Bitter Work 3.5
October 27th, 2022.
I stared at the train station, which was bustling with people and pokémon of all shapes and sizes. A few kids were being led around by a chansey, and a trainer was walking alongside his infernape. In real life infernape was a tad intimidating, since they were essentially a lanky chimpanzee that was also on fire. Size wise they were about the size of a large chimpanzee, around four feet while hunched over and five while not.
We had already bought the tickets that would let us cross some five hundred kilometers in about six hours. Now the question was… where was the train again?
I know it was here somewhere but I got distracted by a gardevoir I was curious about, and tried to ask them some questions and sort of got lost in the crowd.
“Brandy.”
“Hey, Akari.” I responded automatically and then blanched at Akari’s face.
“We’re going.” It was a strong statement. “Alley oop.” I flailed uselessly as I was suddenly thrown over her shoulder, and my face burned in utter embarrassment after brief amused glances of the people around.
“Akari!”
“Nope!” I slapped her back, and then gave up.
Why?
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I watched the landscape of Tohoku rush by as I rested my sore butt on the comfortable train seats. The train itself offered quite a few amenities including dining for all passengers. Who didn’t have to pay tickets… though if they were a pokémon on their own they’d have to.
It was honestly kind of funny how their society worked, and interesting.
We were allowed to have our pokémon out as long as they weren’t too big, so no snorlax or onix. And none of my pokémon were big enough for that rule, though if Jericho wanted to be out he’d be under the limit for a while… and he does want to evolve, we just need to find a good quality moon stone and wait for him to accumulate more power. I would say once he reaches about 5-star accumulated power, so around the fifth gym.
But he was being lazy so he was currently sleeping in his hall, while Mirko and Llayda were chatting with the rather hesitant new member of our team in Fennekin, pending a nickname. Which I wasn’t going to give until she was good and ready.
Instead I was using my phone, opening it and taking a look at the data it had acquired from scanning the Node that was the Fireside Woods. We had taken dozens of scans after that attack, and had found some interesting data.
“Hello World.” I blinked when my porygon computer buddy piped up. “May I consolidate this analysis for you?”
“Do you want to?” I asked with a smirk, I considered them more of a co-worker since they ran the math I certainly couldn’t.
“I will take that as a yes,” I just grinned at Fennekin’s dumbfounded expression. “Preliminary analysis of background Aural Energy Flow indicates a form of ecological equilibrium. Fire-type energy appears to provide sources of heat and light, and provides sufficient energy to prevent stagnation in the natural flow of aura.”
“Is that bad?”
“Stagnant aura flow can often lead to an increase in disease, both physical and spiritual. Fire TE melts that stagnant flow, likely allowing the environment to heal and providing a suitable source of warmth, energy and emotion. Analysis of sensor data indicates a stronger effect on layers of space-time as per usual with aural energy flow.”
Oh right, there was a lot of information that aura aka infinity energy flows within metaphysically aligned planes of existence, higher layers of the World.
Or—
“Tch.” Fennekin had apparently made up her mind about the conversation, and I just raised an eyebrow at her. Llayda replied in a chiding tone to her response and it quickly broke down into rather mild bickering.
Fennekin was a bit tsundere but not to an insane extent, just a bit abrasive and not the best with people. “We can talk about something else if you’re interested, Fennekin?” I lightly patted my friendly digital companion, who left some text I could read up on their findings for later.
Mirko let out a cry. I interpreted it as ‘training goals?’ and continued. “How about training goals? I know Akari is doing the same with her team while she’s in another cart for a bit.” Jericho popped out, and the seat next to me was filled by his scaly butt.
“Nir!” He proclaimed.
Fennekin looked… concerned and I tilted my head. “Is that okay?” The fox let out a sigh and didn’t offer a protest.
I clapped my hands together. “So, the next gym we’re facing is the Nakagawa Gym, an electric-type one specifically, mainly it comes down to solidifying the kind of role each of you can or want to play in battle. Mirko, you’re an amazing sweeper with your speed, strength and wide movepool especially when you evolve.” Mirko nodded, as that was a goal she was aiming for as well. “How close are you to fully mastering Jump Kick?” I saw her take a stance, and I paled. “Don’t do it on a train!” I hissed and she just laughed with an amused churring chortle.
Mirko was a bitch sometimes…
“Fake Out might be another good move, it’s a priority move so you can flinch someone and then take advantage of their weakness, and Return is a bit more effective than Headbutt now.” Mirko just offered a purr, arms crossed over her chest. “Along with that Cut-based move you’re working on, that’ll be an interesting surprise won’t it?”
We shared a sadistic grin, and I moved on to Jericho.
“Jericho, your role is likely going to be that of a dedicated lead, with Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes you’re amazing at setting up the field, with plenty of strength and power on top of that. Roar might be a good move to learn, spread around your presents.” He offered a toothy grin at my suggestion. Once he could use Sheer Force he was going to be a monster. “So I’m counting on you to do your best when it comes to setting up the most optimal of traps.”
Llayda was the third pokémon I had to speak to. “Llayda… you’re already a monster by my account, you’re a great wallbreaker, with your defenses, constitution, typing, and abilities making you tough as hell.” She had finally developed Thick Fat after evolving, giving her even greater resistance to fire and ice energies. Once we figured out Sap Sipper, she’d lose one of her own weaknesses. Abilities had many uses which was why I was looking up if it was possible to help Mirko develop Scrappy outside of mega evolution.
Which was why she was getting in the habit of silently using Foresight, and to see if we could make it something innate to her physiology. Then she’d be Scrappy and tear through ghosts whenever she liked.
Anyways…
“I’m thinking maybe you can learn Encore, use it to trap an opponent into a bad position and pummel them into submission, Trailblaze might be interesting against other water-types and for a nice speed boost.” Liquidation had been learned in about a day, and Llayda wanted to combo it together with Aqua Tail.
Llayda just vibrated in place, her tail swaying back and forth with joy.
I faced the final and newest member of the team, who just looked confused. “I’m guessing we’re using a lot of weird terminology right?”
Fennekin replied with an unhappy yip. “Fe…”
“Fair, they’re just the names I’ve… appropriated for the various roles someone can play on the team. At the most basic, there are just three, attacking, defending, and supporting.” But that could be expanded upon.
“Miro.” Mirko added to the conversation with a haughty tone of voice.
“Those three roles can be expanded into more specific implementations for example for attacking, a sweeper is a pokémon trained in defeating many opponents in a row, often with some set-up from a lead. Like say Mirko cutting through a team weakened by poison and Stealth Rock with powerful moves and overwhelming speed. She’d be a physical sweeper, using body-oriented moves like Return or Dizzy Punch, rather than a special sweeper that uses power-sourced moves like Flamethrower or a mixed sweeper that uses both kinds of moves.”
Fennekin looked curious, tilting her head in a manner I found rather adorable.
Not that I’d say that to her face.
“A wallbreaker is similar to a sweeper, roles can be quite fluid in reality. They can take way more hits and can come in and take down tanky ass pokémon that sweepers have a hard time bringing down. A bit technical, but Akari offers a lot of advice when it comes to working out the Meta of pokémon battling.”
Fennekin just narrowed her eyes. “Fo…fo.”
“The question then is what you want to do, which also depends on whether or not you want to evolve, I know that varies.” Some pokémon preferred sticking to their first or second stage. It did offer more power, but the bond was good at negating that ‘weakness’ quite easily.
“Fofo!” She sounded indignant, and Mirko gave a thumbs up. So that was a yes for evolution then.
“So that leaves the role you want to play, there’s options with your moves, and possible abilities.” Blaze in the fennekin line was a form of basic war magic, Through intense meditation and other means they could become Magicians, able to befuddle the senses and snatch items through tricks and spells. In recent years they had figured out how to Magic Bounce the energies of utility moves.
There were lots of abilities that from what I remember pokémon didn’t have before but now they did. For example a certain volcano weasel from Johto could now have Drought because why not?
I’m not actually sure how pokémon get new abilities? Was it through genes from other species, magic, or figuring out how to use their inherent biology as a basis for new abilities?
Whatever.
I went back to chatting with Fennekin. “You’ve got a fairly wide range of potential roles, with your high speed and special power and vast movepool it lets you act as a setup sweeper, a healer, or a cleaner that can take down the remainders of an opposing team.” Her nose wrinkled at the word healer, and I wondered why that was so. “Move wise, you know Ember, Wish, Stored Power, Calm Mind, Hypnosis and Fire Spin. We can probably work on strengthening Ember into Flamethrower, it’s a much more powerful move… though I wonder if you can mix Fire Spin and Ember into some type of AoE fire grenade attack.” A sort of Hellzone Grenade if you would? “Wish is interesting, it’ll be good at keeping you in the battle with the healing, and I think your species figured out Morning Sun a while back.”
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“Fen?” She just sounded befuddled at my questions.
“Well, I have to take into account every option when it comes to the team. Roles can be pretty fluid, so I have to work it out beforehand and see what options will work for your needs. I don’t have any healers on the team, but I don’t necessarily need one either,” plus depending on my luck, maybe I could get that ghost type audino on my team. Heal Pulse was a very powerful move when it came to traveling the Routes. “So do you want to fight, heal or some other third thing?”
“Foko!” Her disdain for healing told me I wasn’t going to get a full-on healer, but I was okay with that. A delphox was still a mighty strong pokémon in most regards.
“Battler then, I was kinda guessing.” I couldn’t understand her speech, but I got the gist of it through the connection between me and my team. I could sense how their aura reacted to their emotions, an almost invisible gut feeling of sorts. It wasn’t anything dramatic, but it made it easier to see the little things strangers would miss. “You’re going to need to learn stronger moves, along with utility moves outside Hypnosis. If that’s alright with you?”
Fennekin just stared, and I was rewarded with a tiny grin on her furry face
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“So uhh… those notes of yours on azumarill as a species… they’re accurate aren’t they?” Akari said faintly as we watched Llayda lift up an entire couch that had to weigh three hundred pounds that had broken off for some reason. She had been enlisted to take it out by one of the train workers, showing off her incredible strength. “Including the ones for Llayda?”
I gestured to my longer summary of their battle statistics on my phone, and Akari leaned over. “A standard baseline azumarill has A class constitution, C- class strength without Huge Power and A-tier with Huge Power. Their toughness is B- class, power about C-, resistance around B-, and speed is C-.”
Akari blinked. “Where does Llayda fall on that scale?”
I coughed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Well… it took a number of standardized measurements and analysis of data from azumarill at similar power and…”
Akari glared. “Brandy.” She folded her arms and I sighed.
“Llayda is greatly above the average, S class constitution, SS class strength, A- toughness, B- power and A- resistance with a B- speed. Giving an exact number is kind of difficult but well… she can withstand more hits, hits harder than a train, takes less damage from a punch and a bullet, can throw out an attack with greater power, and is speedier than your run of the mill azumarill.” She was still slower than everyone else except Fennekin but that was a matter of her species not being very fast.
“What the hell do you feed her?” Akari demanded and I shrugged helplessly.
“I give her a good and healthy diet, lots of exercise and plenty of battles. As well as working with her fey side.” She was a creature of the multicolored world, living, beautiful lies of pure glamour.
“Fey magic is a bit dangerous isn’t it?” It wasn’t a question for Akari, while the togepi were among the friendliest and least dangerous fairies they still had access to potent and dangerous abilities.
Interestingly enough, I had learned a lot about moves that didn’t have much of a use in direct combat, but did serve as useful abilities and skills in the lives of pokémon. They were generally not given names, since they were generally not directly useful in combat. They were basically all the weird nebulous stuff pokémon just do without thinking like sinking into the shadows for ghost types or possession.
Or curses in the case of ghosts and fairies, Llayda seemed to enjoy inflicting curses, though she was surprisingly considerate with them. Mostly just small pranks like making water taste like hot and spicy Morpeko Dew… but she had helped with crafting a fairy rune for training, using it to gather fey energies during training, each duel increasing her power. It was actually rather hard to make because you needed a willing sparring partner, an area rich in natural energy, and involved a carefully crafted narrative to keep the pact balanced.
Mirko used a weak version of Odor Sleuth to augment her sense of smell, and an auditory version for her ears. These weak field moves had no direct combat applications and used very little energy, like the difference between throwing a three thousand newton punch and wiggling your ears.
“Hey, Miss!” I snapped out of my day dream when I found a bright eyed kid stare at Llayda with awe, revealing a gap toothed smile. “Is that your pokémon?”
I leaned forward a bit to look the kid in the eye. “She is, she’s pretty cool huh?” I hoped he would leave soon, the brunette kid was cute but I was terrible with kids. I frowned when I saw her playfully balancing the sofa, and in a blink Mirko was there, ‘politely’ berating the bigger pokémon without any hesitation. “A bit rowdy though.”
Akari just giggled.
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The train ride was still a few hours away from ending, and I could tell Jericho was trying to break the ice with the surprisingly chilly fire type known as Fennekin. I couldn’t say it was working but I couldn’t say it was outright failing. I was leaning against my seat on a comfy couch-thing with a table between it and the other side that was supposed to be occupied by Akari but instead served as a napping cushion for Kirby.
He was a bit bigger than he used to be, and his fur was very slowly changing hue as he got stronger and aged. Pokémon mature quickly, both physically and mentally, though like a lot of animals they can continue to grow and develop for quite some time after depending on the species. A bit like humans continuing to mature and develop out to about twenty five years old if… more extreme.
A munchlax was battle ready at about a month, but don’t tend to be able to evolve until they’re at least nine months old, and the healthy range was closer to a year old or older. So he likely wouldn’t evolve until we had gotten over half of the badges, and when he did… hoo boy. He was going to be one hell of a monster in both raw might and appetite.
I tapped my fingers against the table, ignoring the presence of Akari as I took the time to focus and consolidate my thoughts. The last few days had been a bit outside of our paygrade, that heatmor had been a six-star monster we had only survived through the grace of Furret, Fennekin being able to build up her Stored Power into a move as strong as Explosion and Llayda evolving in the heat of battle.
Something screwy was going on and I didn’t know what the cause was.
“You’ve been recovering nicely, huh?” There was an unreadable expression on Akari’s face as she traced my figure. “Good that you didn’t need any physical therapy, it’d suck for you to lose your conditioning.”
“Is that so?”
Akari. “Fitness is important as a trainer, keeping up as much as you can with your pokémon is both healthy and necessary.” She flexed her arm and I gaped as it tensed like steel. “It’s also uhh… nice to see you happy.”
“Ehh?”
“You’re smiling.” She pointed out, and a quick self analysis noticed that fact. Why was I so happy?
“Oh.” I rubbed my face, hands gliding across smooth skin as I laid back against the soft cushions of my seat. “Umm… now that I think about it, we don’t really… share too many personal things do we? Despite being travel buddies, we kinda just ask a bit and back off.”
Why did I say that? Don’t make this awkward, idiot!
“You’re not wrong.” To my surprise she agreed with me, and scooted over to be closer though right outside my personal bubble. “Maybe it would be… a good idea to get to know each other better.”
“Yeah?”
She gave a toothy beam. “What do you want to know, maybe we can play twenty questions?”
“That… might be okay, who starts?” She pointed to me with a silent look. “What kind of questions?”
“Well things about our home maybe, likes, dislikes, weird people stuff,” she waved her hand weirdly, her face twisted into distaste. “Or whatever.”
I nodded. “What’s your home like, up in the Sternwing Mountains?”
Her gaze turned nostalgic. “Quiet and loud, we live up high in the mountains, we’re not a huge clan, like the Joy family, maybe a few thousand in our main settlement and a few thousand more scattered up and down the entire range. We’ve lived there in the mountains for at least three thousand years, age tends to come with being Celestic. We’ve got our kin up in Sinnoh, along with some more distant relatives in the Diamond and Pearl clans. There’s lots of wild, dangerous pokémon so we tend to have a lot of elite trainers, like the Dragon Tamer Clan of Johto. It helps that we earned the favor of a Lord.”
I had heard of certain pokémon like that. “Are those like the Nobles of Sinnoh?”
She nodded. “A little bit yes, though no divine blessing from the Original One.” She hadn’t ruled out a blessing from other godly beings. “We earned the favor of Lord Azazel, the most powerful togekiss in all of Tohoku, if not the entirety of Nihoh, he could be considered a… true Type Royal like Lord Avalugg.”
Type Royals were the pinnacle of a species, while they weren’t necessarily all giants, they were insanely powerful individuals, acting as guardian spirits and rulers for their Type across a whole region. If a Legendary was considered a god, a Type Royal can be classed as a demigod, pokémon so powerful they could reshape landscapes and climate. Type Royal was more a class of being rather than a specific phenotype, pertaining to unusual pokémon that serve major roles in the more social aspects of the ecosystem. The Totems and Nobles of Alola and Sinnoh, and the Lords of Tohoku. But if she meant true as in giant…
“How big is he…?”
“You could fit eight of me in the space between his wingtips.” I choked. “Azazel is a strong and caring pokémon and he instilled those values in my ancestors… Ellis is actually one of his children.”
That explains so much. “She’s not going to grow up like her dad right?”
“She could, but at most she might grow into an Alpha, so maybe big enough to carry me on her back?” That was still pretty big.
“Huh… interesting, what about family or friends?”
“Pokémon mostly, I never got along with other kids,” she admitted with a sad sigh. “Too much of a wild child, way too many rumors someone in my family line fucked a pokémon.”
Something like a strangled laugh escaped me. “What?”
She gave a little shrug. “It happens, I’m more annoyed that someone clearly slacked on teaching kids basic biology. But as for family… my mom died a few years ago,” her melancholy was obvious and I grimaced at the issues I had tripped over. “Dad… he kinda shut down after she passed, and I ended up not being able to go on my journey like the rest of the kids… and kids can be cruel.” Her eyes were stormy, her voice holding at a steady tenor. “So I mostly just had friendships with pokémon instead of other humans, it left me with some… interesting skills.” She brushed a few fingers against the marks on her face, and her grin became smug. “But now it’s my turn.”
“Shoot.”
“What did you do in life? As a job, or something?”
…
What a loaded question.
“Nothing. I was doing nothing,” I spat, something like anger rising in my throat. “I had just quit my job because I couldn’t take the stress, because it’s a family-run business run by my garbage can of a father and a mother too caught up in her own problems to give a real shit.” Akari looked at me in horror. “I was… not in a good place when I came here Akari… I was… am suffering from depression due to a nice mix of burnout, and being unequipped to handle my own life, as well as not being allowed to.” I had been a frankly gigantic wreck back then and now, and was only more functional because I was away from the toxic hellhole that was my old life.
“I’m… sorry.”
“Someone has to be,” I replied dryly. “I’ve got a lot of unresolved trauma and resentment, the least I can figure is that I’m not going to use it as an excuse to shit on everyone else.”
We spent what felt like hours, throwing questions at each other. Her questions were focused around my life, my family, where I grew up, just the quiet parts… and sometimes the sad and depressing parts. The lies and affairs of my father and the failures of my mother when it came to being a parent, and the general brokenness of my family.
But it helped to talk about it, helped to get an outside perspective so I could step away and reflect. I also ended up learning more about her as a person, her home life was a bit more magical than mine, the adventures she had with the pokémon of the mountains and forests and high plains, hijinks like toying with magic, getting chased by angry mons, and learning the basics of aura from her kin and a lucario.
The loneliness of having no human friends, and three years of growing up in an empty and silent home.
It wasn’t anything big, it wasn’t a life changing revelation, or a blood pumping battle, or witnessing the glory of nature. It was a simple chat between friends and that…
Was a lot more important than I had once thought.