Oh sorry, I get pronouns confused sometimes.
The Friendly Necromancer
- Thread starter Sengachi
- Start date
-
- Tags
- pokemon pokemon trainer
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or they/them. Diya uses it internally, and is referred to using they by its friends, and either works for a comment.
ProfHardraad
ThreadNecromancer
I don't think Diya is a Banette. I think it's something new. Something that could only exist in a story like this. Sort of a Bhuta Aradhana type scenario. Also, I wonder if one could get an alternate evolution of Shuppet by giving up the stuffie specifically for the purpose of evolution.
June did research and it sounds like by technicality Diya is still a Banette but considering how one of the only known previous cases of a Shuppet evolving into a dead body was with a another Pokemon and that their isn't any mentioned cases of that happening with humans, well they are probably something new.
Diya also seems to be unusual in the sense that they are seem to be far more empathetic than even other ghosts in their family line. I am not sure if thats just something specific to them or its just a case of their siblings and cousins basically having no parents and no one teaching them how to be empathetic or to pursue better goals when they evolve. It sounds like Diya will try to change that though for ghosts in general. If she succeeds you'd get happier ghosts and better perceptions of ghost pokemons habits. I am pretty sure Diya is something else too because atleast from what we know so far, an ghost practicing necromancy by accident and creating another ghost that seems to be a completely new variant of the Ghastly line is completely unheard of.
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Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
i mean....
In-Universe in the fic there have been cases of similar things happening.
i.e the Herdier
Firedon
Lazy Sleepy Cat
- Location
- Germany
Diya is explicitly a Banette though?
Also I feel like specifically giving something up to reap the rewards of evolving a shuppet into banette would backfire spectacularly.Summary said:
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Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
If done in good faith, it would fail because if you love both the Shuppet and the stuffy there is nothing for the Bayenette.
If there is a whole to fill… well thats just standard vengeance then, and not the evo you would want.
My sleepy-brain thought that the idea here was to try to evolve a shuppet, but without an object for the Banette to inhabit. I expect that it just wouldn't evolve, but the mad scientist in me runs ahead and wants to try aversion therapy before ethics can catch up. Maybe Team Rocket would try it?
The existence of Banette probably discourage the kidnapping of children because a Banette that finds out that no it wasn't abandoned it's child was stolen from it is going to be PISSED.
Eeveeshadowbacon
Soon...all the eeveelutions will be in my grasp
- Location
- Right Behind You, Omae wa mō shinde iru
- Pronouns
- Nani
Today in the the local news, Leaders of the Notorious Child Kidnapper group, Ga'cha, have all willing turned themselves in to escape a group of 10 Banette who had possessed a bunch of said children's toys to get revenge. It turns out that during the last bunch of kidnapping and ransom attempts, they had failed to notice that several children had large stuffed animal that they were careful tending to.
As expected, said stuffed animals didn't take well to being abandoned and were sequential turned into the hosts from various Shuppet evolutions. Several of the surviving Banettes were captured and giving to the children, who have had their names redacted for legal purposes, who promised to give the Banete the love they were giving their stiffed animals before. One child had to say, "I always knew Mister Fluffy protected me as I sleeped from the night terrors,. I didn't know he would also protect me from the day terrors as well."
That's right Tom, truly a heartwarming story and a reminder that crimes never pay. Now onto the Weather...
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Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
I'm surprised it took me over half a year to realize this fic existed; it's certainly good enough that I feel I should have noticed it before someone happened to link me to it. Regardless, this is a wonderful story! Very much enjoying the massive amounts of worldbuilding you've done, especially with how well it's been integrated into the narrative — you've obviously put a ton of thought into the details of this world, and I think they work quite well together. Diya is also both an interesting and adorable MC; Banette was an excellent choice of Pokemon for a narrative like this. Can't wait to read more! q(≧▽≦q)
Imagine how conflicted a Banette would feel if it found out that it had just been sent for dry cleaning. That would be awkward. A unique way to get a starter Pokemon as well.
I don't think that would count as "abandoned". Shuppets aren't as smart as a human, but they're not stupid and they can feel the emotional ressonance in an object.
Eeveeshadowbacon
Soon...all the eeveelutions will be in my grasp
- Location
- Right Behind You, Omae wa mō shinde iru
- Pronouns
- Nani
Sent for Dry Cleaning and the cleaners forgot about it and never returned it.
Hmm mabye, or returned to the wrong person, who got rid of it. I'm not sure what that Banette would do: Get back to the innocent family that lost it, or blast the ones responsible for the abandonment.
The answer is obvious: Yes. Blast those resposible, then return to their family. What could possibly go wrong?
Incinerators are probably very lucrative and VERY well guarded for this reason.
Chapter 15: Fighting For Friendship
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 15: Fighting For Friendship
"TM" is an ambiguous acronym which can stand for "technical manipulation" or "technical machine". In both cases it is referring to the same process, by which a pokemon held in stasis is converted into a digital environment and then directly modified by special machines, typically for the purpose of adding novel abilities to the pokemon. For example, a Squirtle's extradimensional water sacs might be modified to introduce Ice energy into the water at the point of release, converting the Squirtle's classic water gun move into a spray of freezing sleet, allowing the Squirtle to more effectively combat Grass pokemon, which are often resilient against Water abilities but vulnerable to extreme cold.
Enhancing pokemons' combat abilities is only one of the uses of TM, however. Technical manipulation can be performed on humans as well as pokemon, and is an essential medical tool. Many modern cancer treatments are performed using TMs, particularly follow-up treatments in which damaged DNA is edited to prevent recurrence of the cancer. It can also be used to fix congenital disorders such as congenital heart disease, cerebral palsy, or hormonal imbalances. TM's unique ability to resolve or manage chronic conditions is critical in ensuring modern life expectancies and end-of-life quality, which improvements in TM technology continue to extend and improve.
TM usage has also become increasingly common for cosmetic alterations, such as coloration or proportion changes. This is an often controversial use of the technology among older generations. Among younger generations however, for whom TM usage has always been common and relatively affordable, even exotic cosmetic modifications outside the human standard (i.e. red skin, yellow eyes, webbed fingers) are hardly worth remarking on.
-----
Canopy Gym's sparring center was a simple but colorful building. The structure itself was little more than a squat gymnasium, and Diya knew that inside would be nothing more than a few simple arenas of varying terrain and a couple of target training areas. Canopy Town might take pride in its gym, but it wasn't large or wealthy enough to afford anything more elaborate than that. But the town refused to leave the building as a grey concrete monolith. Successive generations of school children had painted over every centimeter of the building in enthusiastic murals of pokemon battles.
Diya's favorite was one of a somewhat blobby Charizard being mobbed by even more blobby Jigglypuffs. It had the same childish glee that filled Diya's heart when it imagined going inside and sparring with its fellow young trainers, of doing that quintessential thing every child imagined doing as a trainer. Inside that building Diya would pit it and Svartis' strengths against other trainers, to see how far they'd come and how far they had yet to go.
It shuffled its feet.
Diya had an Ice Gym challenge to prepare for. It needed to find other trainers with Ice pokemon to spar against. June and Bashak were wonderful friends, and Bashak especially was a fantastic training partner, but neither of them used Ice pokemon. Bashak was learning to fight with his new Ice/Ground Piloswine, who he'd named Alicia, but the key word there was learning. He was hardly an Ice type expert and he was still cautious about how skittish her brush with death had left her. For now he was only letting Alicia spar with his own pokemon, so he could have complete control over her encounters.
Which meant if Diya wanted to train to fight Ice pokemon, it needed to train with other people. Which was fine. It was totally fine. Leader Ahmad and his assistants were friendly and professional and training with them was great. It's just that Ahmad only had four full time assistants. Between training their own pokemon, running the group lessons, and managing local conservation efforts, they were only left with so much time for one-on-one sparring sessions. And that time was split between every single trainer visiting the gym.
So if Diya wanted to fight an Ice pokemon more than once a week, it needed to spar with other trainers its age. Which is why the young trainer stood outside Canopy Gym's sparring center, listening to the faint sound of shouted commands and the exclamations of sparring pokemon from within.
And if Diya reached deep down into itself for some honesty … it might be stalling by admiring the schoolchildrens' murals rather than going inside and finding a sparring partner. The young ghost trainer swallowed and rocked back and forth on its feet.
This should not be that hard. It was excited to go inside! It wanted to spar with other trainers. It wanted to see what they could do, and show them what it could do. It wanted to talk to them and learn from them and-
It wanted to make friends with them.
Which Diya could do! It had made friends with June. And Bashak. It knew how to do this. It even had the memories of a human to draw on, it knew how to make friends with peers. Right?
Diya kept staring at the sparring center and did not take one step forward. Its inherited memories informed it that while its boy had had friends, he hadn't had the faintest clue how he'd got them. They just showed up in his life one day. Kind of like how June had showed up in Diya's life one day and dragged Bashak along with her.
Oh stars and shadows it really didn't know how to make friends with its peers. It was doomed.
Gleeful cackling drifted out from under the shadowed awning of a building on the other side of the street. The Misdreavus was still following Diya, and at the moment it was clearly enjoying the taste of the young trainer's anxiety. Diya glared at it.
Beneath its cloak, Svartis stirred. What was wrong? she asked her trainer.
Nothing, Diya tried to respond. But its thoughts immediately turned to how nervous it was and how it didn't know what it would say to whoever it met inside and how awkward it would be to explain its no-talking thing to them and … Okay it was nervous, alright!
The former Snom bristled under Diya's cloak. Were there predators inside the building? Dangerous pokemon? Diya could feel its eyes narrow as it thought. Were there Spinaraks inside there?
No no no, Diya reassured its companion. There were pokemon inside, but they were all trained using the virtual reality software Nurse Claire had shown them. They were perfectly safe. Nothing inside the sparring center would hurt them.
Svartis mulled over that for a few seconds. Then, carefully and making sure to perform the memory manipulation right, she reflected back to Diya its anxiety-laced mental image of saying hi to the other trainers, coupled with the feeling of a question. Loosely interpreted, the message asked, 'You're scared to say hi?'.
The young trainer bit the inside of its cheek. …yes, it responded. If it had to say it directly, yes it was. It was working up the courage to-
A mental image from the Misdreavus caught them both. It showed Svartis going into the sparring center and hissing out a hi in Diya's place, to break the ice for her companion. The image was accompanied by woven together feelings of success, acclamation, and gratitude.
Chirpy affirmation bounced back from Svartis. Okay, she understood that. She would say hi for Diya.
Diya had time to blink once in confusion and once in horrified realization before events left it behind.
Svartis boiled out from under Diya's cloak as a cloud of purple smog and flowed through the gap under the sparring center's doors. As Svartis rushed inside, she sent Diya a fleeting affirmation that she would remember to keep her soul-smog contained even without Diya there to absorb it for her.
Which was a thing the trainers inside would most definitely not know she was doing! They would only see a loose Gastly approaching them! Diya blared negation through their bond and rushed after her. It tried to grab her but its hand went right through her immaterial smoke. Panicked, Diya slammed through the doors to follow her-
Ow. Those were pull, not push.
Breathless laughter floated out of the shadowed awning across the street.
Diya thought some extremely unkind words about the trickster spirit and yanked the doors open. It rushed into the sparring center ready to defuse whatever battle was about to occur between panicking trainers and Svartis-
-and found a perfectly calm room. Two older local trainers occupied the target wall on the far end of the center and were each practicing with a Snover, a small native tree-like pokemon with Ice powers. They were engrossed in having their pokemon practice together to get an ice shard attack right, and neither of them even glanced over at the new arrivals.
Two more younger trainers were standing in a gravel sparring court littered with small rocks which broke up the terrain and larger boulders which broke up line of sight. One of them was working with a rare Alolan Sandshrew and the other a Charmander. They were looking over at the doors where Diya had just burst in, heads tilted and slightly confused at its dramatic entrance. One of them waved their hand at the other and called for a halt to their exercise. Evasion training, if Diya had to guess, from the way the Charmander was standing atop a boulder and the Sandshrew had just skidded to a halt behind a torso-sized rock.
The last trainer in the room, standing next to the evasion training, was a girl a couple years older than Diya wearing a red beanie, worn jeans, and a slightly tattered fleece. Going by her appearance she was probably a local like Diya. She had one of the more common local looks, dark brown skin, thick eyebrows, and coarse black hair dense enough to lift the beanie off of her scalp. Well, technically Diya supposed she might be a visitor from the equatorial region which was responsible for Kenomao's settlement. But they tended to walk around Kenomao during winter bundled up until they looked like fluffy barely mobile balls, not in jeans.
And that particular trainer was looking up at a floating Svartis and not panicking. She'd taken a cautious step back and wasn't taking her eyes off of it, but she wasn't reaching for a pokeball to fight it or running for the exit.
The Gastly smiled wide at her and hissed out, "Svaarrrrrtissss!" She materialized a hand and waved. She paused, waiting for a response. When she didn't get it she said again, "Svartisss", and gestured to herself and then the girl.
The girl blinked and tilted her head. "Oh! I'm Cori." She waved back. She glanced over to Diya and then back to Svartis. "Hello there. Is this your Gastly?"
Diya nodded. The tip of its Mismagius hat bobbed with the motion.
"Oh, cool. Sorry to ask, but is it safe?"
Diya nodded again, getting out its pokedex to type with. It rushed over to her and typed as fast as it could, trying to head off her concern. <Gastly can control their poison emission, don't worry.>
It took Cori a moment to realize what Diya was doing with its pokedex, but she got it once it turned the pokedex around to her. "Oh! You're mute, aren't you?" She smiled when Diya nodded. "Okay, hey Brandon, Tianna," she looked over at the two sparring trainers, "it's fine, his Gastly can control its poison."
One of the trainers, Tianna, waved at Diya. "We know, no worries." They'd both been at the Canopy Gym lesson where Svartis had learned to breathe below-freezing air. She and Brandon turned back to their match.
When Cori looked back to Diya she found its pokedex turned towards her again. <They, not he. And my name is Diya.>
Her eyes widened and Diya felt a complicated burst of emotions burst from her. They were tied around a kernel of remorse Diya could taste, but the overall composition was positive. Diya couldn't parse it all before the emotions faded though, the feeling was as fleeting as it was intense. "Sorry, I shouldn't have assumed," she apologized. Then she continued on, smiling, "But so Diya, you say your Gastly can control its poison emission? How does that work?"
The other trainer took hold of Diya's left elbow and steered it away from the resuming spar as it typed. Svartis followed after them, grinning at the two of them talking and radiating cheerful satisfaction at a job well done. Diya pointedly ignored her as it typed. <It's not actually a gas. It's an aural Ghost effect she can pull in.>
Cori frowned. "That can't possibly be right. Gastly victims asphyxiate, right?"
Svarits and Diya looked at each other. Each exchanged a mental shrug with the other. They'd never actually tested her powers to any serious extent on a living being, let alone to death. Maybe? Diya vaguely remembered some news article years ago about a Gastly-caused death at a construction site which might have said something like that.
Cori flipped out her own pokedex and started typing. "Yeah let me check…" she started scrolling. "While I'm checking, by the by, how do you know that it's an aural effect?"
<I'm an odd type of psychic,> Diya answered. June had suggested that the Banette keep its psychic cover story as vague as possible in the future and let people draw their own conclusions. <I can feel it from Svartis' perspective, it's not gas.>
"Hn. I trust you, don't get me wrong, it's just…" Cori squinted at her screen. She had a very intense glare. "Yeah, medical reports on Gastly attacks say there's definitely a respiratory anaphylactic effect. Creatures exposed to it have their throats close. Which is not how purely mental attacks kill."
The Banette raised an eyebrow and shrugged. It didn't know what to tell her. Svartis' soul smog was most certainly a Ghost effect.
The other trainer crossed her arms and gave Diya an evaluating look. "Hmm. Actually, I have an idea and I think I know how to test it. How do you feel about recording a spar with me? I'll split the bounties with you if we get any useful information."
Diya nodded eagerly, forgetting its earlier nervousness. It was absolutely up for that. It had come here with a purpose however. <I'm here to spar against Ice pokemon though. Do you have any?>
Cori leaned in to peer at the Banette's screen. "Hn? Oh, yeah. I've got a Staryu with some Ice moves TMed onto it. Would that work for you?"
The ghost trainer didn't bother trying to hide its wide eyes as it nodded. TM referred to 'technique manipulation', a process by which the bodies of pokemon in virtual space were directly edited to give them additional abilities. Templates for specific abilities and pokemon were available relatively cheaply online, but they had to be tailored for an individual pokemon's body and that was an extremely technical process. It took hundreds if not thousands of hours of careful simulation practice to master. Those who did were in high demand and charged accordingly, making it a pricey thing for a young trainer getting by on basic income.
From the look of Cori's worn clothes though, she wasn't independently wealthy. She'd either scrimped and saved to afford it, or she'd TMed her Staryu herself. Curious and a little awed, Diya probed, <Are any of your other pokemon TMed?>
Cori's answering smile showed teeth and pride. "All six of them. Did it myself. Do you still want to spar?" The look in Cori's eyes said she knew exactly how impressive that was, and how powerful it implied her pokemon would be.
The ghost trainer looked up at its one singular pokemon. Svartis smiled guilelessly back at it, happy and proud that she'd successfully broken the ice and found someone for her trainer to talk to. At the impression of sparring she read in Diya's thoughts she smiled wider. She projected a memory of sparring with Greta, tinged with joy and giddy excitement. This would be fun!
Diya had one novice pokemon. Cori had a full league team of pokemon she'd TMed herself.
Well. Losing was an important part of the learning process. And no one had ever become a pokemon trainer by shying away from difficulty. Diya sent back cautious optimism to Svartis, marrying her memory of playing with Greta with its own memory of the caution it and Bashak used to approach his Piloswine.
<Sure. I'll spar with you.>
"Cool. Hey, give me your pokedex for a moment? Okay … there's my number. It'll be easier for you to text me than to walk over and show me your pokedex while we're sparring, yeah?"
Diya took its pokedex back and nodded. It followed Cori over to an open league-style sparring court. The court was open and devoid of any terrain, marked up with lines and circles to delineate match boundaries and pokemon starting positions. It swallowed its nervousness and excitement, trying to calm its fluttering heart. It was actually going to be sparring with a rival trainer for the first time. June and Bashak didn't count, and practicing specific moves under Leader Admad's guidance didn't either. This was going to be its first proper match against someone taking it seriously.
It felt an answering thrum of anticipation from Svartis. And then, oddly enough, a response to that which didn't come from either of them. A separate echo of the anticipation bounced back with the taste of encouragement added on. Diya followed the echo to its source. There, in the rafters above them was the Misdreavus. The cheeky little ghost fluttered its dress-like lower half in an approximation of a wave.
Diya fought down a scowl and sighed. As scary as it had been to see Svartis rushing into the sparring center without it, the Misdreavus had read the situation better than it. No serious harm had been done, Svartis was fine and Diya was fine (maybe a little achy where its shoulder had hit the door, but fine). The little trickster spirit had been trying to help in its own way. And it had succeeded, because the Misdreavus' plan for Svartis to break the ice had worked.
The Banette looked up at the Misdreavus. It was a mischief maker by nature. It wouldn't be possible to train it to not play pranks and cause trouble, Misdreavuses literally lived on shock and startlement. It was also the only pokemon of its species in Canopy Town. The Shuppets were company for it, but not quite the right kind of company. They tended to be shy and stay out of sight, while Misdreavuses were bold and attention seeking.
The poor thing must be lonely.
Diya waved back at it, and sent it the memory of Bashak welcoming Diya into his yurt. If it wanted to come down and join them, it could.
Across the sparring court, Cori followed its gaze. "Is that another one of your pokemon?"
<Not yet. But we'll see.> Diya texted back.
"Ah." The more experienced trainer smiled. "Well. Good luck with that. Anyway, you ready for our spar?"
With one last look at Svartis, Diya nodded.
"Alright! Let's do this!" Cori bounced on the balls of her feet and grinned. "Go, Hwimning!" She pulled a pokeball off her belt and threw it dead center at the starting circle for a one-on-one league match. Red light burst forth from the pokeball, which she caught on the rebound, materializing a pokemon Diya had never seen before.
Hwimning was a raptor-shaped pokemon which came up to Diya's chest. It balanced on two huge wicked red claws, had a long white tail lashing out behind it for balance, and clacked a white beak in Diya's direction. But that general shape was about where its resemblance to anything avian ended. The pokemon was covered, or maybe made of, layers and layers of moss and fungus. Its chest, underbelly, and legs were covered with fluffy green moss, some of which was tipped in small blisters of yellow liquid. Its face and tail, where skin or feathers should be, were made of squishy white mycelium and sprouting from its neck were the frilly gills of a mushroom. A wide-brimmed mushroom cap covered in more green moss, spotted by red blisters, adorned its head, and its tail was capped with spongy green balls dusted with a yellow powder.
The pokemon's beak opened, revealing a shockingly red mouth, and it trilled, "Brrriiihihiihihihiii." The creature shivered and shook itself, and a haze of faint white spores dusted the air around it. Its looked around, getting its bearings, before pinning Diya with two beady black eyes.
Diya took a long step back.
Cori chuckled. "Don't worry, the white spores are just a threat display. They're totally harmless."
Ah, Diya thought to itself. So that's why she had been so comfortably reckless with her own safety around its poisonous pokemon. This was a usual thing for her. It was a fascinating pokemon though, however unnerving. Without stepping closer, Diya carefully pointed its pokedex's scanner at the creature.
The blue scanning dome shone bright for a few seconds before text appeared on Diya's screen.
BRELOOM
Threat Classification: HIGH. Macro-fauna ambush predator, capable of lethal aggression, flees if startled.
(Note: DO NOT STARTLE. Triggers highly lethal defensive spore response.)
Diya paused its reading and hit the Misdreavus with the strongest sending it could muster, insisting that this pokemon was absolutely off-limits for its pranks.
(Note: Non-local pokemon species. Likely trained, non-aggressive.)
Breloom is a Grass/Fighting pokemon, evolved from Shroomish. Unlike its passive herbivorous prior evolution, Breloom is a carnivorous ambush predator and should be approached only with extreme caution.
Breloom is a symbiotic colony organism composed of many fungal species intertwined with an avian musculoskeletal frame. It takes down prey and deters would-be predators with a highly varied array of toxic spores. If its spores do not take effect quickly enough when defending itself against predators, it will fall back on Fighting techniques focused through its large talons.
Breloom, along with its prior evolution Shroomish, is notable for its unique reaction to foreign antigens. Its biological immune response is coupled with a paired injection of Grass/Fighting energy, which produces a strong regenerative effect, often not only countering but exceeding the damage done by the foreign substance. The regeneration is so strong that some trainers will even purposefully poison their Brelooms before battle to trigger it.
Diya gave Hwimning an evaluating look. It copied the last paragraph and texted it to Cori, following up with, <Is this what you want to test?> While Cori read, Hwimning balanced itself on one talon and scratched the back of its neck with the other, dislodging a shower of white spores. Diya really hoped Cori was right about those being harmless.
When she finished reading, Cori nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, that's exactly it! If your Gastly's choking effect is physical and actually causes an inflammatory response, it should trigger Hwimning's regeneration. But if it's all mental and just makes creatures think they're choking, Hwimning's regeneration will remain dormant."
<Will this be safe for-> Diya did not have the faintest idea how to spell that name, <-your pokemon?>
"Should be. Brelooms can function anaerobically if they have to. Even if they stop breathing they'll just get sluggish and kinda dumb. We'll be safe about it though, if Hwimning shows any negative reaction I'll put them back in pokeball stasis and bring them to the pokecenter later."
Diya nodded. When Cori put it that way, Hwimning really was the perfect pokemon for Svartis to go all out against. It was probably immune to her most lethal ability and even if it wasn't, it almost certainly wouldn't die from it. And if against all odds everything still went terribly wrong, they could put Hwimning in stasis and bring the Breloom to a fully stocked pokecenter in minutes. There was nothing stopping Svartis from giving it her all in this fight.
The ghost trainer's heart picked up. It breathed deep through its nose, filling its lungs all the way. This would be their first serious pokemon battle, holding nothing back.
Stars above, it was excited.
<Let's do this.> Diya directed Svartis into the starting circle opposite Hwimning. Facing off against it, the Gastly puffed herself up and let loose an excited teakettle shriek as she compressed back down to her normal size.
"Awesome! I'll count us off." On the opposite side of the sparring court, Cori grinned and barred her teeth. "Ready?"
Diya nodded and Svartis let out another excited shriek.
"Three!"
"Two!"
Hwimning bristled and yellow spores mixed themselves in with the white.
"One!"
Svartis and Diya hissed in breaths simultaneously.
"Go!"
Cori shouted a command to her Breloom and it threw itself to the side, rolling over the concrete floor. But Svartis hardly needed to aim to hit it with her new icy wind attack. The Gastly sucked in air and ballooned to enormous size in an instant, filling the sparring center with the shriek of suddenly compressed air as the carbon dioxide inside of her deposited into motes of dry ice dust. And when she compressed back down, the wave of ultracold air she unleashed was simply too large to dodge. The Breloom trilled out its distress as the edges of its moss blackened in the cold and the pinpricks of dry ice scraped its white mushroom flesh raw.
And Svartis didn't just breathe out ice and cold. Visible for a moment under Diya's glowing pink stare, she also took all of her oily purple-black soul smog, which she usually worked so hard to pull in around herself, and let it loose. Slick streams of spiritually toxic miasma flooded the sparring court, sticking to the Breloom and coating its soul.
But Hwimning refused to give Svartis time to revel in her success. Its beak opened wide and with a flash a ball of green light condensed inside its mouth, launching forth an instant later. The vibrant green energy splashed against Svartis' form as if she were solid, blasting away a layer of the purple smoke that comprised her body.
Svartis cried out and flew back, trying to get herself distance and altitude. She instinctively threw a sloppy night shade to cover her retreat, but the coiling purple-black ribbons did little. Most of them missed Hwimning entirely, who didn't even bother to dodge. Instead Cori's pokemon carefully took aim again with another vibrant green energy ball. Its attack landed squarely on Svartis, blasting away more layers of purple smoke.
Diya's eyes widened as the pummeling continued. Svartis climbed further into the air to get away from the Breloom, trading night shades for energy balls and coming out the worst for the exchange. If this kept up she was going to lose.
Svartis! Diya called, pulling hard on their bond to grab her panicked attention. Stop! This wasn't getting her anywhere. Night shades were instinctive for the gastly, but they weren't reinforcing her soul smog's effects on her opponent, and she wasn't going to win an artillery match against an ability no doubt TMed specifically by Cori to win long-ranged matches for her pokemon. If Svartis wanted to get anywhere, she needed to shut that ability down.
Svartis, use spite, Diya ordered.
The beleaguered spirit was still under assault, and just a moment before had been flailing about in panic. But Diya sent her steady determination … and above them both, so did the Misdreavus. If she stayed calm and fought this battle smart, they knew she could do it. So Svartis reached deep for calm, even as another energy ball tore away pieces of her gaseous form, and used spite.
Spite was an odd little move Diya and Svartis had developed when training with Greta, whose habit of using Ghost-disrupting Dark energy in her bites had been a sure source of agony for both of them. Svartis would breathe out her soul smog as her opponent was using an ability and drawing on whatever equivalent of the phantom world they used to fuel their powers, and her smog would be pulled into their soul along with that energy. And then she took it back, pulling the oily phantom smoke out and scraping bits of her opponent's soul raw in the process. Specifically, the parts of their soul which handled the energy of whatever ability Svartis' opponent had been using.
So this time when her opponent charged up another energy ball, Svartis didn't return fire. Instead, when Hwimning pulled in Grass energy to charge her energy ball, Svartis breathed out phantom fumes. Hwimning still launched its energy ball at her -a direct hit, Diya winced- but it let out a choked trilling "Briii!" a moment later.
Hwimning tried to keep up its assault, pulling in the energy for another blast, but it choked and coughed partway through. The partially formed green ball flew apart into quickly dissolving blobs of light. It attempted to use energy ball one more time, even as Svartis kept breathing her miasma into its soul, and it did manage one last attack which made Svartis flinch. But only one more attack. After that each attempt to draw Grass energy into its mouth only made it snap its head about and trill in pain.
"Looooo~" the pokemon whimpered.
"Hey! Pause for a second?" Cori called across the court. Her voice snapped out with such force that Svartis halted her next attack -a flare of Ghost energy meant to confuse and disorient- instantly. Diya raised an open hand to acknowledge the time-out a moment later.
Cori snapped out a storage ball, which let out a duffel bag in a flare of red light. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a gas mask, hastily strapping it over her head. The moment the protective gear was in place she rushed forward towards her pokemon. Hwimning was clearly uncomfortable, fidgeting and ruffling the mushroom-like gills at its throat, but they held still enough for Cori to examine them. She took hold of her Breloom and moved it around carefully, adjusting it so she could get a good look at every part of it.
Then, to Diya's shock, she stood up and recalled Hwimning into its pokeball. She said something, but her voice was too muffled by the heavy gas mask to make out. Diya shook its head and shrugged.
Cori grumbled something from inside the gas mask. She held up one finger and retreated from the court, then took a canister of water out of the duffle bag. She poured the water over her hands liberally, splashing it freely over the floor as she wiped her hands clean of any spores. She examined her skin, brushed off her fleece for good measure, and then finally took off the gas mask. "Ow. That thing's straps always bite into my head when I rush. Hey, Diya, mind having your Gastly ice breath the court? The spores aren't long-lived, but better safe than sorry."
Diya relayed the request to Svartis, who did as asked and iced over the sparring court. <Is your Breloom okay?> Diya asked.
Cori opened her mouth, closed it, and then chewed on her tongue. "Probably?" she said eventually.
Diya's eyes widened in alarm. <Should I get a nurse?!>
"No it's fine, Hwimning is in stasis. It's just strange. Hwimning's gills were all puffed up and inflamed."
The ghost trainer made a small 'hn' noise through its nose. <And that's not either of the results you were expecting.>
"Yeah." Cori chewed on her tongue some more. "I saw their inflamed gills, and I'm still not a hundred percent convinced that's possible. Brelooms are supposed to heal from being poisoned." She shook her head.
<And unknowns are unsafe.> That was something Diya had learned from June, when she was talking about working with bug pokemon venoms. Any unexpected reaction, no matter how minor, should be treated with the utmost seriousness.
The other trainer nodded. "Yeah. Damn, I don't have the faintest idea how that works. You're sure that it's a pure Ghost effect, no toxic gas mixed in there or anything?"
That got a nod and an apologetic shrug for an answer.
She snorted. "Hah. Well, we may end up being responsible for a bounty because of this, rather than earning one." Cori shook her head and sighed. "Anyway, I remember promising you a spar against a pokemon with Ice moves, right?"
Diya nodded eagerly, mirrored by Svartis. That spar had ended right when it was getting good. <Yeah, I'd love to go again!> Svartis agreed with a fierce "Gaaaa!" and bared her pointy fangs in a wide smile.
"Awesome!" Cori clipped Hwimning's pokeball back on her belt and pulled off another. "Bituin, I choose you!" Cori did a little skip into the air that was probably unnecessary but which Diya thought looked cool, and flung her pokeball into the sparring court. With a flash of red light, it released a Staryu onto the court.
Staryu was another pokemon Diya had never seen before in person, though it at least knew about this one. The Water pokemon looked like nothing so much as a floating starfish, with light brown limbs that were sixty centimeters from tip to tip. Diya faintly remembered learning that those limbs were actually evolutionarily obsolete calcified lumps, rendered pointless by Staryu's evolution of psychic self-propulsion. The center of the Staryu's body was covered in a gleaming yellow carapace that shone like gold under the right light and covered its true body, affixed with an enormous pink pearl in the center. The pearl glowed as the Staryu was released from its pokeball, throbbing with an energy Diya could feel from across the court, and the air around the Staryu rippled as it raised itself higher into the air.
Diya gave the Staryu -Bituin- an evaluating look. Staryu were supposed to be peerless fliers and formidable artillery pokemon. Their psychically powered flight let them turn and brake on the head of a pin and they could fire a variety of beams at any angle from their pearls with no warning. Clearly Cori was not going to allow Svartis to beat this pokemon by simply taking to the air and bombarding it from above.
Its lower tendrils wriggled with the eager urge to fight it and- wait. What? Diya shook its head, dispelling the intrusive thoughts bleeding out of the Misdreavus in the rafters above. It looked up into the rafters, taking its hat off so it could see straight up properly. The trickster spirit wanted to fight?
Cori cleared her throat. "Um, we doing this or…?"
<Sorry, just a moment please.> Diya focused more intently and pushed out with its powers, pinging the Misdreavus. It wanted to fight against Cori's pokemon?
The Misdreavus wiggled self-consciously. Its return sending was a complicated soup, apprehension paired with the image of it fighting Bituin, resolution and purpose, giddy vicarious joy as Svartis fought Hwimning, a sense of unity, and … yearning. It wasn't that it wanted to fight against Bituin. It was just ... Svartis and Diya had looked like they were having fun together. And together was the key word there. They'd shared a single purpose and intent as Svartis had fought.
The Misdreavus wanted that.
Diya's heart swelled. Gently, it sent out a soft invitation for the trickster spirit to come down and-
Svartis beat her trainer to the punch and tackled the Misdreavus in a hug which slammed their half-corporeal forms through the air so hard they collided with the ceiling. The Misdreavus squealed and hugged Svartis back, blasting giddy phantom pings out so fast they were almost incoherent.
The Banette couldn't help itself. It broke down giggling. It curled over and pressed the back of its wrist to its mouth, desperately trying to keep its mouth shut. Of course, how silly of it to try softness with a spirit of heart-pounding jump scares. Much better to straightforwardly tackle the trickster spirit with a hug.
Cori stood on the sidelines with Bituin rotating slowly in the air in front of her. "I am so confused."
Slowly the Banette pulled itself back together. It replaced its purple witch's hat on its head and smiled hard enough to be seen even from behind its scarf - its first piplup scarf today, always a good choice. <Our Misdreavus friend will be joining us to spar, if you're okay with that.>
"Oh. Yeah, sure! One sec, let me bring out a second pokemon."
Diya blinked. It hadn't quite meant that, it had been thinking of the Misdreavus -who really needed a name- fighting Bituin in Svartis' place.
"Go! Egredia!" After Cori's prior two unusual pokemon, Diya was surprised to see a simple Pidgeotto come flying out. The second evolution of the Pidgey line was a common sight almost anywhere in the world. Though no less impressive for being common, Diya noted, as the two meter wingspan bird flew over Diya's head. Their pounding wings set the Banette's cloak and scarf fluttering backward, and it had to grab its hat to keep it on its head.
Then the sweltering heat of that wind hit Diya, causing it to break out in a sticky sweat. The air rippled with heat in Egredia's wake as the Flying pokemon swept a wide arc around the sparring court. Looking more closely, Diya could see that Egredia's coloring was unusual for a Pidgeotto. The typical Pidgeotto had a red trailing crest, stripes of red feathers in its tail -longer if they were female, which Egredia appeared to be-, a tan underbelly, and brown top. But Egredia's top coat was a ruddy red.
Maybe Diya had jumped to conclusions about how common this particular Pidgeotto was.
"So, ready for a two-v-two, Diya?"
Absolutely not, and definitely not against the aerial supremacy duo of a Staryu and whatever TMed hellbeast Cori had forged from a Pidgeotto. Also, with the addition of Egredia to the mix, Diya was pretty darn sure this no longer counted as Ice-type training. But even so, and as much as it knew it was going to lose, Diya couldn't stop itself from smiling. It called out to its ghosts. Were they ready?
Enthusiastic mental cheering was its answer.
Yeah. That's what it thought. <Ready when you are.>
There was no countdown for this battle. Everyone just moved. Cori shouted and Egredia screeched in answer. The Pidgeotto began to shimmer in a new way, with wispy afterimages peeling off in her wake. The Misdreavus decided that wouldn't fly and fired a vicious little hex of curdled purple energy in her direction. But as if Bituin had read its mind -and the Staryu probably had- it thrust itself between them as fast as the hex could be fired. A brilliant pane of violet light appeared in front of Bituin which the hex splashed against. Cori cheered.
Then a moment later Svartis finished inflating herself for her icy breath, and deathly cold wind laced with spiritual poison rushed out over the battlefield. Bituin weathered the onslaught without complaint behind its light shield, but Egredia screeched as the cold scorched her feathers.
Cori didn't waste a moment. "Egredia, up! Bituin, ice them!" Her Pidgeotto shot up to the ceiling in a blur of afterimages, moving so fast Diya could hardly follow her with its eyes. Bituin remained fixed in place behind its violet shield, and without fanfare a series of pencil-thin blue beams lanced out from its glowing pearl. They passed through its shield like it wasn't there -which Diya personally thought was unfair- and blasted into the ghosts. The Misdreavus cried out "DREE!" at the painful cold of the ice beams, while Svartis shivered uncomfortably.
Bituin focused its barrage on the Misdreavus, seeing how much more the Ice attack hurt it, until finally the trickster spirit screamed. Diya heard its pained howl in the phantom world as much as the physical world and the Banette flinched. The Staryu flinched even harder though. Its pearl flashed and it jerked backwards through the air as ice burns appeared all over its useless arms and -more importantly- its chitinous shell. At the same time the Misdreavus rallied and cried out with renewed energy, "Viii!".
Meanwhile Svartis was trying to blast Egredia with night shades, but not a single twisting ribbon landed. The closest hit the ceiling meters behind the horrendously fast Pidgeotto. Then with a turn so fast Diya could hardly believe it didn't snap the bird pokemon's neck, it wheeled and shot straight towards, and through, Svartis. The Gastly exploded. Her semi-corporeal projection collapsed and the purple gas which made her up was caught and churned by the turbulence of Egredia's wake. Diya could feel her pained and disoriented panic through their bond as she desperately tried to reconstitute her form.
But that move had cost Cori's pokemon. Already impacted by the soul smog in Svartis' icy wind, taking a facefull of her essence had done Egredia no favors. She coughed and wheezed as she wheeled about. Her chest heaved as she laboured for breath.
Mentally Diya pinged the Misdreavus. If it could keep launching hexes at Bituin and keep it pinned down behind its shield, they would win this. Cori would be forced to recall Egredia into stasis but Svartis would eventually reconstitute, and then it would be two on one.
Except Cori didn't look worried. In fact, she was smiling. "Haha! Alright, let's see if this works!" she shouted. "Egredia! Sunny day!"
With a great laboured heave of her wings, Egredia clawed at the air to gain altitude. With all her strength she managed to climb to just beneath the rafters over the center of the court and there she spread her wings.
And then there was light.
Egredia was the dawn itself and her brilliance hit Diya like a breaking wave at the beach. It felt like a small child swept head over heels by a wave far too tall for it to withstand. The Banette gasped and fell to a knee as the light poured through it. Its core remained protected, but every loose bit of power not safe in its innermost self was washed away.
Cori's Pidgeotto shone resplendently above the battle, a molten sun of rippling orange and yellows so bright Diya could hardly look at her. Diya's phantom senses were nothing more than a roar of static in its ears but it knew that if it could see the phantom world right then, that it would see all of Svartis' smog burning away under the brilliant light of the rising dawn.
"Egredia, use heat wave! Bituin, shock!"
The physical light vanished from Egredia's body, but Diya could still feel it lingering like a hot summer's sun upon its soul. Then the Pidgeotto, no longer wheezing in the slightest, beat its wings with a mighty cry. Swearing wind blasted forth and that hot sun became a burning oven.
The Misdreavus, as distracted and weakened by the light as Diya, wasn't even looking at the Staryu when a lightning bolt lanced out of its pearl and struck the spirit from the sky.
Svartis, barely half-formed and tumbling like a charred leaf in the burning wind, expressed to Diya the sentiment that she had had enough, thank you very much.
Diya could not agree more. It held up its arms in a big X and slashed them down. Then for good measure it sent Cori a text, <We surrender!>
"Egredia, Bituin, back!" Cori's pokemon wheeled back through the air, returning to their trainer. Egredia landed next to Cori to receive vigorous congratulatory neck scritches, while Bituin laid itself out horizontally in the air and hovered centimeters above Cori's head. "Nice match!" she called out to Diya.
Diya was torn between answering with 'stars and shadows what was that?' and 'how have you not already trounced this gym?', and settled for, <I am glad you think so.>
"No really! Especially with a new pokemon, that was amazing! That one-two punch your pokemon opened up with at the beginning of the match? Mm, perfect! I couldn't have coordinated better myself. And if sunny day's purification effect hadn't worked, hoooo, that fight might have gone south for us real fast." Cori beckoned Diya to come over to her side of the sparring court. She looked exhilarated.
Diya obliged, typing as it went. Along the way across the court it pulled a battered Svartis under its cloak, and picked up the still stunned Misdreavus to cradle in one arm. <Speaking of which, what was that?!>
"Sunny day?"
<Yes!!!>
Cori … blushed? She shuffled her feet and scratched the back of her head, inexplicably embarrassed all of a sudden. "Okay, well … you've got to promise not to laugh."
There was nothing in the world further from Diya's mind. It readily agreed.
The TM trainer took a deep breath and then said, in a single rushed breath, "IthinkIcanevolvePidgeyintoHo-oh."
Diya blinked. <Say again?>
"Okay look I've got pictures! Come around, come on!" Cori hooked Diya's elbow with her hand and dragged it around to look at her pokedex. "See this? See how Pidgey becomes more colorful and gains red accents as it evolves into Pidgeotto? And then Pidgeotto's accent markings become more completely red when it evolves into Pidgeot?"
There was little Diya could do but mutely nod. What in the world did this have to do with Egredia's sunny day?
"Now look at this! Mega Pidgeot! Look at it! It's got a blue-ish green coloration on the tips of its wings!"
That looked like blue to Diya, but it wasn't about to argue.
"Now look at this," and that's when Cori brought up pictures of the migratory god pokemon of the sun, Ho-oh itself, onto her screen. "Look! See the red coloration? The light underbelly? The green feather tips? The crest? Well admittedly the crest isn't a perfect match, but still! See the claws? The profile? Note how its profile is a bit more elongated than the Mega Pidgeot, just like each evolution of the Pidgey line is a bit more elongated than the last?" Cori's voice rose almost to a fever pitch at the end. Any embarrassment was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and now Cori was starting to remind Diya almost uncomfortably of June when she got going on a topic.
Almost hesitantly, Diya typed, <Yes?>
"Yes! You see it too!"
Unfortunately Diya actually could see the resemblance between one of the most common and least esteemed pokemon in the world and what was arguably the most revered god pokemon.
"Right so I've been TMing Pidgeys ever since I started learning how to TM. They're plentiful, easy to catch, and there's loads of scanning data on them to work with. Of course almost no pokemon TMers bother with Pidgeys, the moment they're off the training simulations they're too good for such common pokemon. On to bigger and better pokemon, buying them up, TMing them to be better, and selling them for a profit. Or just selling their services directly for use on league pokemon. But I find Pidgeys fascinating. There's so many possible ability expressions you can mod them with."
Cori leaned in close, her ecstatic grin looming wide in Diya's vision. "And guess what I found?"
A deep and abiding need to meet June at some point, clearly.
"I found sunny day. It's an uncommon ability which shows up in several Grass lines and only two Fire lines. But it's there in Pidgeys too, activatable by flipping the switch on a single gene expression! And here's the kicker, it's long been hypothesized that the purifying and calming effect Ho-oh radiates is just an extremely powerful version of the sunny day ability!"
"So I switched it on in Egredia and guess what? Her feathers turned red. I could even teach her how to use heat wave after that, no additional TMing necessary! She couldn't use it instinctively, but she could still learn it!"
Part of Diya's brain was still scrambling and wondering if where she was going with this was blasphemy - it must be to some people, surely. And another part of its brain was wondering if being in the presence of Ho-oh's apparently even more powerful sunny day aura would kill it - probably, it thought. But what brain space was left was starting to wonder if maybe Cori wasn't quite as crazy as she'd first sounded when she started talking about Pidgeys and Ho-oh.
"And you know, plenty of pokemon have alternative evolution paths which only occur under the right conditions. So I'm wondering, what if there's some Fire path evolution for Pidgeys we never see in nature for some reason? Or maybe a path they used to have, but evolved -in the other sense of the word- away from? And what if, just maybe, we can reactivate it?"
Apotheosis. Cori was talking about TMing a Pidgey into apotheosis. She couldn't be more than seventeen at the oldest and she wanted to manufacture a god. Out of a Pidgey.
"I don't think it'll be easy, of course. If my theory's correct, Ho-oh is on an evolution tier above Mega Pidgey, or at least on par with it. And I know how few trainers ever manage to induce a mega evolution. And I'm certainly not prideful enough to think my first TMing attempt is necessarily going to be the right path, no matter how much I love Egredia." The red Pidgeotto preened at hearing her name and Cori gave her more neck scritches.
"But uhh, yeah." A trace of that earlier embarrassment returned. "That's what's up with sunny day. It's an ability which may or may not be a weaker expression of the sun god's purifying light. I thought it might help against your Gastly's aura."
Diya stared at Cori for a long moment. <It did.>
"Cool! Yeah it clears away a lot of abilities which saturate an area with elemental energy. It's useful like that."
Privately, Diya thought Cori could have just said that. Of course if she hadn't, it wouldn't have been exposed to the horrifyingly plausible idea of turning a Pidgey into a god. Yay?
Diya's brain was still a little twisted up into knots. It suspected it would need a while to process this.
"Umm. Want to go another round if your pokemon are recovered? We can do a proper one-v-one with only Bituin using its Ice ability."
<Give me a second.> Diya checked on Svartis and the Misdreavus. Svartis was still out of it and barely reconstituted, though she said she'd be ready to fight again after taking some time to rest. The Misdreavus, though, had only been temporarily stunned by Bituin's lightning bolt and was raring to go. It insisted that it'd had Bituin on the ropes and only lost because the Staryu had gotten in a cheap shot while it was distracted.
Which was exactly how Misdreavuses fought in the wild, so Diya thought that was maybe just a bit hypocritical. Svartis picked up on the thought through their bond and got in a weak giggle. Well, regardless, if the Misdreavus wanted a rematch Diya wasn't going to stop it.
By the end of the day Diya and its companion, or maybe that was companions now, finally got some practice fighting against Ice type moves. Their spars with Cori's Staryu confirmed that Svartis was much more resilient to Ice attacks than the Misdreavus was, which added to Diya's suspicions that the Snom-born Gastly might be more Ice-aligned than a typical Gastly. And one quickly aborted rematch between Svartis and Egredia confirmed that she was also more vulnerable to Fire abilities.
The other important thing Diya learned was that it had a long way to go as a trainer. With her partial type advantage, Svartis could beat Bituin most of the time. If the Staryu stuck to Ice beams. But when it didn't Svartis lost more often than not. And as confident as the Misdreavus was, it didn't fare any better. Its ability to share damage inflicted upon it with its opponent was a game changer, but only for their first couple of fights. The ability was spiritually taxing and it wasn't long before the Misdreavus found itself unable to cast anything but hexes which splashed harmlessly on the Staryu's light screen.
And while the Misdreavus and Svartis both started flagging after a few rounds, Cori's Bituin might as well have been a machine. Cori spritzed it with some potion and fed it a couple berries and it was ready to go another round. Diya could feel the pokemon's exhaustion; it was impacted by fight after fight against Diya's two alternating pokemon. But it had the discipline and the practice to keep fighting through that. Holding up its light screen, evasive maneuvers, and firing its energy beams had been drilled into it until they were automatic. Diya's pokemon on the other hand, and Diya itself, only got sloppier as the day wore on.
In spite of their losses though, Cori had nothing but praise for the progress Diya's team made. They were new pokemon, of species not suited for direct combat, under the direction of a novice trainer. And yet they still earned occasional wins against Cori's well-trained and TMed Bituin. To hear Cori tell it, that was no small thing.
When the sun started going down and the sparring center emptied out, Cori didn't let Diya leave without giving the ghost trainer a firm handshake. "Thank you for the matches, Diya. I learned a lot today."
Diya mustered up the energy to raise an eyebrow. <Really? I should be thanking you.>
The more experienced trainer smirked. "Yeah yeah, my pokemon are awesome and you learned a lot. But no, seriously," she said more somberly, "you should be proud of your pokemon, Diya. They worked hard and fought well. And I meant what I said, I learned a lot. It's not every day you have an opportunity to learn to fight Ghost pokemon. If you ever want to spar again while I'm still in town, just text me."
Well now, Diya thought to itself. It looked like it wasn't that bad at this making friends thing after all. <I will. Have a good night Cori. And thank you again.>
"You too. See you later!"
Diya nodded, waving as Cori walked away. Svartis summoned the energy to materialize a hand outside of Diya's cloak and wave as well, and from its exhausted perch on Diya's shoulder the Misdreavus waggled its lower tendrils. Once she was gone, Diya checked the time. It still had a couple hours before dinner.
Nap? it sent to the two other ghosts.
Blearily murmured assent was their answer.
Coordinating so many fights for so long had been surprisingly tiring, but Diya was still fresh when it came to phantom energy. The Banette dropped into its shadow, carrying its exhausted charges across Canopy Town in a series of jumps through the town's dark corners. Its last jump was into the shadowed eaves of a bell tower on the edge of the town graveyard. Most of the local Shuppets slept in its rafters during the day.
Diya retrieved its sleeping bag and Piplup plushie from their storage ball and laid them down beneath the Shuppets on the belltower's floor. It curled on its side on top of the sleeping bag, one arm around the Piplup plushie, and gestured with the other arm for Svartis to join it. Svartis didn't wait a second, oozing gratefully into the plushie and taking refuge inside. Exhaustion took hold moments later, dragging Svartis instantly into sleep and pulling Diya on its way there.
Diya's eyes started to drift shut, but then blinked back open. The Misdreavus hadn't joined them. The Banette peered upward. The Misdreavus was still floating in the air above it, hesitating.
What a silly pokemon, Diya thought sleepily. It waved the spirit down. Come on, you too, it sent. Its eyes closed and it lay its head down again. In short order the Banette began to drift off to sleep.
A soft weight settled on its side.
Diya smiled. Good.
---
The door creaked open. June peeked inside. "Hey, Diya, you in there? Svartis?"
Diya murmured blearily and dragged its hat over its eyes, shielding itself from the streetlamp's light shining in.
"Ah," June said softly, "I thought so. You weren't in your room so we were wondering where you were." She waved at the Shuppets milling about in the rafters, taking a quick picture of them with her pokedex. "We'll save dinner for you, okay?"
Still hiding its eyes from the light, Diya nodded.
The door creaked closed.
With the streetlamps shut out, Diya's pink eyes illuminated the space and the pokemon within. Even hours later, the Misdreavus was still sleeping on top of Diya's side.
Gently, trying not to wake the Misdreavus up too much, Diya shook its side. Hey, it projected, little one.
The Misdreavus blinked slowly. Its red eyes, surrounded by yellow sclera, opened a slit. "Mmmi?" it murmured.
Are you here to stay? With us? Diya asked it.
The Misdreavus, curled up on top of Diya, gave the Banette a long slow look, like that was obvious. It didn't even bother with a proper sending, instead just letting its current state of being leak out into the surrounding world. It felt tired, and accomplished, and warm. It shut its eyes and curled back up on Diya's side. Moments later it was asleep again.
Diya smiled. Carefully, so as not to wake either of its companions, it pulled down its scarf. Carefully, it breathed in through its mouth, pulling bits of the Misdreavus' energy into itself. The Banette let the energy sit there for as long as it could hold its breath, mingling with its soul-stuff. When it breathed out, it had one word on its lips.
"Madrabaz." One of the words the boy had so enjoyed collecting, it meant trickster. Diya thought it was appropriate.
Diya fell back asleep with a smile on its face.
-----
"TM" is an ambiguous acronym which can stand for "technical manipulation" or "technical machine". In both cases it is referring to the same process, by which a pokemon held in stasis is converted into a digital environment and then directly modified by special machines, typically for the purpose of adding novel abilities to the pokemon. For example, a Squirtle's extradimensional water sacs might be modified to introduce Ice energy into the water at the point of release, converting the Squirtle's classic water gun move into a spray of freezing sleet, allowing the Squirtle to more effectively combat Grass pokemon, which are often resilient against Water abilities but vulnerable to extreme cold.
Enhancing pokemons' combat abilities is only one of the uses of TM, however. Technical manipulation can be performed on humans as well as pokemon, and is an essential medical tool. Many modern cancer treatments are performed using TMs, particularly follow-up treatments in which damaged DNA is edited to prevent recurrence of the cancer. It can also be used to fix congenital disorders such as congenital heart disease, cerebral palsy, or hormonal imbalances. TM's unique ability to resolve or manage chronic conditions is critical in ensuring modern life expectancies and end-of-life quality, which improvements in TM technology continue to extend and improve.
TM usage has also become increasingly common for cosmetic alterations, such as coloration or proportion changes. This is an often controversial use of the technology among older generations. Among younger generations however, for whom TM usage has always been common and relatively affordable, even exotic cosmetic modifications outside the human standard (i.e. red skin, yellow eyes, webbed fingers) are hardly worth remarking on.
-----
Canopy Gym's sparring center was a simple but colorful building. The structure itself was little more than a squat gymnasium, and Diya knew that inside would be nothing more than a few simple arenas of varying terrain and a couple of target training areas. Canopy Town might take pride in its gym, but it wasn't large or wealthy enough to afford anything more elaborate than that. But the town refused to leave the building as a grey concrete monolith. Successive generations of school children had painted over every centimeter of the building in enthusiastic murals of pokemon battles.
Diya's favorite was one of a somewhat blobby Charizard being mobbed by even more blobby Jigglypuffs. It had the same childish glee that filled Diya's heart when it imagined going inside and sparring with its fellow young trainers, of doing that quintessential thing every child imagined doing as a trainer. Inside that building Diya would pit it and Svartis' strengths against other trainers, to see how far they'd come and how far they had yet to go.
It shuffled its feet.
Diya had an Ice Gym challenge to prepare for. It needed to find other trainers with Ice pokemon to spar against. June and Bashak were wonderful friends, and Bashak especially was a fantastic training partner, but neither of them used Ice pokemon. Bashak was learning to fight with his new Ice/Ground Piloswine, who he'd named Alicia, but the key word there was learning. He was hardly an Ice type expert and he was still cautious about how skittish her brush with death had left her. For now he was only letting Alicia spar with his own pokemon, so he could have complete control over her encounters.
Which meant if Diya wanted to train to fight Ice pokemon, it needed to train with other people. Which was fine. It was totally fine. Leader Ahmad and his assistants were friendly and professional and training with them was great. It's just that Ahmad only had four full time assistants. Between training their own pokemon, running the group lessons, and managing local conservation efforts, they were only left with so much time for one-on-one sparring sessions. And that time was split between every single trainer visiting the gym.
So if Diya wanted to fight an Ice pokemon more than once a week, it needed to spar with other trainers its age. Which is why the young trainer stood outside Canopy Gym's sparring center, listening to the faint sound of shouted commands and the exclamations of sparring pokemon from within.
And if Diya reached deep down into itself for some honesty … it might be stalling by admiring the schoolchildrens' murals rather than going inside and finding a sparring partner. The young ghost trainer swallowed and rocked back and forth on its feet.
This should not be that hard. It was excited to go inside! It wanted to spar with other trainers. It wanted to see what they could do, and show them what it could do. It wanted to talk to them and learn from them and-
It wanted to make friends with them.
Which Diya could do! It had made friends with June. And Bashak. It knew how to do this. It even had the memories of a human to draw on, it knew how to make friends with peers. Right?
Diya kept staring at the sparring center and did not take one step forward. Its inherited memories informed it that while its boy had had friends, he hadn't had the faintest clue how he'd got them. They just showed up in his life one day. Kind of like how June had showed up in Diya's life one day and dragged Bashak along with her.
Oh stars and shadows it really didn't know how to make friends with its peers. It was doomed.
Gleeful cackling drifted out from under the shadowed awning of a building on the other side of the street. The Misdreavus was still following Diya, and at the moment it was clearly enjoying the taste of the young trainer's anxiety. Diya glared at it.
Beneath its cloak, Svartis stirred. What was wrong? she asked her trainer.
Nothing, Diya tried to respond. But its thoughts immediately turned to how nervous it was and how it didn't know what it would say to whoever it met inside and how awkward it would be to explain its no-talking thing to them and … Okay it was nervous, alright!
The former Snom bristled under Diya's cloak. Were there predators inside the building? Dangerous pokemon? Diya could feel its eyes narrow as it thought. Were there Spinaraks inside there?
No no no, Diya reassured its companion. There were pokemon inside, but they were all trained using the virtual reality software Nurse Claire had shown them. They were perfectly safe. Nothing inside the sparring center would hurt them.
Svartis mulled over that for a few seconds. Then, carefully and making sure to perform the memory manipulation right, she reflected back to Diya its anxiety-laced mental image of saying hi to the other trainers, coupled with the feeling of a question. Loosely interpreted, the message asked, 'You're scared to say hi?'.
The young trainer bit the inside of its cheek. …yes, it responded. If it had to say it directly, yes it was. It was working up the courage to-
A mental image from the Misdreavus caught them both. It showed Svartis going into the sparring center and hissing out a hi in Diya's place, to break the ice for her companion. The image was accompanied by woven together feelings of success, acclamation, and gratitude.
Chirpy affirmation bounced back from Svartis. Okay, she understood that. She would say hi for Diya.
Diya had time to blink once in confusion and once in horrified realization before events left it behind.
Svartis boiled out from under Diya's cloak as a cloud of purple smog and flowed through the gap under the sparring center's doors. As Svartis rushed inside, she sent Diya a fleeting affirmation that she would remember to keep her soul-smog contained even without Diya there to absorb it for her.
Which was a thing the trainers inside would most definitely not know she was doing! They would only see a loose Gastly approaching them! Diya blared negation through their bond and rushed after her. It tried to grab her but its hand went right through her immaterial smoke. Panicked, Diya slammed through the doors to follow her-
Ow. Those were pull, not push.
Breathless laughter floated out of the shadowed awning across the street.
Diya thought some extremely unkind words about the trickster spirit and yanked the doors open. It rushed into the sparring center ready to defuse whatever battle was about to occur between panicking trainers and Svartis-
-and found a perfectly calm room. Two older local trainers occupied the target wall on the far end of the center and were each practicing with a Snover, a small native tree-like pokemon with Ice powers. They were engrossed in having their pokemon practice together to get an ice shard attack right, and neither of them even glanced over at the new arrivals.
Two more younger trainers were standing in a gravel sparring court littered with small rocks which broke up the terrain and larger boulders which broke up line of sight. One of them was working with a rare Alolan Sandshrew and the other a Charmander. They were looking over at the doors where Diya had just burst in, heads tilted and slightly confused at its dramatic entrance. One of them waved their hand at the other and called for a halt to their exercise. Evasion training, if Diya had to guess, from the way the Charmander was standing atop a boulder and the Sandshrew had just skidded to a halt behind a torso-sized rock.
The last trainer in the room, standing next to the evasion training, was a girl a couple years older than Diya wearing a red beanie, worn jeans, and a slightly tattered fleece. Going by her appearance she was probably a local like Diya. She had one of the more common local looks, dark brown skin, thick eyebrows, and coarse black hair dense enough to lift the beanie off of her scalp. Well, technically Diya supposed she might be a visitor from the equatorial region which was responsible for Kenomao's settlement. But they tended to walk around Kenomao during winter bundled up until they looked like fluffy barely mobile balls, not in jeans.
And that particular trainer was looking up at a floating Svartis and not panicking. She'd taken a cautious step back and wasn't taking her eyes off of it, but she wasn't reaching for a pokeball to fight it or running for the exit.
The Gastly smiled wide at her and hissed out, "Svaarrrrrtissss!" She materialized a hand and waved. She paused, waiting for a response. When she didn't get it she said again, "Svartisss", and gestured to herself and then the girl.
The girl blinked and tilted her head. "Oh! I'm Cori." She waved back. She glanced over to Diya and then back to Svartis. "Hello there. Is this your Gastly?"
Diya nodded. The tip of its Mismagius hat bobbed with the motion.
"Oh, cool. Sorry to ask, but is it safe?"
Diya nodded again, getting out its pokedex to type with. It rushed over to her and typed as fast as it could, trying to head off her concern. <Gastly can control their poison emission, don't worry.>
It took Cori a moment to realize what Diya was doing with its pokedex, but she got it once it turned the pokedex around to her. "Oh! You're mute, aren't you?" She smiled when Diya nodded. "Okay, hey Brandon, Tianna," she looked over at the two sparring trainers, "it's fine, his Gastly can control its poison."
One of the trainers, Tianna, waved at Diya. "We know, no worries." They'd both been at the Canopy Gym lesson where Svartis had learned to breathe below-freezing air. She and Brandon turned back to their match.
When Cori looked back to Diya she found its pokedex turned towards her again. <They, not he. And my name is Diya.>
Her eyes widened and Diya felt a complicated burst of emotions burst from her. They were tied around a kernel of remorse Diya could taste, but the overall composition was positive. Diya couldn't parse it all before the emotions faded though, the feeling was as fleeting as it was intense. "Sorry, I shouldn't have assumed," she apologized. Then she continued on, smiling, "But so Diya, you say your Gastly can control its poison emission? How does that work?"
The other trainer took hold of Diya's left elbow and steered it away from the resuming spar as it typed. Svartis followed after them, grinning at the two of them talking and radiating cheerful satisfaction at a job well done. Diya pointedly ignored her as it typed. <It's not actually a gas. It's an aural Ghost effect she can pull in.>
Cori frowned. "That can't possibly be right. Gastly victims asphyxiate, right?"
Svarits and Diya looked at each other. Each exchanged a mental shrug with the other. They'd never actually tested her powers to any serious extent on a living being, let alone to death. Maybe? Diya vaguely remembered some news article years ago about a Gastly-caused death at a construction site which might have said something like that.
Cori flipped out her own pokedex and started typing. "Yeah let me check…" she started scrolling. "While I'm checking, by the by, how do you know that it's an aural effect?"
<I'm an odd type of psychic,> Diya answered. June had suggested that the Banette keep its psychic cover story as vague as possible in the future and let people draw their own conclusions. <I can feel it from Svartis' perspective, it's not gas.>
"Hn. I trust you, don't get me wrong, it's just…" Cori squinted at her screen. She had a very intense glare. "Yeah, medical reports on Gastly attacks say there's definitely a respiratory anaphylactic effect. Creatures exposed to it have their throats close. Which is not how purely mental attacks kill."
The Banette raised an eyebrow and shrugged. It didn't know what to tell her. Svartis' soul smog was most certainly a Ghost effect.
The other trainer crossed her arms and gave Diya an evaluating look. "Hmm. Actually, I have an idea and I think I know how to test it. How do you feel about recording a spar with me? I'll split the bounties with you if we get any useful information."
Diya nodded eagerly, forgetting its earlier nervousness. It was absolutely up for that. It had come here with a purpose however. <I'm here to spar against Ice pokemon though. Do you have any?>
Cori leaned in to peer at the Banette's screen. "Hn? Oh, yeah. I've got a Staryu with some Ice moves TMed onto it. Would that work for you?"
The ghost trainer didn't bother trying to hide its wide eyes as it nodded. TM referred to 'technique manipulation', a process by which the bodies of pokemon in virtual space were directly edited to give them additional abilities. Templates for specific abilities and pokemon were available relatively cheaply online, but they had to be tailored for an individual pokemon's body and that was an extremely technical process. It took hundreds if not thousands of hours of careful simulation practice to master. Those who did were in high demand and charged accordingly, making it a pricey thing for a young trainer getting by on basic income.
From the look of Cori's worn clothes though, she wasn't independently wealthy. She'd either scrimped and saved to afford it, or she'd TMed her Staryu herself. Curious and a little awed, Diya probed, <Are any of your other pokemon TMed?>
Cori's answering smile showed teeth and pride. "All six of them. Did it myself. Do you still want to spar?" The look in Cori's eyes said she knew exactly how impressive that was, and how powerful it implied her pokemon would be.
The ghost trainer looked up at its one singular pokemon. Svartis smiled guilelessly back at it, happy and proud that she'd successfully broken the ice and found someone for her trainer to talk to. At the impression of sparring she read in Diya's thoughts she smiled wider. She projected a memory of sparring with Greta, tinged with joy and giddy excitement. This would be fun!
Diya had one novice pokemon. Cori had a full league team of pokemon she'd TMed herself.
Well. Losing was an important part of the learning process. And no one had ever become a pokemon trainer by shying away from difficulty. Diya sent back cautious optimism to Svartis, marrying her memory of playing with Greta with its own memory of the caution it and Bashak used to approach his Piloswine.
<Sure. I'll spar with you.>
"Cool. Hey, give me your pokedex for a moment? Okay … there's my number. It'll be easier for you to text me than to walk over and show me your pokedex while we're sparring, yeah?"
Diya took its pokedex back and nodded. It followed Cori over to an open league-style sparring court. The court was open and devoid of any terrain, marked up with lines and circles to delineate match boundaries and pokemon starting positions. It swallowed its nervousness and excitement, trying to calm its fluttering heart. It was actually going to be sparring with a rival trainer for the first time. June and Bashak didn't count, and practicing specific moves under Leader Admad's guidance didn't either. This was going to be its first proper match against someone taking it seriously.
It felt an answering thrum of anticipation from Svartis. And then, oddly enough, a response to that which didn't come from either of them. A separate echo of the anticipation bounced back with the taste of encouragement added on. Diya followed the echo to its source. There, in the rafters above them was the Misdreavus. The cheeky little ghost fluttered its dress-like lower half in an approximation of a wave.
Diya fought down a scowl and sighed. As scary as it had been to see Svartis rushing into the sparring center without it, the Misdreavus had read the situation better than it. No serious harm had been done, Svartis was fine and Diya was fine (maybe a little achy where its shoulder had hit the door, but fine). The little trickster spirit had been trying to help in its own way. And it had succeeded, because the Misdreavus' plan for Svartis to break the ice had worked.
The Banette looked up at the Misdreavus. It was a mischief maker by nature. It wouldn't be possible to train it to not play pranks and cause trouble, Misdreavuses literally lived on shock and startlement. It was also the only pokemon of its species in Canopy Town. The Shuppets were company for it, but not quite the right kind of company. They tended to be shy and stay out of sight, while Misdreavuses were bold and attention seeking.
The poor thing must be lonely.
Diya waved back at it, and sent it the memory of Bashak welcoming Diya into his yurt. If it wanted to come down and join them, it could.
Across the sparring court, Cori followed its gaze. "Is that another one of your pokemon?"
<Not yet. But we'll see.> Diya texted back.
"Ah." The more experienced trainer smiled. "Well. Good luck with that. Anyway, you ready for our spar?"
With one last look at Svartis, Diya nodded.
"Alright! Let's do this!" Cori bounced on the balls of her feet and grinned. "Go, Hwimning!" She pulled a pokeball off her belt and threw it dead center at the starting circle for a one-on-one league match. Red light burst forth from the pokeball, which she caught on the rebound, materializing a pokemon Diya had never seen before.
Hwimning was a raptor-shaped pokemon which came up to Diya's chest. It balanced on two huge wicked red claws, had a long white tail lashing out behind it for balance, and clacked a white beak in Diya's direction. But that general shape was about where its resemblance to anything avian ended. The pokemon was covered, or maybe made of, layers and layers of moss and fungus. Its chest, underbelly, and legs were covered with fluffy green moss, some of which was tipped in small blisters of yellow liquid. Its face and tail, where skin or feathers should be, were made of squishy white mycelium and sprouting from its neck were the frilly gills of a mushroom. A wide-brimmed mushroom cap covered in more green moss, spotted by red blisters, adorned its head, and its tail was capped with spongy green balls dusted with a yellow powder.
The pokemon's beak opened, revealing a shockingly red mouth, and it trilled, "Brrriiihihiihihihiii." The creature shivered and shook itself, and a haze of faint white spores dusted the air around it. Its looked around, getting its bearings, before pinning Diya with two beady black eyes.
Diya took a long step back.
Cori chuckled. "Don't worry, the white spores are just a threat display. They're totally harmless."
Ah, Diya thought to itself. So that's why she had been so comfortably reckless with her own safety around its poisonous pokemon. This was a usual thing for her. It was a fascinating pokemon though, however unnerving. Without stepping closer, Diya carefully pointed its pokedex's scanner at the creature.
The blue scanning dome shone bright for a few seconds before text appeared on Diya's screen.
BRELOOM
Threat Classification: HIGH. Macro-fauna ambush predator, capable of lethal aggression, flees if startled.
(Note: DO NOT STARTLE. Triggers highly lethal defensive spore response.)
Diya paused its reading and hit the Misdreavus with the strongest sending it could muster, insisting that this pokemon was absolutely off-limits for its pranks.
(Note: Non-local pokemon species. Likely trained, non-aggressive.)
Breloom is a Grass/Fighting pokemon, evolved from Shroomish. Unlike its passive herbivorous prior evolution, Breloom is a carnivorous ambush predator and should be approached only with extreme caution.
Breloom is a symbiotic colony organism composed of many fungal species intertwined with an avian musculoskeletal frame. It takes down prey and deters would-be predators with a highly varied array of toxic spores. If its spores do not take effect quickly enough when defending itself against predators, it will fall back on Fighting techniques focused through its large talons.
Breloom, along with its prior evolution Shroomish, is notable for its unique reaction to foreign antigens. Its biological immune response is coupled with a paired injection of Grass/Fighting energy, which produces a strong regenerative effect, often not only countering but exceeding the damage done by the foreign substance. The regeneration is so strong that some trainers will even purposefully poison their Brelooms before battle to trigger it.
Diya gave Hwimning an evaluating look. It copied the last paragraph and texted it to Cori, following up with, <Is this what you want to test?> While Cori read, Hwimning balanced itself on one talon and scratched the back of its neck with the other, dislodging a shower of white spores. Diya really hoped Cori was right about those being harmless.
When she finished reading, Cori nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, that's exactly it! If your Gastly's choking effect is physical and actually causes an inflammatory response, it should trigger Hwimning's regeneration. But if it's all mental and just makes creatures think they're choking, Hwimning's regeneration will remain dormant."
<Will this be safe for-> Diya did not have the faintest idea how to spell that name, <-your pokemon?>
"Should be. Brelooms can function anaerobically if they have to. Even if they stop breathing they'll just get sluggish and kinda dumb. We'll be safe about it though, if Hwimning shows any negative reaction I'll put them back in pokeball stasis and bring them to the pokecenter later."
Diya nodded. When Cori put it that way, Hwimning really was the perfect pokemon for Svartis to go all out against. It was probably immune to her most lethal ability and even if it wasn't, it almost certainly wouldn't die from it. And if against all odds everything still went terribly wrong, they could put Hwimning in stasis and bring the Breloom to a fully stocked pokecenter in minutes. There was nothing stopping Svartis from giving it her all in this fight.
The ghost trainer's heart picked up. It breathed deep through its nose, filling its lungs all the way. This would be their first serious pokemon battle, holding nothing back.
Stars above, it was excited.
<Let's do this.> Diya directed Svartis into the starting circle opposite Hwimning. Facing off against it, the Gastly puffed herself up and let loose an excited teakettle shriek as she compressed back down to her normal size.
"Awesome! I'll count us off." On the opposite side of the sparring court, Cori grinned and barred her teeth. "Ready?"
Diya nodded and Svartis let out another excited shriek.
"Three!"
"Two!"
Hwimning bristled and yellow spores mixed themselves in with the white.
"One!"
Svartis and Diya hissed in breaths simultaneously.
"Go!"
Cori shouted a command to her Breloom and it threw itself to the side, rolling over the concrete floor. But Svartis hardly needed to aim to hit it with her new icy wind attack. The Gastly sucked in air and ballooned to enormous size in an instant, filling the sparring center with the shriek of suddenly compressed air as the carbon dioxide inside of her deposited into motes of dry ice dust. And when she compressed back down, the wave of ultracold air she unleashed was simply too large to dodge. The Breloom trilled out its distress as the edges of its moss blackened in the cold and the pinpricks of dry ice scraped its white mushroom flesh raw.
And Svartis didn't just breathe out ice and cold. Visible for a moment under Diya's glowing pink stare, she also took all of her oily purple-black soul smog, which she usually worked so hard to pull in around herself, and let it loose. Slick streams of spiritually toxic miasma flooded the sparring court, sticking to the Breloom and coating its soul.
But Hwimning refused to give Svartis time to revel in her success. Its beak opened wide and with a flash a ball of green light condensed inside its mouth, launching forth an instant later. The vibrant green energy splashed against Svartis' form as if she were solid, blasting away a layer of the purple smoke that comprised her body.
Svartis cried out and flew back, trying to get herself distance and altitude. She instinctively threw a sloppy night shade to cover her retreat, but the coiling purple-black ribbons did little. Most of them missed Hwimning entirely, who didn't even bother to dodge. Instead Cori's pokemon carefully took aim again with another vibrant green energy ball. Its attack landed squarely on Svartis, blasting away more layers of purple smoke.
Diya's eyes widened as the pummeling continued. Svartis climbed further into the air to get away from the Breloom, trading night shades for energy balls and coming out the worst for the exchange. If this kept up she was going to lose.
Svartis! Diya called, pulling hard on their bond to grab her panicked attention. Stop! This wasn't getting her anywhere. Night shades were instinctive for the gastly, but they weren't reinforcing her soul smog's effects on her opponent, and she wasn't going to win an artillery match against an ability no doubt TMed specifically by Cori to win long-ranged matches for her pokemon. If Svartis wanted to get anywhere, she needed to shut that ability down.
Svartis, use spite, Diya ordered.
The beleaguered spirit was still under assault, and just a moment before had been flailing about in panic. But Diya sent her steady determination … and above them both, so did the Misdreavus. If she stayed calm and fought this battle smart, they knew she could do it. So Svartis reached deep for calm, even as another energy ball tore away pieces of her gaseous form, and used spite.
Spite was an odd little move Diya and Svartis had developed when training with Greta, whose habit of using Ghost-disrupting Dark energy in her bites had been a sure source of agony for both of them. Svartis would breathe out her soul smog as her opponent was using an ability and drawing on whatever equivalent of the phantom world they used to fuel their powers, and her smog would be pulled into their soul along with that energy. And then she took it back, pulling the oily phantom smoke out and scraping bits of her opponent's soul raw in the process. Specifically, the parts of their soul which handled the energy of whatever ability Svartis' opponent had been using.
So this time when her opponent charged up another energy ball, Svartis didn't return fire. Instead, when Hwimning pulled in Grass energy to charge her energy ball, Svartis breathed out phantom fumes. Hwimning still launched its energy ball at her -a direct hit, Diya winced- but it let out a choked trilling "Briii!" a moment later.
Hwimning tried to keep up its assault, pulling in the energy for another blast, but it choked and coughed partway through. The partially formed green ball flew apart into quickly dissolving blobs of light. It attempted to use energy ball one more time, even as Svartis kept breathing her miasma into its soul, and it did manage one last attack which made Svartis flinch. But only one more attack. After that each attempt to draw Grass energy into its mouth only made it snap its head about and trill in pain.
"Looooo~" the pokemon whimpered.
"Hey! Pause for a second?" Cori called across the court. Her voice snapped out with such force that Svartis halted her next attack -a flare of Ghost energy meant to confuse and disorient- instantly. Diya raised an open hand to acknowledge the time-out a moment later.
Cori snapped out a storage ball, which let out a duffel bag in a flare of red light. She unzipped the bag and pulled out a gas mask, hastily strapping it over her head. The moment the protective gear was in place she rushed forward towards her pokemon. Hwimning was clearly uncomfortable, fidgeting and ruffling the mushroom-like gills at its throat, but they held still enough for Cori to examine them. She took hold of her Breloom and moved it around carefully, adjusting it so she could get a good look at every part of it.
Then, to Diya's shock, she stood up and recalled Hwimning into its pokeball. She said something, but her voice was too muffled by the heavy gas mask to make out. Diya shook its head and shrugged.
Cori grumbled something from inside the gas mask. She held up one finger and retreated from the court, then took a canister of water out of the duffle bag. She poured the water over her hands liberally, splashing it freely over the floor as she wiped her hands clean of any spores. She examined her skin, brushed off her fleece for good measure, and then finally took off the gas mask. "Ow. That thing's straps always bite into my head when I rush. Hey, Diya, mind having your Gastly ice breath the court? The spores aren't long-lived, but better safe than sorry."
Diya relayed the request to Svartis, who did as asked and iced over the sparring court. <Is your Breloom okay?> Diya asked.
Cori opened her mouth, closed it, and then chewed on her tongue. "Probably?" she said eventually.
Diya's eyes widened in alarm. <Should I get a nurse?!>
"No it's fine, Hwimning is in stasis. It's just strange. Hwimning's gills were all puffed up and inflamed."
The ghost trainer made a small 'hn' noise through its nose. <And that's not either of the results you were expecting.>
"Yeah." Cori chewed on her tongue some more. "I saw their inflamed gills, and I'm still not a hundred percent convinced that's possible. Brelooms are supposed to heal from being poisoned." She shook her head.
<And unknowns are unsafe.> That was something Diya had learned from June, when she was talking about working with bug pokemon venoms. Any unexpected reaction, no matter how minor, should be treated with the utmost seriousness.
The other trainer nodded. "Yeah. Damn, I don't have the faintest idea how that works. You're sure that it's a pure Ghost effect, no toxic gas mixed in there or anything?"
That got a nod and an apologetic shrug for an answer.
She snorted. "Hah. Well, we may end up being responsible for a bounty because of this, rather than earning one." Cori shook her head and sighed. "Anyway, I remember promising you a spar against a pokemon with Ice moves, right?"
Diya nodded eagerly, mirrored by Svartis. That spar had ended right when it was getting good. <Yeah, I'd love to go again!> Svartis agreed with a fierce "Gaaaa!" and bared her pointy fangs in a wide smile.
"Awesome!" Cori clipped Hwimning's pokeball back on her belt and pulled off another. "Bituin, I choose you!" Cori did a little skip into the air that was probably unnecessary but which Diya thought looked cool, and flung her pokeball into the sparring court. With a flash of red light, it released a Staryu onto the court.
Staryu was another pokemon Diya had never seen before in person, though it at least knew about this one. The Water pokemon looked like nothing so much as a floating starfish, with light brown limbs that were sixty centimeters from tip to tip. Diya faintly remembered learning that those limbs were actually evolutionarily obsolete calcified lumps, rendered pointless by Staryu's evolution of psychic self-propulsion. The center of the Staryu's body was covered in a gleaming yellow carapace that shone like gold under the right light and covered its true body, affixed with an enormous pink pearl in the center. The pearl glowed as the Staryu was released from its pokeball, throbbing with an energy Diya could feel from across the court, and the air around the Staryu rippled as it raised itself higher into the air.
Diya gave the Staryu -Bituin- an evaluating look. Staryu were supposed to be peerless fliers and formidable artillery pokemon. Their psychically powered flight let them turn and brake on the head of a pin and they could fire a variety of beams at any angle from their pearls with no warning. Clearly Cori was not going to allow Svartis to beat this pokemon by simply taking to the air and bombarding it from above.
Its lower tendrils wriggled with the eager urge to fight it and- wait. What? Diya shook its head, dispelling the intrusive thoughts bleeding out of the Misdreavus in the rafters above. It looked up into the rafters, taking its hat off so it could see straight up properly. The trickster spirit wanted to fight?
Cori cleared her throat. "Um, we doing this or…?"
<Sorry, just a moment please.> Diya focused more intently and pushed out with its powers, pinging the Misdreavus. It wanted to fight against Cori's pokemon?
The Misdreavus wiggled self-consciously. Its return sending was a complicated soup, apprehension paired with the image of it fighting Bituin, resolution and purpose, giddy vicarious joy as Svartis fought Hwimning, a sense of unity, and … yearning. It wasn't that it wanted to fight against Bituin. It was just ... Svartis and Diya had looked like they were having fun together. And together was the key word there. They'd shared a single purpose and intent as Svartis had fought.
The Misdreavus wanted that.
Diya's heart swelled. Gently, it sent out a soft invitation for the trickster spirit to come down and-
Svartis beat her trainer to the punch and tackled the Misdreavus in a hug which slammed their half-corporeal forms through the air so hard they collided with the ceiling. The Misdreavus squealed and hugged Svartis back, blasting giddy phantom pings out so fast they were almost incoherent.
The Banette couldn't help itself. It broke down giggling. It curled over and pressed the back of its wrist to its mouth, desperately trying to keep its mouth shut. Of course, how silly of it to try softness with a spirit of heart-pounding jump scares. Much better to straightforwardly tackle the trickster spirit with a hug.
Cori stood on the sidelines with Bituin rotating slowly in the air in front of her. "I am so confused."
Slowly the Banette pulled itself back together. It replaced its purple witch's hat on its head and smiled hard enough to be seen even from behind its scarf - its first piplup scarf today, always a good choice. <Our Misdreavus friend will be joining us to spar, if you're okay with that.>
"Oh. Yeah, sure! One sec, let me bring out a second pokemon."
Diya blinked. It hadn't quite meant that, it had been thinking of the Misdreavus -who really needed a name- fighting Bituin in Svartis' place.
"Go! Egredia!" After Cori's prior two unusual pokemon, Diya was surprised to see a simple Pidgeotto come flying out. The second evolution of the Pidgey line was a common sight almost anywhere in the world. Though no less impressive for being common, Diya noted, as the two meter wingspan bird flew over Diya's head. Their pounding wings set the Banette's cloak and scarf fluttering backward, and it had to grab its hat to keep it on its head.
Then the sweltering heat of that wind hit Diya, causing it to break out in a sticky sweat. The air rippled with heat in Egredia's wake as the Flying pokemon swept a wide arc around the sparring court. Looking more closely, Diya could see that Egredia's coloring was unusual for a Pidgeotto. The typical Pidgeotto had a red trailing crest, stripes of red feathers in its tail -longer if they were female, which Egredia appeared to be-, a tan underbelly, and brown top. But Egredia's top coat was a ruddy red.
Maybe Diya had jumped to conclusions about how common this particular Pidgeotto was.
"So, ready for a two-v-two, Diya?"
Absolutely not, and definitely not against the aerial supremacy duo of a Staryu and whatever TMed hellbeast Cori had forged from a Pidgeotto. Also, with the addition of Egredia to the mix, Diya was pretty darn sure this no longer counted as Ice-type training. But even so, and as much as it knew it was going to lose, Diya couldn't stop itself from smiling. It called out to its ghosts. Were they ready?
Enthusiastic mental cheering was its answer.
Yeah. That's what it thought. <Ready when you are.>
There was no countdown for this battle. Everyone just moved. Cori shouted and Egredia screeched in answer. The Pidgeotto began to shimmer in a new way, with wispy afterimages peeling off in her wake. The Misdreavus decided that wouldn't fly and fired a vicious little hex of curdled purple energy in her direction. But as if Bituin had read its mind -and the Staryu probably had- it thrust itself between them as fast as the hex could be fired. A brilliant pane of violet light appeared in front of Bituin which the hex splashed against. Cori cheered.
Then a moment later Svartis finished inflating herself for her icy breath, and deathly cold wind laced with spiritual poison rushed out over the battlefield. Bituin weathered the onslaught without complaint behind its light shield, but Egredia screeched as the cold scorched her feathers.
Cori didn't waste a moment. "Egredia, up! Bituin, ice them!" Her Pidgeotto shot up to the ceiling in a blur of afterimages, moving so fast Diya could hardly follow her with its eyes. Bituin remained fixed in place behind its violet shield, and without fanfare a series of pencil-thin blue beams lanced out from its glowing pearl. They passed through its shield like it wasn't there -which Diya personally thought was unfair- and blasted into the ghosts. The Misdreavus cried out "DREE!" at the painful cold of the ice beams, while Svartis shivered uncomfortably.
Bituin focused its barrage on the Misdreavus, seeing how much more the Ice attack hurt it, until finally the trickster spirit screamed. Diya heard its pained howl in the phantom world as much as the physical world and the Banette flinched. The Staryu flinched even harder though. Its pearl flashed and it jerked backwards through the air as ice burns appeared all over its useless arms and -more importantly- its chitinous shell. At the same time the Misdreavus rallied and cried out with renewed energy, "Viii!".
Meanwhile Svartis was trying to blast Egredia with night shades, but not a single twisting ribbon landed. The closest hit the ceiling meters behind the horrendously fast Pidgeotto. Then with a turn so fast Diya could hardly believe it didn't snap the bird pokemon's neck, it wheeled and shot straight towards, and through, Svartis. The Gastly exploded. Her semi-corporeal projection collapsed and the purple gas which made her up was caught and churned by the turbulence of Egredia's wake. Diya could feel her pained and disoriented panic through their bond as she desperately tried to reconstitute her form.
But that move had cost Cori's pokemon. Already impacted by the soul smog in Svartis' icy wind, taking a facefull of her essence had done Egredia no favors. She coughed and wheezed as she wheeled about. Her chest heaved as she laboured for breath.
Mentally Diya pinged the Misdreavus. If it could keep launching hexes at Bituin and keep it pinned down behind its shield, they would win this. Cori would be forced to recall Egredia into stasis but Svartis would eventually reconstitute, and then it would be two on one.
Except Cori didn't look worried. In fact, she was smiling. "Haha! Alright, let's see if this works!" she shouted. "Egredia! Sunny day!"
With a great laboured heave of her wings, Egredia clawed at the air to gain altitude. With all her strength she managed to climb to just beneath the rafters over the center of the court and there she spread her wings.
And then there was light.
Egredia was the dawn itself and her brilliance hit Diya like a breaking wave at the beach. It felt like a small child swept head over heels by a wave far too tall for it to withstand. The Banette gasped and fell to a knee as the light poured through it. Its core remained protected, but every loose bit of power not safe in its innermost self was washed away.
Cori's Pidgeotto shone resplendently above the battle, a molten sun of rippling orange and yellows so bright Diya could hardly look at her. Diya's phantom senses were nothing more than a roar of static in its ears but it knew that if it could see the phantom world right then, that it would see all of Svartis' smog burning away under the brilliant light of the rising dawn.
"Egredia, use heat wave! Bituin, shock!"
The physical light vanished from Egredia's body, but Diya could still feel it lingering like a hot summer's sun upon its soul. Then the Pidgeotto, no longer wheezing in the slightest, beat its wings with a mighty cry. Swearing wind blasted forth and that hot sun became a burning oven.
The Misdreavus, as distracted and weakened by the light as Diya, wasn't even looking at the Staryu when a lightning bolt lanced out of its pearl and struck the spirit from the sky.
Svartis, barely half-formed and tumbling like a charred leaf in the burning wind, expressed to Diya the sentiment that she had had enough, thank you very much.
Diya could not agree more. It held up its arms in a big X and slashed them down. Then for good measure it sent Cori a text, <We surrender!>
"Egredia, Bituin, back!" Cori's pokemon wheeled back through the air, returning to their trainer. Egredia landed next to Cori to receive vigorous congratulatory neck scritches, while Bituin laid itself out horizontally in the air and hovered centimeters above Cori's head. "Nice match!" she called out to Diya.
Diya was torn between answering with 'stars and shadows what was that?' and 'how have you not already trounced this gym?', and settled for, <I am glad you think so.>
"No really! Especially with a new pokemon, that was amazing! That one-two punch your pokemon opened up with at the beginning of the match? Mm, perfect! I couldn't have coordinated better myself. And if sunny day's purification effect hadn't worked, hoooo, that fight might have gone south for us real fast." Cori beckoned Diya to come over to her side of the sparring court. She looked exhilarated.
Diya obliged, typing as it went. Along the way across the court it pulled a battered Svartis under its cloak, and picked up the still stunned Misdreavus to cradle in one arm. <Speaking of which, what was that?!>
"Sunny day?"
<Yes!!!>
Cori … blushed? She shuffled her feet and scratched the back of her head, inexplicably embarrassed all of a sudden. "Okay, well … you've got to promise not to laugh."
There was nothing in the world further from Diya's mind. It readily agreed.
The TM trainer took a deep breath and then said, in a single rushed breath, "IthinkIcanevolvePidgeyintoHo-oh."
Diya blinked. <Say again?>
"Okay look I've got pictures! Come around, come on!" Cori hooked Diya's elbow with her hand and dragged it around to look at her pokedex. "See this? See how Pidgey becomes more colorful and gains red accents as it evolves into Pidgeotto? And then Pidgeotto's accent markings become more completely red when it evolves into Pidgeot?"
There was little Diya could do but mutely nod. What in the world did this have to do with Egredia's sunny day?
"Now look at this! Mega Pidgeot! Look at it! It's got a blue-ish green coloration on the tips of its wings!"
That looked like blue to Diya, but it wasn't about to argue.
"Now look at this," and that's when Cori brought up pictures of the migratory god pokemon of the sun, Ho-oh itself, onto her screen. "Look! See the red coloration? The light underbelly? The green feather tips? The crest? Well admittedly the crest isn't a perfect match, but still! See the claws? The profile? Note how its profile is a bit more elongated than the Mega Pidgeot, just like each evolution of the Pidgey line is a bit more elongated than the last?" Cori's voice rose almost to a fever pitch at the end. Any embarrassment was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and now Cori was starting to remind Diya almost uncomfortably of June when she got going on a topic.
Almost hesitantly, Diya typed, <Yes?>
"Yes! You see it too!"
Unfortunately Diya actually could see the resemblance between one of the most common and least esteemed pokemon in the world and what was arguably the most revered god pokemon.
"Right so I've been TMing Pidgeys ever since I started learning how to TM. They're plentiful, easy to catch, and there's loads of scanning data on them to work with. Of course almost no pokemon TMers bother with Pidgeys, the moment they're off the training simulations they're too good for such common pokemon. On to bigger and better pokemon, buying them up, TMing them to be better, and selling them for a profit. Or just selling their services directly for use on league pokemon. But I find Pidgeys fascinating. There's so many possible ability expressions you can mod them with."
Cori leaned in close, her ecstatic grin looming wide in Diya's vision. "And guess what I found?"
A deep and abiding need to meet June at some point, clearly.
"I found sunny day. It's an uncommon ability which shows up in several Grass lines and only two Fire lines. But it's there in Pidgeys too, activatable by flipping the switch on a single gene expression! And here's the kicker, it's long been hypothesized that the purifying and calming effect Ho-oh radiates is just an extremely powerful version of the sunny day ability!"
"So I switched it on in Egredia and guess what? Her feathers turned red. I could even teach her how to use heat wave after that, no additional TMing necessary! She couldn't use it instinctively, but she could still learn it!"
Part of Diya's brain was still scrambling and wondering if where she was going with this was blasphemy - it must be to some people, surely. And another part of its brain was wondering if being in the presence of Ho-oh's apparently even more powerful sunny day aura would kill it - probably, it thought. But what brain space was left was starting to wonder if maybe Cori wasn't quite as crazy as she'd first sounded when she started talking about Pidgeys and Ho-oh.
"And you know, plenty of pokemon have alternative evolution paths which only occur under the right conditions. So I'm wondering, what if there's some Fire path evolution for Pidgeys we never see in nature for some reason? Or maybe a path they used to have, but evolved -in the other sense of the word- away from? And what if, just maybe, we can reactivate it?"
Apotheosis. Cori was talking about TMing a Pidgey into apotheosis. She couldn't be more than seventeen at the oldest and she wanted to manufacture a god. Out of a Pidgey.
"I don't think it'll be easy, of course. If my theory's correct, Ho-oh is on an evolution tier above Mega Pidgey, or at least on par with it. And I know how few trainers ever manage to induce a mega evolution. And I'm certainly not prideful enough to think my first TMing attempt is necessarily going to be the right path, no matter how much I love Egredia." The red Pidgeotto preened at hearing her name and Cori gave her more neck scritches.
"But uhh, yeah." A trace of that earlier embarrassment returned. "That's what's up with sunny day. It's an ability which may or may not be a weaker expression of the sun god's purifying light. I thought it might help against your Gastly's aura."
Diya stared at Cori for a long moment. <It did.>
"Cool! Yeah it clears away a lot of abilities which saturate an area with elemental energy. It's useful like that."
Privately, Diya thought Cori could have just said that. Of course if she hadn't, it wouldn't have been exposed to the horrifyingly plausible idea of turning a Pidgey into a god. Yay?
Diya's brain was still a little twisted up into knots. It suspected it would need a while to process this.
"Umm. Want to go another round if your pokemon are recovered? We can do a proper one-v-one with only Bituin using its Ice ability."
<Give me a second.> Diya checked on Svartis and the Misdreavus. Svartis was still out of it and barely reconstituted, though she said she'd be ready to fight again after taking some time to rest. The Misdreavus, though, had only been temporarily stunned by Bituin's lightning bolt and was raring to go. It insisted that it'd had Bituin on the ropes and only lost because the Staryu had gotten in a cheap shot while it was distracted.
Which was exactly how Misdreavuses fought in the wild, so Diya thought that was maybe just a bit hypocritical. Svartis picked up on the thought through their bond and got in a weak giggle. Well, regardless, if the Misdreavus wanted a rematch Diya wasn't going to stop it.
By the end of the day Diya and its companion, or maybe that was companions now, finally got some practice fighting against Ice type moves. Their spars with Cori's Staryu confirmed that Svartis was much more resilient to Ice attacks than the Misdreavus was, which added to Diya's suspicions that the Snom-born Gastly might be more Ice-aligned than a typical Gastly. And one quickly aborted rematch between Svartis and Egredia confirmed that she was also more vulnerable to Fire abilities.
The other important thing Diya learned was that it had a long way to go as a trainer. With her partial type advantage, Svartis could beat Bituin most of the time. If the Staryu stuck to Ice beams. But when it didn't Svartis lost more often than not. And as confident as the Misdreavus was, it didn't fare any better. Its ability to share damage inflicted upon it with its opponent was a game changer, but only for their first couple of fights. The ability was spiritually taxing and it wasn't long before the Misdreavus found itself unable to cast anything but hexes which splashed harmlessly on the Staryu's light screen.
And while the Misdreavus and Svartis both started flagging after a few rounds, Cori's Bituin might as well have been a machine. Cori spritzed it with some potion and fed it a couple berries and it was ready to go another round. Diya could feel the pokemon's exhaustion; it was impacted by fight after fight against Diya's two alternating pokemon. But it had the discipline and the practice to keep fighting through that. Holding up its light screen, evasive maneuvers, and firing its energy beams had been drilled into it until they were automatic. Diya's pokemon on the other hand, and Diya itself, only got sloppier as the day wore on.
In spite of their losses though, Cori had nothing but praise for the progress Diya's team made. They were new pokemon, of species not suited for direct combat, under the direction of a novice trainer. And yet they still earned occasional wins against Cori's well-trained and TMed Bituin. To hear Cori tell it, that was no small thing.
When the sun started going down and the sparring center emptied out, Cori didn't let Diya leave without giving the ghost trainer a firm handshake. "Thank you for the matches, Diya. I learned a lot today."
Diya mustered up the energy to raise an eyebrow. <Really? I should be thanking you.>
The more experienced trainer smirked. "Yeah yeah, my pokemon are awesome and you learned a lot. But no, seriously," she said more somberly, "you should be proud of your pokemon, Diya. They worked hard and fought well. And I meant what I said, I learned a lot. It's not every day you have an opportunity to learn to fight Ghost pokemon. If you ever want to spar again while I'm still in town, just text me."
Well now, Diya thought to itself. It looked like it wasn't that bad at this making friends thing after all. <I will. Have a good night Cori. And thank you again.>
"You too. See you later!"
Diya nodded, waving as Cori walked away. Svartis summoned the energy to materialize a hand outside of Diya's cloak and wave as well, and from its exhausted perch on Diya's shoulder the Misdreavus waggled its lower tendrils. Once she was gone, Diya checked the time. It still had a couple hours before dinner.
Nap? it sent to the two other ghosts.
Blearily murmured assent was their answer.
Coordinating so many fights for so long had been surprisingly tiring, but Diya was still fresh when it came to phantom energy. The Banette dropped into its shadow, carrying its exhausted charges across Canopy Town in a series of jumps through the town's dark corners. Its last jump was into the shadowed eaves of a bell tower on the edge of the town graveyard. Most of the local Shuppets slept in its rafters during the day.
Diya retrieved its sleeping bag and Piplup plushie from their storage ball and laid them down beneath the Shuppets on the belltower's floor. It curled on its side on top of the sleeping bag, one arm around the Piplup plushie, and gestured with the other arm for Svartis to join it. Svartis didn't wait a second, oozing gratefully into the plushie and taking refuge inside. Exhaustion took hold moments later, dragging Svartis instantly into sleep and pulling Diya on its way there.
Diya's eyes started to drift shut, but then blinked back open. The Misdreavus hadn't joined them. The Banette peered upward. The Misdreavus was still floating in the air above it, hesitating.
What a silly pokemon, Diya thought sleepily. It waved the spirit down. Come on, you too, it sent. Its eyes closed and it lay its head down again. In short order the Banette began to drift off to sleep.
A soft weight settled on its side.
Diya smiled. Good.
---
The door creaked open. June peeked inside. "Hey, Diya, you in there? Svartis?"
Diya murmured blearily and dragged its hat over its eyes, shielding itself from the streetlamp's light shining in.
"Ah," June said softly, "I thought so. You weren't in your room so we were wondering where you were." She waved at the Shuppets milling about in the rafters, taking a quick picture of them with her pokedex. "We'll save dinner for you, okay?"
Still hiding its eyes from the light, Diya nodded.
The door creaked closed.
With the streetlamps shut out, Diya's pink eyes illuminated the space and the pokemon within. Even hours later, the Misdreavus was still sleeping on top of Diya's side.
Gently, trying not to wake the Misdreavus up too much, Diya shook its side. Hey, it projected, little one.
The Misdreavus blinked slowly. Its red eyes, surrounded by yellow sclera, opened a slit. "Mmmi?" it murmured.
Are you here to stay? With us? Diya asked it.
The Misdreavus, curled up on top of Diya, gave the Banette a long slow look, like that was obvious. It didn't even bother with a proper sending, instead just letting its current state of being leak out into the surrounding world. It felt tired, and accomplished, and warm. It shut its eyes and curled back up on Diya's side. Moments later it was asleep again.
Diya smiled. Carefully, so as not to wake either of its companions, it pulled down its scarf. Carefully, it breathed in through its mouth, pulling bits of the Misdreavus' energy into itself. The Banette let the energy sit there for as long as it could hold its breath, mingling with its soul-stuff. When it breathed out, it had one word on its lips.
"Madrabaz." One of the words the boy had so enjoyed collecting, it meant trickster. Diya thought it was appropriate.
Diya fell back asleep with a smile on its face.
-----
Gastly (Ghost/Poison):
Misdreavus (Ghost):
Charizard (Fire/Flying):
[evolved from Charmeleon]
Jigglypuff (Normal/Fairy):
Snover (Grass/Ice):
Alolan Sandshrew (Ice/Steel):
Charmander (Fire):
Breloom (Grass/Fighting):
Staryu (Water):
Pidgey (Normal/Flying):
Pidgeotto (Normal/Flying):
[evolved from Pidgey]
Pidgeot (Normal/Flying):
[evolved from Pidgeotto]
Mega Pidgeot (Normal/Flying):
[Mega evolution of Pidgeot]
Ho-oh (Fire/Flying):
[Legendary pokemon / Ultra Pidgeot?]
Misdreavus (Ghost):
Charizard (Fire/Flying):
[evolved from Charmeleon]
Jigglypuff (Normal/Fairy):
Snover (Grass/Ice):
Alolan Sandshrew (Ice/Steel):
Charmander (Fire):
Breloom (Grass/Fighting):
Staryu (Water):
Pidgey (Normal/Flying):
Pidgeotto (Normal/Flying):
[evolved from Pidgey]
Pidgeot (Normal/Flying):
[evolved from Pidgeotto]
Mega Pidgeot (Normal/Flying):
[Mega evolution of Pidgeot]
Ho-oh (Fire/Flying):
[Legendary pokemon / Ultra Pidgeot?]
Last edited:
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Brilliant as always!
i wonder what other things the TM technology can do?
webbed hands and feet would probably be good for people living on islands, and who train amphibious pokemon....are gills possible? or larger spleens to help them hold their breath longer?
what about lighter, hollow bones and Patagia?
eyes that can take in more light to allow night vision?
Bio-luminecent spots?
i wonder what other things the TM technology can do?
webbed hands and feet would probably be good for people living on islands, and who train amphibious pokemon....are gills possible? or larger spleens to help them hold their breath longer?
what about lighter, hollow bones and Patagia?
eyes that can take in more light to allow night vision?
Bio-luminecent spots?
Echo
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
- Location
- "echolocation" dur hur hur
Recall also that the potential divinity latent within the Pidgey line was clearly established by Twitch Plays Pokemon; Cori may be on to something here.
The best vengeance is a life lived with hugs.
And then Cori jumped ahead of my own mad sciencing and went straight to creating a god.
I wonder if this can reverse-engineer and reproduce blessings granted by legendaries...
And then Cori jumped ahead of my own mad sciencing and went straight to creating a god.
ProfHardraad
ThreadNecromancer
The best I got for this is some kind of oyster?
Literally "Star". It's also the name of a play.
I got nothing for this except some maybe fossils?
This isn't the time to use this.
- Location
- United States
I now need to know what monster god Youngster Joey is training his Ratata into.
TM Mods
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Usual disclaimer that I believe pretty strongly in the death of the author on my own works, and that my thoughts on stuff outside the main text are just musings with as much validity as anyone else's. And also subject to change, if I ever do get around to turning any of this into canon. But this is stuff I love thinking about, so let's do it.
So hmmm. Webbed fingers and feet would definitely be common for Water trainers, or just people who live on the coast (that one's definitely going to be canon when this story gets to the coast). Gills though, I'm not sure about. Integrating a gill system into a human body would be an enormous undertaking and require serious modifications to a lot of critical systems. What might make more sense to implement is adding an extradimensional pocket (like what Apricorns or Water pokemon have) which can hold extra air. I imagine little auxiliary additions like that are easier. That's probably still not that common though, as it's much cheaper to do that with a piece of air-storage tech.
Gliding folds are a neat idea, but also highly situational. They're a cool, but also I'm struggling to think of a common situation where you'd want them and not be able to prepare access to a gliding suit. I'd put these under the category of: some people with devoted niche interests must have done it, but it's probably rare.
Hollow bones, yeesh, humans are just not designed for that. We have enough bone problems as is. If you also augmented your bones extensively with superior lightweight scaffolding, maybe it could work, but that's still some seriously invasive modification of a big component of multiple critical systems, with a definite downside even in the case of success. For this one, I'd think there's probably one or two, maybe a handful of, wealthy people with a seriously dedicated fixation on self-powered flight who would pay to have it done and endure the multiple treatments and recovery time it would take. Like, we're talking the kind of rare where there's multiple interview articles for each such person.
Tapetum (the back-reflectors which make some animals' eyes shine) and bioluminescent spots are extremely simple additions that are probably very common to ubiquitous in the right communities. Miners and spelunkers, I imagine, would almost never not have them. Even with flashlights, better night vision and a perpetual light source is never pointless underground. More advanced eye modifications though, maybe not so much. Anything which modifies your eye enough to change your sight would require substantial recovery time for your brain to relearn how to see.
The basic guidelines I'd apply when world-crafting functional (as opposed to cosmetic) body modification ideas are this:
| Daily Usage? | Simple Modification? | Tech Replicable? | Long Recovery Time? | Use Commonality |
| Yes | Yes | No | No | Near Ubiquitous |
| Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Uncommon |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Common |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Rare |
| Yes | No | No | No | Uncommon |
| Yes | No | No | Yes | Rare |
| Yes | No | Yes | No | Rare |
| Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Very Rare |
| No | Yes | No | No | Common |
| No | Yes | No | Yes | Uncommon |
| No | Yes | Yes | No | Rare |
| No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Very Rare |
| No | No | No | No | Rare |
| No | No | No | Yes | Very Rare |
| No | No | Yes | No | Almost Unique |
| No | No | Yes | Yes | Nonexistent |
Oh shoot, I forgot to include an audio link for Hwimning! The word it's based on is actually spelled skymning in Swedish, meaning dusk, but unless you're familiar with Swedish you're going to pronounce that totally wrong, so I anglicized it as best I could.
Correct! I got it from Filipino.
Not surprised you couldn't find this one, Egredia is a modification of eguerdia, which means noon in Basque.