plans aren't really a Ghostly thing anyway."
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The Sableye egg hatched fifty-one days before the League season.
No one was there but her and Cherish when it happened. This was normal; Pokemon have a rudimentary sense of their surroundings before they hatch, and rare is the Ghost who wants an audience while they're weak. It was also why she was never further than ten yards or so at all times, lest she return to a cracked egg and a missing Darkness Pokemon.
The Sableye punched a purple hand through the side, and huffed and growled in exertion as they tried in vain to tear the hole wider. After about two minutes and numerous failed attempts, the baby gave a cry of frustration and phased through the eggshell; the cry turned to a noise of triumph. The Sableye's first act in life was shoving his egg off the side of her bed and pouncing on its shattered pieces, stuffing yolk in his mouth with violent ferocity.
Amelia hid a smile behind her doll. The Sableye was nine inches tall and maybe ten pounds at most, a roughly-humanoid purple blob with eyes of infinite darkness. He was adorable.
She held out a hand, palm up and full of synthetic gems. The Sableye – her Sableye – cocked its head curiously, hearing the clink of precious gems and doubtless experiencing the happy-feelings his instincts pair with that sound. He turned to her fully, gaze switching between her face and the gems in her hand and back again. She could almost hear the cogs in his brain grind.
He wasn't going to ask for the stones. They're valuable, and someone else has them; ergo, he won't be given them. Such is the reasoning of a Dark- and Ghost-type Pokemon. No, two minutes old and he's planning his first heist.
She could give them to him. It'd be a bad idea, but it would make him stick around long enough for a bond to form, maybe. She doesn't want to earn her Pokémon's attention by being an easy mark, though. Other trainers might be able to earn their Pokemon's loyalty through kindness and charm, but that wasn't going to work on a Sableye.
The Sableye made his move. He leapt, Dark energies propelling his body more than his physical strength, cutting through the air towards her gem-filled hand with speed. Amelia was disappointed; then he fell through the bed's shadow and emerged from her's, stubby hand streaking for the treasures at an angle.
"Good attempt," she praised honestly. It wasn't quite a Shadow Sneak, but the precursor to the Ghost-type staple move and a good omen. She was excited to train the little guy and take him all the way to the Conference and beyond.
It wasn't enough to let the gems be stolen, though; if they were, then the Sableye would never respect her. When his purple hand was inches away from hers, she called on her own Ghostly energies to turn her hand phantasmal. The gems fell right through her flesh and were caught by her other hand before they could land in her lap.
The Sableye clasped her hand and stopped, surprised. He inspected her hand with a squinty look, increasingly frustrated and confused, as if expecting to find a ruby inbetween her fingers.
She waved the gems in the air with her off hand, smug smile on her face. "If you want them, you'll have to earn them," she taunted.
Thus began a game of keep-away she knew would only be the first of many. It ended several minutes later with her cute little Sableye spread-eagled on her bedsheets, panting for breath and glaring at her and the gems still in her hand. She smiled, more kind this time.
"Let's make a deal, okay? I'll give you a list of things you must do, and in exchange, you'll get these gems, and many more in the future. Okay?"
Eagerly, the Sableye nodded.
"I'm what's called a Pokemon Trainer. I raise Pokemon – like you, dear! – into powerful battlers. I'll teach you to be strong, will feed you, provide direction, and, yes, give you lots of gems to keep, polish, and eat. In exchange, you protect me from harm and listen to my every command. Sound like a good deal?"
The Sableye thought for a long few seconds, but she knew he was just playacting. He already decided. Before long, he was making grabbing motions towards the gems.
"Ah, ah! To seal the deal, we both need to touch the Sacred Ball, okay?"
Amelia took a Premier Ball from her nightstand drawer and set it between them, keeping her face as solemn as she could. She angled it just so, then pressed her finger on the side. Impatiently, her Sableye reached out-
And pressed the button.
He disappeared in a flash of red light.
She giggled. It would have been cruel to do this to an Eevee like her brother hatched, but a Dark type? A little deception would only foster respect.
She pressed a kiss to the top of the Pokéball. Through a smile, she whispered, "You're very sweet, and maybe a little dumb, but you're mine now, okay, sweetie? Your name will be Toffee. Let's conquer the world together."
The next months passed in a breeze.
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Claw Six Feet Up
Pokemon AU
Indigo Plateau
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"Gengar."
There was a flash of red, then a mass of purple shadow appeared on the battlefield. It writhed more like a stormcloud than a thing alive, burning red eyes and too-wide toothy grins appearing here and there on its form. By the time wispy legs and arms stretched out from the mass, two of each and for a flicker of a moment three or even four, the Ghost's challenger was well and truly intimidated- the scarred, spade-tailed Houndoom pressing his belly to the ground and growling. Amelia understood. Even a weak, unmotivated Ghost can birth nightmares with a touch, and Agatha's Gengar reigns supreme over all of its type on the continent.
Amelia couldn't look away as the one-sided slaughter began. Ten thousand people had gathered in the stands to watch the Indigo Conference Champion challenge Agatha of the Elite Four, each attempting to outcheer and outscream the rest, but Amelia felt isolated- all she could hear was the drumbeat of her heart in her ears, feel the scratchy fabric of her dress between her fingers, taste the acrid tang of Ghost power in the air. She had come to witness the ultimate evolution of the Ghost-type, see the peak she had yet to climb, and every move and flex of its power both terrified her and ignited her ambition.
The challenger's Houndoom was a beast, having taken down two of Elite Four Lorelei's Ice-types by itself with vigor to spare. Gengar wasn't impressed; its laughter never abated, echoing and high-pitched and heavy with Ghost power that wrecked havoc on Houndoom's soul and mind. Every time a Dark Pulse or Flamethrower punctured Gengar's form, the Ghost evaporated and left its smile for last, mocking and taunting. To the uninitiated – and, indeed, most who were watching today – Gengar seemed on the backfoot, never launching an attack of its own, but Amelia could recognize the tell-tale signs of a Curse on Houndoom, like a fatal illness on fast-forward.
Houndoom was fighting an enemy that couldn't be touched, could be in multiple places at once or in his shadow or underneath the ground, that could turn his body against itself and that reveled in his suffering. A Gengar was a malevolent demon, a nightmare in the waking world, and there was little even a Dark Specialist like Karen could do. Within two or three minutes, Houndoom collapsed like a ragdoll, bleeding from old scars and wounds it had never gotten.
Karen sent out the rest of her team. Mightyena, Umbreon, Honchkrow, Weavile, Crawdaunt- none could lay so much as a single blow on Agatha's Gengar. For a Conference Champion that had defeated all challengers across the continent and the first of the Elite Four, it was a humiliating defeat.
Amelia watched it all with ambition. Agatha had been a fixture of the Elite Four since it was founded eighty years ago, but exposure to Ghost power could sustain her life for only so long. One day – maybe not this year, or even this decade, but soon – Agatha's time would come. When it did, Amelia intended to be there.
She would become the continent's premier Ghost Master.
Or she would die again trying.
.
.
.
Amelia, like many Ghosts, had dim memories of her past life.
She remembered growing flowers and watching sunsets and hot chocolate. She remembered warm hugs, genuine love, honest affection. She remembered growing up and getting old and waiting, waiting, waiting. She remembered this is it, one last breath, beep-beep-beeeep.
She remembered the Distortion World. Time didn't flow in the Distortion World, but the longer she lingered, the more her past life faded, became colder. By the time she found her way out, she no longer had any desire to leave. Neither did she have desire to stay, and idle curiosity saw her passing through to the Material Realms once more.
A Ghost and a Pokemon but not a particular Ghost-type Pokemon, she found it difficult to remain cohesive in the Material Realm. There were… grooves, divots, in the slate of reality, and like water flowing downhill she found herself spilling into them. She was halfway to becoming a Misdreavus when she realized what they were- molds, the hollowed-out shape of a Pokemon, skin but no substance. When wet clay is poured into a mold of a pot, when does it stop being clay and start being a pot? As a cloud of deathly energy and psychic impulses she was Louise, though that construction came closer to toppling every day, but if her shape was forced into that of a Misdreavus, a Misdreavus she would become.
It scared her. She, who devoured the emotions of the unwary out of envy for what she could no longer feel; she, who had died already, was afraid of dying again.
… Perhaps that's why, as she consumed the fear, regret, and sorrow of a dying girl, that she did what she did.
(Or, maybe, the dying girl said all the right – or wrong – words. They had conversed, this they remember, but what was said, they don't recall. And no one else was in the room when it happened.)
It was her hope – and what a nostalgic feeling! – that wearing the girl like a cloak would protect her from dissolution. That her heartbeat and vitality and aura would be a cliff's edge for her to hang on to, such that she didn't fall back into the mold of Misdreavus. Instead, Amelia became Louise's new mold- and, before either of them could protest, two had become one.
How much of them was Louise, and how much Amelia Whitegrave? Who knows.
But everyone would know their name, regardless.
.
.
.
She was grounded for sneaking out of the house.
"I disagree with this punishment," she said pointlessly.
"Your mother and I understand why you disagree," Father said, will like an iron wall, "And your need to escape the house every once in a while is valid. However."
Amelia gave up the argument. When Father says 'however,' there is no convincing him. There is human stubborn, and then there is Steel Specialist stubborn – she'd have greater luck squeezing blood out of his Aggron.
Father saw this and finished his declaration anyway, the tyrant. "You didn't bring any Pokemon guards, and your Dusk Pendant wouldn't stop a powerful or determined enough Psychic-type from whisking you away. You have enemies: monsters who wouldn't hesitate to use you for their own ends. If you were abducted, we'd be lucky if they only ransomed you back, and what do we say about luck?"
"The Blackthorns stole it all," Amelia answered dutifully.
"Exactly. If you wanted to see Agatha, all you had to do was say and we could've reserved a box."
And then Father would've been there, and Mother, and Grayson, and Mouser, and Shazam, and about six men in sunglasses and black outfits, each with a Ghost in their shadow or a Psychic behind a Light Screen. Attending the Elite match with an entourage defeated the entire point. How can she determine if she wants the freedom of becoming a Pokemon trainer if she can't taste that freedom for even a moment? How could a human know the god's ambrosia is worth dying for, if they're not allowed a single sip?
Becoming a trainer had been Amelia's dream, once. That dream had been lost in the possession. She had snuck out to see if the shadow of that dream yet remained- and in so doing, had discovered a burning ambition to become something, someone. Amelia and Louise had both been dreamers, but neither had been ambitious. This- this was something new, something that had not merely survived the possession, but been born from it. It was the first proof she discovered that she was not merely the sum of her shattered parts, but something greater.
She had to pursue it. It would be a betrayal of both Amelia and Louise if she didn't.
Father saw this in her eyes. He sighed. Perhaps he, too, knew the signs of a Whitegrave drawing a line in the sand- and though a Ghost Specialist was less stubborn than a Steel, they were no less tenacious.
She said the words anyway. "I want to participate in the next Circuit."
"Fine," he said, and Amelia could almost taste the ashes that must be on his tongue. "However."
Amelia blinked slowly. "I'll abide… reasonable conditions."
It was better than slipping away in the middle of the night, and they both knew she would. The League didn't require parental permission, and she would be of-age – fourteen – before February. Besides.
A Ghost couldn't be caged for long.
.
.
.
Clad in pricey athletic wear just the right shade of blue to bring some color out of her slate-gray eyes, her blonde hair in a tail and her Pikachu doll held in both hands, Amelia felt out of place.
It was bright out. Brilliant, even. The sun had risen not half an hour ago, casting warmth and malevolent light across the snowy park behind their manse, and though she wanted to be inside she had promised. Her word meant little to her, but her relationship with her steel wall of a father meant much, and this was a much more reasonable condition than she rightfully expected.
"We'll start with some stretches: they're the most important part of a workout. After, we'll run a lap to warm our blood, and then we'll begin for real. Do try your hardest, darling. If you slack off, Shazam will know."
Amelia gave her mother a dry look. "How much did you bribe him to be awake at this hour?" And was it more or less than it would've cost to hire an actual physical trainer, she didn't ask.
"It is uncouth to pry into the bond between a trainer and her Pokemon."
So, a lot.
Mother ran her hard- whether out of a genuine desire to prepare her for the rigors of a Journey, sadistic amusement, or as petty revenge for the comment, Amelia didn't know and didn't care to figure out. It was likely a mixture of all three and more besides. Psychic Specialists were like that, saying one thing and meaning three other things and that first thing too, sometimes. If Amelia held affinity for the Dark type, she might be able to twist her own mind into a pretzel to induce some kind of comprehension, or just intuit it based off of vibes, but Amelia had long ago given up on understanding how her mother worked.
… That was common among Psychics and their families, Amelia had learned. It had only gotten worse when Amelia's gentle Fairy and Water affinities had been consumed by a near-overwhelming Ghost affinity. While Dark-types could bend and twist themselves to present their minds a certain way, Ghost-types were just static, screaming, and raw emotion. Some Psychics claimed that Ghost Specialists didn't think or reason at all, their higher brain function devoured piecemeal by their own wicked type energies, acting entirely off instinct and animal cunning. If her mother held that belief, Amelia didn't know.
So, as she worked herself into a sprawling mess on the snow an hour later, slick with hot sweat and panting like a dog, she minded the physical exercise a lot less than she had expected. It was time spent with her mother. That had been uncommon for a few years now, and was only liable to become as rare as Milotic once she set off in three months.
She had to do this three times a week? That's thirty-six hours. If Father's other conditions were like this, then she might need to try the emotional honesty thing more often.
"What starter do you want, darling?"
Amelia blinked, but wasn't surprised. Sudden changes in topic were common for Mother. "I don't suppose a Spiritomb is on the shortlist."
"Unlikely, seeing as I don't recognize the species," Mother said through a smile. "We can do rare and we can do foreign, but both is a bit much even on our badget, sweet thing."
Figures. With a little experimentation and a lot more power, she could probably create one, anyway.
"If you need time to think about it, that's fine," Mother continued, "But keep in mind that the sooner you tell us, the sooner we can acquire one, and the sooner we can begin training. The Indigo Conference is only eleven months away!"
Amelia sat up and immediately fell back into her slouch. "I don't need time. Sableye. They're Hoennian."
"I'm familiar. Dark primary- a good choice. Your affinity allows you to fight back against hostile Psychics, but a little Dark stealth… as they say, an ounce of prevention. Gender, age, pedigree?"
"Don't care, an egg, don't care. At least a month away from hatching, please."
"Consider it done, darling. I've always loved Sableye, they have the most gorgeous eyes." Mother paused for a moment, maybe to ask why so long from hatching, maybe something else. "If you have any questions about the Circuit, I'm an open book."
Amelia didn't have any, but she made some up anyway.
.
.
.
Amelia's brother is the most intolerable fool in Kanto.
"-and that's when Mouser revealed she knew Stored Power. The blast of Psychic energy almost tore the poor Arbok to shreds, for a moment there I was worried she had killed the damn thing! Of course, the League has the best medical care, and in the end, I had the Soul Badge and a new fan in Koga's daughter. She really took a shine to me, and I was quite flattered… of course, I had one more badge to collect off in Cinnabar, and the Conference was only a month out, so it couldn't be. Ah, and here I am rambling on! What were we talking about?"
"A Chandelure in the Safari Zone," Amelia prompted.
"Ah, yes. Unfortunately, it was just a Misdreavus with Will-o-Wisp, I was really quite disappointed, if I brought back a Chandelure for my sweet little sister I would've been the best big brother in Kanto! No, all of Indigo! Not that I already aren't. That swaggering Blackthorn moron doesn't hold a candle to my big-brothering bonfire-"
.
.
.
Day after day passed in a kind of mind-numbing rhythm. She'd spend the mornings with Mother or Father, either exhausting her body or her mind, until she knew every route and danger-spot in Kanto and the certitude she could run them all faster than an Arcanine. In the afternoons, she studied for the Trainer Licensure Exam, mostly playing catch-up as until this point she had been in tutoring to join the family business. At night, when the manse fell quiet and the only light and sound came from a burning candle and her own breath, she played with her aura.
Trained. She trained her aura. It wasn't easy. Some days, she wished she had caved and let Father hire a Specialist to instruct her in the auric arts. Amelia never let the dangerous thought become more than just that- Steels and Fires and even Psychics like Mother might be able to reach phantasmal tendrils into each other's souls and play guide, but Ghosts like Amelia didn't have it so easy. If ever another Ghost Specialist cupped her soul in their hands, Amelia would be far too terrified of them taking a bite to learn a single thing.
Amelia stared into the candle flame. It had been one of her brother's few good ideas, though she wasn't using it the way he did. She didn't become the fire, or make the shadows it cast dance, but instead kept her eyes on the wax- watched as the fire ate, and ate, and ate, and the candle shortened inch by inch.
She fed herself to the candle flame, and as it grew bigger, brighter, hungrier, she felt cold. Her breath misted in the air, and for a split-second she feared she would fall through the bed and into the kitchens below again. She kept her body in the Material while willing her soul out of it, and as frost crept across her bedsheets and her conscious mind was consumed by the dark desires underneath, Amelia fell to pieces.
To the north-east, Mother made a carnival of dolls dance while in meditation with Shazam. Which limbs each controlled differed between dolls, but the synchronicity was at most a hair off, and as the reenactment of Beauregard's Disaster Foretold progressed towards the final act more dolls joined the fray. On impulse she knocked the Absol doll on its side, and Mother knocked on the side of her soul in a chiding manner.
To the south, Father signed paperwork at his desk, muttering promises of retribution as he once more lamented becoming a businessman and not opening up a Gym. His soul was a pillar of shining steel, unyielding and reflective, and she reared back from her own haunting visage. Father didn't notice, soul as unfeeling and insensitive as the rest of his personality.
To the west, Grayson burned.
Amelia sucked in a breath and with it, the vapor-cloud of her soul and Ghostly energies. The breath quickly became two and three, four, five, rapidfire, before her heart calmed and she reached blindly for the hot chocolate on her bedside. The warmth chased away the Ghostly frost on her inside, and the sweetness cemented her in the here-and-now.
… Grayson was an intolerable fool. His soul, though, was the warmest, brightest thing she had ever felt, and it never failed to jolt her out of a trance. His presence in the manse was the only reason she could practice so brazenly. Without a safeguard like him around, she might become one of the horror stories mothers tell their children about those unlucky few with too strong of a Ghost affinity.
Amelia wanted to be a horror story. She didn't want to be a tragic one, though.
"… I'm scared," she admitted. Voicing it aloud felt like a betrayal and a release, all at once.
Her Pikachu doll had fallen on the floor during her astral projection. She picked it up, dusted it off, then held it in what would have been a bone-creaking hug. It… helped. Her doll wasn't as warm as a real Pikachu would be, but she didn't want a real Pikachu anyway, and her mother had knit it for her when she was a child, frail and infirm and one step closer to death with every hospital stay.
"I'm scared, Cherish," she said again, a little stronger. "Sometimes I wish that I was born healthier, so Louise never came for me and I still had Water and Fairy affinities. Maybe more than sometimes. I'm sure Mother could source me a Popplio, and I would learn to sing along with it when it became a Primarina, and I'd catch a Marill, and Father would hatch me a Mawile and we'd bond over its shared types, and we can afford a Prism Scale for a Milotic, and we'd perform in as many Contests as we fought in Gyms, and bring honor to the Whitegraves in a way my brother couldn't…"
She took another sip of her hot chocolate. Then another, and another, and soon enough it was all gone, and as she looked into the empty mug she wanted to cry.
"This is the part where I say this is unlike a Ghost specialist, but it actually is," she said with an unhappy laugh. "We're the weepy, anxious sort, in our head when we're not out of our bodies, and I never feel more attuned to my affinity then when I'm stewing in regret that it's my affinity at all. A normal girl wouldn't be this miserable and spiteful at fourteen, but a normal girl wouldn't accept a Ghost into her soul, would she?
"Brother offered to help me work through it. Mother offered a more active solution. Father would hire the finest therapists money could buy. None of them get it, of course- not a drop of Ghost in any of their souls. If I worked through my nonsense, learned to let go and move on and all that cheery foolishness, then I'd grow weaker, and I wouldn't achieve my dream. I'm a Ghost. Pain is power, and power is pain… the more twisted my head is, the more in tune with this type I am. Why ever would I fix myself?
"But, Cherish. You love me anyways, don't you? Spite and curses and all."
Cherish didn't nod, or shake her head. Of course she didn't. She's a doll.
Amelia smiled. She pressed a sweet kiss to Cherish's head, right between the cloth Pikachu ears, and sank back into a trance.
It was dangerous, but being weak around a full team of Ghosts was infinitely more so. If she wanted to raise nightmares the rival of Agatha's, then she had to be strong enough they wouldn't eat her, first.
.
.
.
The Sableye egg arrived on a Friday.
"If you need any advice on caring for an egg, don't hesitate to come ask your big brother!" Grayson said boisterously. He had volunteered to fly out on Regal and pick it up, saving her the frustration of having to wait until Monday for a delivery, so she allowed him a few minutes to talk himself up. Never let it be said she was an ungrateful sister. "Why, I raised Mouser from an egg myself when I was only a little older than you are now, and I picked up a dozen or three tricks to smooth the process along. If you want a Fire-type to curl up around it every now and then to shave a few days off, just say the word, sweet sister, and you'll have your choice of six to do the deed. Except Spitfire, she'll probably eat it."
"Warming up a Sableye egg will kill it," Amelia said matter-of-factly.
Grayson floundered for a bit before making a ludicrous promise to catch an Ice-type. Amelia hid a smile.
True to Mother's word, the egg didn't hatch for almost five weeks. Her whole life had to be structured around the egg, and she knew it would only get worse once it hatched. When she exercised with her mother or sat across from her father, the egg was there, kept in a box for shade and fed ice cubes through a latch in the side every few hours. When she studied in the library or talked to Cherish on her bed or… well, she didn't do anything else, really, the egg was there.
"I hope you don't feel jealous," Amelia told Cherish, one day. "There's no need, really. Sableye will learn to confide in you as I have, and you'll always be my first friend, okay? I'll always love and have time for you, so don't go feeling neglected, now."
With two months and change left until the next League season, she plotted out her Journey. Her family each had different, often conflicting advice for how to go about it, and the many books and journals in the house library offered another thousand perspectives besides.
Father seemed to have his finger on the pulse of popular opinion on the subject: a Journey lived and died on preparation and foreknowledge, and a trainer with a heavy pack, thorough plan, and reasonable limits was a successful trainer. He sat down with her and helped her plot out a route through each of Kanto's eight badge-holding settlements, ignoring the lesser Gyms with all the thoughtless condescension of an ex-Ace. His plan was around seven pages long, detailed enough to include the departure and arrival dates for convoys and transport ships, and with multiple sub-plans should she need to switch direction on a dime seven or so months in the future. Amelia almost felt bad for her intention to utterly disregard it and travel entirely off vibes.
Mother's advice was both more and less practical: "Decide what six Pokemon your Conference team will include," she had said, "And then acquire those Pokemon as quickly as you can." The longer she has the Pokemon in her roster, the more time she has to train them up to a Conference standard, and the less likely she is to be one of those moronic greenhorns who have three or even four competitive Pokemon and two that just aren't up to snuff. There's nothing more humiliating than losing to an inferior Trainer in front of the entire continent because of something so ludicrous as time constraints. (Amelia politely didn't inquire into her own Conference performance.)
Grayson's advice was the simplest, as she had expected, but also well-thought out and philosophical, which she hadn't. His Journey was the cause of his glorious transformation from boy-with-potential to man-of-talent (his words), but it wasn't because of Gym victories, the accumulation of power, or even his admittedly impressive showing on the world stage, but because of the experiences he had and the freedom that had allowed him to have them. He told a long, intricately detailed story about getting lost in Mt. Moon and not being able to find his way out for three months, which had given him only three more to collect six badges if he wanted to complete the Circuit in time for the Conference.
Amelia remembered that time, vaguely. It was before the possession and so fractured, but both of their parents had been sick with worry, and Amelia herself had become increasingly convinced that her brother was dead or worse. It had been a dark time, and the stress had driven her into the hospital more than usual.
"I found Spitfire in those tunnels, back when she was only a Magby," he continued, "And though she's become the powerhouse of my team and I love her dearly- she's not the most valuable thing to happen to me in those months. With my flashlight out of battery, rations long gone, and all attempts to navigate foiled by Ghosts and wicked Clefairy, I fell to despair. In that time, I wasn't the heir of our Whitegrave branch, or a future Fire Specialist, or a Championship competitor: I was just Grayson, a human in a world of beings with real power, and everything else was just so much dross. That experience woke me up, and I emerged a grown man."
Grayson gazed into the middle distance, eyes shadowed over by haunting memories. In that moment, Amelia realized that for all his wacky tales and childish antics, he very rarely mentioned Mt. Moon at all.
Then he grinned. "I looked so cool there, didn't I, Amelia?! Come on! Admit your big brother is cool!"
"Never!"
That night, as she brainstormed with Cherish and wrote notes in her journal by candlelight, she flipped to the page marked JOURNEY PLANS and underlined twice. Underneath it, she wrote:
Go wherever. Try and hit one Gym a month so you're not left floundering like Grayson.
"Spontaneity doesn't come naturally," she admitted to Cherish, "But maybe it's something I could learn? Calculated plans aren't really a Ghostly thing anyway."
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The Sableye egg hatched fifty-one days before the League season.
No one was there but her and Cherish when it happened. This was normal; Pokemon have a rudimentary sense of their surroundings before they hatch, and rare is the Ghost who wants an audience while they're weak. It was also why she was never further than ten yards or so at all times, lest she return to a cracked egg and a missing Darkness Pokemon.
The Sableye punched a purple hand through the side, and huffed and growled in exertion as they tried in vain to tear the hole wider. After about two minutes and numerous failed attempts, the baby gave a cry of frustration and phased through the eggshell; the cry turned to a noise of triumph. The Sableye's first act in life was shoving his egg off the side of her bed and pouncing on its shattered pieces, stuffing yolk in his mouth with violent ferocity.
Amelia hid a smile behind her doll. The Sableye was nine inches tall and maybe ten pounds at most, a roughly-humanoid purple blob with eyes of infinite darkness. He was adorable.
She held out a hand, palm up and full of synthetic gems. The Sableye – her Sableye – cocked its head curiously, hearing the clink of precious gems and doubtless experiencing the happy-feelings his instincts pair with that sound. He turned to her fully, gaze switching between her face and the gems in her hand and back again. She could almost hear the cogs in his brain grind.
He wasn't going to ask for the stones. They're valuable, and someone else has them; ergo, he won't be given them. Such is the reasoning of a Dark- and Ghost-type Pokemon. No, two minutes old and he's planning his first heist.
She could give them to him. It'd be a bad idea, but it would make him stick around long enough for a bond to form, maybe. She doesn't want to earn her Pokémon's attention by being an easy mark, though. Other trainers might be able to earn their Pokemon's loyalty through kindness and charm, but that wasn't going to work on a Sableye.
The Sableye made his move. He leapt, Dark energies propelling his body more than his physical strength, cutting through the air towards her gem-filled hand with speed. Amelia was disappointed; then he fell through the bed's shadow and emerged from her's, stubby hand streaking for the treasures at an angle.
"Good attempt," she praised honestly. It wasn't quite a Shadow Sneak, but the precursor to the Ghost-type staple move and a good omen. She was excited to train the little guy and take him all the way to the Conference and beyond.
It wasn't enough to let the gems be stolen, though; if they were, then the Sableye would never respect her. When his purple hand was inches away from hers, she called on her own Ghostly energies to turn her hand phantasmal. The gems fell right through her flesh and were caught by her other hand before they could land in her lap.
The Sableye clasped her hand and stopped, surprised. He inspected her hand with a squinty look, increasingly frustrated and confused, as if expecting to find a ruby inbetween her fingers.
She waved the gems in the air with her off hand, smug smile on her face. "If you want them, you'll have to earn them," she taunted.
Thus began a game of keep-away she knew would only be the first of many. It ended several minutes later with her cute little Sableye spread-eagled on her bedsheets, panting for breath and glaring at her and the gems still in her hand. She smiled, more kind this time.
"Let's make a deal, okay? I'll give you a list of things you must do, and in exchange, you'll get these gems, and many more in the future. Okay?"
Eagerly, the Sableye nodded.
"I'm what's called a Pokemon Trainer. I raise Pokemon – like you, dear! – into powerful battlers. I'll teach you to be strong, will feed you, provide direction, and, yes, give you lots of gems to keep, polish, and eat. In exchange, you protect me from harm and listen to my every command. Sound like a good deal?"
The Sableye thought for a long few seconds, but she knew he was just playacting. He already decided. Before long, he was making grabbing motions towards the gems.
"Ah, ah! To seal the deal, we both need to touch the Sacred Ball, okay?"
Amelia took a Premier Ball from her nightstand drawer and set it between them, keeping her face as solemn as she could. She angled it just so, then pressed her finger on the side. Impatiently, her Sableye reached out-
And pressed the button.
He disappeared in a flash of red light.
She giggled. It would have been cruel to do this to an Eevee like her brother hatched, but a Dark type? A little deception would only foster respect.
She pressed a kiss to the top of the Pokéball. Through a smile, she whispered, "You're very sweet, and maybe a little dumb, but you're mine now, okay, sweetie? Your name will be Toffee. Let's conquer the world together."
The next months passed in a breeze.
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
Yup, working with emotional themes like these can make writing quite draining.
Calling the family dynamic dysfuntional is generous if Type influences personality like I think it does; everyone's quirks annoy everyone else... and make tricking a newly hatched 'mon into effectively catching itself a very Ghost thing to do.
Calling the family dynamic dysfuntional is generous if Type influences personality like I think it does; everyone's quirks annoy everyone else... and make tricking a newly hatched 'mon into effectively catching itself a very Ghost thing to do.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
Aren't Karens supposed to inflict Psychic damage on everyone?
One would wonder how there aren't more dead or missing kids in whatever one's interpretation of the Pokemon verse is but then again they have an endless army of Jenny bots offscreen keeping the peace outside of the big bads so I suppose public order isn't that bad.
What did I just say about dating a Poison master? Well, he's maybe not quite as big a fool as she thinks since Grayson didn't go for it in the end.
A successful trainer that settles for mediocrity and complains about their life as a businessman instead of a Gym owner, maybe.
On the flipside, in the early games it's also pretty hilarious to just roll up with a single Lv99 beatstick and see what happens.
The best kind of starter, innit?
Yeah, I can see where this could be fun but it's very wide open for how you would want to take it, almost too much so.
Kaernetron
Feuergeist
- Location
- Weit, Weit dort Oben
Yes, finding out how many of the Elite Four a single max level pokemon can solo was an entertaining diversion while grinding money/XP.