Protect seems to be missing from Jeanne's list.
When is a Spoon a Sword? (Pokemon OC-Insert)
- Thread starter Fabled Webs
- Start date
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Thanks
- Location
- Madison Wisconsin
As a casual fan who hasn't watched the show in years, I mostly play the games and read fanfic like this one, how is the tournament rigged?
I can absolutely belive Ash isn't worthy of a top 8 spot in a world tournament but I'm curious as to how it happened.
JBcristal
Bring Me All The Puppies!
- Location
- Somewhere that doesn't have enough puppies.
Gotta say, I'm curious for the opposite belief. Ash has a solid team, has already won a championship so he's not out of place with the other contestants, and runs the equivalent of Anything Goes by virtue of having power ups out the wazoo. Is that what's rigged? The bunch of participants' multiple power-ups? Because I'd say that's more janky than it is shenanigans. Unfair for the competency maybe, rigged... nah.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He
Hmm.. if Teleport has some sort of visual indicator - which, let's face it, it probably has - Artoria could learn to teleport fake, like creating a visual effect to make it look like she is teleporting but she doesn't actually move, tripping up the enemy. Or using a visual effect to seemingly 'telegraph' where she is going to teleport only to teleport somewhere else.
Even if Teleport doesn't have an indicator, the power of surprise is strong. If Artoria figure out how to add some sort of lightshow whenever she teleports enveloping her body and showing where she would land, she could suddenly drop it and teleport without any indicators to catch an opponent off-guard.
Also, if Artoria could gain a finer degree of control over Double Team it would be bloody useful. If she could just make them not mimic her actions it would be a major boon.
If she could create singular after images easily, she could play a 'shell game where whenever the enemy is starting to guess where she is, she creates an after-image in her location and teleports into the position of one of the other clones. The enemy would 'confirm' that one of the clones is fake with some sort of AoE move only for the real Artoria to swap positions with it.
If artoria could learn some sort of burrowing or invisibility move, she could even run a con game where none of the after images are real and the real Artoria is invisible - though she would probably disdain it as 'cowardly'.
Even if Teleport doesn't have an indicator, the power of surprise is strong. If Artoria figure out how to add some sort of lightshow whenever she teleports enveloping her body and showing where she would land, she could suddenly drop it and teleport without any indicators to catch an opponent off-guard.
Also, if Artoria could gain a finer degree of control over Double Team it would be bloody useful. If she could just make them not mimic her actions it would be a major boon.
If she could create singular after images easily, she could play a 'shell game where whenever the enemy is starting to guess where she is, she creates an after-image in her location and teleports into the position of one of the other clones. The enemy would 'confirm' that one of the clones is fake with some sort of AoE move only for the real Artoria to swap positions with it.
If artoria could learn some sort of burrowing or invisibility move, she could even run a con game where none of the after images are real and the real Artoria is invisible - though she would probably disdain it as 'cowardly'.
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Vegetation
Eating the sun, incrementally
- Location
- Fertile Soil
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Let's combine these ideas. Even a dim light can be blinding if it's right in front of you and you aren't expecting it. The big disadvantage of a move like Flash is that you and your allies have to plan around it to avoid getting blinded as well. If you can fake-teleport right in front of your opponent's eyes with a weaker (but still potent; you'd have to work on brightening up whatever visual flair a Teleport might have) light, what you've created is a targeted, ranged Flash with less or no detriment to your own team. It probably wouldn't be anywhere near as potent as your standard Flash, especially Jeanne's, but for an up-close fighter who relies on technique and finesse, even a second or two of disorientation could be enough to gain the upper hand.
1.12 Appetizer
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Appetizer 1.12
Aaron Fulan
Mauville City, Hoenn Region
I was led to a battlefield with no furnishments. Battles involving higher badge-levels could take place in a wide assortment of field designs, but there was nothing in the here and now.
The eccentric gym leader stood at the far end in just a pair of comfortable sweatpants and a tan jacket. His bushy, white beard looked like it hadn't seen a comb in months. The one part of his appearance he seemed to pay attention to was his hair. He has a single, white tuft on his otherwise bald head that he styled into the shape of a lightning bolt. I couldn't imagine the amount of gel that took. All around him was the aura of happiness. It was good to see that the jolly old man wasn't putting on an act.
"Aaron Fulan!" he bellowed, making me flinch a bit. "Wahahaha! Are you ready for your challenge?"
"Yes, Leader Wattson."
"Good! We'll get right on that then."
Four League-provided baltoy hovered into the room and formed a psychic shield around the field. The ref, a young-ish gym trainer, stood at the side.
"This is the gym battle between Aaron Fulan of Mossdeep City and Gym Leader Wattson," she shouted, enunciating clearing for League records. "This is the challenger's first gym battle and will be a two on two battle in which only the challenger may make substitutions. Challenger, please send out your pokémon."
I motioned for Jeanne to take the field. The mareep bleated cheerily and ambled onto the field, about as unbothered as I'd ever seen anyone. Sometimes, I wished I had Jeanne's casual contentedness.
"Leader Wattson, please release your pokémon."
"Hoh, an electric type? You must be very confident in that mareep, boyo!" With a rambunctious laugh, he tossed a pokéball into the field, revealing a voltorb that shook with barely contained anger. So, really, a normal voltorb. "Pissed the fuck off" seemed like their natural state of existence. "If you came here expecting only electric type moves, you're in for a real shock! Wahahaha, I crack myself up!"
"Begin!" the ref called.
"Wahahaha," Wattson let out another booming laugh. "Roll out the red carpet with Rollout, voltorb!"
His shitty jokes made me want to groan audibly, but I didn't have the time. The voltorb was fast. "Jeanne, Protect then Spore!"
The voltorb careened into my little lamb just as an emerald shield stuttered to life around her. It cracked with a single collision, but it was enough to send the voltorb's momentum elsewhere. Then, as the danger-ball began to course-correct, Jeanne positively exploded into a cloud of wool fluff.
It was barely directed, couldn't really be called an attack. I saw several fly in my direction and bounce off the psychic barriers. Within moments, my side of the field looked like a kindergarten's attempt at an indoor "snow day."
The voltorb took the brunt of the "attack." A tide of woolen balls rose up in front of it like a castle wall, slashing its momentum to a more manageable pace.
"Now, Tackle!"
"Ma-reep!" she cried as she charged forward. She wasn't very fast, a little encumbered by her own newfound terrain, but she did have the benefit of horns. Like a miniature taurus, she flung herself horns-first at the wide-eyed voltorb, launching it back to Wattson's side of the field.
"Chase it, then Cotton Spore again."
My little lamb dutifully ran over to Wattson's own field. Instead of trying to tackle the ticking time bomb, she let out a bleating cry and drowned his field in woolen balls too.
"Excellent use of terrain, challenger," Wattson complimented. His eyes sharpened and his aura flared with newfound interest. "Sonic Boom!"
The voltorb screeched, letting out a wall of sound that impacted like a physical force. It wasn't like the Sonic Boom of an exploud thankfully; it wasn't leveling buildings or anything, but it was still enough to clear the woolen balls in the area, flinging them away to form a circle around it.
It screeched again, a lower frequency this time, and a ripple of distorted air launched out like a missile and struck Jeanne. It was her turn to be flung across the field.
"Mareep!" she cried in pain.
"Now follow it with Rollout."
The voltorb was too fast. It rolled around within its cleared circle until it built enough momentum to disregard the woolen spores. It then careened towards Jeanne, launching her into the psychic barriers before she could recover.
She made a good showing, but in the end, she was too slow and too inexperienced to do much more. I had hoped that Jeanne would be able to defeat the voltorb and use Flash to blind the electrike, but that turned out to be too much to ask for.
"Return," I recalled her with a gentle smile. "You were brilliant, Jeanne."
"Challenger, please reveal your final pokémon," the ref said, as if it wasn't obvious who my anchor would be.
"Artoria, ready?"
White flames of will blazed brightly around her. 'I will avenge my comrade,' she swore in my mind, swinging her spoon forward into chūdan.
"Wahaha, that's quite the fiery ralts you've got there. Electrifying! I like it!"
"Nuki waza," I told her, our bond flickering with what I had in mind.
Wattson's brows furrowed. I didn't just teach Artoria to respond to kendo forms because I thought it was cute, though it was; it also provided a significant advantage in battle. Good trainers, especially people with decades of experience like Wattson, could discern their opponents' strategies from overhearing a handful of vocal commands.
Unless Wattson was familiar with Kantoan sword arts in this world, that advantage was gone.
"Rollout," he ordered.
I said nothing, smiling genially as his voltorb rolled towards my ralts. Against a human, that would no doubt be bone-breaking force. Artoria's smile mirrored my own.
Then, a second before impact, she moved.
She stepped forward, her foot gliding on the ground. A single step brought her adjacent to the voltorb. Her spoon collided with her opponent in a swerving arc, its head scooping up the ball pokémon like a lacrosse stick. For a fraction of a second, the voltorb ground against the spoon futilely.
Then, the Mana Edge exploded.
The blast launched the voltorb clear across the field until it was stopped painfully by the psychic barriers in front of Wattson, making the old man flinch slightly. For once, he had no jokes or puns. He wordlessly recalled the fallen voltorb.
"Sorry, Jeanne needs some work, but Artoria's my starter for a reason," I said. "If you underestimate her because she uses a spoon, you're going to be in for a bad time."
"I can see that," Wattson replied. Then, slowly, a wide grin split his face. "Wahahaha, alright, Aaron. I'll admit the little missy's got spark. Now, electrike, let's bring the thunder!"
With that, the pokémon I'd initially wanted appeared. I'd gotten pretty knowledgeable about the species over the past week. This electrike sported green fur with highlights of golden yellow around its mane. I noticed that the yellow had fully overtaken the sides, telling me that it was a mature specimen. The longer mane marked it as male.
"Electrike, Quick Attack," Wattson barked.
The lightning pokémon obeyed. To my untrained eyes, he all but disappeared in a blur of white. It was only the corona of emotions that surrounded him that allowed me to track his movements. In a second, he'd already crossed the field to clash fang to spoon against Artoria. I'd drilled into her head that head-on confrontations weren't the way to go, but he was so fast that she didn't have the chance to dodge away or throw out a Protect.
She grit her teeth and dug in her heels, bracing as much as her slim body would allow. Even with Confusion bolstering her own physical strength, she was being pushed back.
"Teleport," I said. I wanted to save it to surprise Wattson, but I wasn't given much of a choice. In a flash of blue, she was in Wattson's side of the field.
She had positioned herself to place the bulk of the woolen spores between her and her opponent. If he wanted to reach her, he'd have to weave his way between the spores and do his best to not accumulate too many, giving her precious seconds to react.
"Thunder Shock."
"Lightning rod," I countered. I sent her a telepathic image of what I expected. Artoria stuck her metal spoon in the ground and stepped away, taking a knee to minimize her already short stature. The lightning sailed above her head, drawn to the silver.
"Smart, but not good enough. Shock Wave!"
Rather poor naming aside, the attack was dangerous. Electrike's yellow highlights glowed blue as electricity coalesced in his fur. Then, he barked, sending an arc of directed lightning that ignored Artoria's makeshift lightning rod completely to strike my unprepared starter.
"Ralts!" she cried in pain.
Seeing that baiting the electrike wouldn't do any good, I made a snap decision. "Rush in," I told her. "Attack and don't let up. Burst!"
The lightly packed dirt beneath her feet cratered, sending a cloud of dust into the air as she shot out like a meteor. There was pain in her aura, but also resolve and joy. This was what she'd been waiting for, a chance to prove that her faith in the way of a knight was not misplaced.
As though her sword had a mind of its own, it dug itself out of the ground and slapped into her outstretched hands.
"Double Team!"
"We can play that game. Match her, electrike!"
It was almost a mirror copy of Artoria's battle against Lucky the elekid. She split into six and the electrike followed. The twelve pokémon met in the middle of the field, but she wasn't aiming for the electrike.
Mana Edge struck the ground with a thunderous crack. All her psychic energy and momentum were channeled into one mighty blow that covered the field in a thick dust cloud.
"Now, all out!"
Cotton Spore was my Plan A. Flash was my Plan B. This was my Plan C. Wattson was blind so long as the dust cloud persisted. So was electrike. Artoria and I had our empathy to draw on.
Inside the cloud, twelve silhouettes of our two pokémon danced.
"Get out of there!" Wattson shouted, a sense of urgency entering his voice for the first time this battle.
"Keep him there," I said. I could almost taste victory.
Artoria teleported from one edge of the cloud to the other, striking then warping away and keeping electrike from leaving her impromptu battlefield even while her clones distracted him. It was death by a thousand cuts. A full-power Mana Edge would be counterproductive, knocking him out of the cloud, so she was reducing the strength of her own attacks while avoiding his own.
"Enough. Flash!"
I cursed inwardly. It was a strategy I'd planned with Jeanne, so why wouldn't Wattson think of it?
Bright light filled the gym. I heard Artoria yelp in surprise, giving away her location. She was promptly tackled out of the cloud and back onto my side of the field.
I blinked the spots out of my eyes to see Artoria on her knees. To be fair, the electrike wasn't faring much better. Even through his green fur, I could see that he was one big mass of bruises and he stepped gingerly as if it hurt to put weight on his forelimbs.
"Splendid use of strategy," Wattson complimented me. "It was a truly charged battle, but I think it's gone on long enough."
"Artoria, can you stand?"
'Y-Yes, my lord,' she said, but her thoughts were staggered like I'd never heard her before. She began to stand on shaky legs. 'I am your knight, your sword and shield. Your dreams will be my own, your dearest wish my reason for being. This, I swore!'
It started first with her spoon. It began to shine with the telltale blue of psychic aura, only to get brighter and brighter. The aura spread, covering her entire body so thickly that her crimson horns looked violet in the light. Flickers of white sparks danced from her hands.
"End this, electrike. Howl into Spark!"
A canine howl pierced the gym, stirring my caveman fight or flight instincts and making my hair stand on end. Lightning arced around his fur. He started with a walk, wincing in pain. His eyes sharpened and the walk turned into a sprint as he stoutly ignored his own injuries.
A comet of yellow electricity streaked towards her.
She met it with a charge of her own, a wordless war cry on her lips.
"Electrike!"
"Ralts!"
Then, in the moment of impact, white overtook blue and the light of evolution shoved the electrike back. It was different from the white aura I saw that represented willpower. There was no way to explain it, but it sent what limited psychic senses I had into overdrive.
The light dimmed, revealing my new kirlia. She stood on trembling legs, panting desperately as she held her sword towards her downed opponent. She was still filthy, caked in dirt and bruised all over her white blouse. Evolution didn't magically fix every problem like it did in the anime; she was still very much on her last legs.
I had enough. I'd gotten what I wanted, a challenging foe to battle and the chance for Artoria to evolve. My hand twitched towards her ball to concede the match. If the electrike could continue after that, we'd just come back in a week and stomp it flat.
"Leader Wattson's electrike is unable to battle. Challenger Aaron and kirlia are the victors!" the ref called, drawing me from my thoughts.
She'd been so quiet that I honestly forgot we had one.
Then the gravity of that declaration weighed in on me and I laughed. I was so focused on my new kirlia that I completely missed the electrike fall over in exhaustion.
We'd done it. Jeanne, Artoria, and I had our first badge.
The psychic shield went down and I ran out to embrace my partner. Even evolved, she was still a diminutive two feet. She'd grow taller in time. I scooped her up and twirled her around.
"We did it," I said. "We won! You were amazing!"
'M-My lord! Please let me go,' my adorable knight pouted, upset that she was still so easily huggable.
I'd catch hell for it later, but I couldn't help but think that her ridiculous spoon was finally the appropriate length to qualify as a standard longsword now.
"Well done," Wattson said as he walked over, "and congratulations on her evolution."
"Thank you, Leader Wattson," I said with a respectful bow.
"Wahahaha, you're as formal as Sharon. She told us to expect you."
"Mom? You spoke with her?"
"All the gym leaders did. That girl's very proud of you, you know."
"She has a funny way of showing it," I grumbled. Then, I thought of something, a nagging suspicion. "Did… Did mom tell you to use a stronger pokémon?"
"Yes, yes she did. Electrike here is one of the ones I reserve for the second badge," the jolly old man revealed. "Typically, first badge challenges don't involve a pokémon who's quite so fast. He also knows a lot more moves than I normally use."
"Fucking hell. Why?"
"Wahahaha! Why? Because she believes in you of course." The ref reappeared carrying two boxes. Wattson opened them and handed me the golden Dynamo badge and a TM disc. "Here. The badge is what you get for winning. The TM contains Shock Wave and I hand these out to truly exceptional trainers."
"Thank you," I said, even if I felt a little bitter towards mom. Not for the first time, I wondered if I'd be better off without her particular brand of tough love.
Today had been a long day. The battle against Wattson hadn't lasted more than half an hour, but it left all of us feeling drained. It was only noon when I returned to the pokémon center, but I wanted nothing more than to fall back into bed.
Still, that could wait.
After entrusting my pokémon to the nurses, I grabbed a quick shower, pinned the Dynamo Badge on the inside hem of my favorite jacket, and started packing. I'd be out the door tomorrow, headed to Verdanturf to hopefully snag that gardevoirite before Wanda could get her hands on it.
Honestly, chances were slim. I was banking on Artoria being able to sense the psychic and fae energy signature given off by the mega stone, just as she'd done with the alakazite in Slateport. If she couldn't, I'd just have to accept that it wasn't there and wait for another opportunity.
I came back down to the lobby and grabbed my pokémon, thanking the on-call nurse. I released my pokémon onto the pokémon center lobby.
"Artoria, Jeanne, how do you feel?"
"Mareep!" my excitable mareep bleated cheerfully, completely unbothered by her defeat. Most other pokémon would have either been down or felt the need to jump back into training to avenge their loss, not Jeanne. Her tail and horns literally shone with good cheer as arcs of electricity danced merrily in her wool.
'I am well, my liege. Better than well,' my first pokémon said with a smile. The green bangs covering her eyes as a ralts had been shifted to one side, revealing a single, ruby eye that almost seemed too large for her face. I could see why so many people found the ralts line so cute; they had facial features similar to those of babies.
Her inner voice was different too. As a ralts, her telepathy had been astonishingly clear, light and airy like the summer breeze. As a kirlia, her thoughts felt weightier. The voice was deeper too, more mature, but there was more to it than me associating her thoughts with sounds. The truth was, telepathy wasn't as people assumed; it was more complicated than just "talking, but with thoughts."
A single thought was more than just a series of sound waves or rationalizations. Thoughts contained a whole host of associated emotions, instincts, and memories that were jumbled together into a singular package. There was no way for an undisciplined or inexperienced mind to untangle the complex web of mental associations without help. It was why people who experienced telepathy for the first time often missed subtle nuances. Just as spoken words could convey a number of connotations based on tone, telepathic thoughts could be equally complex.
As a kirlia, each of her thoughts felt more organized, more controlled, than they did as a ralts. I could feel her care, love, devotion, and passion with every word, but they were carefully curated now in a way that was no less genuine than before.
Impossible to explain, but that difference was immense.
"I can see that," I said, sending her a pulse of affection. Reaching down, I ruffled her hair and chuckled as she went cherry-red. It never ceased to amuse me that my kirlia could feel my emotions at all times and so enjoyed a type of intimacy most people would never experience, but immediately turned into a stuttering mess at the first sign of physical affection.
"Good. We'll have time to talk about the battle later. We'll go over what we did right and what we could do better. But for now, I need to give mom a call."
'Lady Sharon?'
"Mareep?"
"Kir-Kirlia," Artoria explained to Jeanne.
"Yes. It seems she told Wattson to make our battle harder than it needed to be."
"Reep? Mareep?"
'Why?'
I rolled my eyes. "Why else? Because she's a social cripple who is incapable of showing love except by pushing people harder and harder."
Artoria frowned. 'She is not that bad, my liege.'
"Really? We're talking about the same woman here, right? The one who signed me up for the Junior Astronauts Summer Camp and expected me to rank first? At the age of eight?"
'Well…'
"Or how about the time she had me memorize great granddad's journal word for word because it contained the basics of pokémon nutrition? At the age of seven?"
'She just wants you to be your best?'
"Yes, that's the problem, Artoria," I said, letting out a frustrated sigh as I led us back to our room. "I know she loves me, I can see emotions fine. I just have a problem with her complete inability to show affection."
'Be that as it may, my liege, you shouldn't speak ill of your mother.'
Reaching down, I scooped her up into my arms. "Oh, fine. You're right."
In my room, I flipped open my PokéNav and dialed home. It was picked up in two rings and Tate's cute face filled the screen.
"Aaron! Liza! Come quick, it's Aaron!" he shouted excitably.
"Aaron? Hey, bro!" Her face squished into the screen, pushing her brother away. "Congratulations!"
"You already heard about the gym battle?" I asked, surprised. The recording wouldn't go live for a few hours at least to give the League porygons a chance to scrub it for glitches or classified details, not that a battle at my level would have any.
"Kind of? Mom was teaching us divination today and we decided to check up on you."
I had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I lived in a world of psychics. My family were some of the more powerful ones around and privacy was ultimately an illusion. As Aaron Fulan, I'd come to terms with that long ago. But on the other hand, Aaron Kanda-Locke grew up in a society where privacy was heavily prized. That part of me wanted to be upset with my siblings and mom for allowing it.
True, I had a similar connection with my kirlia, but it felt different with her. Constantly being able to feel her loyalty towards me went a long way to soothing ruffled feathers.
I swallowed. Perhaps it was a matter of distance.
"So you saw the battle?"
"Uh-huh. Your ralts evolved!"
"She did," I said agreeably and nudged Artoria in front of the camera. "Say hi, Artoria."
"Artoria? Is that her name?"
"Hello, Lord Tate, Lady Liza, I hope you are well," my little knight said, though it came out as "Kirlia-kir."
"Mareep!" Jeanne cried, feeling left out. She bumped the PokéNav out of my hand. Looking at the camera, she gave the lens a curious lick and shuddered in disgust. "Mareep…"
"Woah, what? Was that your mareep?"
"Jeanne, come back." I tucked the sheep under one arm and my pixie in the other and placed my camera on my knee. "Yeah. I actually caught her yesterday."
"Wait, you went into a gym battle with a fresh capture?" Tate asked, scandalized.
"Wow, I would never have been able to tell. She almost beat that voltorb," Liza added.
"Yeah. Jeanne's a quick study. She might be more suited for contests though. She really wants to be the 'most radiant ampharos in the world' or something."
"Ooh, a contest-trained ampharos would be really pretty," my little sis squealed. She was still in the phase where she was picking her favorite pokémon based on how cute they were. When I left, her favorite was togekiss. Who knew what it was now?
Suddenly, the image lifted itself into the air. When it settled, I saw the stern face of my mother. "Hello, son."
"Hi mom. I hear you rigged my match."
"Hardly. I felt you deserved a worthy challenge."
"Did you know I'd win?"
"Of course. You're my son."
"You know, that'd almost be touching if I didn't know for a fact you just looked ahead to see me with the Dynamo Badge."
"Uncertainty is for lesser minds," she sniffed.
"Was… Was that a joke? You can joke?"
"I'll have you know I am not devoid of humor."
I felt Artoria's elbow in my side. "Yeah, fine, fine. Should I expect all my gym battles to be equally difficult?"
"No, Quinn and I just felt that Artoria needed a little push."
"To evolve."
"Indeed. Your father sends his regards, young one," she said to Artoria. Quinn the gallade appeared by his mistress' side in a flash of blue.
"Gallade. Gal. Gall-ade."
"Kir? Lia?"
"Gallade."
"Kirlia!"
I had no idea what the two were saying to each other, but I took the flaring of purple and blue aura around my starter to mean they were enjoying themselves.
"Where's dad?"
"Dad's off on a training seminar," Tate chimed in. "He said he needs to update his zero-g certificate."
"Huh, cool. Tell him I said hey."
"Okay."
"So," I said as casually as I could. I'd thought about this. In the end, I wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do, but… "I found an alakazite."
"You what?" It was the first time I'd seen mom surprised in a while. She didn't emote well at the best of times. Her surprised face was just two rapid blinks, but I savored it. Even that loss of control spoke volumes where she was concerned.
Reaching into my bag, I held it out before the camera. "I have an alakazite."
"So I see…"
"No, 'As expected of my son,' or 'As I had foreseen?'" I teased.
"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed. "I have no expectations in your ability to track down rare items."
"Oww."
"And you know powerful relics are blindspots."
"Yeah… I'm going to have to brush up on precogs," I said honestly. "I forgot about most of it after you told me I didn't have the Sight."
"Typical. The future is ever-changing, Aaron. Looking into the future is like looking into a reflection in the mirror. In the end, we shape our reflections."
"Cool, very mystical and all, but what does that have to do with relics being blindspots? I mean, it makes some sense. If you could divine the location of mega stones, we'd be sitting on a small mountain of them."
"Quite. The mega stones and their key stone counterparts, as well as several other items, are universal constants. You will find it utterly impossible to break one. The weight of their existence interferes with our sight."
I still didn't understand but nodded along anyway. "Huh, neat. So… you can't find one? You mean…" I grinned slyly. "I have something you wouldn't be able to get?"
"Truly, Arceus favors the dim-witted."
"Oww…" Still, I grinned. That was as good as begging with her. More importantly, it meant no one, literally no one knew the locations of mega stones. This was likely true of several relics such as the Lustrous and Adamant Orbs. I decided to make sorting my memories a priority. It wasn't an art I had any natural talent in, but I'd push through with bullheaded effort.
"What do you plan on doing with it?"
I shrugged. "Who knows. How much do you think this will go for?"
She frowned. "You want to… sell… an artifact of immense power?"
"I'm joking. Want it?"
"Excuse me?"
"Do you want to alakazite."
"Yes… What will it cost me?"
"A favor," I said. "I'm going to cash in a favor sometime in the future and it'll be one that requires you to leverage your position as a gym leader."
"Done."
This time, it was my turn to be surprised. "Just like that?"
"A gym leader may reward a sponsored trainer for meritorious deeds. I will not show favoritism because you are my son, but locating a mega stone would qualify."
"Huh."
"Indeed. I recommend you think carefully about this favor. There are many who would go to great lengths to have me 'owe them one.' Do not squander it."
"I won't," I said firmly. "So… What now?"
"Now I will send Quinn to you to pick it up."
"Sure, when can I expe-"
I was cut off by the bright light of Quinn's Teleport. Artoria's father was tall for a gallade at six feet. His emerald and white armor gleamed in the light. The angular crystal on his chest pulsed with power, bathing the room with psychic energy.
"Hey, Quinn," I greeted, tossing him the alakazite. "Tell Alfonse to have some fun and pull that third spoon out of his ass."
'As crass as ever, young lord,' he spoke in my mind, his voice a rich, deep baritone.
"Right, you're why Artoria insists on calling me 'lord.'"
'There is nothing wrong with proper etiquette.'
"Right, right," I waved him off. The gallade was as big a chuuni as his daughter. Though to be fair, he was as close to a true knight as anyone could get.
'Father.'
'Daughter. You have advanced quickly.'
'I have.'
'I look forward to seeing the knight you will become.' With that rejoinder, he was gone.
"I think that means he's proud of you."
'Father acknowledged me,' Artoria said shakily.
"He's always acknowledged you."
'As a daughter. This is the first time he ever called me a knight.'
I pulled my pokémon into a hug. "Well it's about time. We're going to save Mossdeep for last. Then, for our eighth badge, we're going to shove a spoon so far up his ass he'll be tasting breakfast for dinner."
'You are far too crass,' she admonished, but I could see the corners of her mouth twitch upward.
"Mareep."
'See? Jeanne agrees with me.'
"Right, right. My own pokémon are ganging up on me."
We hung up shortly after. The three of us spent the rest of the day going over the battle and watching reruns of pokémon contests so Jeanne could get an idea of what they were like.
Author's Note
Hopefully, that gym battle was suitably epic. It's a little hard to give the battle the gravitas it's due.
Closing an arc is always a little challenging. I need to conclude at a decent point and wrap up some plot threads while leaving a few hanging for me to pick up on later. I think Verdanturf and a favor owed by Sharon Fulan are good enough for me to pick it up later.
Now, any guesses as to what this favor might be?
This concludes Arc 1 of When is a Spoon a Sword? I will be switching back to Legendary Tinker, my Worm/Runeterra cross.
As always, thank you for reading and a special thanks to those of you who bought me coffee. If you think I deserve a tip, my kofi is fabledwebs.
Aaron Fulan
Mauville City, Hoenn Region
I was led to a battlefield with no furnishments. Battles involving higher badge-levels could take place in a wide assortment of field designs, but there was nothing in the here and now.
The eccentric gym leader stood at the far end in just a pair of comfortable sweatpants and a tan jacket. His bushy, white beard looked like it hadn't seen a comb in months. The one part of his appearance he seemed to pay attention to was his hair. He has a single, white tuft on his otherwise bald head that he styled into the shape of a lightning bolt. I couldn't imagine the amount of gel that took. All around him was the aura of happiness. It was good to see that the jolly old man wasn't putting on an act.
"Aaron Fulan!" he bellowed, making me flinch a bit. "Wahahaha! Are you ready for your challenge?"
"Yes, Leader Wattson."
"Good! We'll get right on that then."
Four League-provided baltoy hovered into the room and formed a psychic shield around the field. The ref, a young-ish gym trainer, stood at the side.
"This is the gym battle between Aaron Fulan of Mossdeep City and Gym Leader Wattson," she shouted, enunciating clearing for League records. "This is the challenger's first gym battle and will be a two on two battle in which only the challenger may make substitutions. Challenger, please send out your pokémon."
I motioned for Jeanne to take the field. The mareep bleated cheerily and ambled onto the field, about as unbothered as I'd ever seen anyone. Sometimes, I wished I had Jeanne's casual contentedness.
"Leader Wattson, please release your pokémon."
"Hoh, an electric type? You must be very confident in that mareep, boyo!" With a rambunctious laugh, he tossed a pokéball into the field, revealing a voltorb that shook with barely contained anger. So, really, a normal voltorb. "Pissed the fuck off" seemed like their natural state of existence. "If you came here expecting only electric type moves, you're in for a real shock! Wahahaha, I crack myself up!"
"Begin!" the ref called.
"Wahahaha," Wattson let out another booming laugh. "Roll out the red carpet with Rollout, voltorb!"
His shitty jokes made me want to groan audibly, but I didn't have the time. The voltorb was fast. "Jeanne, Protect then Spore!"
The voltorb careened into my little lamb just as an emerald shield stuttered to life around her. It cracked with a single collision, but it was enough to send the voltorb's momentum elsewhere. Then, as the danger-ball began to course-correct, Jeanne positively exploded into a cloud of wool fluff.
It was barely directed, couldn't really be called an attack. I saw several fly in my direction and bounce off the psychic barriers. Within moments, my side of the field looked like a kindergarten's attempt at an indoor "snow day."
The voltorb took the brunt of the "attack." A tide of woolen balls rose up in front of it like a castle wall, slashing its momentum to a more manageable pace.
"Now, Tackle!"
"Ma-reep!" she cried as she charged forward. She wasn't very fast, a little encumbered by her own newfound terrain, but she did have the benefit of horns. Like a miniature taurus, she flung herself horns-first at the wide-eyed voltorb, launching it back to Wattson's side of the field.
"Chase it, then Cotton Spore again."
My little lamb dutifully ran over to Wattson's own field. Instead of trying to tackle the ticking time bomb, she let out a bleating cry and drowned his field in woolen balls too.
"Excellent use of terrain, challenger," Wattson complimented. His eyes sharpened and his aura flared with newfound interest. "Sonic Boom!"
The voltorb screeched, letting out a wall of sound that impacted like a physical force. It wasn't like the Sonic Boom of an exploud thankfully; it wasn't leveling buildings or anything, but it was still enough to clear the woolen balls in the area, flinging them away to form a circle around it.
It screeched again, a lower frequency this time, and a ripple of distorted air launched out like a missile and struck Jeanne. It was her turn to be flung across the field.
"Mareep!" she cried in pain.
"Now follow it with Rollout."
The voltorb was too fast. It rolled around within its cleared circle until it built enough momentum to disregard the woolen spores. It then careened towards Jeanne, launching her into the psychic barriers before she could recover.
She made a good showing, but in the end, she was too slow and too inexperienced to do much more. I had hoped that Jeanne would be able to defeat the voltorb and use Flash to blind the electrike, but that turned out to be too much to ask for.
"Return," I recalled her with a gentle smile. "You were brilliant, Jeanne."
"Challenger, please reveal your final pokémon," the ref said, as if it wasn't obvious who my anchor would be.
"Artoria, ready?"
White flames of will blazed brightly around her. 'I will avenge my comrade,' she swore in my mind, swinging her spoon forward into chūdan.
"Wahaha, that's quite the fiery ralts you've got there. Electrifying! I like it!"
"Nuki waza," I told her, our bond flickering with what I had in mind.
Wattson's brows furrowed. I didn't just teach Artoria to respond to kendo forms because I thought it was cute, though it was; it also provided a significant advantage in battle. Good trainers, especially people with decades of experience like Wattson, could discern their opponents' strategies from overhearing a handful of vocal commands.
Unless Wattson was familiar with Kantoan sword arts in this world, that advantage was gone.
"Rollout," he ordered.
I said nothing, smiling genially as his voltorb rolled towards my ralts. Against a human, that would no doubt be bone-breaking force. Artoria's smile mirrored my own.
Then, a second before impact, she moved.
She stepped forward, her foot gliding on the ground. A single step brought her adjacent to the voltorb. Her spoon collided with her opponent in a swerving arc, its head scooping up the ball pokémon like a lacrosse stick. For a fraction of a second, the voltorb ground against the spoon futilely.
Then, the Mana Edge exploded.
The blast launched the voltorb clear across the field until it was stopped painfully by the psychic barriers in front of Wattson, making the old man flinch slightly. For once, he had no jokes or puns. He wordlessly recalled the fallen voltorb.
"Sorry, Jeanne needs some work, but Artoria's my starter for a reason," I said. "If you underestimate her because she uses a spoon, you're going to be in for a bad time."
"I can see that," Wattson replied. Then, slowly, a wide grin split his face. "Wahahaha, alright, Aaron. I'll admit the little missy's got spark. Now, electrike, let's bring the thunder!"
With that, the pokémon I'd initially wanted appeared. I'd gotten pretty knowledgeable about the species over the past week. This electrike sported green fur with highlights of golden yellow around its mane. I noticed that the yellow had fully overtaken the sides, telling me that it was a mature specimen. The longer mane marked it as male.
"Electrike, Quick Attack," Wattson barked.
The lightning pokémon obeyed. To my untrained eyes, he all but disappeared in a blur of white. It was only the corona of emotions that surrounded him that allowed me to track his movements. In a second, he'd already crossed the field to clash fang to spoon against Artoria. I'd drilled into her head that head-on confrontations weren't the way to go, but he was so fast that she didn't have the chance to dodge away or throw out a Protect.
She grit her teeth and dug in her heels, bracing as much as her slim body would allow. Even with Confusion bolstering her own physical strength, she was being pushed back.
"Teleport," I said. I wanted to save it to surprise Wattson, but I wasn't given much of a choice. In a flash of blue, she was in Wattson's side of the field.
She had positioned herself to place the bulk of the woolen spores between her and her opponent. If he wanted to reach her, he'd have to weave his way between the spores and do his best to not accumulate too many, giving her precious seconds to react.
"Thunder Shock."
"Lightning rod," I countered. I sent her a telepathic image of what I expected. Artoria stuck her metal spoon in the ground and stepped away, taking a knee to minimize her already short stature. The lightning sailed above her head, drawn to the silver.
"Smart, but not good enough. Shock Wave!"
Rather poor naming aside, the attack was dangerous. Electrike's yellow highlights glowed blue as electricity coalesced in his fur. Then, he barked, sending an arc of directed lightning that ignored Artoria's makeshift lightning rod completely to strike my unprepared starter.
"Ralts!" she cried in pain.
Seeing that baiting the electrike wouldn't do any good, I made a snap decision. "Rush in," I told her. "Attack and don't let up. Burst!"
The lightly packed dirt beneath her feet cratered, sending a cloud of dust into the air as she shot out like a meteor. There was pain in her aura, but also resolve and joy. This was what she'd been waiting for, a chance to prove that her faith in the way of a knight was not misplaced.
As though her sword had a mind of its own, it dug itself out of the ground and slapped into her outstretched hands.
"Double Team!"
"We can play that game. Match her, electrike!"
It was almost a mirror copy of Artoria's battle against Lucky the elekid. She split into six and the electrike followed. The twelve pokémon met in the middle of the field, but she wasn't aiming for the electrike.
Mana Edge struck the ground with a thunderous crack. All her psychic energy and momentum were channeled into one mighty blow that covered the field in a thick dust cloud.
"Now, all out!"
Cotton Spore was my Plan A. Flash was my Plan B. This was my Plan C. Wattson was blind so long as the dust cloud persisted. So was electrike. Artoria and I had our empathy to draw on.
Inside the cloud, twelve silhouettes of our two pokémon danced.
"Get out of there!" Wattson shouted, a sense of urgency entering his voice for the first time this battle.
"Keep him there," I said. I could almost taste victory.
Artoria teleported from one edge of the cloud to the other, striking then warping away and keeping electrike from leaving her impromptu battlefield even while her clones distracted him. It was death by a thousand cuts. A full-power Mana Edge would be counterproductive, knocking him out of the cloud, so she was reducing the strength of her own attacks while avoiding his own.
"Enough. Flash!"
I cursed inwardly. It was a strategy I'd planned with Jeanne, so why wouldn't Wattson think of it?
Bright light filled the gym. I heard Artoria yelp in surprise, giving away her location. She was promptly tackled out of the cloud and back onto my side of the field.
I blinked the spots out of my eyes to see Artoria on her knees. To be fair, the electrike wasn't faring much better. Even through his green fur, I could see that he was one big mass of bruises and he stepped gingerly as if it hurt to put weight on his forelimbs.
"Splendid use of strategy," Wattson complimented me. "It was a truly charged battle, but I think it's gone on long enough."
"Artoria, can you stand?"
'Y-Yes, my lord,' she said, but her thoughts were staggered like I'd never heard her before. She began to stand on shaky legs. 'I am your knight, your sword and shield. Your dreams will be my own, your dearest wish my reason for being. This, I swore!'
It started first with her spoon. It began to shine with the telltale blue of psychic aura, only to get brighter and brighter. The aura spread, covering her entire body so thickly that her crimson horns looked violet in the light. Flickers of white sparks danced from her hands.
"End this, electrike. Howl into Spark!"
A canine howl pierced the gym, stirring my caveman fight or flight instincts and making my hair stand on end. Lightning arced around his fur. He started with a walk, wincing in pain. His eyes sharpened and the walk turned into a sprint as he stoutly ignored his own injuries.
A comet of yellow electricity streaked towards her.
She met it with a charge of her own, a wordless war cry on her lips.
"Electrike!"
"Ralts!"
Then, in the moment of impact, white overtook blue and the light of evolution shoved the electrike back. It was different from the white aura I saw that represented willpower. There was no way to explain it, but it sent what limited psychic senses I had into overdrive.
The light dimmed, revealing my new kirlia. She stood on trembling legs, panting desperately as she held her sword towards her downed opponent. She was still filthy, caked in dirt and bruised all over her white blouse. Evolution didn't magically fix every problem like it did in the anime; she was still very much on her last legs.
I had enough. I'd gotten what I wanted, a challenging foe to battle and the chance for Artoria to evolve. My hand twitched towards her ball to concede the match. If the electrike could continue after that, we'd just come back in a week and stomp it flat.
"Leader Wattson's electrike is unable to battle. Challenger Aaron and kirlia are the victors!" the ref called, drawing me from my thoughts.
She'd been so quiet that I honestly forgot we had one.
Then the gravity of that declaration weighed in on me and I laughed. I was so focused on my new kirlia that I completely missed the electrike fall over in exhaustion.
We'd done it. Jeanne, Artoria, and I had our first badge.
The psychic shield went down and I ran out to embrace my partner. Even evolved, she was still a diminutive two feet. She'd grow taller in time. I scooped her up and twirled her around.
"We did it," I said. "We won! You were amazing!"
'M-My lord! Please let me go,' my adorable knight pouted, upset that she was still so easily huggable.
I'd catch hell for it later, but I couldn't help but think that her ridiculous spoon was finally the appropriate length to qualify as a standard longsword now.
"Well done," Wattson said as he walked over, "and congratulations on her evolution."
"Thank you, Leader Wattson," I said with a respectful bow.
"Wahahaha, you're as formal as Sharon. She told us to expect you."
"Mom? You spoke with her?"
"All the gym leaders did. That girl's very proud of you, you know."
"She has a funny way of showing it," I grumbled. Then, I thought of something, a nagging suspicion. "Did… Did mom tell you to use a stronger pokémon?"
"Yes, yes she did. Electrike here is one of the ones I reserve for the second badge," the jolly old man revealed. "Typically, first badge challenges don't involve a pokémon who's quite so fast. He also knows a lot more moves than I normally use."
"Fucking hell. Why?"
"Wahahaha! Why? Because she believes in you of course." The ref reappeared carrying two boxes. Wattson opened them and handed me the golden Dynamo badge and a TM disc. "Here. The badge is what you get for winning. The TM contains Shock Wave and I hand these out to truly exceptional trainers."
"Thank you," I said, even if I felt a little bitter towards mom. Not for the first time, I wondered if I'd be better off without her particular brand of tough love.
X
Today had been a long day. The battle against Wattson hadn't lasted more than half an hour, but it left all of us feeling drained. It was only noon when I returned to the pokémon center, but I wanted nothing more than to fall back into bed.
Still, that could wait.
After entrusting my pokémon to the nurses, I grabbed a quick shower, pinned the Dynamo Badge on the inside hem of my favorite jacket, and started packing. I'd be out the door tomorrow, headed to Verdanturf to hopefully snag that gardevoirite before Wanda could get her hands on it.
Honestly, chances were slim. I was banking on Artoria being able to sense the psychic and fae energy signature given off by the mega stone, just as she'd done with the alakazite in Slateport. If she couldn't, I'd just have to accept that it wasn't there and wait for another opportunity.
I came back down to the lobby and grabbed my pokémon, thanking the on-call nurse. I released my pokémon onto the pokémon center lobby.
"Artoria, Jeanne, how do you feel?"
"Mareep!" my excitable mareep bleated cheerfully, completely unbothered by her defeat. Most other pokémon would have either been down or felt the need to jump back into training to avenge their loss, not Jeanne. Her tail and horns literally shone with good cheer as arcs of electricity danced merrily in her wool.
'I am well, my liege. Better than well,' my first pokémon said with a smile. The green bangs covering her eyes as a ralts had been shifted to one side, revealing a single, ruby eye that almost seemed too large for her face. I could see why so many people found the ralts line so cute; they had facial features similar to those of babies.
Her inner voice was different too. As a ralts, her telepathy had been astonishingly clear, light and airy like the summer breeze. As a kirlia, her thoughts felt weightier. The voice was deeper too, more mature, but there was more to it than me associating her thoughts with sounds. The truth was, telepathy wasn't as people assumed; it was more complicated than just "talking, but with thoughts."
A single thought was more than just a series of sound waves or rationalizations. Thoughts contained a whole host of associated emotions, instincts, and memories that were jumbled together into a singular package. There was no way for an undisciplined or inexperienced mind to untangle the complex web of mental associations without help. It was why people who experienced telepathy for the first time often missed subtle nuances. Just as spoken words could convey a number of connotations based on tone, telepathic thoughts could be equally complex.
As a kirlia, each of her thoughts felt more organized, more controlled, than they did as a ralts. I could feel her care, love, devotion, and passion with every word, but they were carefully curated now in a way that was no less genuine than before.
Impossible to explain, but that difference was immense.
"I can see that," I said, sending her a pulse of affection. Reaching down, I ruffled her hair and chuckled as she went cherry-red. It never ceased to amuse me that my kirlia could feel my emotions at all times and so enjoyed a type of intimacy most people would never experience, but immediately turned into a stuttering mess at the first sign of physical affection.
"Good. We'll have time to talk about the battle later. We'll go over what we did right and what we could do better. But for now, I need to give mom a call."
'Lady Sharon?'
"Mareep?"
"Kir-Kirlia," Artoria explained to Jeanne.
"Yes. It seems she told Wattson to make our battle harder than it needed to be."
"Reep? Mareep?"
'Why?'
I rolled my eyes. "Why else? Because she's a social cripple who is incapable of showing love except by pushing people harder and harder."
Artoria frowned. 'She is not that bad, my liege.'
"Really? We're talking about the same woman here, right? The one who signed me up for the Junior Astronauts Summer Camp and expected me to rank first? At the age of eight?"
'Well…'
"Or how about the time she had me memorize great granddad's journal word for word because it contained the basics of pokémon nutrition? At the age of seven?"
'She just wants you to be your best?'
"Yes, that's the problem, Artoria," I said, letting out a frustrated sigh as I led us back to our room. "I know she loves me, I can see emotions fine. I just have a problem with her complete inability to show affection."
'Be that as it may, my liege, you shouldn't speak ill of your mother.'
Reaching down, I scooped her up into my arms. "Oh, fine. You're right."
In my room, I flipped open my PokéNav and dialed home. It was picked up in two rings and Tate's cute face filled the screen.
"Aaron! Liza! Come quick, it's Aaron!" he shouted excitably.
"Aaron? Hey, bro!" Her face squished into the screen, pushing her brother away. "Congratulations!"
"You already heard about the gym battle?" I asked, surprised. The recording wouldn't go live for a few hours at least to give the League porygons a chance to scrub it for glitches or classified details, not that a battle at my level would have any.
"Kind of? Mom was teaching us divination today and we decided to check up on you."
I had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, I lived in a world of psychics. My family were some of the more powerful ones around and privacy was ultimately an illusion. As Aaron Fulan, I'd come to terms with that long ago. But on the other hand, Aaron Kanda-Locke grew up in a society where privacy was heavily prized. That part of me wanted to be upset with my siblings and mom for allowing it.
True, I had a similar connection with my kirlia, but it felt different with her. Constantly being able to feel her loyalty towards me went a long way to soothing ruffled feathers.
I swallowed. Perhaps it was a matter of distance.
"So you saw the battle?"
"Uh-huh. Your ralts evolved!"
"She did," I said agreeably and nudged Artoria in front of the camera. "Say hi, Artoria."
"Artoria? Is that her name?"
"Hello, Lord Tate, Lady Liza, I hope you are well," my little knight said, though it came out as "Kirlia-kir."
"Mareep!" Jeanne cried, feeling left out. She bumped the PokéNav out of my hand. Looking at the camera, she gave the lens a curious lick and shuddered in disgust. "Mareep…"
"Woah, what? Was that your mareep?"
"Jeanne, come back." I tucked the sheep under one arm and my pixie in the other and placed my camera on my knee. "Yeah. I actually caught her yesterday."
"Wait, you went into a gym battle with a fresh capture?" Tate asked, scandalized.
"Wow, I would never have been able to tell. She almost beat that voltorb," Liza added.
"Yeah. Jeanne's a quick study. She might be more suited for contests though. She really wants to be the 'most radiant ampharos in the world' or something."
"Ooh, a contest-trained ampharos would be really pretty," my little sis squealed. She was still in the phase where she was picking her favorite pokémon based on how cute they were. When I left, her favorite was togekiss. Who knew what it was now?
Suddenly, the image lifted itself into the air. When it settled, I saw the stern face of my mother. "Hello, son."
"Hi mom. I hear you rigged my match."
"Hardly. I felt you deserved a worthy challenge."
"Did you know I'd win?"
"Of course. You're my son."
"You know, that'd almost be touching if I didn't know for a fact you just looked ahead to see me with the Dynamo Badge."
"Uncertainty is for lesser minds," she sniffed.
"Was… Was that a joke? You can joke?"
"I'll have you know I am not devoid of humor."
I felt Artoria's elbow in my side. "Yeah, fine, fine. Should I expect all my gym battles to be equally difficult?"
"No, Quinn and I just felt that Artoria needed a little push."
"To evolve."
"Indeed. Your father sends his regards, young one," she said to Artoria. Quinn the gallade appeared by his mistress' side in a flash of blue.
"Gallade. Gal. Gall-ade."
"Kir? Lia?"
"Gallade."
"Kirlia!"
I had no idea what the two were saying to each other, but I took the flaring of purple and blue aura around my starter to mean they were enjoying themselves.
"Where's dad?"
"Dad's off on a training seminar," Tate chimed in. "He said he needs to update his zero-g certificate."
"Huh, cool. Tell him I said hey."
"Okay."
"So," I said as casually as I could. I'd thought about this. In the end, I wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do, but… "I found an alakazite."
"You what?" It was the first time I'd seen mom surprised in a while. She didn't emote well at the best of times. Her surprised face was just two rapid blinks, but I savored it. Even that loss of control spoke volumes where she was concerned.
Reaching into my bag, I held it out before the camera. "I have an alakazite."
"So I see…"
"No, 'As expected of my son,' or 'As I had foreseen?'" I teased.
"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed. "I have no expectations in your ability to track down rare items."
"Oww."
"And you know powerful relics are blindspots."
"Yeah… I'm going to have to brush up on precogs," I said honestly. "I forgot about most of it after you told me I didn't have the Sight."
"Typical. The future is ever-changing, Aaron. Looking into the future is like looking into a reflection in the mirror. In the end, we shape our reflections."
"Cool, very mystical and all, but what does that have to do with relics being blindspots? I mean, it makes some sense. If you could divine the location of mega stones, we'd be sitting on a small mountain of them."
"Quite. The mega stones and their key stone counterparts, as well as several other items, are universal constants. You will find it utterly impossible to break one. The weight of their existence interferes with our sight."
I still didn't understand but nodded along anyway. "Huh, neat. So… you can't find one? You mean…" I grinned slyly. "I have something you wouldn't be able to get?"
"Truly, Arceus favors the dim-witted."
"Oww…" Still, I grinned. That was as good as begging with her. More importantly, it meant no one, literally no one knew the locations of mega stones. This was likely true of several relics such as the Lustrous and Adamant Orbs. I decided to make sorting my memories a priority. It wasn't an art I had any natural talent in, but I'd push through with bullheaded effort.
"What do you plan on doing with it?"
I shrugged. "Who knows. How much do you think this will go for?"
She frowned. "You want to… sell… an artifact of immense power?"
"I'm joking. Want it?"
"Excuse me?"
"Do you want to alakazite."
"Yes… What will it cost me?"
"A favor," I said. "I'm going to cash in a favor sometime in the future and it'll be one that requires you to leverage your position as a gym leader."
"Done."
This time, it was my turn to be surprised. "Just like that?"
"A gym leader may reward a sponsored trainer for meritorious deeds. I will not show favoritism because you are my son, but locating a mega stone would qualify."
"Huh."
"Indeed. I recommend you think carefully about this favor. There are many who would go to great lengths to have me 'owe them one.' Do not squander it."
"I won't," I said firmly. "So… What now?"
"Now I will send Quinn to you to pick it up."
"Sure, when can I expe-"
I was cut off by the bright light of Quinn's Teleport. Artoria's father was tall for a gallade at six feet. His emerald and white armor gleamed in the light. The angular crystal on his chest pulsed with power, bathing the room with psychic energy.
"Hey, Quinn," I greeted, tossing him the alakazite. "Tell Alfonse to have some fun and pull that third spoon out of his ass."
'As crass as ever, young lord,' he spoke in my mind, his voice a rich, deep baritone.
"Right, you're why Artoria insists on calling me 'lord.'"
'There is nothing wrong with proper etiquette.'
"Right, right," I waved him off. The gallade was as big a chuuni as his daughter. Though to be fair, he was as close to a true knight as anyone could get.
'Father.'
'Daughter. You have advanced quickly.'
'I have.'
'I look forward to seeing the knight you will become.' With that rejoinder, he was gone.
"I think that means he's proud of you."
'Father acknowledged me,' Artoria said shakily.
"He's always acknowledged you."
'As a daughter. This is the first time he ever called me a knight.'
I pulled my pokémon into a hug. "Well it's about time. We're going to save Mossdeep for last. Then, for our eighth badge, we're going to shove a spoon so far up his ass he'll be tasting breakfast for dinner."
'You are far too crass,' she admonished, but I could see the corners of her mouth twitch upward.
"Mareep."
'See? Jeanne agrees with me.'
"Right, right. My own pokémon are ganging up on me."
We hung up shortly after. The three of us spent the rest of the day going over the battle and watching reruns of pokémon contests so Jeanne could get an idea of what they were like.
Author's Note
Hopefully, that gym battle was suitably epic. It's a little hard to give the battle the gravitas it's due.
Closing an arc is always a little challenging. I need to conclude at a decent point and wrap up some plot threads while leaving a few hanging for me to pick up on later. I think Verdanturf and a favor owed by Sharon Fulan are good enough for me to pick it up later.
Now, any guesses as to what this favor might be?
This concludes Arc 1 of When is a Spoon a Sword? I will be switching back to Legendary Tinker, my Worm/Runeterra cross.
As always, thank you for reading and a special thanks to those of you who bought me coffee. If you think I deserve a tip, my kofi is fabledwebs.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oof. That is gonna suck. But it's your story schedule so I will wait.
Sheba ( Queen of Sheba ) the Zorua/Zoroark would be cool, but we're in Hoenn so yeah x)
Unseelie
(Verified True Fae)
- Location
- Tír fo Thuinn
Huh, another excellent pokéfic. Those seem to pop up more often recently, have to agree with an earlier commenter there.
Looking forward to more!
Looking forward to more!
Given that the character is 38 at that point, does that mean the real-world part was a few years in the future?
What does that reference?
Didn't the hisuian forms die out or something?
Renko
Look closer ~☆
- Location
- The Endless Void
I'm a bit weird out by the MC using the term mana when there is like no magic in Pokémon.
Shouldn't it be renamed Psychic Burst instead?
Would have been better if she lost the fight here. Not a fan of MCs winning all the time. It gets boring in the long run.
*rolls eyes*
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Firstly pokemon has magic, i haven't read the manga, but the games and anima has magic in them.
True, but that way the oponent don't have idea what to expect, as mana doesn't mean any type they can counter, so if artoria learn how to use other typing in the mana series then she can be a very tricky opponent to counter, no even considering her potential power with reinforcement.
So the doduo didnt count? Because all her victories were believable as those were in her range of power, and he as a trainer is better than the common trainer, be it because of outside reincarnation knowledge or because his parent is a gym leader, so the weird thing would have been a lose against a machop.
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2.1 Salad
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Preface
Yeah, Spoon is back, and with it comes news: This is the last story I will update in one massive arc. I'm switching to a weekly update schedule in which I'll update at least one of my stories each week. I initially copied my update schedule from the author of Most Dangerous Gamer (amazing story by the way), but found out over the year that the schedule only worked for him because he had one story. I have five and spending months on a single arc forces me to neglect all the others. I know most of you thought this and Plan? What Plan? were dead fics.
So, never again.
On another note, I've decided to transition to Patreon instead of Kofi for a lot of reasons. Stories I write will still be free. Page isn't live. In fact, it won't be live until January. I'm telling you all about it now because I would like for you all to give me some feedback in terms of what rewards you'd like to see.
One final thing: I haven't been sitting with my thumbs up my ass. I run two quests on Akun and I've been told they're both pretty good. One is a Worm/Pokémon cross. The other is a Campione/Multi cross. Both are safe for work. That said, the site most definitely is NSFW so if you want to read some of my other works and don't mind having to tap dance around the degeneracy, check it out. I won't give you links to respect Space Battles' and Sufficient Velocity's degree of separation rule.
Salad 2.1
Aaron Fulan
Route 117, Hoenn Region
I stood at the edge of Mauville and Route 117, my two pokémon by my side. Mauville had been good to us, but it was time to move on. I smiled knowingly. Most trainers following the gym circuit ignored Verdanturf as a town with nothing worthy of note, but I knew better. By going there, I could lay claim to a gardevoirite, the single most precious thing Artoria could ever possess, the key to letting her achieve her dreams.
But first, the route.
It was something I'd noticed about Hoenn and, I suspected, the entire pokémon world. Every single route was distinct form the city. There was a stark divide between the municipality of Mauville and Route 117, as if someone took a permanent marker, drew a circle around the city, and said, "Urban influence ends here."
That wasn't to say the route was just woodland of course. In fact, it was mostly low meadows filled with some of the best weather and soil available in the region. Ranches, farms, orchards, and more dotted the route and a clear path of hardpacked dirt made getting lost all but impossible. It just lacked the trappings of any road coming out of a city that I'd come to expect on Earth. No separate road for cars, no street signs, no lights, no asphalt, and certainly no gas station attached to a greasy bed and breakfast. Just a blend of nature and human cohabitation that took my breath away.
It was beautiful. Hoenn was a largely tropical region so the planting and growing season for berries was abnormally long. Even though this was mid-February, I could smell the aromas of flowers on the breeze, the distinct Sweet Scent of roselia helping out with the orchards, and the pungent sting of recently upturned soil.
"Ready to go?"
Beside me, Jeanne was as peppy as ever, her emotions forming a kaleidoscope vibrant colors. Joy. Peace. Excitement. I could imagine her being a shonen protagonist in another life, always upbeat, always optimistic, always ready to laugh along. I'd never met anyone half as naturally happy before and it was refreshing.
"Ma-mareeeeep!" she bleated, eager to see the world. I'd promised her that she could participate in the Verdanturf contest coming up in ten days, plenty of time to get there and work on a routine. It was something for her to look forward to while Artoria and I searched for the gardevoirite.
'Always, my lord,' Artoria's voice rang clearly in my mind. With it came a wave of emotions and associations. Schemas, I thought they were called in psychology. Love. Loyalty. Resolve. There was no need to try to interpret her emotions by looking at the corona surrounding her because her emotions were as much my own.
My partner sat atop the mareep, her trademark silver spoon slung over her back like a great claymore. I looked at my two pokémon and just had to snap off a picture with my PokéNav. I made a new chatroom and posted the picture so the twins and Lisia could see it.
[Welcome to the PokéNet BBS. The chatroom "Family and Friends" has been created by Sir_Aaron.]
[Mossdeep_Moon has been invited.]
[Mossdeep_Sun has been invited.]
[XO-CloudDancer-OX has been invited.]
Sir_Aaron: Dame Artoria and her noble steed Jeanne off on their new [adventure].
She looked at me curiously. 'What is it?'
'I thought you hated being held.' I thought at her. Ever since her evolution, our bond had deepened. No longer did I have to voice my thoughts aloud for her to hear me. It was an exhilarating experience, an intimacy I'd come to see as an extension of myself. It was remarkable how naturally the habit of maintaining a private channel came to me.
'I am astride my noble steed,' she sniffed. 'B-Besides, I do not dislike being held in your arms, merely, it is improper for a knight to be coddled by her lord.'
'Of course, of course. What was I thinking?'
'That I look noble and splendid and how lucky you are to have a magnificent knight such as myself in your service.'
I suppressed a laugh, just in time to feel my PokéNav vibrate. I saw the twins' response.
Mossdeep_Sun: That's pretty cute, not gonna lie. Liza's squealing and it's hurting my ears.
Mossdeep_Moon: ASDFGHJKEWREWGTHYU Send. More. Pictures. Now.
XO-CloudDancer-OX: Woah, are these your siblings? Hi, everyone, I'm a friend your big bro met. And wow your kirlia is adorable. Why sun and moon? Which one's which?
Mossdeep_Moon: I'm Liza, the older, cool one.
Mossdeep_Sun: Psh, she wishes. I'm Tate, the actual cool one.
Sir_Aaron: They're both brats but I love them anyway. Btw, keep an eye on Lisia, you two. I promised her she can have one of you if she wins the grand festival.
Mossdeep_Moon: What? You're just giving us away? What kind of big brother are you?
Mossdeep_Sun: Yeah! That's cruel, big bro!
Sir_Aaron: Ah, but then you wouldn't bicker so much.
Mossdeep_Moon: Ooh, now that you mention it… Sorry, Tate, guess you're leaving.
Mossdeep_Sun: Me? Why me? Maybe Lisia wants a little sister instead, huh?
I chuckled as they devolved into inane bickering and sent Artoria their reactions through our bond. I wasn't nearly as good at this as she was so the psychic image was a bit hazy, but for a moment, Artoria saw what I saw. Her face went cherry-red.
'M-My lord! We are not adorable! Jeanne and I are gallant!'
'You can't be both?'
'Knights are not adorable,' she sulked. She reached forward and tugged on Jeanne's wool, letting out a command. "Kir, kirlia!"
My mareep just let out another happy bleat and started to trot forward, off to conquer Route 117.
We set off, with the three of us doing as much training as we could. There were no pokémon I wanted that I was likely to find here, so I didn't feel the need to stop for much. The next week or so on the road would be a week of conditioning.
Artoria's evolution into a kirlia was welcome, not least for the extra opportunities to tease her, but it meant she'd need to get used to her newfound growth. After indulging in my little knight's dreams of a mounted joust for about fifteen minutes, I had her step off her mount and follow along on foot.
"Artoria, I want you to execute every shikake waza as we go in sequence. Step into each strike as you perform renzoku-waza: kote, do, men, then end with tsuki. The goal is to get you used to your new body and make your transitions seamless."
'Yes, my lord!'
"Jeanne, you're going to charge as much electricity as you can and store it in your horns while we move. The goal is to keep the charge as long as you can, as bright as you can. Don't expend, just hold."
"Mareep?"
I looked at Artoria and waited for her to translate. 'She asked why she would not practice any moves.'
I nodded in thanks. I'd done a bit of reading on mareep. The Summers library didn't have any information on the species, but there was plenty of information available online for the general public, them being very common pokémon in Johto. "That's because the most important thing for a young electric type is to learn to store a charge. This is especially true of mareep. Most of your electricity is generated through your wool, so it's not something you store inside your body. That's why a mareep's electric attacks tend to be a little slower in charge time than say, a pikachu's. But it's not like a mareep can't store electricity internally; it's just not something you do naturally until you evolve and lose a lot of wool. I want you to get a head start on that. Make sense?"
"Ma… ree…?" She cocked her head to the side as if in deep thought.
It was… perhaps not my best idea trying to explain biology to a mareep. Jeanne wasn't dumb, but she definitely was more about the show than the study.
"It'll make you a stronger ampharos," I said simply.
"Reep!"
'That was not a difficult explanation. Is Jeanne slow?'
"Hush, Artoria. Everyone learns at a different pace. She's a much more tactile learner."
'As you say, my lord.'
"Now both of you, start!" I shouted as I began to jog along the dirt path.
Training went both ways as far as I was concerned. I was a modern-day swordmaster, a man who worked with his body all his life. This, the body of Aaron Fulan, fell short of my expectations on every level and I refused to tolerate it a second longer than I had to.
Thus, conditioning. More than anything else, stamina was what made an athlete so I started off on a slow, methodical jog. It was slow enough that even my two pokémon, barely two feet tall, could match my strides. No matter. I'd be feeling it soon enough. Hefting my bag, I mentally readied myself for a slog.
The three of us breathed heavily as we sat by the side of the road on one of several rest stops we'd passed today. It boasted a wooden table and chairs as well as a small signpost, roofed as to protect the paper contents from light rain. Next to it was an oran berry bush that hadn't matured quite yet as well as a basket of water bottles and individually wrapped mini-muffins. A dirt path led away from the rest stop, presumably to the ones who set up this stop.
"Refreshments free. Please take one. Courtesy of the Loverose Orchard," the signboard said. It also contained a list of jobs that a passing trainer might be interested in taking in exchange for some spare change or a roof to sleep under.
It wasn't a bad way to attract trainers, I figured, especially not for a small orchard like this one. Perhaps it wasn't reliable, but to handle some non-urgent work like painting a shed? Not bad at all. Many traveling trainers were effectively gig workers; they couldn't all be lucky enough to have a sponsor like me.
I looked over the job postings: Guard work to chase away a persistent gang of nincada from eating the tree sap, chopping wood, spreading more fertilizer… basic stuff.
'Will we be taking a job, my lord?' Artoria asked. She was breathing heaviest of all of us, the adorable training-nut.
'No, no we won't be. We have plenty of funds at the moment.'
It was true. Despite what mom said about not showing favoritism, I found another three grand in my bankbook the next morning. She clearly thought that whatever favor I'd ask for in exchange for the alakazite wouldn't be enough on its own and decided to tide me over until then by padding my wallet.
Of course, I knew she'd deny it to her dying breath if confronted. I'd just miscounted, that's all.
The three of us lazed around and recovered our stamina while snacking on the muffins left out for passerby. The sun warmed the picnic table and I found my eyes drooping just a bit. A few minutes of shut-eye before returning to the road couldn't hurt…
"Hey, you!" I heard a voice call. "Did you eat all the food here?"
I turned to look her way. Our guest was a girl about my age, perhaps a bit older. She was taller than me, with black hair and gray eyes. She wore a set of overalls and a red bandana to keep her bangs from her eyes. Her overalls were clearly well-used, with dirt and grass stains all along her lower legs.
I looked towards the basket she was pointing at. It was now empty of those delectable mini-muffins. I glanced down at the most likely culprits. Artoria and Jeanne looked back at me with guilty smiles, their lips smudged with crumbs.
"Ah… sorry, guess my pokémon were a bit hungrier from training than I thought."
'Hunger is the enemy,' Artoria responded, nodding as if she'd spoken the truth of the universe. Sometimes, I regretted enthralling her with tales of her British counterpart… and was grateful that no one else could understand my utterly unrepentant kirlia beyond the usual vocalizations.
"Reep," came Jeanne's concurrent reply.
"Man, I was hoping I could grab a bite before going back to work. The Loveroses always have good stuff."
I dug around in my backpack and pulled out some trail mix. "It's not muffins, but they're pretty good."
"Sure, thanks. Lydia, by the way. Breeder-in-training."
"Aaron," I said, shaking her hand as she took a seat by me. "Traveling trainer."
"Yeah, I can tell. A kirlia and mareep aren't exactly from these parts. Got any badges?"
"Just Dynamo."
"Huh. And you're not headed north to Lavaridge?"
"I've got business in Verdanturf. Jeanne, my mareep, wants to try out the contest scene, see?"
"Ooh, so you want to be the next Wallace? You know most people only succeed with one or the other, right? If they succeed at all?"
I shrugged. "If that's what my pokémon want. As far as I'm concerned, I'll consider my journey a success if my pokémon achieve all that they set out to do. In the end, the badges and ribbons are secondary to that."
"That's a good way to look at things."
"Thanks. How about you? Why a breeder?"
"Family ranch," she said with a wry smile. "It's not much, but it's home. I guess I just never had the wanderlust other people have. When mom asked me if I wanted to go on a journey, I turned her down."
"That's alright. As romanticized as a journey is, it's not the be all end all. Sounds like you're getting plenty of experience with pokémon anyway right where you are."
"Heh, anyone ever tell you that you talk like an old man? Who says 'romanticized' in normal conversation?"
"A man of higher culture and class," I sniffed. "You might even say a higher breeding."
"Ha, oh really? Breeding jokes for the breeder? Funny."
The two of us sat around comfortably. We chatted about our lives. I told her about my pokémon's strange dreams and antics and Lydia told me about the chores of a life on the farm. It sounded idyllic, like a countryside paradise I read about in my old life. Tolkien's hobbits, but with more emphasis on magic creatures.
"So… How does it all work?" I asked.
She stared at me incredulously then adopted a sly smirk. "What? Well, when a mother and father get really horny…"
"I think I'm good on the sex, thanks," I said, voice dry as a sandshrew's asscrack. "I meant the business. What pokémon do you breed? And why? Like, who buys them all?"
"You're no fun. Well… Our ranch is one of the smaller ones, but we're subsidized by the League. So I guess we breed whatever the League tells us to. Like, right now, we have a bunch of shroomish and goldeen. None of them are fighters if that's what you're wondering. Shroomish can be really good for the environment and are naturally excellent at assisting in decomposition, making soils more fertile and all that. Goldeen are scavengers too so they do basically the same thing but in water."
"So the League commissions your work, buys the batch each generation, and… releases them into the wild?"
"Or farms, fisheries, and the like. We occasionally even breed zigzagoon and such just so trainer schools all over the region have a class set for teaching purposes."
"That's kind of cool. So I guess the zigzagoon I saw in Mossdeep could have come from your ranch."
"Yup," she stood, dusting herself off. "Thanks for the snack. I'm going to go head back before mom chews my ear off again for slacking. Later!"
"Yeah, nice meeting you, Lydia," I called back. I looked down at my pokémon. "Shall we go? I think we've rested enough."
We stopped twice more by the time lunch came around. All of us were breathing heavily, though I heard not a word of complaint from even Jeanne. Artoria had gotten accustomed to her longer legs and her strikes looked crisper than ever. She'd even taken to channeling Mana Edge along her spoon, leaving trails of blue-violet light along the arcs of her swings.
This stop was more substantial than the Loveroses' with several fire pits and grills for trainers to prep their own food. It was also occupied by half a dozen people milling around. I saw several pokémon sent out to play and mingle, most intimidating of all being a fearow with a wicked-sharp beak.
I didn't like the way that bird was looking at Jeanne, so I kept her close.
Lunch was pokéchow for them and a sandwich for me. Anything more complicated could wait 'til I'd settled in for the evening. I held up the electric and psychic type-specific pokéchow and wondered what the difference was. Judging by the ingredient list, the nutritional value seemed similar, though a handful of spices and dried berries used were different.
'The difference is mostly in flavoring, my lord,' Artoria explained as she took the brown kibble-like pebble in her mouth. 'Jeanne's food tastes like cardboard to me.'
'Huh. Guess it helps to have a telepath I can just ask. How so?'
'Her food is a little bit sour, as if acidic It also has a pulpy consistency that I find unpleasant.'
'I thought you liked sweet-sour things.'
'That is that and this is this.'
I ruffled her green hair to her annoyance. "Fine, fine. Does Jeanne like your food?"
"Mareep," the sheep in question bleated with a methodical shake of her head.
'No, she says it leaves a chalky aftertaste in her mouth. I have no idea what she is referring to.'
"Weird."
Lunch passed leisurely to allow us to recover from our morning workout. I took the chance to speak with a few other trainers, one a triathlete like Wanda and another a local day care worker who dropped by looking for commissions. Seeing how a lot of it was done online these days and most trainers passing through wouldn't be very strong, I didn't think he was looking very hard, probably just using it as an excuse to chill out.
After a while, we began our trip anew. This time, we took it slow. It was an elevation of the training Wanda showed me concerning doduo. Artoria had quickly learned to respond to my emotions and so I decided that the best way to progress would be to share senses with one another.
I gamely ignored all the laughing and whispering and pulled the paper bag down over my head. "Ready, Artoria?"
'They are mocking you, my lord.' I could practically hear her teeth clench, my proud, proud kirlia. At least she wasn't challenging them all to honor duels anymore…
'They are, and I don't care. Now are you ready?'
'Surely there is a better way to train?'
'Not while on the move there isn't.'
'Very well, my lord. I am ready.'
Then I felt my mind lurch for lack of a better word. There was a pull on her end and a push on mine and I was suddenly two feet tall and brandishing a spoon like a longsword.
Looking at the world from her point of view was… surprisingly normal. I wasn't sure what I was expecting now that we were doing it voluntarily and outside of battle, but I just felt like an extremely short person.
'I'm not short,' I heard her grumble in my mind. 'Humans are just unnecessarily tall.'
'Whatever you say, my adorkable knight.'
Even this telepathy felt different, as though we'd finally entered the same room to speak rather than shout at each other from across the hall. Normally, there was her usual vocalization of "Kirlia-kir" or somesuch, but this kind of mental transmission came with no physical accompaniments. There was something intimate about the clarity of this connection that I found difficult to describe.
'Adorkable is not a word.'
'Words exist to convey meanings. You know precisely what I mean, especially with telepathy. Ergo it is now a word,' I teased. I couldn't see her blushing up a storm with the paper bag over my head, but I could feel the fire in her cheeks.
'Unfair…'
I decided I'd had enough of teasing Artoria and began walking. This was the whole point of our exercise. I would spend some of our trip in her head before trading off so she could spend some time in mine. By sharing headspace and senses, I hoped to accustom us both to this intimacy so we could coordinate better in battle.
Shouting Kantoan kendo techniques was good, great even, but when the two of us had the option to communicate at the speed of thought? No contest.
If we could swap to using each other's senses like this, it would also mean that Artoria couldn't be blinded or deafened because she could just hop into my head for a bit. We'd done it before in Slateport against that poochyena, but I wanted this transition to be seamless, for her to be as good at manipulating her body even while using my senses to perceive the world.
There was one last reason for this: Psychic power stacked. Stacked like Legos. I knew this for a proven fact. I saw it with Liza and Tate, and even the two doduo heads, for what little psychic power they held. I wanted Artoria and I to artificially create the bond my twin siblings had with each other. If I succeeded, I would be able to draw on her power to supplement my own lacking reserves and she could draw on my experience with the sword.
Two bodies, but a single, unified mind.
It was theoretical. I couldn't find a single book in the Summers family library that talked about artificially creating a twin bond, but if it worked…
Yes, for that, I'd happily put up with being the route's laughingstock.
The moment I finished that thought, I misjudged the location of a pebble from my body's foot while looking through Artoria's eyes and landed on my face.
Author's Note
Renzoku-waza just means "in sequence" or "continuous strikes." In this case, it's like a boxer who shadow-boxes while on a jog.
Breeder Lydia is one of the characters you can find on the route. Thought it'd be fitting to have her cameo here since I used to beat her up every ten minutes in Pokémon Emerald for exp.
Decided to italicize mental speech from now on to distinguish between that and spoken words. Poor formatting on my part.
Yeah, Spoon is back, and with it comes news: This is the last story I will update in one massive arc. I'm switching to a weekly update schedule in which I'll update at least one of my stories each week. I initially copied my update schedule from the author of Most Dangerous Gamer (amazing story by the way), but found out over the year that the schedule only worked for him because he had one story. I have five and spending months on a single arc forces me to neglect all the others. I know most of you thought this and Plan? What Plan? were dead fics.
So, never again.
On another note, I've decided to transition to Patreon instead of Kofi for a lot of reasons. Stories I write will still be free. Page isn't live. In fact, it won't be live until January. I'm telling you all about it now because I would like for you all to give me some feedback in terms of what rewards you'd like to see.
One final thing: I haven't been sitting with my thumbs up my ass. I run two quests on Akun and I've been told they're both pretty good. One is a Worm/Pokémon cross. The other is a Campione/Multi cross. Both are safe for work. That said, the site most definitely is NSFW so if you want to read some of my other works and don't mind having to tap dance around the degeneracy, check it out. I won't give you links to respect Space Battles' and Sufficient Velocity's degree of separation rule.
Salad 2.1
Aaron Fulan
Route 117, Hoenn Region
I stood at the edge of Mauville and Route 117, my two pokémon by my side. Mauville had been good to us, but it was time to move on. I smiled knowingly. Most trainers following the gym circuit ignored Verdanturf as a town with nothing worthy of note, but I knew better. By going there, I could lay claim to a gardevoirite, the single most precious thing Artoria could ever possess, the key to letting her achieve her dreams.
But first, the route.
It was something I'd noticed about Hoenn and, I suspected, the entire pokémon world. Every single route was distinct form the city. There was a stark divide between the municipality of Mauville and Route 117, as if someone took a permanent marker, drew a circle around the city, and said, "Urban influence ends here."
That wasn't to say the route was just woodland of course. In fact, it was mostly low meadows filled with some of the best weather and soil available in the region. Ranches, farms, orchards, and more dotted the route and a clear path of hardpacked dirt made getting lost all but impossible. It just lacked the trappings of any road coming out of a city that I'd come to expect on Earth. No separate road for cars, no street signs, no lights, no asphalt, and certainly no gas station attached to a greasy bed and breakfast. Just a blend of nature and human cohabitation that took my breath away.
It was beautiful. Hoenn was a largely tropical region so the planting and growing season for berries was abnormally long. Even though this was mid-February, I could smell the aromas of flowers on the breeze, the distinct Sweet Scent of roselia helping out with the orchards, and the pungent sting of recently upturned soil.
"Ready to go?"
Beside me, Jeanne was as peppy as ever, her emotions forming a kaleidoscope vibrant colors. Joy. Peace. Excitement. I could imagine her being a shonen protagonist in another life, always upbeat, always optimistic, always ready to laugh along. I'd never met anyone half as naturally happy before and it was refreshing.
"Ma-mareeeeep!" she bleated, eager to see the world. I'd promised her that she could participate in the Verdanturf contest coming up in ten days, plenty of time to get there and work on a routine. It was something for her to look forward to while Artoria and I searched for the gardevoirite.
'Always, my lord,' Artoria's voice rang clearly in my mind. With it came a wave of emotions and associations. Schemas, I thought they were called in psychology. Love. Loyalty. Resolve. There was no need to try to interpret her emotions by looking at the corona surrounding her because her emotions were as much my own.
My partner sat atop the mareep, her trademark silver spoon slung over her back like a great claymore. I looked at my two pokémon and just had to snap off a picture with my PokéNav. I made a new chatroom and posted the picture so the twins and Lisia could see it.
[Welcome to the PokéNet BBS. The chatroom "Family and Friends" has been created by Sir_Aaron.]
[Mossdeep_Moon has been invited.]
[Mossdeep_Sun has been invited.]
[XO-CloudDancer-OX has been invited.]
Sir_Aaron: Dame Artoria and her noble steed Jeanne off on their new [adventure].
She looked at me curiously. 'What is it?'
'I thought you hated being held.' I thought at her. Ever since her evolution, our bond had deepened. No longer did I have to voice my thoughts aloud for her to hear me. It was an exhilarating experience, an intimacy I'd come to see as an extension of myself. It was remarkable how naturally the habit of maintaining a private channel came to me.
'I am astride my noble steed,' she sniffed. 'B-Besides, I do not dislike being held in your arms, merely, it is improper for a knight to be coddled by her lord.'
'Of course, of course. What was I thinking?'
'That I look noble and splendid and how lucky you are to have a magnificent knight such as myself in your service.'
I suppressed a laugh, just in time to feel my PokéNav vibrate. I saw the twins' response.
Mossdeep_Sun: That's pretty cute, not gonna lie. Liza's squealing and it's hurting my ears.
Mossdeep_Moon: ASDFGHJKEWREWGTHYU Send. More. Pictures. Now.
XO-CloudDancer-OX: Woah, are these your siblings? Hi, everyone, I'm a friend your big bro met. And wow your kirlia is adorable. Why sun and moon? Which one's which?
Mossdeep_Moon: I'm Liza, the older, cool one.
Mossdeep_Sun: Psh, she wishes. I'm Tate, the actual cool one.
Sir_Aaron: They're both brats but I love them anyway. Btw, keep an eye on Lisia, you two. I promised her she can have one of you if she wins the grand festival.
Mossdeep_Moon: What? You're just giving us away? What kind of big brother are you?
Mossdeep_Sun: Yeah! That's cruel, big bro!
Sir_Aaron: Ah, but then you wouldn't bicker so much.
Mossdeep_Moon: Ooh, now that you mention it… Sorry, Tate, guess you're leaving.
Mossdeep_Sun: Me? Why me? Maybe Lisia wants a little sister instead, huh?
I chuckled as they devolved into inane bickering and sent Artoria their reactions through our bond. I wasn't nearly as good at this as she was so the psychic image was a bit hazy, but for a moment, Artoria saw what I saw. Her face went cherry-red.
'M-My lord! We are not adorable! Jeanne and I are gallant!'
'You can't be both?'
'Knights are not adorable,' she sulked. She reached forward and tugged on Jeanne's wool, letting out a command. "Kir, kirlia!"
My mareep just let out another happy bleat and started to trot forward, off to conquer Route 117.
We set off, with the three of us doing as much training as we could. There were no pokémon I wanted that I was likely to find here, so I didn't feel the need to stop for much. The next week or so on the road would be a week of conditioning.
Artoria's evolution into a kirlia was welcome, not least for the extra opportunities to tease her, but it meant she'd need to get used to her newfound growth. After indulging in my little knight's dreams of a mounted joust for about fifteen minutes, I had her step off her mount and follow along on foot.
"Artoria, I want you to execute every shikake waza as we go in sequence. Step into each strike as you perform renzoku-waza: kote, do, men, then end with tsuki. The goal is to get you used to your new body and make your transitions seamless."
'Yes, my lord!'
"Jeanne, you're going to charge as much electricity as you can and store it in your horns while we move. The goal is to keep the charge as long as you can, as bright as you can. Don't expend, just hold."
"Mareep?"
I looked at Artoria and waited for her to translate. 'She asked why she would not practice any moves.'
I nodded in thanks. I'd done a bit of reading on mareep. The Summers library didn't have any information on the species, but there was plenty of information available online for the general public, them being very common pokémon in Johto. "That's because the most important thing for a young electric type is to learn to store a charge. This is especially true of mareep. Most of your electricity is generated through your wool, so it's not something you store inside your body. That's why a mareep's electric attacks tend to be a little slower in charge time than say, a pikachu's. But it's not like a mareep can't store electricity internally; it's just not something you do naturally until you evolve and lose a lot of wool. I want you to get a head start on that. Make sense?"
"Ma… ree…?" She cocked her head to the side as if in deep thought.
It was… perhaps not my best idea trying to explain biology to a mareep. Jeanne wasn't dumb, but she definitely was more about the show than the study.
"It'll make you a stronger ampharos," I said simply.
"Reep!"
'That was not a difficult explanation. Is Jeanne slow?'
"Hush, Artoria. Everyone learns at a different pace. She's a much more tactile learner."
'As you say, my lord.'
"Now both of you, start!" I shouted as I began to jog along the dirt path.
Training went both ways as far as I was concerned. I was a modern-day swordmaster, a man who worked with his body all his life. This, the body of Aaron Fulan, fell short of my expectations on every level and I refused to tolerate it a second longer than I had to.
Thus, conditioning. More than anything else, stamina was what made an athlete so I started off on a slow, methodical jog. It was slow enough that even my two pokémon, barely two feet tall, could match my strides. No matter. I'd be feeling it soon enough. Hefting my bag, I mentally readied myself for a slog.
X
The three of us breathed heavily as we sat by the side of the road on one of several rest stops we'd passed today. It boasted a wooden table and chairs as well as a small signpost, roofed as to protect the paper contents from light rain. Next to it was an oran berry bush that hadn't matured quite yet as well as a basket of water bottles and individually wrapped mini-muffins. A dirt path led away from the rest stop, presumably to the ones who set up this stop.
"Refreshments free. Please take one. Courtesy of the Loverose Orchard," the signboard said. It also contained a list of jobs that a passing trainer might be interested in taking in exchange for some spare change or a roof to sleep under.
It wasn't a bad way to attract trainers, I figured, especially not for a small orchard like this one. Perhaps it wasn't reliable, but to handle some non-urgent work like painting a shed? Not bad at all. Many traveling trainers were effectively gig workers; they couldn't all be lucky enough to have a sponsor like me.
I looked over the job postings: Guard work to chase away a persistent gang of nincada from eating the tree sap, chopping wood, spreading more fertilizer… basic stuff.
'Will we be taking a job, my lord?' Artoria asked. She was breathing heaviest of all of us, the adorable training-nut.
'No, no we won't be. We have plenty of funds at the moment.'
It was true. Despite what mom said about not showing favoritism, I found another three grand in my bankbook the next morning. She clearly thought that whatever favor I'd ask for in exchange for the alakazite wouldn't be enough on its own and decided to tide me over until then by padding my wallet.
Of course, I knew she'd deny it to her dying breath if confronted. I'd just miscounted, that's all.
The three of us lazed around and recovered our stamina while snacking on the muffins left out for passerby. The sun warmed the picnic table and I found my eyes drooping just a bit. A few minutes of shut-eye before returning to the road couldn't hurt…
"Hey, you!" I heard a voice call. "Did you eat all the food here?"
I turned to look her way. Our guest was a girl about my age, perhaps a bit older. She was taller than me, with black hair and gray eyes. She wore a set of overalls and a red bandana to keep her bangs from her eyes. Her overalls were clearly well-used, with dirt and grass stains all along her lower legs.
I looked towards the basket she was pointing at. It was now empty of those delectable mini-muffins. I glanced down at the most likely culprits. Artoria and Jeanne looked back at me with guilty smiles, their lips smudged with crumbs.
"Ah… sorry, guess my pokémon were a bit hungrier from training than I thought."
'Hunger is the enemy,' Artoria responded, nodding as if she'd spoken the truth of the universe. Sometimes, I regretted enthralling her with tales of her British counterpart… and was grateful that no one else could understand my utterly unrepentant kirlia beyond the usual vocalizations.
"Reep," came Jeanne's concurrent reply.
"Man, I was hoping I could grab a bite before going back to work. The Loveroses always have good stuff."
I dug around in my backpack and pulled out some trail mix. "It's not muffins, but they're pretty good."
"Sure, thanks. Lydia, by the way. Breeder-in-training."
"Aaron," I said, shaking her hand as she took a seat by me. "Traveling trainer."
"Yeah, I can tell. A kirlia and mareep aren't exactly from these parts. Got any badges?"
"Just Dynamo."
"Huh. And you're not headed north to Lavaridge?"
"I've got business in Verdanturf. Jeanne, my mareep, wants to try out the contest scene, see?"
"Ooh, so you want to be the next Wallace? You know most people only succeed with one or the other, right? If they succeed at all?"
I shrugged. "If that's what my pokémon want. As far as I'm concerned, I'll consider my journey a success if my pokémon achieve all that they set out to do. In the end, the badges and ribbons are secondary to that."
"That's a good way to look at things."
"Thanks. How about you? Why a breeder?"
"Family ranch," she said with a wry smile. "It's not much, but it's home. I guess I just never had the wanderlust other people have. When mom asked me if I wanted to go on a journey, I turned her down."
"That's alright. As romanticized as a journey is, it's not the be all end all. Sounds like you're getting plenty of experience with pokémon anyway right where you are."
"Heh, anyone ever tell you that you talk like an old man? Who says 'romanticized' in normal conversation?"
"A man of higher culture and class," I sniffed. "You might even say a higher breeding."
"Ha, oh really? Breeding jokes for the breeder? Funny."
The two of us sat around comfortably. We chatted about our lives. I told her about my pokémon's strange dreams and antics and Lydia told me about the chores of a life on the farm. It sounded idyllic, like a countryside paradise I read about in my old life. Tolkien's hobbits, but with more emphasis on magic creatures.
"So… How does it all work?" I asked.
She stared at me incredulously then adopted a sly smirk. "What? Well, when a mother and father get really horny…"
"I think I'm good on the sex, thanks," I said, voice dry as a sandshrew's asscrack. "I meant the business. What pokémon do you breed? And why? Like, who buys them all?"
"You're no fun. Well… Our ranch is one of the smaller ones, but we're subsidized by the League. So I guess we breed whatever the League tells us to. Like, right now, we have a bunch of shroomish and goldeen. None of them are fighters if that's what you're wondering. Shroomish can be really good for the environment and are naturally excellent at assisting in decomposition, making soils more fertile and all that. Goldeen are scavengers too so they do basically the same thing but in water."
"So the League commissions your work, buys the batch each generation, and… releases them into the wild?"
"Or farms, fisheries, and the like. We occasionally even breed zigzagoon and such just so trainer schools all over the region have a class set for teaching purposes."
"That's kind of cool. So I guess the zigzagoon I saw in Mossdeep could have come from your ranch."
"Yup," she stood, dusting herself off. "Thanks for the snack. I'm going to go head back before mom chews my ear off again for slacking. Later!"
"Yeah, nice meeting you, Lydia," I called back. I looked down at my pokémon. "Shall we go? I think we've rested enough."
X
We stopped twice more by the time lunch came around. All of us were breathing heavily, though I heard not a word of complaint from even Jeanne. Artoria had gotten accustomed to her longer legs and her strikes looked crisper than ever. She'd even taken to channeling Mana Edge along her spoon, leaving trails of blue-violet light along the arcs of her swings.
This stop was more substantial than the Loveroses' with several fire pits and grills for trainers to prep their own food. It was also occupied by half a dozen people milling around. I saw several pokémon sent out to play and mingle, most intimidating of all being a fearow with a wicked-sharp beak.
I didn't like the way that bird was looking at Jeanne, so I kept her close.
Lunch was pokéchow for them and a sandwich for me. Anything more complicated could wait 'til I'd settled in for the evening. I held up the electric and psychic type-specific pokéchow and wondered what the difference was. Judging by the ingredient list, the nutritional value seemed similar, though a handful of spices and dried berries used were different.
'The difference is mostly in flavoring, my lord,' Artoria explained as she took the brown kibble-like pebble in her mouth. 'Jeanne's food tastes like cardboard to me.'
'Huh. Guess it helps to have a telepath I can just ask. How so?'
'Her food is a little bit sour, as if acidic It also has a pulpy consistency that I find unpleasant.'
'I thought you liked sweet-sour things.'
'That is that and this is this.'
I ruffled her green hair to her annoyance. "Fine, fine. Does Jeanne like your food?"
"Mareep," the sheep in question bleated with a methodical shake of her head.
'No, she says it leaves a chalky aftertaste in her mouth. I have no idea what she is referring to.'
"Weird."
Lunch passed leisurely to allow us to recover from our morning workout. I took the chance to speak with a few other trainers, one a triathlete like Wanda and another a local day care worker who dropped by looking for commissions. Seeing how a lot of it was done online these days and most trainers passing through wouldn't be very strong, I didn't think he was looking very hard, probably just using it as an excuse to chill out.
After a while, we began our trip anew. This time, we took it slow. It was an elevation of the training Wanda showed me concerning doduo. Artoria had quickly learned to respond to my emotions and so I decided that the best way to progress would be to share senses with one another.
I gamely ignored all the laughing and whispering and pulled the paper bag down over my head. "Ready, Artoria?"
'They are mocking you, my lord.' I could practically hear her teeth clench, my proud, proud kirlia. At least she wasn't challenging them all to honor duels anymore…
'They are, and I don't care. Now are you ready?'
'Surely there is a better way to train?'
'Not while on the move there isn't.'
'Very well, my lord. I am ready.'
Then I felt my mind lurch for lack of a better word. There was a pull on her end and a push on mine and I was suddenly two feet tall and brandishing a spoon like a longsword.
Looking at the world from her point of view was… surprisingly normal. I wasn't sure what I was expecting now that we were doing it voluntarily and outside of battle, but I just felt like an extremely short person.
'I'm not short,' I heard her grumble in my mind. 'Humans are just unnecessarily tall.'
'Whatever you say, my adorkable knight.'
Even this telepathy felt different, as though we'd finally entered the same room to speak rather than shout at each other from across the hall. Normally, there was her usual vocalization of "Kirlia-kir" or somesuch, but this kind of mental transmission came with no physical accompaniments. There was something intimate about the clarity of this connection that I found difficult to describe.
'Adorkable is not a word.'
'Words exist to convey meanings. You know precisely what I mean, especially with telepathy. Ergo it is now a word,' I teased. I couldn't see her blushing up a storm with the paper bag over my head, but I could feel the fire in her cheeks.
'Unfair…'
I decided I'd had enough of teasing Artoria and began walking. This was the whole point of our exercise. I would spend some of our trip in her head before trading off so she could spend some time in mine. By sharing headspace and senses, I hoped to accustom us both to this intimacy so we could coordinate better in battle.
Shouting Kantoan kendo techniques was good, great even, but when the two of us had the option to communicate at the speed of thought? No contest.
If we could swap to using each other's senses like this, it would also mean that Artoria couldn't be blinded or deafened because she could just hop into my head for a bit. We'd done it before in Slateport against that poochyena, but I wanted this transition to be seamless, for her to be as good at manipulating her body even while using my senses to perceive the world.
There was one last reason for this: Psychic power stacked. Stacked like Legos. I knew this for a proven fact. I saw it with Liza and Tate, and even the two doduo heads, for what little psychic power they held. I wanted Artoria and I to artificially create the bond my twin siblings had with each other. If I succeeded, I would be able to draw on her power to supplement my own lacking reserves and she could draw on my experience with the sword.
Two bodies, but a single, unified mind.
It was theoretical. I couldn't find a single book in the Summers family library that talked about artificially creating a twin bond, but if it worked…
Yes, for that, I'd happily put up with being the route's laughingstock.
The moment I finished that thought, I misjudged the location of a pebble from my body's foot while looking through Artoria's eyes and landed on my face.
Author's Note
Renzoku-waza just means "in sequence" or "continuous strikes." In this case, it's like a boxer who shadow-boxes while on a jog.
Breeder Lydia is one of the characters you can find on the route. Thought it'd be fitting to have her cameo here since I used to beat her up every ten minutes in Pokémon Emerald for exp.
Decided to italicize mental speech from now on to distinguish between that and spoken words. Poor formatting on my part.
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Thanks for the chapter!
Can you bury the links in spoiler boxes two-deep, or something? I can't figure out where to go from a web search.
wdango
Storyteller
- Location
- Bali, Indonesia
We're allowed to share links in PM, yes? I managed to find it, so if you PM me i'll send you a link.
JmonsterNEO
Spouter of nonsense
- Location
- The quest forums
Is that a Library of Ruina reference?
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
I think that phrase might be a bit older than LoR.
JmonsterNEO
Spouter of nonsense
- Location
- The quest forums
Project Moon has kinda become my current hyperfixation, so it's on my mind a lot.
Also, a spellblade training montage for Artoria courtesy of an Iron Valiant would be cool. Given how they're a fusion of Gardevoir and Gallade, and presumably their fighting styles as well. Iron Gallant is a Paradox Pokemon, so one popping up could be attributed to a time anomaly or an Ultra Wormhole, the whole paradox thing gives a lot of flexibility for reasons for them showing up.
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2.2 Salad
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Salad 2.2
Aaron Fulan
Route 117, Hoenn Region
"Umm… Why is there a bag over your kirlia's head?" a curious farm boy asked. He wore a wide-brim straw hat to protect himself from the sun and a pair of overalls with one strap broken. He had a dopey smile on his face that reminded me of a slowpoke.
'That is unkind, my liege,' I heard Artoria admonish in my mind.
'Yeah, you're right. I guess after days of this, I'm getting tired of people being overly curious.'
It was something I noticed immediately about the pokémon world that differed from my own. Back in Arlington, there was no way in hell a stranger would just come up to chat like this, especially not if I looked as crazy as I did now. No one wanted extra trouble for themselves and someone who walked around with a bag over his head would have been given a wide berth, even by the people trying to sell something.
'This… Arlington… It does not sound like a friendly place.'
'It was peaceful enough, but compared to here? No, no it was not. People weren't mean, just… transactional? Yeah, that's a good word for it. If you didn't have something they wanted, either in the form of professional connections or social clout, you weren't worth their time.'
'Your world sounds unpleasant. How can one live a fulfilling life that way? It sounds like a world where chivalry and ethics take a backseat to selfishness.'
'I suppose from your point of view, it does. And in a way, you're not wrong. But that isn't to say there weren't good people there either. It was just a little more pragmatic than this one. I didn't know any better though, so this world just seems even better in comparison now,' I said gently.
And that had been a doozy of a chat. A day into our trek through Route 117, I suggested that Artoria should dive even deeper into my mind, picking up my sword techniques. She did, and by extension came into contact with the full length of my history. I told Jeanne and Artoria about everything that night, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to cover it all. The games. Anime. Manga. Magma. Aqua. The Legends. All that I knew. All that could happen, in all their paradoxical, contradictory detail.
Everything.
In the end, my pokémons' chuuni personalities helped me out. To Artoria, my wealth of knowledge and experience made me a more worthy lord, especially since said knowledge and experience granted us a massive lead on the location of a gardevoirite. Jeanne? She didn't care. To be clear, she understood, she wasn't dumb despite her simplistic worldview. She just decided that an ampharos-to-be who was as splendid and radiant as her deserved an equally splendid and radiant trainer.
Chuuni, both of them, and I loved them both to bits.
I felt Artoria's spoon jab painfully into my shin. 'I still do not understand what that word means precisely, but I know when I am being insulted.'
'It's cute and I love you more for being the chuunis you are,' I told her, sending a flood of adoring emotions through the bond. I felt her face flush as her mind dealt with the psychic equivalent of hugs and headpats.
I didn't watch her flush. I felt her flush and devolve into a stammering wreck of embarrassment as her higher brain functions went on a coffee break. Her emotions swapped between being happy, embarrassed, embarrassed that she was embarrassed, indignant anger at my teasing, back to being happy at the intimacy of our connection, then finally settled on petulant sulking when she realized I was still mentally rolling on the floor laughing.
"Umm… hello?"
I was drawn back to the real world by the farm boy's question. He looked a little unnerved now and I realized that while Artoria and I were having our exchange, my face hadn't changed at all. I had, for all intents and purposes, stared the boy down without blinking once.
"Huh, no wonder people think psychics are weird," I muttered.
"Huh?"
"Sorry, kid. I was having a mental chat with my kirlia."
"I'm not a kid!"
"Sorry, just… we're training, alright?"
"Whatever, weirdo," he grumbled as he stalked off. Wasn't the first one. Wouldn't be the last.
We'd been switching off sensory deprivation between us for days now and we'd more or less gotten used to controlling our bodies while in the other's headspace. We were even good enough to practice some katas, her with her spoon and me with bokken I'd picked up in a sporting goods store. Kendo wasn't very popular outside of Kanto but finding goods to meet niche hobbies was the main perk of a metropolis like Mauville.
If simply walking from place to place doubled as training for Artoria, it was only fair that I used our rest stops and lunch breaks to plan a training regimen for Jeanne. The biggest immediate challenge was coming up with a contest routine, one simple enough that even a young mareep can perform it while still being stimulating enough to pass the appeals round.
Truthfully, I didn't expect to win the first contest. Contests were very different from battles; simply being the strongest wasn't enough, not that I was guaranteed of that either. No, there was a certain showmanship and pageantry that was expected of these routines and I wasn't sure I had the knack for it. The best I could do was to incorporate every one of Jeanne's moves in a bombastic display of sound and color, playing off her natural flamboyance and hoping for the best. We'd get around to refining things after learning what worked and what didn't.
"Okay, ready, Jeanne?"
"Mareep!"
Artoria and I stood a safe distance from the energetic electric type. We'd both taken a few unpleasant jolts on accident from being too close.
"Alright then. Electric Terrain!"
"Maa-REEP!" she cried out, releasing the electricity she'd been storing all day in her wool, tail, and horns.
A bubble of electricity flared out from her, chagrining the ground beneath her and… little else. Her terrain extended a full six feet in all directions, but that was a pittance compared to the size of a full battlefield or contest stage. I doubted she'd be able to increase her range until she evolved. Disappointing, but expected.
'Perhaps you should not expect her to match the power of a Legend, my lord.'
'I won't,' I promised. Artoria was right of course. In the anime, Tapu Koko had covered an entire temple in rainbow light. The terrain was so perfect that there was almost no distinction between the floor and the sky, just a dimension of rainbow color. As I'd come to learn in this world, the lack of random static discharge was proof of the Melemele Guardian's masterful control. It proved that the Mr. Thundercock could manipulate the charge in the earth even after using the move, and even against the physical laws demanding energy be discharged. 'Unreasonable expectations will only make her burn herself out. Besides, just being able to use the move at all is impressive for her age.'
We'd just have to work with what we had.
"Okay, now Cotton Spore!"
With an enthusiastic cry, she fired off the woolen balls in every direction. The balls were themselves covered in a residual charge from the electric sheep. A dizzying array of ground-to-air lightning launched from the Electric Terrain, lighting up the balls and keeping them in the air longer than gravity would like.
Not long, but long enough to send a cascade of light and shadow over the rest stop.
Jeanne was no master, not yet. She had no control over the way the terrain acted on the woolen balls.
So, I decided instead to make it a feature of our act. Wool, contrary to popular belief, wasn't flammable. It was airy, but the proteins and fibers that made it up just didn't burn. A high enough heat could manage to melt it, but quick bursts of electricity wouldn't cut it, certainly not a mareep's wool that was designed to store electrical charge.
The rain of glittering wool balls settled on the ground, erupting in a shower of sparks as the two moves met. Jeanne was on her hind legs, forelimbs spread wide in the same Y-pose she was so fond of.
"MAREEP!" she bleated a cheerful yell before trying to bow. Try. She instead ended up rolling before coming to a stop on her haunches. She looked back at me and raised her forelimbs again while sitting as if to tell me she'd done it on purpose.
"Excellent," I told her proudly. A bow would have been good, but this was adorable in its own way. I gestured to some of the wool balls. "Some of those didn't spark because they landed outside the terrain."
"Maa…"
"That's okay, Jeanne. You can't make your terrain any bigger, not until you evolve. Instead, we're going to focus on getting better control over your spores until you can make them land where you want them to. Sound good?"
"Mareep!"
"Great, now Cotton Spore, straight up."
It was slow going. It wasn't that Jeanne was unskilled, far from it, merely that she was enthusiastic. To a fault. She put a hundred percent of herself into everything she did, which unfortunately meant she wasn't a big proponent of control or moderation. It didn't help that Cotton Spore wasn't typically a move that was aimed, merely pointed in a general direction to encumber opponents.
Even so, repetition eventually got us to the point where she was mostly landing her spores in the terrain. I didn't know if it was because continuously practicing the same move dimmed her enthusiasm or because there was a limit to how much even a mareep could stress her hair follicles, but I was satisfied with the results.
The two of us sat around for a bit, her in my lap despite the Hoenn heat, and watched Artoria go through her forms. I would occasionally chuck a rock at her and watch as she pivoted cleanly to knock the stone out of the air. It was more impressive since she was looking from my eyes, not hers.
"You have some strange pokémon," I heard behind me. Turning, I was met with a green-haired boy about my age. On his shoulder was a budew, the pre-evolution of the roselia commonly found around these parts. He had a confident smirk on his face, though not necessarily a malicious one.
"I do," I said with an easy smile. I took the opportunity to snap a pebble towards my kirlia then immediately look away.
I was rewarded with a yelp of pain. "Kir!"
'Oww… That was unnecessary,' I heard her grumble.
'That'll be the next step. Prediction even if my attention wanders elsewhere.'
'You could have warned me.'
'But then it wouldn't be a surprise. The ralts line begins to develop precognitive capabilities following their first evolution. It's about time for you to start training that too. Even if it's just for a second or two, being able to see the future mid-combat is going to be critical to your fighting style going forward.' I sent her brief memory flashes of swordsmen from my past life whose skills seemed downright precognitive. 'I want you to see the future like Charlotte Katakuri and react like Sasaki Kojirou.'
'Yes, my liege. I understand. In that case, please pelt me with even more stones!' she said, pumped to the gills now. The best way to motivate a chuuni? Anime. 'My liege is thinking unkind things about me…'
'I'm not. There's nothing wrong with being a shameless training-nut.'
'Haauuu…'
"Hello? You there, weirdo?"
I turned my attention back to him to find him snapping his fingers in front of my face. "Yes. Just having a chat with my kirlia. Can I help you?"
"You're going to compete in Verdanturf, aren't you?"
"Most people introduce themselves before demanding answers from strangers."
"As if. I don't need to greet every mediocre wannabe I meet," he scoffed, nose turned up.
I did my best to channel my mother. An arched eyebrow and an unimpressed stare filled with the utter apathy of a psychic, sure to quell even the most arrogant blowhard. I wasn't quite there, but it was enough to get him to take a step back. "Then why are you here?"
'I do not like this person,' Artoria grumbled. She'd pulled the blindfold from her face and was glaring at him with undisguised contempt. 'He is rude and quick to give offense.'
'And what do his emotions say?'
'He is nervous. As he should be after insulting you.'
I looked at his aura. She could read his emotions far more clearly than I could, I was only human while she was a kirlia, but that didn't mean we were interpreting them the same way. 'There's that, but you should also see what isn't there. Confidence. Malice.'
'Then why is he so rude?'
'Social awkwardness. Insecurity. He's young and young people do dumb things to hide their perceived failings. If I had to guess, he came here because someone told him that a good rival would push him further on his journey. Maybe he is here to scout a potential opponent. Or maybe he was lonely and looking for a way to strike up conversation. Remember, for most new trainers, this is the first time they've been made to travel alone.'
'Would it not be better if humans were more straightforward with one another?' she asked, confused. 'A simple "I want to be friends," sounds much better than whatever mess this is. If humans were more honest, you would not need to guess at his intentions.'
'True, but not everyone can see emotions like we can. Be patient with them.'
It was something I'd known about Artoria, but rarely witnessed. Back in Mossdeep, everyone in the gym, barring dad, was a psychic. And even with dad, he was more than used to our unique quirks that he could seem almost precognitive in addressing our wants. Empathy was as natural as breathing so hiding our intentions and feelings was a fool's errand. She was getting better, but human interaction was for her an incomplete communication method. The masquerade inherent to human society was something that still felt alien to her.
"Hello? You there? You just space out like this normally?" the boy interrupted. Whatever he said in response to my original question, I completely missed his response.
"Yes, actually. You'll find powerful psychics often don't bother communicating verbally. Telepathy is much faster than speech and it comes naturally to us."
"Whatever."
"You still haven't told me your name."
"I did! It's Drew!"
That rang a bell, though I wasn't certain why. "Ah, sorry, must have missed it. Artoria and I were having a chat," I said apologetically.
'With the budew, and him aiming for the contest, I suspect he is the rival of this "May Maple" character you remember, my lord,' Artoria reminded me. That was another big benefit to sharing everything with her. I wasn't a particularly talented psychic, but with Artoria's help, I was working to organize a "mind palace" of sorts. Well, not quite a palace. Or a house. More of a filing cabinet than anything. She was effectively helping me sort my memories, build a library of relevant knowledge and whatnot from my past life.
I sent her a pulse of gratitude. "So, did you want something?"
"You! I just told you that your kirlia isn't going to win, especially not with her trainer spacing out like a slowpoke!"
"Well of course not. It'd be really weird if she managed to win a contest she's not competing in."
"What? Then why's she swinging a spoon around?"
"Because she's training."
"That doesn't explain anything."
I smirked at him and watched a drop of red spread through his emotional aura like food coloring in a glass of water. Just because I had a good idea of why he behaved the way he did didn't mean I had to enable him. An insecure, rude brat was still a rude brat. "No? I think it explains everything."
"Ugh, whatever, you spacey weirdo. I don't care if you're not competing," he grumbled, trudging off.
'But you are competing, my lord.'
'I am. I never said otherwise. I said you are not competing. If that's the conclusion he draws, then that's fine by me.'
'I see… Humans are strange.'
'We are.'
I patted her gently and packed up before hitting the road again.
I watched and waited wordlessly as my fluffy mareep did her best do dance out of the way of a lotad's Water Gun. She tried, but Jeanne just wasn't the most agile pokémon around. This battle against some semi-retired man who decided to go fly fishing was going about as I'd expected.
I told her before we started that I would not be giving her any commands this time; I wanted my pokémon to be able to handle battles on this level on their own. Jeanne had agreed with her usual cheer, only to get stymied by a surprisingly strong lotad.
The lilypad covered pokémon proved something I'd suspected but hadn't applied to pokémon battles: Water didn't conduct electricity. To be more specific, pure water wasn't an effective conductor. When a Water Gun and a Thunder Shock met in midair, one might expect the electricity to travel along the water and shock the lotad. One would be wrong, or near enough.
What really happened was that the Water Gun, having more mass, pressed through the Thunder Shock, forcing Jeanne to dodge. What little electricity that traveled along the water to strike the lotad did little if any damage thanks to its part grass type.
I wasn't sure how pure a Water Gun was, but I suspected it didn't contain too many salt ions.
Jeanne, for all her enthusiasm, wasn't a tactical thinker. After the fourth time trying the same game of beam-chicken and being forced to retreat, she shot me a pitiable look.
'I suppose it's a good time to intervene.'
'It seems so, my lord.'
"Electric Terrain," I barked. She took a Water Gun, soaking her wool, but obeyed with a wince. "Then Charge into Thunder Shock."
That did it. The extra boost from the charged terrain along with a brief internal powerup was enough to overcome lotad's grass typing. The Thunder Shock was so empowered that it was virtually indistinguishable from a decently powerful Thunderbolt. It also tuckered out my little lamb. She was the victor, but there was no question that she wouldn't be ready for a second bout.
I shook the fisherman's hand and received my LC bounty. 500 LC was nothing to scoff at.
"Heh, kids these days. No shame at all, robbing their elders for spending money," he groused goodnaturedly. Next to him, a beefy ludicolo with hints of gray in its poncho-like fur, probably that lotad's parent, laughed and consoled the young froglike pokémon.
"If you wanted to win, I'm sure you would have sent out that guy over there. Is he your partner?"
"She, but yeah. Fiesta is the big reason I settled down around here. Weather's perfect for her old bones, son."
"That's great. Thanks for the battle, mister."
"Sure, sure. I don't have anything better to do these days. Fiesta will win the money back for me on the next poor sap we meet."
I stumbled at that. "Heh, guess I'm lucky."
"Yup. Take care, kid."
There was a small but significant number of people like him along Route 117. They were trainers who had gone on their journeys and decided to settle down along the flower-laden path. Many of them still had powerful pokémon like Fiesta, though only a few had their full teams from their prime.
I found that interesting in itself. Some trainers met with tragedy, losing team members here and there. Others found that the retired life didn't suit some pokémon, particularly because some pokémon had vastly extended lifespans. I'd read a popular story of a ninetales in Kanto going on a pokémon journey eight separate times, each time with the next generation of her human's family. It was also fairly common for retiring trainers to give away their pokémon, either to the rangers for relocation into the wild or the gyms so they could train the next generation.
Seeing people like him made me wonder how many of my team I'd have by my side when I was old and gray.
'At least one,' Artoria promised, waves of reassurance accompanying her words. 'I have but one lord and master. I shall serve none other.'
I gave her the mental equivalent of a hug back. 'Love you too, Artoria.'
Author's Note
Yes, I skipped over the lengthy "Hi, I'm from another world and reincarnated/transmigrated to this one. I am and am not the same Aaron Fulan," chat.
Wanted two chapters to describe the route. More could happen I suppose, but Route 117 just isn't a very interesting route.
Aaron Fulan
Route 117, Hoenn Region
"Umm… Why is there a bag over your kirlia's head?" a curious farm boy asked. He wore a wide-brim straw hat to protect himself from the sun and a pair of overalls with one strap broken. He had a dopey smile on his face that reminded me of a slowpoke.
'That is unkind, my liege,' I heard Artoria admonish in my mind.
'Yeah, you're right. I guess after days of this, I'm getting tired of people being overly curious.'
It was something I noticed immediately about the pokémon world that differed from my own. Back in Arlington, there was no way in hell a stranger would just come up to chat like this, especially not if I looked as crazy as I did now. No one wanted extra trouble for themselves and someone who walked around with a bag over his head would have been given a wide berth, even by the people trying to sell something.
'This… Arlington… It does not sound like a friendly place.'
'It was peaceful enough, but compared to here? No, no it was not. People weren't mean, just… transactional? Yeah, that's a good word for it. If you didn't have something they wanted, either in the form of professional connections or social clout, you weren't worth their time.'
'Your world sounds unpleasant. How can one live a fulfilling life that way? It sounds like a world where chivalry and ethics take a backseat to selfishness.'
'I suppose from your point of view, it does. And in a way, you're not wrong. But that isn't to say there weren't good people there either. It was just a little more pragmatic than this one. I didn't know any better though, so this world just seems even better in comparison now,' I said gently.
And that had been a doozy of a chat. A day into our trek through Route 117, I suggested that Artoria should dive even deeper into my mind, picking up my sword techniques. She did, and by extension came into contact with the full length of my history. I told Jeanne and Artoria about everything that night, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to cover it all. The games. Anime. Manga. Magma. Aqua. The Legends. All that I knew. All that could happen, in all their paradoxical, contradictory detail.
Everything.
In the end, my pokémons' chuuni personalities helped me out. To Artoria, my wealth of knowledge and experience made me a more worthy lord, especially since said knowledge and experience granted us a massive lead on the location of a gardevoirite. Jeanne? She didn't care. To be clear, she understood, she wasn't dumb despite her simplistic worldview. She just decided that an ampharos-to-be who was as splendid and radiant as her deserved an equally splendid and radiant trainer.
Chuuni, both of them, and I loved them both to bits.
I felt Artoria's spoon jab painfully into my shin. 'I still do not understand what that word means precisely, but I know when I am being insulted.'
'It's cute and I love you more for being the chuunis you are,' I told her, sending a flood of adoring emotions through the bond. I felt her face flush as her mind dealt with the psychic equivalent of hugs and headpats.
I didn't watch her flush. I felt her flush and devolve into a stammering wreck of embarrassment as her higher brain functions went on a coffee break. Her emotions swapped between being happy, embarrassed, embarrassed that she was embarrassed, indignant anger at my teasing, back to being happy at the intimacy of our connection, then finally settled on petulant sulking when she realized I was still mentally rolling on the floor laughing.
"Umm… hello?"
I was drawn back to the real world by the farm boy's question. He looked a little unnerved now and I realized that while Artoria and I were having our exchange, my face hadn't changed at all. I had, for all intents and purposes, stared the boy down without blinking once.
"Huh, no wonder people think psychics are weird," I muttered.
"Huh?"
"Sorry, kid. I was having a mental chat with my kirlia."
"I'm not a kid!"
"Sorry, just… we're training, alright?"
"Whatever, weirdo," he grumbled as he stalked off. Wasn't the first one. Wouldn't be the last.
We'd been switching off sensory deprivation between us for days now and we'd more or less gotten used to controlling our bodies while in the other's headspace. We were even good enough to practice some katas, her with her spoon and me with bokken I'd picked up in a sporting goods store. Kendo wasn't very popular outside of Kanto but finding goods to meet niche hobbies was the main perk of a metropolis like Mauville.
X
If simply walking from place to place doubled as training for Artoria, it was only fair that I used our rest stops and lunch breaks to plan a training regimen for Jeanne. The biggest immediate challenge was coming up with a contest routine, one simple enough that even a young mareep can perform it while still being stimulating enough to pass the appeals round.
Truthfully, I didn't expect to win the first contest. Contests were very different from battles; simply being the strongest wasn't enough, not that I was guaranteed of that either. No, there was a certain showmanship and pageantry that was expected of these routines and I wasn't sure I had the knack for it. The best I could do was to incorporate every one of Jeanne's moves in a bombastic display of sound and color, playing off her natural flamboyance and hoping for the best. We'd get around to refining things after learning what worked and what didn't.
"Okay, ready, Jeanne?"
"Mareep!"
Artoria and I stood a safe distance from the energetic electric type. We'd both taken a few unpleasant jolts on accident from being too close.
"Alright then. Electric Terrain!"
"Maa-REEP!" she cried out, releasing the electricity she'd been storing all day in her wool, tail, and horns.
A bubble of electricity flared out from her, chagrining the ground beneath her and… little else. Her terrain extended a full six feet in all directions, but that was a pittance compared to the size of a full battlefield or contest stage. I doubted she'd be able to increase her range until she evolved. Disappointing, but expected.
'Perhaps you should not expect her to match the power of a Legend, my lord.'
'I won't,' I promised. Artoria was right of course. In the anime, Tapu Koko had covered an entire temple in rainbow light. The terrain was so perfect that there was almost no distinction between the floor and the sky, just a dimension of rainbow color. As I'd come to learn in this world, the lack of random static discharge was proof of the Melemele Guardian's masterful control. It proved that the Mr. Thundercock could manipulate the charge in the earth even after using the move, and even against the physical laws demanding energy be discharged. 'Unreasonable expectations will only make her burn herself out. Besides, just being able to use the move at all is impressive for her age.'
We'd just have to work with what we had.
"Okay, now Cotton Spore!"
With an enthusiastic cry, she fired off the woolen balls in every direction. The balls were themselves covered in a residual charge from the electric sheep. A dizzying array of ground-to-air lightning launched from the Electric Terrain, lighting up the balls and keeping them in the air longer than gravity would like.
Not long, but long enough to send a cascade of light and shadow over the rest stop.
Jeanne was no master, not yet. She had no control over the way the terrain acted on the woolen balls.
So, I decided instead to make it a feature of our act. Wool, contrary to popular belief, wasn't flammable. It was airy, but the proteins and fibers that made it up just didn't burn. A high enough heat could manage to melt it, but quick bursts of electricity wouldn't cut it, certainly not a mareep's wool that was designed to store electrical charge.
The rain of glittering wool balls settled on the ground, erupting in a shower of sparks as the two moves met. Jeanne was on her hind legs, forelimbs spread wide in the same Y-pose she was so fond of.
"MAREEP!" she bleated a cheerful yell before trying to bow. Try. She instead ended up rolling before coming to a stop on her haunches. She looked back at me and raised her forelimbs again while sitting as if to tell me she'd done it on purpose.
"Excellent," I told her proudly. A bow would have been good, but this was adorable in its own way. I gestured to some of the wool balls. "Some of those didn't spark because they landed outside the terrain."
"Maa…"
"That's okay, Jeanne. You can't make your terrain any bigger, not until you evolve. Instead, we're going to focus on getting better control over your spores until you can make them land where you want them to. Sound good?"
"Mareep!"
"Great, now Cotton Spore, straight up."
It was slow going. It wasn't that Jeanne was unskilled, far from it, merely that she was enthusiastic. To a fault. She put a hundred percent of herself into everything she did, which unfortunately meant she wasn't a big proponent of control or moderation. It didn't help that Cotton Spore wasn't typically a move that was aimed, merely pointed in a general direction to encumber opponents.
Even so, repetition eventually got us to the point where she was mostly landing her spores in the terrain. I didn't know if it was because continuously practicing the same move dimmed her enthusiasm or because there was a limit to how much even a mareep could stress her hair follicles, but I was satisfied with the results.
The two of us sat around for a bit, her in my lap despite the Hoenn heat, and watched Artoria go through her forms. I would occasionally chuck a rock at her and watch as she pivoted cleanly to knock the stone out of the air. It was more impressive since she was looking from my eyes, not hers.
"You have some strange pokémon," I heard behind me. Turning, I was met with a green-haired boy about my age. On his shoulder was a budew, the pre-evolution of the roselia commonly found around these parts. He had a confident smirk on his face, though not necessarily a malicious one.
"I do," I said with an easy smile. I took the opportunity to snap a pebble towards my kirlia then immediately look away.
I was rewarded with a yelp of pain. "Kir!"
'Oww… That was unnecessary,' I heard her grumble.
'That'll be the next step. Prediction even if my attention wanders elsewhere.'
'You could have warned me.'
'But then it wouldn't be a surprise. The ralts line begins to develop precognitive capabilities following their first evolution. It's about time for you to start training that too. Even if it's just for a second or two, being able to see the future mid-combat is going to be critical to your fighting style going forward.' I sent her brief memory flashes of swordsmen from my past life whose skills seemed downright precognitive. 'I want you to see the future like Charlotte Katakuri and react like Sasaki Kojirou.'
'Yes, my liege. I understand. In that case, please pelt me with even more stones!' she said, pumped to the gills now. The best way to motivate a chuuni? Anime. 'My liege is thinking unkind things about me…'
'I'm not. There's nothing wrong with being a shameless training-nut.'
'Haauuu…'
"Hello? You there, weirdo?"
I turned my attention back to him to find him snapping his fingers in front of my face. "Yes. Just having a chat with my kirlia. Can I help you?"
"You're going to compete in Verdanturf, aren't you?"
"Most people introduce themselves before demanding answers from strangers."
"As if. I don't need to greet every mediocre wannabe I meet," he scoffed, nose turned up.
I did my best to channel my mother. An arched eyebrow and an unimpressed stare filled with the utter apathy of a psychic, sure to quell even the most arrogant blowhard. I wasn't quite there, but it was enough to get him to take a step back. "Then why are you here?"
'I do not like this person,' Artoria grumbled. She'd pulled the blindfold from her face and was glaring at him with undisguised contempt. 'He is rude and quick to give offense.'
'And what do his emotions say?'
'He is nervous. As he should be after insulting you.'
I looked at his aura. She could read his emotions far more clearly than I could, I was only human while she was a kirlia, but that didn't mean we were interpreting them the same way. 'There's that, but you should also see what isn't there. Confidence. Malice.'
'Then why is he so rude?'
'Social awkwardness. Insecurity. He's young and young people do dumb things to hide their perceived failings. If I had to guess, he came here because someone told him that a good rival would push him further on his journey. Maybe he is here to scout a potential opponent. Or maybe he was lonely and looking for a way to strike up conversation. Remember, for most new trainers, this is the first time they've been made to travel alone.'
'Would it not be better if humans were more straightforward with one another?' she asked, confused. 'A simple "I want to be friends," sounds much better than whatever mess this is. If humans were more honest, you would not need to guess at his intentions.'
'True, but not everyone can see emotions like we can. Be patient with them.'
It was something I'd known about Artoria, but rarely witnessed. Back in Mossdeep, everyone in the gym, barring dad, was a psychic. And even with dad, he was more than used to our unique quirks that he could seem almost precognitive in addressing our wants. Empathy was as natural as breathing so hiding our intentions and feelings was a fool's errand. She was getting better, but human interaction was for her an incomplete communication method. The masquerade inherent to human society was something that still felt alien to her.
"Hello? You there? You just space out like this normally?" the boy interrupted. Whatever he said in response to my original question, I completely missed his response.
"Yes, actually. You'll find powerful psychics often don't bother communicating verbally. Telepathy is much faster than speech and it comes naturally to us."
"Whatever."
"You still haven't told me your name."
"I did! It's Drew!"
That rang a bell, though I wasn't certain why. "Ah, sorry, must have missed it. Artoria and I were having a chat," I said apologetically.
'With the budew, and him aiming for the contest, I suspect he is the rival of this "May Maple" character you remember, my lord,' Artoria reminded me. That was another big benefit to sharing everything with her. I wasn't a particularly talented psychic, but with Artoria's help, I was working to organize a "mind palace" of sorts. Well, not quite a palace. Or a house. More of a filing cabinet than anything. She was effectively helping me sort my memories, build a library of relevant knowledge and whatnot from my past life.
I sent her a pulse of gratitude. "So, did you want something?"
"You! I just told you that your kirlia isn't going to win, especially not with her trainer spacing out like a slowpoke!"
"Well of course not. It'd be really weird if she managed to win a contest she's not competing in."
"What? Then why's she swinging a spoon around?"
"Because she's training."
"That doesn't explain anything."
I smirked at him and watched a drop of red spread through his emotional aura like food coloring in a glass of water. Just because I had a good idea of why he behaved the way he did didn't mean I had to enable him. An insecure, rude brat was still a rude brat. "No? I think it explains everything."
"Ugh, whatever, you spacey weirdo. I don't care if you're not competing," he grumbled, trudging off.
'But you are competing, my lord.'
'I am. I never said otherwise. I said you are not competing. If that's the conclusion he draws, then that's fine by me.'
'I see… Humans are strange.'
'We are.'
I patted her gently and packed up before hitting the road again.
X
I watched and waited wordlessly as my fluffy mareep did her best do dance out of the way of a lotad's Water Gun. She tried, but Jeanne just wasn't the most agile pokémon around. This battle against some semi-retired man who decided to go fly fishing was going about as I'd expected.
I told her before we started that I would not be giving her any commands this time; I wanted my pokémon to be able to handle battles on this level on their own. Jeanne had agreed with her usual cheer, only to get stymied by a surprisingly strong lotad.
The lilypad covered pokémon proved something I'd suspected but hadn't applied to pokémon battles: Water didn't conduct electricity. To be more specific, pure water wasn't an effective conductor. When a Water Gun and a Thunder Shock met in midair, one might expect the electricity to travel along the water and shock the lotad. One would be wrong, or near enough.
What really happened was that the Water Gun, having more mass, pressed through the Thunder Shock, forcing Jeanne to dodge. What little electricity that traveled along the water to strike the lotad did little if any damage thanks to its part grass type.
I wasn't sure how pure a Water Gun was, but I suspected it didn't contain too many salt ions.
Jeanne, for all her enthusiasm, wasn't a tactical thinker. After the fourth time trying the same game of beam-chicken and being forced to retreat, she shot me a pitiable look.
'I suppose it's a good time to intervene.'
'It seems so, my lord.'
"Electric Terrain," I barked. She took a Water Gun, soaking her wool, but obeyed with a wince. "Then Charge into Thunder Shock."
That did it. The extra boost from the charged terrain along with a brief internal powerup was enough to overcome lotad's grass typing. The Thunder Shock was so empowered that it was virtually indistinguishable from a decently powerful Thunderbolt. It also tuckered out my little lamb. She was the victor, but there was no question that she wouldn't be ready for a second bout.
I shook the fisherman's hand and received my LC bounty. 500 LC was nothing to scoff at.
"Heh, kids these days. No shame at all, robbing their elders for spending money," he groused goodnaturedly. Next to him, a beefy ludicolo with hints of gray in its poncho-like fur, probably that lotad's parent, laughed and consoled the young froglike pokémon.
"If you wanted to win, I'm sure you would have sent out that guy over there. Is he your partner?"
"She, but yeah. Fiesta is the big reason I settled down around here. Weather's perfect for her old bones, son."
"That's great. Thanks for the battle, mister."
"Sure, sure. I don't have anything better to do these days. Fiesta will win the money back for me on the next poor sap we meet."
I stumbled at that. "Heh, guess I'm lucky."
"Yup. Take care, kid."
There was a small but significant number of people like him along Route 117. They were trainers who had gone on their journeys and decided to settle down along the flower-laden path. Many of them still had powerful pokémon like Fiesta, though only a few had their full teams from their prime.
I found that interesting in itself. Some trainers met with tragedy, losing team members here and there. Others found that the retired life didn't suit some pokémon, particularly because some pokémon had vastly extended lifespans. I'd read a popular story of a ninetales in Kanto going on a pokémon journey eight separate times, each time with the next generation of her human's family. It was also fairly common for retiring trainers to give away their pokémon, either to the rangers for relocation into the wild or the gyms so they could train the next generation.
Seeing people like him made me wonder how many of my team I'd have by my side when I was old and gray.
'At least one,' Artoria promised, waves of reassurance accompanying her words. 'I have but one lord and master. I shall serve none other.'
I gave her the mental equivalent of a hug back. 'Love you too, Artoria.'
Author's Note
Yes, I skipped over the lengthy "Hi, I'm from another world and reincarnated/transmigrated to this one. I am and am not the same Aaron Fulan," chat.
Wanted two chapters to describe the route. More could happen I suppose, but Route 117 just isn't a very interesting route.
2.3 Salad
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Salad 2.3
Aaron Fulan
Verdanturf Town, Hoenn Region
Six days after leaving Mauville, I was here and "here" took my breath away.
Verdanturf was a countryside paradise. It looked like one of those Danish villages I'd seen on postcards and travel magazines in my past life, with fields of flowers as far as the eye could see and bushes of succulent berries all along the roadside, just waiting for a passing soul to pick them. The air here was noticeably crisp, not just compared to Mauville, but even the route, as though several grass types acted as living air fresheners daily.
According to the PokéNav's guidebook, that was basically what was going on. Bellossom, the final form of oddish, were an unusually common sight here, the largest population of them outside a grass type reserve in Johto, and their naturally purifying properties were evident for all to experience.
Which, upon further reflection, raised an important question: Where were they getting sun stones? Was there some kind of giant sun stone somewhere nearby just like the giant moon stone on Mt. Moon? Did the local bellossom conduct some ritual of evolution once a year with a batch of new gloom? Or maybe there were trace minerals in the water that catalyzed this specific evolutionary path?
Strictly speaking, this wasn't like the games. A stone, or most evolutionary items I was familiar with for that matter, wasn't necessary for evolution. Otherwise, pokémon like oddish and bellsprout would have died out in the wild thanks to the simple fact that their most powerful forms were locked behind a giant scavenger hunt.
This was not so. Vileplume and bellossom weren't common, but nor were they nearly as rare in the wild as one would expect.
In this world unrestricted by a developer's programming logic, age and power were perfectly acceptable substitutes. In fact, some believed that a natural evolution was more powerful, claiming that the catalyzing effect of evolutionary items provided immediate benefits in exchange for long-term potential.
Evidence was… mixed… on that front. For example, Lance and Clair both had monstrously powerful kingdra and neither were "natural" evolutions, both having received dragon scales from one of the many dragonite that called Blackthorn home. Then again, those two were exceptionally powerful trainers. It could simply be that their kingdra were powerful in spite of their triggered evolution.
No matter the truth, the bellossom population here was far more numerous than expected. While it was true that pokémon with branching evolutionary paths were likely to evolve into forms they were most familiar with, usually whatever their parents or leaders in their communities were, the sheer quantity of bellossom in Verdanturf was abnormal.
'It has certainly done wonders for this town,' Artoria quipped. She let out a pleased sigh, practically dancing by anyone else's standards. 'If this is the result of too many of these flower dancers, perhaps we should all strive to cultivate more of them.'
'You like the air, huh?'
'I do. It has a refreshing aroma and even were I not a fan of the scent, many people are. Their uplifted mood is positively delicious.'
Saying so, she nudged an impression my way. For a moment, I felt my senses replaced by hers. Smell and taste blended seamlessly until I could hardly tell the two apart. The air quite literally tasted sweet and fruity, light with a bit of a bounce. If I had to tie an impression to it from my old life, I would liken it to Christmas morning as a child. It was the hope, the eager expectation, that anything could happen. If optimism could be distilled into a perfume, this would be it.
'This is wonderful. Is this what you taste when you feed off emotions?'
'Indeed, my lord. There is something delicious about this type of optimism. I think this type of flavor is my favorite even among all other positive emotions. The thrill of a new day is contagious.'
'So it is. I'll try to be more optimistic for you then,' I promised.
'There is no need for that, my liege. I assure you I am eating fine. Besides, trying to be what you are not would only taint the flavor.'
'Heh, my kirlia is a glutton even when it comes to emotions.'
'Hunger is the enemy,' she sniffed.
'Of course it is,' I smiled indulgently. 'Honestly, seeing you so happy makes me wonder if we should have stopped to catch a roselia for the team.'
'Hmm… I would not be opposed to a teammate who is florally inclined.'
'We'll see. If we meet one, it wouldn't be a bad idea. Grass is a criminally underestimated type.'
There were a few things I wanted to do in the town. To start, I had to go register for the pokémon contest. I still had four days, but I wanted to get that out of the way as soon as possible before going on my mega stone hunt. I didn't think Jeanne would forgive me if I forgot about it. The three of us walked to the wealthy north end of town and found the building. Really, it was impossible to miss.
The contest hall was honestly kind of ugly. It was a deep maroon color, which would have been fine, on its own, but it was also shaped like a military pillbox I'd seen in one of those WWII documentaries, or maybe one of those hilariously pointless duncecaps that seemingly every military dress uniform seemed to include. To either side were two fountains shaped like pokéballs so people could sit around while waiting for the show to start.
The interior was much better. It was a half-moon shape with the center area being taken up by a prominent stage that doubled as the battlefield. To the right of the stage was a set of three desks where the three judges would sit. Typically, those seats were taken by a prominent member of the hosting city or town, a member of the League, and a wildcard guest, oftentimes a veteran coordinator.
I walked up to the registration booth. Next to me, my mareep was literally glowing with excitement. I could even feel the hairs on my leg tingle and stand on end whenever I brushed past her. To my other side, Artoria had her spoon out and was rolling a marble of psychic energy around the rim, an exercise in control she did almost absentmindedly at this point.
"Hello, ma'am," I greeted the teller. She was a middle-aged woman whose nametag proclaimed her as a proud member of the local contest fan club. Larger contest halls had formalized staff, but I supposed that in a small town like this, volunteers were a great way to cut down on overhead costs.
"Hello, sweetie, are you here to register for the contest?"
"Mareep!" Jeanne bleated cheerfully, standing on two hooves and leaning against the booth. Her glowing tai wagged like a puppy's. "Reep!"
"Aww, she's adorable. Is she the one competing? Your kirlia is quite lovely as well."
"Yes, Jeanne, my mareep, has been looking forward to this all week."
I was in the process of handing her my dex when I heard a familiar voice shout behind me.
"You!"
"Hello, Drew," I said with a lazy wave. The green-haired boy was standing next to a tall, attractive girl with salmon-pink hair and intense blue eyes. Unlike the boy, her demeanor was filled with grace and poise. "Fancy seeing you here. Who's your friend?"
"You said you weren't competing!"
"I never said that."
"You did!"
"No, I said it'd be strange if Artoria won this contest since she isn't competing. Jeanne on the other hand, is quite thrilled at the prospect."
I took some small satisfaction in watching his eyebrow twitch as he tried to find a comeback. It was petty of me, he hadn't done anything egregiously wrong, but I couldn't find it in me to care overmuch. I wondered if frustration was an emotion Artoria could taste as well.
'I'd rather not, my lord,' she said dryly. 'Frustration tastes bitter and chalky. It is something that linger unpleasantly. Must you antagonize him?'
'It's funny?'
'And unknightly.'
'Fine, fine, you win. Would you like me to apologize?'
'No, my lord should not be so quick to bow his head. He was the one to give offense first. But nor should you continue to jab at what fragile dignity he has left.'
I stooped down a bit to scratch Artoria between her horns in that one place I knew she loved but would never admit to. It was always fun to feel her vibrate with indecision between shrugging off my hand or luxuriating in the sensation. 'Hehe, since when is my little knight so wise?'
'Hmph, I have always been wise. My lord is only now opening his eyes to the truth,' she sniffed, turning her nose up.
I chuckled and picked Artoria up, ignoring her embarrassed squirming. 'Well maybe you can help me see clearly from a better height.'
'Height jokes. How juvenile. I won't be small forever.'
'Don't worry, I'll still hug you even when you become a gardevoir.'
'That isn't what I meant and you know it.'
"You're doing it again!"
I turned back to him. For a few seconds, I'd completely forgotten he was here. "Oh, yeah? Sorry, guess I got lost in thought. My kirlia is adorable and hilarious. Anyway, Jeanne, my mareep, is competing."
"Che, no matter. My budew and I are going to take the win."
"We'll see, but it's not good to boast you know. You just end up sounding like a blowhard if you lose."
"That won't matter because I'll win."
"Then you'll sound like a smug jackass. Gracious in defeat, humble in victory, you know?"
"A friendly rivalry already? But you shouldn't count other contestants out," said the girl who came with Drew. She sent me a mature smile that made me curse my hormones. "Hello, my name is Solidad and this will be my third year as a coordinator."
"Solidad…"
'Is she someone you know, my lord?'
'Maybe…' I held out my hand for her to shake. "Aaron. That's an odd name. Are you not from Hoenn?"
"No, I'm from Pewter City in Kanto. Contests aren't as big there, but I wanted to be a coordinator ever since I saw one on TV so I've been traveling through Sinnoh for two years. I decided a change of scenery might be nice so here I am for the third."
"Wow, then I guess a normal-rank contest like this is going to be a piece of cake for you."
"I have an advantage, but that's no reason to not put your best foot forward. Raw power is much less important in a contest than in a gym battle, so it's possible for younger trainers to quickly overtake even a past victor," she encouraged. "I won my first ribbon from only the second contest I've ever been in."
"True enough, but now that means you have both experience and power."
"I'm glad you think highly of me, but remember that I'm competing at this rank because I don't yet qualify for a higher one. That's partially because Hoenn did not recognize my credentials from Johto, but I do have to be honest and say that I have much to learn."
"In any case, Jeanne and I will be working hard to master our routine."
"Then I'll look forward to a challenge."
We parted on good terms. Solidad was the polar opposite of Drew. She was a woman who'd long since become accustomed to the trainer's life and had a wealth of experience to back her. Speaking to her jogged my memories a bit. I remembered her as a famous coordinator during May's time, someone who'd become a mentor for both her and Zoe. It meant that whatever her struggles in the past few years, she would likely become a Grand Coordinator in the near future.
Speaking of famous coordinators, I was reminded of Lisia, the closest thing the pokémon world had to a pop idol. She said she would travel to Lilycove to compete in her first contest and I wondered how she was doing.
'Perhaps she would appreciate a call, my lord?'
'You think so?'
'I find her company far more pleasant than this Drew fellow.'
'You and me both.'
In another half hour, the three of us found ourselves in our room in the pokémon center. The PokéNav rang for all of four seconds before the call went through. My vision was filled with fluffy white clouds as Ali pecked at the screen curiously.
"Ali, stop that," I heard Lisia chide before the blue songbird was lifted into the air and her smiling face took up the screen. She fumbled in her breast pocket before extracting a familiar case. "Hey, Aaron! Look what I've got!"
In her hands was what I'd expected, her first contest ribbon. It was a brass shield with a crown that held in place a ribbon of blue bubbles framed in green. Like badges, the real record was kept digitally, just in case she lost the thing, but it still made for an impressive trophy.
"I thought you might have that," I said with a soft smile, "and from your first contest ever. Congratulations. Only two more until you qualify for super-ranks, right?"
"Mou! You can't do the all-knowing psychic thing!"
"I told you, I don't have the Sight."
"Then why aren't you more surprised?" she pouted cutely.
"What can I say, I have an eye for talent. I really do think you're the most likely person to dethrone your uncle. Just call it a gut feeling, hmm?"
"T-Thanks," she stammered. For all her enthusiasm, she was still a teenager and I didn't know a single one that could take a compliment without embarrassment. She hastily changed the subject. "Well, are you ready for Verdanturf? That's in four days, right?"
"We are," I nodded firmly. "I don't know if we'll win, but Jeanne and I will give it the ol' college try."
"But you're not in college, silly."
"Yeah, I'm not sure where the phrase comes from either now that you mention it. Anyway, are you still in Lilycove?"
"Uh-huh. Ali and I've been hanging around at home, but we're going to visit the Safari Zone in a bit before heading to Fortree City. I can't wait to see all the cool flying types there!"
"Hmm, still in Lilycove? You're not getting lazy now that you've won a ribbon, are you?" I teased.
"I'm not, you meanie! Mom's just really good at making me want to stay, alright? She makes these really good cream puffs and every time I want to leave, she bribes Ali with her favorite poffins. It's unfair."
"Of course. Truly a formidable woman. Why Fortree though? Do they have a contest hall I don't know about?"
She shrugged. "Kind of… Their annual Feather Carnival is coming up. I heard Leader Winona is going to be performing a special sky dance with her altaria so Ali and I wanted to go check it out. You know, get some tips from a real pro. There's also an amateur contest that's not really sponsored and only for flying types but it'd be cool to win it."
"Yeah, that sounds pretty sweet. Anyway, it was nice talking to you, but I'm going to go train while I still have some daylight left."
"Yeah, keep in touch, Aaron! Bye!"
The signal winked out, leaving me alone with my two pokémon. I stood and gestured to my team. "Shall we?"
"KIIRRRLLLIIIAAAA!" My little knight-in-training let out a valiant (adorable) roar as she rushed forward with Mana Burst, turning into a comet of bite-sized aggression and determination. Her normally blue-clad spoon was shrouded in deep, mist-like violet that left a trail of sinister light in her wake.
Her attack struck the thick tree trunk she'd chosen to practice against with significant force, tearing a wicked gouge into the bark roughly four inches deep. Unfortunately, it was the silver of the spoon rather than the phantasmal aura of ghost types that did most of the work. The aura shattered on contact with the trunk, dispersing like a flame scattered in the wind.
She returned to her starting point and took up her ready stance.
'Artoria, dear, maybe you should stop,' I suggested gently. This was her first major bottleneck since we began traveling. Everything came to her easily. She was a natural with the blade, possessed of both monstrous talent and single-minded dedication to the art. She was the ideal student; I couldn't imagine a more perfect pupil in that regard. Even fashioning custom moves using psychic energy was a minor challenge at best for her.
And then there was Shadow Sneak. Ghost type aura fucked with psychics; everyone knew that. But it wasn't as though the two were truly incompatible. If I had to describe it, the contrast was more an alienness in their way of thought rather than any fundamentally unreconcilable difference. The mind and soul were intrinsically linked after all, and the majority of fully evolved ghost and psychics could learn moves from the other's type. Hell, the fact that a gallade could pass on Shadow Sneak as an inherited move to a ralts proved my point.
But that alienness of thought was proving to be a major obstacle for my little knight. Ghosts were stealthy. Ghosts were spiritual. Ghosts were entities who embodied the intangible and unknowable. Artoria was direct and honest. Artoria turned her great mental affinity towards refining her body and technique. Ghosts were everything Artoria wasn't.
And it showed.
She began by trying to sink into her own shadow as the move demanded but decided to stop that when we found it took her a full fifteen seconds, an eternity in battle. Instead of trying to shroud her entire body, we decided to simply work on the physical aspect, sticking only to her spoon. Even then, keeping up the enhancement for a decisive strike was proving to be a challenge.
'I will master this move before the day is through,' she swore.
'I don't doubt you will, but not today.'
'This is the move passed down from my sire. I must-'
'Artoria, come here,' I spoke firmly, giving our mental bond a sharp tug. I seldom snapped at her, but it was necessary. The trouble with training-nuts was that they just didn't know when to quit. She trudged to my side, her expression mulish. I patted my lap and she sat down without her usual complaint.
The two of us watched Jeanne train. My little lamb had taken to making only a few Cotton Spores at a time, launching them into the air before nailing them with a low-powered Thunder Shock to light them up while working on her accuracy. She was improving, turning Cotton Spore form an indiscriminate attack to something… not precise perhaps, but more directed.
I absentmindedly brushed my partner's emerald locks into place.
'It shouldn't be this hard,' Artoria said. I could feel her self-flagellation through the bond. Shame. Frustration. The impression that she was letting me down somehow.
'It should be this hard,' I chided gently. 'You know ghost type moves will always be hard for a psychic.'
'I am not other psychics.'
'No, you're my little knight. You can already teleport in combat. Sinking into shadows would be useful, but it's not a critical need. Take it slower.'
'At least the weapon enhancement… How else will I strike down phantoms?'
'That will come in time. Be patient. In fact, I'm forbidding you from swinging your sword again for the rest of the day.'
She whirled indignantly. 'But-!'
I squashed her hair down. It was convenient having hands big enough to grip her head like a baseball. 'Listen,' I chided. 'You're going to stop swinging that spoon around like a berserker. All you're doing is tiring yourself out. Instead, sit with me. Meditate. Try to channel ghost type aura into your spoon and refine it. If you accustom yourself to having it, it might last longer.'
'I… Perhaps you're right, my lord.'
'Good. Have you noticed that trail of aura you leave behind every time you swing?'
'Yes.'
'Well, while it looks cool, it's proof that you're wasting your aura. Condense it. Focus on holding it in place and shaping it to become an edge around the spoon.'
'As you say, my lord.'
'You'll get this, Artoria. I believe in you.'
She looked at me with newfound determination before settling onto her knees, her sword on her lap. 'I will not let you down.'
With Jeanne refining her contest routine and Artoria in meditation, I had a rare moment to myself. I pulled out my bokken and began to practice. Over a month away from home had given me back some of my stamina, but it'd be up to me to drill in the muscle memory I remembered from my past life. Between sword practice, sorting my memories, physical conditioning, and training my team, I had a daunting schedule.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Author's Note
Why Solidad? Because I feel like no one gives famous coordinators enough screentime in fics.
The Feather Carnival is an actual thing in canon.
Aaron Fulan
Verdanturf Town, Hoenn Region
Six days after leaving Mauville, I was here and "here" took my breath away.
Verdanturf was a countryside paradise. It looked like one of those Danish villages I'd seen on postcards and travel magazines in my past life, with fields of flowers as far as the eye could see and bushes of succulent berries all along the roadside, just waiting for a passing soul to pick them. The air here was noticeably crisp, not just compared to Mauville, but even the route, as though several grass types acted as living air fresheners daily.
According to the PokéNav's guidebook, that was basically what was going on. Bellossom, the final form of oddish, were an unusually common sight here, the largest population of them outside a grass type reserve in Johto, and their naturally purifying properties were evident for all to experience.
Which, upon further reflection, raised an important question: Where were they getting sun stones? Was there some kind of giant sun stone somewhere nearby just like the giant moon stone on Mt. Moon? Did the local bellossom conduct some ritual of evolution once a year with a batch of new gloom? Or maybe there were trace minerals in the water that catalyzed this specific evolutionary path?
Strictly speaking, this wasn't like the games. A stone, or most evolutionary items I was familiar with for that matter, wasn't necessary for evolution. Otherwise, pokémon like oddish and bellsprout would have died out in the wild thanks to the simple fact that their most powerful forms were locked behind a giant scavenger hunt.
This was not so. Vileplume and bellossom weren't common, but nor were they nearly as rare in the wild as one would expect.
In this world unrestricted by a developer's programming logic, age and power were perfectly acceptable substitutes. In fact, some believed that a natural evolution was more powerful, claiming that the catalyzing effect of evolutionary items provided immediate benefits in exchange for long-term potential.
Evidence was… mixed… on that front. For example, Lance and Clair both had monstrously powerful kingdra and neither were "natural" evolutions, both having received dragon scales from one of the many dragonite that called Blackthorn home. Then again, those two were exceptionally powerful trainers. It could simply be that their kingdra were powerful in spite of their triggered evolution.
No matter the truth, the bellossom population here was far more numerous than expected. While it was true that pokémon with branching evolutionary paths were likely to evolve into forms they were most familiar with, usually whatever their parents or leaders in their communities were, the sheer quantity of bellossom in Verdanturf was abnormal.
'It has certainly done wonders for this town,' Artoria quipped. She let out a pleased sigh, practically dancing by anyone else's standards. 'If this is the result of too many of these flower dancers, perhaps we should all strive to cultivate more of them.'
'You like the air, huh?'
'I do. It has a refreshing aroma and even were I not a fan of the scent, many people are. Their uplifted mood is positively delicious.'
Saying so, she nudged an impression my way. For a moment, I felt my senses replaced by hers. Smell and taste blended seamlessly until I could hardly tell the two apart. The air quite literally tasted sweet and fruity, light with a bit of a bounce. If I had to tie an impression to it from my old life, I would liken it to Christmas morning as a child. It was the hope, the eager expectation, that anything could happen. If optimism could be distilled into a perfume, this would be it.
'This is wonderful. Is this what you taste when you feed off emotions?'
'Indeed, my lord. There is something delicious about this type of optimism. I think this type of flavor is my favorite even among all other positive emotions. The thrill of a new day is contagious.'
'So it is. I'll try to be more optimistic for you then,' I promised.
'There is no need for that, my liege. I assure you I am eating fine. Besides, trying to be what you are not would only taint the flavor.'
'Heh, my kirlia is a glutton even when it comes to emotions.'
'Hunger is the enemy,' she sniffed.
'Of course it is,' I smiled indulgently. 'Honestly, seeing you so happy makes me wonder if we should have stopped to catch a roselia for the team.'
'Hmm… I would not be opposed to a teammate who is florally inclined.'
'We'll see. If we meet one, it wouldn't be a bad idea. Grass is a criminally underestimated type.'
X
There were a few things I wanted to do in the town. To start, I had to go register for the pokémon contest. I still had four days, but I wanted to get that out of the way as soon as possible before going on my mega stone hunt. I didn't think Jeanne would forgive me if I forgot about it. The three of us walked to the wealthy north end of town and found the building. Really, it was impossible to miss.
The contest hall was honestly kind of ugly. It was a deep maroon color, which would have been fine, on its own, but it was also shaped like a military pillbox I'd seen in one of those WWII documentaries, or maybe one of those hilariously pointless duncecaps that seemingly every military dress uniform seemed to include. To either side were two fountains shaped like pokéballs so people could sit around while waiting for the show to start.
The interior was much better. It was a half-moon shape with the center area being taken up by a prominent stage that doubled as the battlefield. To the right of the stage was a set of three desks where the three judges would sit. Typically, those seats were taken by a prominent member of the hosting city or town, a member of the League, and a wildcard guest, oftentimes a veteran coordinator.
I walked up to the registration booth. Next to me, my mareep was literally glowing with excitement. I could even feel the hairs on my leg tingle and stand on end whenever I brushed past her. To my other side, Artoria had her spoon out and was rolling a marble of psychic energy around the rim, an exercise in control she did almost absentmindedly at this point.
"Hello, ma'am," I greeted the teller. She was a middle-aged woman whose nametag proclaimed her as a proud member of the local contest fan club. Larger contest halls had formalized staff, but I supposed that in a small town like this, volunteers were a great way to cut down on overhead costs.
"Hello, sweetie, are you here to register for the contest?"
"Mareep!" Jeanne bleated cheerfully, standing on two hooves and leaning against the booth. Her glowing tai wagged like a puppy's. "Reep!"
"Aww, she's adorable. Is she the one competing? Your kirlia is quite lovely as well."
"Yes, Jeanne, my mareep, has been looking forward to this all week."
I was in the process of handing her my dex when I heard a familiar voice shout behind me.
"You!"
"Hello, Drew," I said with a lazy wave. The green-haired boy was standing next to a tall, attractive girl with salmon-pink hair and intense blue eyes. Unlike the boy, her demeanor was filled with grace and poise. "Fancy seeing you here. Who's your friend?"
"You said you weren't competing!"
"I never said that."
"You did!"
"No, I said it'd be strange if Artoria won this contest since she isn't competing. Jeanne on the other hand, is quite thrilled at the prospect."
I took some small satisfaction in watching his eyebrow twitch as he tried to find a comeback. It was petty of me, he hadn't done anything egregiously wrong, but I couldn't find it in me to care overmuch. I wondered if frustration was an emotion Artoria could taste as well.
'I'd rather not, my lord,' she said dryly. 'Frustration tastes bitter and chalky. It is something that linger unpleasantly. Must you antagonize him?'
'It's funny?'
'And unknightly.'
'Fine, fine, you win. Would you like me to apologize?'
'No, my lord should not be so quick to bow his head. He was the one to give offense first. But nor should you continue to jab at what fragile dignity he has left.'
I stooped down a bit to scratch Artoria between her horns in that one place I knew she loved but would never admit to. It was always fun to feel her vibrate with indecision between shrugging off my hand or luxuriating in the sensation. 'Hehe, since when is my little knight so wise?'
'Hmph, I have always been wise. My lord is only now opening his eyes to the truth,' she sniffed, turning her nose up.
I chuckled and picked Artoria up, ignoring her embarrassed squirming. 'Well maybe you can help me see clearly from a better height.'
'Height jokes. How juvenile. I won't be small forever.'
'Don't worry, I'll still hug you even when you become a gardevoir.'
'That isn't what I meant and you know it.'
"You're doing it again!"
I turned back to him. For a few seconds, I'd completely forgotten he was here. "Oh, yeah? Sorry, guess I got lost in thought. My kirlia is adorable and hilarious. Anyway, Jeanne, my mareep, is competing."
"Che, no matter. My budew and I are going to take the win."
"We'll see, but it's not good to boast you know. You just end up sounding like a blowhard if you lose."
"That won't matter because I'll win."
"Then you'll sound like a smug jackass. Gracious in defeat, humble in victory, you know?"
"A friendly rivalry already? But you shouldn't count other contestants out," said the girl who came with Drew. She sent me a mature smile that made me curse my hormones. "Hello, my name is Solidad and this will be my third year as a coordinator."
"Solidad…"
'Is she someone you know, my lord?'
'Maybe…' I held out my hand for her to shake. "Aaron. That's an odd name. Are you not from Hoenn?"
"No, I'm from Pewter City in Kanto. Contests aren't as big there, but I wanted to be a coordinator ever since I saw one on TV so I've been traveling through Sinnoh for two years. I decided a change of scenery might be nice so here I am for the third."
"Wow, then I guess a normal-rank contest like this is going to be a piece of cake for you."
"I have an advantage, but that's no reason to not put your best foot forward. Raw power is much less important in a contest than in a gym battle, so it's possible for younger trainers to quickly overtake even a past victor," she encouraged. "I won my first ribbon from only the second contest I've ever been in."
"True enough, but now that means you have both experience and power."
"I'm glad you think highly of me, but remember that I'm competing at this rank because I don't yet qualify for a higher one. That's partially because Hoenn did not recognize my credentials from Johto, but I do have to be honest and say that I have much to learn."
"In any case, Jeanne and I will be working hard to master our routine."
"Then I'll look forward to a challenge."
We parted on good terms. Solidad was the polar opposite of Drew. She was a woman who'd long since become accustomed to the trainer's life and had a wealth of experience to back her. Speaking to her jogged my memories a bit. I remembered her as a famous coordinator during May's time, someone who'd become a mentor for both her and Zoe. It meant that whatever her struggles in the past few years, she would likely become a Grand Coordinator in the near future.
Speaking of famous coordinators, I was reminded of Lisia, the closest thing the pokémon world had to a pop idol. She said she would travel to Lilycove to compete in her first contest and I wondered how she was doing.
'Perhaps she would appreciate a call, my lord?'
'You think so?'
'I find her company far more pleasant than this Drew fellow.'
'You and me both.'
X
In another half hour, the three of us found ourselves in our room in the pokémon center. The PokéNav rang for all of four seconds before the call went through. My vision was filled with fluffy white clouds as Ali pecked at the screen curiously.
"Ali, stop that," I heard Lisia chide before the blue songbird was lifted into the air and her smiling face took up the screen. She fumbled in her breast pocket before extracting a familiar case. "Hey, Aaron! Look what I've got!"
In her hands was what I'd expected, her first contest ribbon. It was a brass shield with a crown that held in place a ribbon of blue bubbles framed in green. Like badges, the real record was kept digitally, just in case she lost the thing, but it still made for an impressive trophy.
"I thought you might have that," I said with a soft smile, "and from your first contest ever. Congratulations. Only two more until you qualify for super-ranks, right?"
"Mou! You can't do the all-knowing psychic thing!"
"I told you, I don't have the Sight."
"Then why aren't you more surprised?" she pouted cutely.
"What can I say, I have an eye for talent. I really do think you're the most likely person to dethrone your uncle. Just call it a gut feeling, hmm?"
"T-Thanks," she stammered. For all her enthusiasm, she was still a teenager and I didn't know a single one that could take a compliment without embarrassment. She hastily changed the subject. "Well, are you ready for Verdanturf? That's in four days, right?"
"We are," I nodded firmly. "I don't know if we'll win, but Jeanne and I will give it the ol' college try."
"But you're not in college, silly."
"Yeah, I'm not sure where the phrase comes from either now that you mention it. Anyway, are you still in Lilycove?"
"Uh-huh. Ali and I've been hanging around at home, but we're going to visit the Safari Zone in a bit before heading to Fortree City. I can't wait to see all the cool flying types there!"
"Hmm, still in Lilycove? You're not getting lazy now that you've won a ribbon, are you?" I teased.
"I'm not, you meanie! Mom's just really good at making me want to stay, alright? She makes these really good cream puffs and every time I want to leave, she bribes Ali with her favorite poffins. It's unfair."
"Of course. Truly a formidable woman. Why Fortree though? Do they have a contest hall I don't know about?"
She shrugged. "Kind of… Their annual Feather Carnival is coming up. I heard Leader Winona is going to be performing a special sky dance with her altaria so Ali and I wanted to go check it out. You know, get some tips from a real pro. There's also an amateur contest that's not really sponsored and only for flying types but it'd be cool to win it."
"Yeah, that sounds pretty sweet. Anyway, it was nice talking to you, but I'm going to go train while I still have some daylight left."
"Yeah, keep in touch, Aaron! Bye!"
The signal winked out, leaving me alone with my two pokémon. I stood and gestured to my team. "Shall we?"
X
"KIIRRRLLLIIIAAAA!" My little knight-in-training let out a valiant (adorable) roar as she rushed forward with Mana Burst, turning into a comet of bite-sized aggression and determination. Her normally blue-clad spoon was shrouded in deep, mist-like violet that left a trail of sinister light in her wake.
Her attack struck the thick tree trunk she'd chosen to practice against with significant force, tearing a wicked gouge into the bark roughly four inches deep. Unfortunately, it was the silver of the spoon rather than the phantasmal aura of ghost types that did most of the work. The aura shattered on contact with the trunk, dispersing like a flame scattered in the wind.
She returned to her starting point and took up her ready stance.
'Artoria, dear, maybe you should stop,' I suggested gently. This was her first major bottleneck since we began traveling. Everything came to her easily. She was a natural with the blade, possessed of both monstrous talent and single-minded dedication to the art. She was the ideal student; I couldn't imagine a more perfect pupil in that regard. Even fashioning custom moves using psychic energy was a minor challenge at best for her.
And then there was Shadow Sneak. Ghost type aura fucked with psychics; everyone knew that. But it wasn't as though the two were truly incompatible. If I had to describe it, the contrast was more an alienness in their way of thought rather than any fundamentally unreconcilable difference. The mind and soul were intrinsically linked after all, and the majority of fully evolved ghost and psychics could learn moves from the other's type. Hell, the fact that a gallade could pass on Shadow Sneak as an inherited move to a ralts proved my point.
But that alienness of thought was proving to be a major obstacle for my little knight. Ghosts were stealthy. Ghosts were spiritual. Ghosts were entities who embodied the intangible and unknowable. Artoria was direct and honest. Artoria turned her great mental affinity towards refining her body and technique. Ghosts were everything Artoria wasn't.
And it showed.
She began by trying to sink into her own shadow as the move demanded but decided to stop that when we found it took her a full fifteen seconds, an eternity in battle. Instead of trying to shroud her entire body, we decided to simply work on the physical aspect, sticking only to her spoon. Even then, keeping up the enhancement for a decisive strike was proving to be a challenge.
'I will master this move before the day is through,' she swore.
'I don't doubt you will, but not today.'
'This is the move passed down from my sire. I must-'
'Artoria, come here,' I spoke firmly, giving our mental bond a sharp tug. I seldom snapped at her, but it was necessary. The trouble with training-nuts was that they just didn't know when to quit. She trudged to my side, her expression mulish. I patted my lap and she sat down without her usual complaint.
The two of us watched Jeanne train. My little lamb had taken to making only a few Cotton Spores at a time, launching them into the air before nailing them with a low-powered Thunder Shock to light them up while working on her accuracy. She was improving, turning Cotton Spore form an indiscriminate attack to something… not precise perhaps, but more directed.
I absentmindedly brushed my partner's emerald locks into place.
'It shouldn't be this hard,' Artoria said. I could feel her self-flagellation through the bond. Shame. Frustration. The impression that she was letting me down somehow.
'It should be this hard,' I chided gently. 'You know ghost type moves will always be hard for a psychic.'
'I am not other psychics.'
'No, you're my little knight. You can already teleport in combat. Sinking into shadows would be useful, but it's not a critical need. Take it slower.'
'At least the weapon enhancement… How else will I strike down phantoms?'
'That will come in time. Be patient. In fact, I'm forbidding you from swinging your sword again for the rest of the day.'
She whirled indignantly. 'But-!'
I squashed her hair down. It was convenient having hands big enough to grip her head like a baseball. 'Listen,' I chided. 'You're going to stop swinging that spoon around like a berserker. All you're doing is tiring yourself out. Instead, sit with me. Meditate. Try to channel ghost type aura into your spoon and refine it. If you accustom yourself to having it, it might last longer.'
'I… Perhaps you're right, my lord.'
'Good. Have you noticed that trail of aura you leave behind every time you swing?'
'Yes.'
'Well, while it looks cool, it's proof that you're wasting your aura. Condense it. Focus on holding it in place and shaping it to become an edge around the spoon.'
'As you say, my lord.'
'You'll get this, Artoria. I believe in you.'
She looked at me with newfound determination before settling onto her knees, her sword on her lap. 'I will not let you down.'
With Jeanne refining her contest routine and Artoria in meditation, I had a rare moment to myself. I pulled out my bokken and began to practice. Over a month away from home had given me back some of my stamina, but it'd be up to me to drill in the muscle memory I remembered from my past life. Between sword practice, sorting my memories, physical conditioning, and training my team, I had a daunting schedule.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Author's Note
Why Solidad? Because I feel like no one gives famous coordinators enough screentime in fics.
The Feather Carnival is an actual thing in canon.
Glad to see this back, it's so good.
2.4 Salad
Fabled Webs
Lord Weaver, Glorious and Wise
- Location
- Arlington, VA
Salad 2.4
Aaron Fulan
Verdanturf Town, Hoenn Region
My alarm rang. I woke up. I opened my eyes and my world remained dark. There was a warm, sweaty weight over my face that I found distinctly unpleasant. I reached up to wipe it off and my fingers sank deeply into Jeanne's wool. I grumbled as I rolled my soggy lamb off my face.
"Must you sleep on my face, Jeanne?" I asked as I tried to wipe the sweat from my face. Jeanne didn't sweat; ovines didn't have any sweat glands. I sure as hell did though and spending the night with a warm, wool pillow over my face left me drenched. That, and wet wool just didn't smell nice.
"Maaa," she bleated. It sounded distinctly like a chortle.
"You're lucky I don't shave you bald."
"Maareep."
I couldn't understand precisely what she said, but I could recognize snark when it was given. If I did shave her, she'd probably grow it back that very day out of spite. I reached over and gave her nose a chiding flick. In the end, I decided a shower could wait until after our morning run and turned to wake Artoria.
My starter had acquired another pillow from the pokémon center staff and claimed it like a conquering hero. Or a dragon. Artoria was draconic, right? I couldn't quite remember, but mine certainly seemed that way with her gluttony sometimes. She slept on that pillow like Smaug on his hoard, unwilling to let even a single coin out of sight. Her green bangs were splayed over her face, rising and falling with her breath.
"Artoria, wake up," I nudged.
"Kii…" she mumbled. It wasn't even a fully formed thought, just the first rumblings of consciousness.
Honestly, I wondered how someone could both be so diligent and so against mornings. It took her several minutes to wake up properly, but once roused, I knew she'd train herself into the ground with a smile. She didn't work hard to play hard; she worked hard so she could work even harder. In that light, perhaps her love of food and sleep made some sense.
If I were an anime character, I'd probably have Jeanne jolt her awake for comedic effect. Rather than force the issue, I instead picked her up, pillow-bed and all, and began to walk outside. The rhythmic rocking of my footsteps slowly started to coax her from Cresselia's realm.
I led Jeanne to the canteen. Like most places in Verdanturf, there was an abundance of flowers even indoors. One entire wall was dedicated to planters and flowerpots tended by an energetic bellossom. Only a few of them were herbs I recognized. In fact, I doubted more than half of these were edible at all; a fair number seemed to only be there for the aroma. Truly, the town was a flower enthusiast's paradise and an allergic's worst nightmare.
I got in line to grab a light breakfast, yogurt and granola to tide us over until lunch. Jeanne happily settled for grass supplements made of hay, local foliage, dried berries, and bamboo shoots. As for Artoria, seeing how she was currently in no position to claim her food, I decided to get her what I was getting.
"Aww, your kirlia is just waking up. She's sooo cuutttee~" I heard a voice croon behind me. It belonged to a chubby lunch lady… or was it breakfast lady? She was pushing along a cart full of more breakfast goodies to stock the self-serve station. There were usual staples like sausage and scrambled eggs, but I noticed that a disproportionate amount of dishes were vegetarian or vegan, all the better to show off the season's harvest. As I'd read, Verdanturf had a long history of agriculture, particularly orchards, and they were justly proud of it.
That did it. Artoria was wide awake. Her eyes snapped open and she reached inside the pillowcase as though drawing Caliburn from its rocky sheath. She teleported to the ground and slung her spoon over her shoulder before strutting stiffly by my side, ready to conquer her ever-distant utopia.
"Hehe, thanks for waking her. She's pretty bad at getting up in the morning but she really hates being called cute."
"Aww, why?"
'It is unknightly,' I heard my partner grumble in my mind.
"She's a very proud pokémon. She doesn't even like letting me carry her normally."
"Well, I think she's adorable."
"Me too. Her pouting just makes her cuter. Thanks for breakfast, ma'am."
"Oh, you three are very welcome."
After breakfast, we briefly dropped by our room to put Artoria's pillow back before heading out for a jog. In the games, three mega stones could be acquired in Verdanturf: the mawilite, pidgeotite, and gardevoirite.
The mawilite was somewhere in the wild, buried in the southeast edge of town, just bordering Route 117. The pidgeotite was given by a girl who didn't know what she was holding in exchange for finding her lost shroomish. If there was a more lopsided trade in the setting, I didn't know of it. The gardevoirite was given by Wanda, Wally's cousin who lived to the southwest, for clearing a path through Rusturf Tunnel. She also had access to a galladite if I remembered right, but it was reserved for her shy cousin.
Assuming Wanda did not have the gardevoirite somewhere in her cabinet already, it seemed like a fair assumption to say that she found it somewhere near her house in the southern part of town, if not past its outer limits. The problem was, it was only available after the player captured Groudon or Kyogre. Was that a quirk of game development or was it something more mystical?
If mystical, it would most stones were unavailable to me and would remain so for years. It would also suggest that some sort of energy resonance existed between the Land, Sea, Sky, and these mysterious relics… which in hindsight wouldn't be too surprising considering Rayquaza was the only pokémon who didn't need a partnered human to mega evolve.
I certainly hoped this wasn't the case, otherwise I'd be spending a lot of time here for nothing.
But just to be thorough, if I couldn't find it in Verdanturf, I'd be forced to pay a visit to Petalburg to see if I'd have more luck in Wally's neck of the woods. And then Rustboro after that.
Since both the mawilite and gardevoirite were in the south, as far as I knew, that was where we would begin our search. I planned to do a grid-pattern jog through the southern half of town for the next few days to see if Artoria could sense the fairy type aura.
I was practically salivating at the thought of not just gardevoirite, but mawilite as well. And if I was particularly fortunate, a pidgeotite, though Artoria couldn't search for that one.
I was brought out of my musings by my partner. 'Did you have to carry me, my lord?'
'I wanted you to have as much time in bed as possible. You do like to cozy up for a bit before you really get focused. Just be glad I didn't have Jeanne jolt you awake.'
'I think I'd prefer the shock,' she grumbled. 'A knight should not be ferried by her lord.'
'Don't worry about what is and is not "knightly." It's got nothing to do with being a good swordsman anyway.' It was an old argument between us. I felt that Artoria placed far too much value in the code of chivalry, perhaps even to her detriment.
'My father-'
'Quinn adheres to the knight's code because he decided to after traveling, growing, and experiencing the world. To him, that code isn't just something he read in a book; it's something he developed and internalized for himself after pondering over right and wrong, justice and injustice. Quinn is a knight because his experiences forged him into a knight.'
'Then surely it is a code worth following.'
'It is,' I agreed. I waved as we passed a fruit stand that had just started to open. 'For him. A code of ethics is truly valuable when you wholeheartedly believe in it, not just in your head or because you were taught, but because you have experiential knowledge that shaped your identity to follow said code. That's why this journey is so important, Artoria. Not just because it will make you a better swordsman, but because it will help you discover yourself.'
'If… If you say so, my lord. I don't know where to start. How does one discover oneself?'
'Slowly, with patience, diligence, and an open mind. It's going to be a lot of work, but that's okay. Baby steps. Now look alive and see if you notice any fairy or psychic type aura.'
'Yes!'
To neither of our surprise, we found nothing but false positives. There was a brief moment when Artoria thought she might have felt something, but it turned out to be a girl and her snubbull practicing Charm in her backyard. Several times, natu, spoink, and even an espeon managed to fool her senses. That was fine. The jog was more about eliminating where the mega stones weren't so we could narrow down possibilities rather than actually finding the stones.
After our jog, the three of us split to do our individual training. Jeanne practiced her routine, trying to make her spores more targeted. Artoria meditated more on her sword and the nature of ghost type energy. When she got bored of that, she watched over Jeanne's practice and tried to predict which spores would land where in an attempt to hone her precognition.
As for me, I settled in my best approximation of a meditative posture next to her. It was time to work on my lackluster psychic affinity.
Psychic energy was… interesting.
Back home, one of mom's gym trainers held free guided meditation sessions every evening for anyone who wanted to drop by. It was almost disgustingly, stereotypically hippie. Deep breaths, incense sticks, ASMR background noises, the whole shebang.
I attended a few of those sessions before and found it to be more or less what I expected. Breathe in. Out. Clear the mind. Way back when I was six, I asked her why we hosted sessions like this. She told me that it was a good way to find hidden talent, and just as important, find those who might be willing and interested in developing said talent.
It was also unfortunately as much description as was generally possible when guiding others to train. After all, how did one describe something where physical sensations were totally absent?
Fortunately, I had a fellow psychic to guide me. This was the major reason why psychics grew exponentially faster when in the company of other psychics. Experience and example could succeed where words fell short. The bond between Artoria and I was an ever-pulsing source of warmth in my mind. It spoke of loyalty and love, passion and ambition.
It was this bond I used as my guiding light. Or perhaps, the better description was that of a whetstone to sharpen my own mind against.
Little by little, I could feel my mind adapting, slowly changing to fill in the blanks of all those lessons I'd failed to grasp with mom. It was an agonizingly slow process, like trying to wear down marble using a single sheet of sandpaper, but I hoped to one day be capable of all the things Artoria could do.
We stayed in our separate routines until lunch. The pokémon center canteen provided us a healthy meal of fruit salad, chicken, and some kind of bread that reminded me of sourdough. Pokémon could be consumed for food, and often enough were, but the pokémon center refrained for obvious reasons. The lunch was a simple, healthy fare that Jeanne supplemented with some newly sprouted shoots of grass.
That was another oddity I'd noticed about having a sheep pokémon to take care of: She chewed cud. For hours. She chewed cud while she practiced. She chewed while we jogged. Sometimes, I thought she chewed even while she napped. It wasn't disruptive or anything, but I wondered if it was okay for her to be doing this while training.
When I asked, the nurse laughed and handed Jeanne some kind of plant-based jerky. It smelled of fresh hay, fibrous mushrooms, and some kind of flower I couldn't quite place. She took one bite and literally lit up like a light bulb with delight. "Oh, don't worry about that. That's perfectly normal among bovine and ovine pokémon. Miltank, tauros, wooloo, and dubwool all do it too. It's because they have multi-chambered stomachs and regurgitate food to chew. It helps them get more nutrients out of their meals."
"Huh. I mean, I think I've read about cows doing that, but never thought pokémon similar to them had the same habit."
"Pokémon share a lot of biological traits with their more animalistic counterparts. For example, a treecko's fingers look remarkably similar to a gecko's under a microscope. Though pokémon have seemingly miraculous powers, that doesn't mean natural selection for optimal biological phenotypes isn't a thing. In fact, some pokémon share similar instincts to their duller cousins such as a desire to build nests in certain places, confront predators a certain way, that sort of thing."
"That sounds like a fascinating field of study," I told her sincerely. I was never much of a scholar, but I knew there were plenty of engineers and biologists who made a career of cross-disciplinary studies, drawing inspiration for machine designs by observing biology. Biomimicry, it was called. It made sense that in the pokémon world, scientists would sometimes compare pokémon and standard animal evolution to discern parallels. "Is it okay for her to train while chewing though? I don't need to wait a full four hours for her to fully digest her meals, do I?"
She snorted daintily. "Four hours? Try the whole day. Pokémon and animals that chew cud do it for most of the day. But don't worry, it won't have any negative effects on her training. It's something they do that's almost as instinctual as breathing."
"Oh, that's convenient. Thank you nurse."
"No problem. It's great to see young people interested in biology, even if only to make sure their pokémon are doing well."
After lunch, the three of us found ourselves wandering the south side of the town once more, hoping to get a hint as to the location of the mega stones. Verdanturf was small in population, but like many rural towns, once you got outside the town center, which consisted of buildings of municipal importance and a small business district, buildings tended to spread themselves out noticeably. The town covered a bigger geographic area than one might expect and it was taking some time to scan the whole thing.
I wasn't complaining though. It really was a beautiful place and watching volbeat and illumise flirt with one another over a garden of flowers was oddly soothing. We were halfway through the section of town I'd parsed out for the day when we came across the Verdant Meadows Trainers' School.
That alone wouldn't have drawn my eye if not for the sceptile and shiftry locking Leaf Blades.
Unova had battle clubs sponsored by some veteran-turned-entrepreneur called Don George. They were basically YMCAs from my past life, except dedicated to pokémon battling and hardcore workouts. Weights, wave pools, treadmills. Whatever a pokémon might conceivably need to get stronger, they had them.
Most other regions had far more modest arrangements. The majority of pokémon centers had at least one battlefield where traveling trainers could network and test each other for fun or quick cash. It was often not enough. There just wasn't enough room for everyone to battle, especially with a team of six, so people often looked for other solutions.
In less notable towns like Verdanturf with fewer travelers, it was often the trainer schools that were the stars of the training scene. Locals and rangers often availed themselves of the facilities after classes were finished for the day.
This connected up and coming trainers with the local community and gave students the chance to see different types of trainers and learn more about their career paths from those currently in the field. If a kid was especially lucky and caught the right eye, even a starter or a more formal internship wasn't out of the question.
That certainly explained why two fully evolved pokémon were duking it out in a school meant for little tykes. But the nuances of human social circles and pseudo career fairs weren't of any interest to Artoria.
'My lord, look! Look!' she shouted excitedly in my mind. The bond practically oozed delight as she watched two "swordsmen" clash. She swung her spoon around, miming some of the slashes the sceptile performed. Her vocalizations were just "Kirlia-kir-kirlia," but that was enough to get several people to turn around.
I got to see her flush with embarrassment, but even that wasn't enough to quell her enthusiasm. She rushed off to the bleachers for ringside seats.
Judging by their uniforms, both trainers were rangers here to spar during their off time, or perhaps a teacher had called in a favor to hold a demonstration for the students. The sceptile's partner was a woman in her late twenties and a large, ten-gallon hat to beat the sun. The shiftry's partner was a man of about the same age who fiddled with a whistle around his neck. They both wore mirror smirks.
The sceptile and shiftry were evenly matched, or near enough that it wasn't immediately obvious which was the better fighter. The sceptile was noticeably faster. It used a mix of Quick Attack, Leaf Blade, and Double Team to seemingly strike from every direction at once. The ranger had obviously worked hard on training her partner, because it could even use Quick Attack in midair to change directions by "double-jumping" like a videogame character.
If I got a pokémon who could learn that, I as going to call it Geppo for sure.
The shiftry was also blisteringly fast, but slower in comparison. It made up for that by using its entire body and more to fight. Its wild, silver mane shone in the light as it whipped its head around, lashing it like a whip. That same turn became a full-body rotation, sending an aura-clad foot through one clone's head. Since nothing stopped its momentum, its fanned fingers came down in a wide arc, whipping up a flurry of wind blades around itself.
"Air Slash? The kick… Mega Kick? Leaf Blade with the other hand obviously… What's making its mane spiky?" I wondered.
"Harden," a man spoke up next to me. I was so caught up in the show that I didn't see him arrive. He wore a green polo with the school logo on his left breast and khaki shorts. He also had a truly spectacular beard-fro that made his jaw look large enough to swallow a melon. I hadn't realized I had spoken aloud.
"Ah, you're right. A seedot learns it naturally, right?"
"That's right, young man. It's impressive that you could identify the Mega Kick though. Most people don't know shiftry can learn that one."
"I'm guessing that's because most shiftry don't bother fighting with their feet."
"Yup. Most shiftry fight using their blades and hurricane-force winds at range."
"But how can a shiftry know Harden? I get that seedot learn it naturally because they're seeds and all, but… It doesn't make sense that they'd keep the move even after evolution."
"You'd normally be right. It's not unusual for pokémon to change their movesets as they evolve to suit their newfound bodies, or simply to replace a weaker move with a more advanced, powerful variant. For example, a poliwag is actually oftentimes better at using Hypnosis than a politoed because of the way its stomach pattern becomes less pronounced upon evolution."
I turned to face him fully. Artoria could watch the two swordsmen. This guy was fascinating. "I'm assuming that 'normally' isn't 'always.'"
"Of course not. Few things concerning pokémon are truly absolute. A pokémon can sometimes retain their prior evolution's moves through either circumstance or training. In the case of the politoed example, it might use an auditory illusion to put its opponents in a trance instead of a purely visual one. It's difficult to train, but I've seen it done.
"That shiftry over there? It retained Harden through a whole lot of practice until it could harden its mane on the fly to use as a whip. It's not quite as effective as an Iron Tail, but it's good for turning away lighter assaults. Ranger Calico is pretty well-known in certain circles for creative training methos with extraordinary results like that."
"Ranger Calico, huh? I'll have to see if I can talk to him. Is it hard getting a pokémon to use a different move in each limb? Mega Kick. Leaf Blade. Air Slash."
"Very. It's definitely a lot more advanced than you're likely to see from your average trainer. It might not eve be worthwhile because it necessitates that each move is weaker. Multitasking like that is only really useful if your pokémon has the right temperament, combat style, and a wide range of move choices. Otherwise, it might just be a waste of time."
"Jack of all trades, master of none. It's still worth thinking about. Thanks, Mr…"
"Mr. Thrush. I teach pokémon evolutionary theory here. Nice to meet you, kid. You coming in from 117?"
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
He chuckled mirthlessly. "Something out west has been stirring up the whismur in Rusturf Tunnel. The whole area's been cordoned off by the rangers because of it. If you were planning on heading west to Rustboro, you're going to have to take the long way around the mountain."
I clicked my tongue. "Crap. Alright, that's good to know."
"Your kirlia looks like she's enjoying herself. Now is that spoon meant to be a psychic focus or a club?"
"Why not both? Artoria's a bit odd. She refuses to use any ranged attacks whatsoever until she becomes a powerful knight."
"She knows that-"
"That she can't become a gallade? Yup. She wants to be like her dad though, so I decided to teach her kendo and adopt Confusion into a physical move."
"Hoh? You're already making custom moves? Ambitious, aren't you?"
I smiled winningly at him. "Yup. Artoria's already a stellar swordsman and she's very light on her feet. Really what she's missing is the psychic power that comes with being a gardevoir but that'll come in time."
"Most people would say that's a waste of potential for a gardevoir."
"Most people are idiots. Pokémon really live up to their potential when they find what they're passionate about. People too. You wouldn't tell a kid he has to be a farmer just 'cause he's got a green thumb if he says he wants to be a doctor, right? Why wouldn't it be the same for pokémon?"
"Heh, well said, kid. I like you; you seem like a kid with his head on straight. You here for a battle?"
"Not particularly. I just happened to get drawn in by those two over there."
"Well how 'bout a job then? If you come back tomorrow morning, you can go a few rounds with my students. Win or lose, I'll pay you 100 LC per battle."
I considered it. At about $10 per battle, it wasn't a bad deal, especially since students wouldn't be expected to give me any prize money. On the field, the battle was wrapping up. The sceptile had pulled out a Dual Chop, using the raw power of draconic aura to rip through the shiftry's wind-based defenses. After that, a single, well-placed Leaf Blade ended it all.
"What do you think, Jeanne, Artoria?"
"Kir?"
"Maa?"
I explained to them the offer. "We can have a lighter jog in the morning then come here to battle."
'Wouldn't that mean it would take longer to scan the town for my mega stone?' Artoria asked. She didn't say it, but she was almost pouting.
'We can do a quick jog in the evening to stay on schedule.'
'Then I have no objections, my lord. Instructing the next generation is also a worthy cause.'
'Hehe, "next generation" already? My, how you've grown.'
'You know what I meant.'
"We'll take it," I told the teacher.
"Happy doing business with you…"
"Oh, sorry. It's Aaron, Mr. Thrush."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow morning. 9 AM."
Author's Note
Fabled's random animal fact: Sheep, cows, pigs, and goats do not sweat. However, horses do, making them the odd ones out in this grouping of farm animals.
Aaron Fulan
Verdanturf Town, Hoenn Region
My alarm rang. I woke up. I opened my eyes and my world remained dark. There was a warm, sweaty weight over my face that I found distinctly unpleasant. I reached up to wipe it off and my fingers sank deeply into Jeanne's wool. I grumbled as I rolled my soggy lamb off my face.
"Must you sleep on my face, Jeanne?" I asked as I tried to wipe the sweat from my face. Jeanne didn't sweat; ovines didn't have any sweat glands. I sure as hell did though and spending the night with a warm, wool pillow over my face left me drenched. That, and wet wool just didn't smell nice.
"Maaa," she bleated. It sounded distinctly like a chortle.
"You're lucky I don't shave you bald."
"Maareep."
I couldn't understand precisely what she said, but I could recognize snark when it was given. If I did shave her, she'd probably grow it back that very day out of spite. I reached over and gave her nose a chiding flick. In the end, I decided a shower could wait until after our morning run and turned to wake Artoria.
My starter had acquired another pillow from the pokémon center staff and claimed it like a conquering hero. Or a dragon. Artoria was draconic, right? I couldn't quite remember, but mine certainly seemed that way with her gluttony sometimes. She slept on that pillow like Smaug on his hoard, unwilling to let even a single coin out of sight. Her green bangs were splayed over her face, rising and falling with her breath.
"Artoria, wake up," I nudged.
"Kii…" she mumbled. It wasn't even a fully formed thought, just the first rumblings of consciousness.
Honestly, I wondered how someone could both be so diligent and so against mornings. It took her several minutes to wake up properly, but once roused, I knew she'd train herself into the ground with a smile. She didn't work hard to play hard; she worked hard so she could work even harder. In that light, perhaps her love of food and sleep made some sense.
If I were an anime character, I'd probably have Jeanne jolt her awake for comedic effect. Rather than force the issue, I instead picked her up, pillow-bed and all, and began to walk outside. The rhythmic rocking of my footsteps slowly started to coax her from Cresselia's realm.
I led Jeanne to the canteen. Like most places in Verdanturf, there was an abundance of flowers even indoors. One entire wall was dedicated to planters and flowerpots tended by an energetic bellossom. Only a few of them were herbs I recognized. In fact, I doubted more than half of these were edible at all; a fair number seemed to only be there for the aroma. Truly, the town was a flower enthusiast's paradise and an allergic's worst nightmare.
I got in line to grab a light breakfast, yogurt and granola to tide us over until lunch. Jeanne happily settled for grass supplements made of hay, local foliage, dried berries, and bamboo shoots. As for Artoria, seeing how she was currently in no position to claim her food, I decided to get her what I was getting.
"Aww, your kirlia is just waking up. She's sooo cuutttee~" I heard a voice croon behind me. It belonged to a chubby lunch lady… or was it breakfast lady? She was pushing along a cart full of more breakfast goodies to stock the self-serve station. There were usual staples like sausage and scrambled eggs, but I noticed that a disproportionate amount of dishes were vegetarian or vegan, all the better to show off the season's harvest. As I'd read, Verdanturf had a long history of agriculture, particularly orchards, and they were justly proud of it.
That did it. Artoria was wide awake. Her eyes snapped open and she reached inside the pillowcase as though drawing Caliburn from its rocky sheath. She teleported to the ground and slung her spoon over her shoulder before strutting stiffly by my side, ready to conquer her ever-distant utopia.
"Hehe, thanks for waking her. She's pretty bad at getting up in the morning but she really hates being called cute."
"Aww, why?"
'It is unknightly,' I heard my partner grumble in my mind.
"She's a very proud pokémon. She doesn't even like letting me carry her normally."
"Well, I think she's adorable."
"Me too. Her pouting just makes her cuter. Thanks for breakfast, ma'am."
"Oh, you three are very welcome."
After breakfast, we briefly dropped by our room to put Artoria's pillow back before heading out for a jog. In the games, three mega stones could be acquired in Verdanturf: the mawilite, pidgeotite, and gardevoirite.
The mawilite was somewhere in the wild, buried in the southeast edge of town, just bordering Route 117. The pidgeotite was given by a girl who didn't know what she was holding in exchange for finding her lost shroomish. If there was a more lopsided trade in the setting, I didn't know of it. The gardevoirite was given by Wanda, Wally's cousin who lived to the southwest, for clearing a path through Rusturf Tunnel. She also had access to a galladite if I remembered right, but it was reserved for her shy cousin.
Assuming Wanda did not have the gardevoirite somewhere in her cabinet already, it seemed like a fair assumption to say that she found it somewhere near her house in the southern part of town, if not past its outer limits. The problem was, it was only available after the player captured Groudon or Kyogre. Was that a quirk of game development or was it something more mystical?
If mystical, it would most stones were unavailable to me and would remain so for years. It would also suggest that some sort of energy resonance existed between the Land, Sea, Sky, and these mysterious relics… which in hindsight wouldn't be too surprising considering Rayquaza was the only pokémon who didn't need a partnered human to mega evolve.
I certainly hoped this wasn't the case, otherwise I'd be spending a lot of time here for nothing.
But just to be thorough, if I couldn't find it in Verdanturf, I'd be forced to pay a visit to Petalburg to see if I'd have more luck in Wally's neck of the woods. And then Rustboro after that.
Since both the mawilite and gardevoirite were in the south, as far as I knew, that was where we would begin our search. I planned to do a grid-pattern jog through the southern half of town for the next few days to see if Artoria could sense the fairy type aura.
I was practically salivating at the thought of not just gardevoirite, but mawilite as well. And if I was particularly fortunate, a pidgeotite, though Artoria couldn't search for that one.
I was brought out of my musings by my partner. 'Did you have to carry me, my lord?'
'I wanted you to have as much time in bed as possible. You do like to cozy up for a bit before you really get focused. Just be glad I didn't have Jeanne jolt you awake.'
'I think I'd prefer the shock,' she grumbled. 'A knight should not be ferried by her lord.'
'Don't worry about what is and is not "knightly." It's got nothing to do with being a good swordsman anyway.' It was an old argument between us. I felt that Artoria placed far too much value in the code of chivalry, perhaps even to her detriment.
'My father-'
'Quinn adheres to the knight's code because he decided to after traveling, growing, and experiencing the world. To him, that code isn't just something he read in a book; it's something he developed and internalized for himself after pondering over right and wrong, justice and injustice. Quinn is a knight because his experiences forged him into a knight.'
'Then surely it is a code worth following.'
'It is,' I agreed. I waved as we passed a fruit stand that had just started to open. 'For him. A code of ethics is truly valuable when you wholeheartedly believe in it, not just in your head or because you were taught, but because you have experiential knowledge that shaped your identity to follow said code. That's why this journey is so important, Artoria. Not just because it will make you a better swordsman, but because it will help you discover yourself.'
'If… If you say so, my lord. I don't know where to start. How does one discover oneself?'
'Slowly, with patience, diligence, and an open mind. It's going to be a lot of work, but that's okay. Baby steps. Now look alive and see if you notice any fairy or psychic type aura.'
'Yes!'
To neither of our surprise, we found nothing but false positives. There was a brief moment when Artoria thought she might have felt something, but it turned out to be a girl and her snubbull practicing Charm in her backyard. Several times, natu, spoink, and even an espeon managed to fool her senses. That was fine. The jog was more about eliminating where the mega stones weren't so we could narrow down possibilities rather than actually finding the stones.
After our jog, the three of us split to do our individual training. Jeanne practiced her routine, trying to make her spores more targeted. Artoria meditated more on her sword and the nature of ghost type energy. When she got bored of that, she watched over Jeanne's practice and tried to predict which spores would land where in an attempt to hone her precognition.
As for me, I settled in my best approximation of a meditative posture next to her. It was time to work on my lackluster psychic affinity.
Psychic energy was… interesting.
Back home, one of mom's gym trainers held free guided meditation sessions every evening for anyone who wanted to drop by. It was almost disgustingly, stereotypically hippie. Deep breaths, incense sticks, ASMR background noises, the whole shebang.
I attended a few of those sessions before and found it to be more or less what I expected. Breathe in. Out. Clear the mind. Way back when I was six, I asked her why we hosted sessions like this. She told me that it was a good way to find hidden talent, and just as important, find those who might be willing and interested in developing said talent.
It was also unfortunately as much description as was generally possible when guiding others to train. After all, how did one describe something where physical sensations were totally absent?
Fortunately, I had a fellow psychic to guide me. This was the major reason why psychics grew exponentially faster when in the company of other psychics. Experience and example could succeed where words fell short. The bond between Artoria and I was an ever-pulsing source of warmth in my mind. It spoke of loyalty and love, passion and ambition.
It was this bond I used as my guiding light. Or perhaps, the better description was that of a whetstone to sharpen my own mind against.
Little by little, I could feel my mind adapting, slowly changing to fill in the blanks of all those lessons I'd failed to grasp with mom. It was an agonizingly slow process, like trying to wear down marble using a single sheet of sandpaper, but I hoped to one day be capable of all the things Artoria could do.
We stayed in our separate routines until lunch. The pokémon center canteen provided us a healthy meal of fruit salad, chicken, and some kind of bread that reminded me of sourdough. Pokémon could be consumed for food, and often enough were, but the pokémon center refrained for obvious reasons. The lunch was a simple, healthy fare that Jeanne supplemented with some newly sprouted shoots of grass.
That was another oddity I'd noticed about having a sheep pokémon to take care of: She chewed cud. For hours. She chewed cud while she practiced. She chewed while we jogged. Sometimes, I thought she chewed even while she napped. It wasn't disruptive or anything, but I wondered if it was okay for her to be doing this while training.
When I asked, the nurse laughed and handed Jeanne some kind of plant-based jerky. It smelled of fresh hay, fibrous mushrooms, and some kind of flower I couldn't quite place. She took one bite and literally lit up like a light bulb with delight. "Oh, don't worry about that. That's perfectly normal among bovine and ovine pokémon. Miltank, tauros, wooloo, and dubwool all do it too. It's because they have multi-chambered stomachs and regurgitate food to chew. It helps them get more nutrients out of their meals."
"Huh. I mean, I think I've read about cows doing that, but never thought pokémon similar to them had the same habit."
"Pokémon share a lot of biological traits with their more animalistic counterparts. For example, a treecko's fingers look remarkably similar to a gecko's under a microscope. Though pokémon have seemingly miraculous powers, that doesn't mean natural selection for optimal biological phenotypes isn't a thing. In fact, some pokémon share similar instincts to their duller cousins such as a desire to build nests in certain places, confront predators a certain way, that sort of thing."
"That sounds like a fascinating field of study," I told her sincerely. I was never much of a scholar, but I knew there were plenty of engineers and biologists who made a career of cross-disciplinary studies, drawing inspiration for machine designs by observing biology. Biomimicry, it was called. It made sense that in the pokémon world, scientists would sometimes compare pokémon and standard animal evolution to discern parallels. "Is it okay for her to train while chewing though? I don't need to wait a full four hours for her to fully digest her meals, do I?"
She snorted daintily. "Four hours? Try the whole day. Pokémon and animals that chew cud do it for most of the day. But don't worry, it won't have any negative effects on her training. It's something they do that's almost as instinctual as breathing."
"Oh, that's convenient. Thank you nurse."
"No problem. It's great to see young people interested in biology, even if only to make sure their pokémon are doing well."
X
After lunch, the three of us found ourselves wandering the south side of the town once more, hoping to get a hint as to the location of the mega stones. Verdanturf was small in population, but like many rural towns, once you got outside the town center, which consisted of buildings of municipal importance and a small business district, buildings tended to spread themselves out noticeably. The town covered a bigger geographic area than one might expect and it was taking some time to scan the whole thing.
I wasn't complaining though. It really was a beautiful place and watching volbeat and illumise flirt with one another over a garden of flowers was oddly soothing. We were halfway through the section of town I'd parsed out for the day when we came across the Verdant Meadows Trainers' School.
That alone wouldn't have drawn my eye if not for the sceptile and shiftry locking Leaf Blades.
Unova had battle clubs sponsored by some veteran-turned-entrepreneur called Don George. They were basically YMCAs from my past life, except dedicated to pokémon battling and hardcore workouts. Weights, wave pools, treadmills. Whatever a pokémon might conceivably need to get stronger, they had them.
Most other regions had far more modest arrangements. The majority of pokémon centers had at least one battlefield where traveling trainers could network and test each other for fun or quick cash. It was often not enough. There just wasn't enough room for everyone to battle, especially with a team of six, so people often looked for other solutions.
In less notable towns like Verdanturf with fewer travelers, it was often the trainer schools that were the stars of the training scene. Locals and rangers often availed themselves of the facilities after classes were finished for the day.
This connected up and coming trainers with the local community and gave students the chance to see different types of trainers and learn more about their career paths from those currently in the field. If a kid was especially lucky and caught the right eye, even a starter or a more formal internship wasn't out of the question.
That certainly explained why two fully evolved pokémon were duking it out in a school meant for little tykes. But the nuances of human social circles and pseudo career fairs weren't of any interest to Artoria.
'My lord, look! Look!' she shouted excitedly in my mind. The bond practically oozed delight as she watched two "swordsmen" clash. She swung her spoon around, miming some of the slashes the sceptile performed. Her vocalizations were just "Kirlia-kir-kirlia," but that was enough to get several people to turn around.
I got to see her flush with embarrassment, but even that wasn't enough to quell her enthusiasm. She rushed off to the bleachers for ringside seats.
Judging by their uniforms, both trainers were rangers here to spar during their off time, or perhaps a teacher had called in a favor to hold a demonstration for the students. The sceptile's partner was a woman in her late twenties and a large, ten-gallon hat to beat the sun. The shiftry's partner was a man of about the same age who fiddled with a whistle around his neck. They both wore mirror smirks.
The sceptile and shiftry were evenly matched, or near enough that it wasn't immediately obvious which was the better fighter. The sceptile was noticeably faster. It used a mix of Quick Attack, Leaf Blade, and Double Team to seemingly strike from every direction at once. The ranger had obviously worked hard on training her partner, because it could even use Quick Attack in midair to change directions by "double-jumping" like a videogame character.
If I got a pokémon who could learn that, I as going to call it Geppo for sure.
The shiftry was also blisteringly fast, but slower in comparison. It made up for that by using its entire body and more to fight. Its wild, silver mane shone in the light as it whipped its head around, lashing it like a whip. That same turn became a full-body rotation, sending an aura-clad foot through one clone's head. Since nothing stopped its momentum, its fanned fingers came down in a wide arc, whipping up a flurry of wind blades around itself.
"Air Slash? The kick… Mega Kick? Leaf Blade with the other hand obviously… What's making its mane spiky?" I wondered.
"Harden," a man spoke up next to me. I was so caught up in the show that I didn't see him arrive. He wore a green polo with the school logo on his left breast and khaki shorts. He also had a truly spectacular beard-fro that made his jaw look large enough to swallow a melon. I hadn't realized I had spoken aloud.
"Ah, you're right. A seedot learns it naturally, right?"
"That's right, young man. It's impressive that you could identify the Mega Kick though. Most people don't know shiftry can learn that one."
"I'm guessing that's because most shiftry don't bother fighting with their feet."
"Yup. Most shiftry fight using their blades and hurricane-force winds at range."
"But how can a shiftry know Harden? I get that seedot learn it naturally because they're seeds and all, but… It doesn't make sense that they'd keep the move even after evolution."
"You'd normally be right. It's not unusual for pokémon to change their movesets as they evolve to suit their newfound bodies, or simply to replace a weaker move with a more advanced, powerful variant. For example, a poliwag is actually oftentimes better at using Hypnosis than a politoed because of the way its stomach pattern becomes less pronounced upon evolution."
I turned to face him fully. Artoria could watch the two swordsmen. This guy was fascinating. "I'm assuming that 'normally' isn't 'always.'"
"Of course not. Few things concerning pokémon are truly absolute. A pokémon can sometimes retain their prior evolution's moves through either circumstance or training. In the case of the politoed example, it might use an auditory illusion to put its opponents in a trance instead of a purely visual one. It's difficult to train, but I've seen it done.
"That shiftry over there? It retained Harden through a whole lot of practice until it could harden its mane on the fly to use as a whip. It's not quite as effective as an Iron Tail, but it's good for turning away lighter assaults. Ranger Calico is pretty well-known in certain circles for creative training methos with extraordinary results like that."
"Ranger Calico, huh? I'll have to see if I can talk to him. Is it hard getting a pokémon to use a different move in each limb? Mega Kick. Leaf Blade. Air Slash."
"Very. It's definitely a lot more advanced than you're likely to see from your average trainer. It might not eve be worthwhile because it necessitates that each move is weaker. Multitasking like that is only really useful if your pokémon has the right temperament, combat style, and a wide range of move choices. Otherwise, it might just be a waste of time."
"Jack of all trades, master of none. It's still worth thinking about. Thanks, Mr…"
"Mr. Thrush. I teach pokémon evolutionary theory here. Nice to meet you, kid. You coming in from 117?"
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
He chuckled mirthlessly. "Something out west has been stirring up the whismur in Rusturf Tunnel. The whole area's been cordoned off by the rangers because of it. If you were planning on heading west to Rustboro, you're going to have to take the long way around the mountain."
I clicked my tongue. "Crap. Alright, that's good to know."
"Your kirlia looks like she's enjoying herself. Now is that spoon meant to be a psychic focus or a club?"
"Why not both? Artoria's a bit odd. She refuses to use any ranged attacks whatsoever until she becomes a powerful knight."
"She knows that-"
"That she can't become a gallade? Yup. She wants to be like her dad though, so I decided to teach her kendo and adopt Confusion into a physical move."
"Hoh? You're already making custom moves? Ambitious, aren't you?"
I smiled winningly at him. "Yup. Artoria's already a stellar swordsman and she's very light on her feet. Really what she's missing is the psychic power that comes with being a gardevoir but that'll come in time."
"Most people would say that's a waste of potential for a gardevoir."
"Most people are idiots. Pokémon really live up to their potential when they find what they're passionate about. People too. You wouldn't tell a kid he has to be a farmer just 'cause he's got a green thumb if he says he wants to be a doctor, right? Why wouldn't it be the same for pokémon?"
"Heh, well said, kid. I like you; you seem like a kid with his head on straight. You here for a battle?"
"Not particularly. I just happened to get drawn in by those two over there."
"Well how 'bout a job then? If you come back tomorrow morning, you can go a few rounds with my students. Win or lose, I'll pay you 100 LC per battle."
I considered it. At about $10 per battle, it wasn't a bad deal, especially since students wouldn't be expected to give me any prize money. On the field, the battle was wrapping up. The sceptile had pulled out a Dual Chop, using the raw power of draconic aura to rip through the shiftry's wind-based defenses. After that, a single, well-placed Leaf Blade ended it all.
"What do you think, Jeanne, Artoria?"
"Kir?"
"Maa?"
I explained to them the offer. "We can have a lighter jog in the morning then come here to battle."
'Wouldn't that mean it would take longer to scan the town for my mega stone?' Artoria asked. She didn't say it, but she was almost pouting.
'We can do a quick jog in the evening to stay on schedule.'
'Then I have no objections, my lord. Instructing the next generation is also a worthy cause.'
'Hehe, "next generation" already? My, how you've grown.'
'You know what I meant.'
"We'll take it," I told the teacher.
"Happy doing business with you…"
"Oh, sorry. It's Aaron, Mr. Thrush."
"Good. I'll see you tomorrow morning. 9 AM."
Author's Note
Fabled's random animal fact: Sheep, cows, pigs, and goats do not sweat. However, horses do, making them the odd ones out in this grouping of farm animals.