Bitter Work 3.8

November 7th, 2022.

The first day had been quite busy, as it involved setting up camp and being taught the basics of the equipment we had on hand. Environmental sensors, infinity energy detecting devices… which Akari and I already had on hand, and various amenities so it wouldn't be pure and utter shit. None of it was incredibly heavy, built to be easily assembled and disassembled, and portable.

We would fan out in small groups, acting as nodes in their network for electromagnetic prospecting using their devices while their larger machinery assembles and collates that data and our pokémon would help open up a deposit if we find one present. Basically we had a bunch of little metal detector-type devices that linked up into some type of network mesh.

Anything beyond that eluded me. Today was a slow day, so my team and I had some free time to train, so we decided to opt for working on developing more robust counters against specific strategies. The move classification system was good for on-the-fly thinking but they alone didn't make up a complete strategy.

I fortunately already had names I could give to the various possible opponents we might face. Though they weren’t perfect either, it was a good start.

For today I was focusing on Fennekin’s training, she had Magician as a potential ability, so I was trying to see if there was any magic she could learn easily enough. I didn’t exactly know magic though, outside some pages on runes in Akari’s book.

She’s been using a rune that’s a circle with a dot inside, which lets her manipulate light and another that’s an upward-facing equilateral triangle, underlined for fire.

It worked for me but I was terrible at magic at the moment. Aside from working with developing her magic for Magician… and eventually Magic Bounce. I was also working on her physical conditioning and practicing her moves since she hasn’t been an active battler for months. Mainly it came down to doing lots of walking, jogging and running, and giving her targets to attack with Sojourner’s holograms.

The digital pokémon has been surprisingly helpful, they were a kind and helpful soul, and Conversion and Conversion 2 could give their little targets type resistances. It was mainly just pushing Fennekin’s moves to their limit, for example practicing with both max and minimum power. Basically strong and agile style, so she would get a better handle of her own energies.

I crossed my arms as I looked at Fennekin practicing Ember, and saw how it was summoned rather differently from how Happy did it. She didn’t fire it from her mouth, it would be more accurate to say she summoned it in front of her face then tossed it out like a bullet.

“Fennekin, hold it please.” The fire fox paused at my request, but didn’t quench her Ember. “I’ve noticed you don’t use your breath to expel fire from your mouth, instead you bring your fire to a point in front of you and ignite it, correct?”

“Fe? Fenn.” She definitely expressed confusion at the fact I had noticed.

“I’ve done my research, most moves are less moves and more classes of techniques that all share a similar effect through different means.” For example Flamethrower is roughly the same pattern and weave of Fire TE, but the way that pattern is made is different from species to species. Many pokémon breathe fire, or fire it from their hands, or even summon it as a spell.

Sort of like a heat engine, they all convert heat energy to mechanical energy but how they do so is unique to them.

“How far can you hold out your flame? Show me please.” I sat down on the ground with her, and Fennekin demonstrated her control.

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty five…

Her Ember gave out at about twenty five meters, and I chewed on my lip. “That gives me some ideas, we can use Ember and Fire Spin as a framework. Fire Spin also involves generating fire externally… not as a trapping move, but as a pattern to keep hold of Ember… you remember those Bullet Hell games you got to watch?”

Fennekin’s eyes gleamed and I knew I had her.

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November 12th, 2022.

“Seems your nidorino has Secret Power working?” Lillian spoke up as my pokémon got to work when it came to clearing the field, Jericho using a mix of geokinesis and Secret Power to clear out the mining site. We had moved on from the first and second sites pretty quick, as there had mostly only been deposits of dust and gems, so we didn’t need to dig very deep. I did end up with about two dozen gems though. Not very valuable unlike say a stone but useful for training.

“Yep. He seems to like it.” I replied back as I looked around at the third site, which was a good one hundred fifty kilometers from where we had started, not far off from Ippongi at the northern tip of the entire region. “Why is this site more promising than the first two?”

“Because it has a confirmed opening to the Grand Underground, with the fourth site being the same, and only a few miles from this one.” She revealed with a casual tone.

The Grand Underground was a vast network of caves and tunnels underneath the entirety of the Sinnoh region, and about half the Tohoku region, and I knew a new other local caves likely had similar openings to that vast underground world beneath our feet. It was where most of the Hisuian variants had found a home when they had become increasingly displaced by changing climate, invasive species and humans.

When their numbers had started to decline, the Diamond and Pearl clans had developed a policy of finding their pokémon’s wild fellows a new home where they could survive and thrive without interference.

“Now we’re not planning to enter the Underground, that isn’t our job here, but many entrances have pretty rich deposits near the surface that are easy to exploit. Shards, fossils, star pieces and of course stones, if we’re lucky we might even find plates.”

“Plates?” I asked.

“Technically speaking, they’re the shards borne from the creation of the universe,” I stared at her. “Practically speaking they’re even denser in Type Energy and are pretty effective at boosting moves, but you aren’t going to pull off anything scary with them.”

“Makes sense.” There were literally hundreds if not thousands of plates around, if they were actively dangerous they’d be a lot more sought after. They’re just rare items. “So… if you don’t mind me asking, why is an Ace Trainer leading something minor like this and not… I don’t know… a daring mission to the Underground?”

Lillian smirked, brushing back her dark bangs, letting me catch a glimpse of her violet eyes and her soft features. “For one thing, personal enjoyment and two, it’s nice to see newbie trainers getting their footing. Especially cute older ones who might need a bit of a… helping hand.” Her tone became downright sultry, and I coughed to myself.

“Umm.” She laughed at my reaction and lifted her hand to her chin, giggling.

“I’m not actually kidding, but I’m not going to flirt with you if that’s too much,” she reassured and I felt some tension uncoil. “Especially when you’ve got that cute partner of yours, Akari right?”

“We’re just friends?” I muttered, rubbing my fingers together and trying to focus on Jericho cleaning up the site for future mining. Flattening the ground, stabilizing the soil and stone below and so on.

Lillian gave me a skeptical look. “Why would that matter? You can kiss your homies, you know.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I choked on laughter, feeling less embarrassed and more amused. “Is that what you call it!” I was no longer feeling so… caught off my guard as it were. “But no, we’re still getting to know each other. I don’t think anything is going to happen.”

Lillian pouted. “I thought I was picking up a vibe…” She gestured to three of her pokémon, her excadrill, a ferrothorn and a bronzong. Excadrill was preparing the sight with his ground moves and claws, ferrothorn was watching out for wild pokémon and her bronzong was using their moves to lift debris and material for core studies. “Excadrill, pal, buddy, chum, bosom friend!”

I placed my hand against my face at her loud and incessant call to her ace, who threw himself up with a slab of stone.

“Uzu, uzu, uzu.” He made shrill twittering and squeaking sounds that sounded like grinding metal. I had to tilt my head down to look at him, since he was right around seventy centimeters tall and forty kilograms in mass. His white mole-like face was shadowed by a massive protruding drill helmet that I knew was a steel core with a coating of diamond and titanium nitride.

“Excadrill, I’m thinking this newbie here needs some heads up when it comes to what Tohoku does best.”

“Huh?” She pointed to Akari, who was happily battling another trainer, wait was that Natsuo?

The field was suddenly coated in a terribly dense and regal layer of draconic energy, Bloom who was now a Tohokun bayleef roared, and I saw Ellis on the ground, unable to hold herself up in the air.

“Dragon Breath!” A beam of blue energy fled from his pokémon’s mouth, and I winced as Akari’s togetic was brought down. Regal Terrain covers the field in draconic energy, increasing the power of dragon-type moves and nullifying type-based immunities through the chaotically dense cowl of aura surrounding their person.

Akari clicked her tongue, returning Ellis and sending out Happy, his magma tail flaring hotter than ever. “Secret Power into Fire Punch.” He slammed into his opponent like a freight train, sending the grass-dragon into a daze with a flinch. Both his fists burst into flames, and with a twist of his hip and shoulder, he punched Bloom’s vulnerable neck, the poor mon letting out a choking sound.

“I’m guessing you’re talking about Terrains?”

“Got it in one, rookie.” Lillian sounded excited, and I was just confused.

“Why me?” I demanded.

“Because I want to, because you’re here, and because you sound like someone who could need someone watching your back. Not that Akari isn’t but…”

“I understand.” Sometimes I forget how deeply the people of this world really do just want to help. They’re not flawless or perfect, but there was a deeper connection between people in this world.

Lily’s steely aura crept out subconsciously, and she just grinned. “Now it’s not going to be easy, excadrill here loves teaching rookies what’s up… and he’s got Metallic Terrain as a move in his repertoire, and he isn’t going to go easy on any of you.”

Her aura and her partner’s aura began to grow and unfold, and I swallowed a nervous supply.

I think I made a mistake.

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November 13th, 2022.

“It’s been some time hasn’t it?” Natsuo said serenely, gently pulling open an apricorn and scooping out the interior to eat it with a smile. “And I see you’ve developed a stronger connection to your aura.”

I wasn’t remotely surprised. “You can tell?”

“My… ability to see into the heart isn’t limited to pokémon,” his expression was oddly chilling. “It is a deeper sight, something I was born with. Only the greatest of Aura Guardians and lucario could see what I see.”

“So I noticed you caught yourself some more pokémon?” I pointed to the two new balls on his belt, each of them marked with a different… rune?

“I made some new friends, I was able to befriend a totodile who as you can see has evolved into a croconaw, you can call her Crackerjaw, she chose that name for herself.” She very much did look just like a rotund bipedal crocodile, but looked far less cuddly than you would expect.

Her frame was robust but also muscular, covered in scales, armor and osteoderms, with red slit eyes that were filled with a fierce intelligence, and rather expressive. About a meter tall or so, and was sunbathing and watching my team with a curious if unnerving expression. The pattern of blue and cream across her torso reminded me of a caveman oddly enough.

Mirko looked wary, her nose twitching and ears swiveling in a rote pattern. Which was sensible, the water crocodile was an apex predator and tended to only eat meat. While most prey pokémon were sub-sapient, the wild wasn’t exactly a safe place regardless for beings lower on the food chain.

Akari was staring too, her eyes narrowed to slits and her posture reminding me of a bird of prey. Why was she staring at his third pokéball?

Natsuo chuckled nervously. “I suppose it is safe here to tell you that my third member is strange?”

“How?” He grabbed his ball, whispered something soft and comforting and threw it into the air. In a flash of light, a pokémon materialized and my heart dropped into my stomach.

It was a quadrupedal chimeric pokémon with traits from many creatures, green avian-insectoid front legs and canine rear legs, a vertical fluke like a fish and a hairy black coat and gray feathers running up their neck. Their head was enclosed in a nightmarish brown helmet and green markings with a large jaw piece wrapping around the front with large and round hinges, and an axe crest poking out.

“Type: Null.” Natsuo’s gaze turned sharp and suspicious, and I sighed.

“That’s not a pokémon many know in this world.” There was almost an accusation in his voice.

“I know plenty of pokémon that I probably shouldn’t know about,” I didn’t care if they knew. “Type: Null is one of them, the better question is where you found one.”

“Secret.” Natsuo said and I nodded, accepting the answer. Not my business to pry.

“That’s fine.” I waved away the question. “So what kind of things did you find around here?”

“I found two star pieces,” he admitted and I blinked. That was a healthy chunk of change with the right buyer, they were made of a rare kind of zeolite that could be sold for between five and fifty thousand pokédollars. “As well as three fire stones, two leaf stones and a sun stone.” And that was another hunk of change, though smaller. They went for anywhere from a thousand to twenty thousand pokédollars depending on their grade. So about two hundred dollars… which is like half a console, expensive but not your entire life savings.

“I found no star pieces, but I did find about twenty shards, nothing groundbreaking. And two water stones.” It was a little disappointing when the real prize was a moon stone so that Jericho would have a shot at his evolution.

“I… found ten star pieces.” Akari whispered quietly but not quietly enough. “A few stones too, three fire stones, and a dusk stone.”

The fuck?

“You could buy a couple bikes with that kinda money.” Bikes weren’t ludicrously expensive here, but they were more expensive than on Earth because they were built to last. They used incredibly durable metal alloys and composites, are easy to repair and reinforced with moves like Barrier like most modern technology is.

I opened my mouth and suddenly found my field of vision full of a cute poison rabbit’s scaly face. “Ri-ri, nir!” I tilted my head at his excitement, and the three of us lab trainers went after him.

Jericho stopped at a bare face of rock, and without hesitation… he used a focused Secret Power and Bulldoze to open up a hole several meters across, stone and rock slowly sliding apart under his will.

I stumbled as I was suddenly crushed under the pressure of what Jericho had uncovered.

“Is that?” Akari looked surprised while I felt elation. It was a cluster of moon stones, gleaming with the mysterious power of the moon overhead. Most of them were mid-quality, but the one at the center was about the thrice the size of my fist and it’s… Space filled the area with its energy.

“Moon stones… I don’t think we can dig out all of those, can we?”

“We’re going to need a core sample, a deposit this great so close to the surface means there might be a sizable vein.” I jumped at one of the Devon geologists who looked at the rocks like she wanted to fuck them.

It was unsettling.

And when did a crowd of people get here?

Oh. Right. Giant vein of rare minerals.

That big stone is mine, no one’s taking it over my dead body.

The crowd shrunk back for a moment, and I tilted my head. What was going on with them?

“Well… we should probably get to work I think?”

Akari nodded mutely, a faint flush to her cheeks.

I just grinned.