“Okay, great job Zoroark. Winnie, can you copy Zoroark’s illusion for me? And hold it as steady as possible.”
Justine leaned closer to her laptop screen, eyes squinting as she examine a bunch of intricate multicolored lines, diagrams, and numbers that were being generated by the machine her laptop was connected to.
Marcus was originally supposed to be the guy doing these tests, but because he’d literally been living off of caffeine for who knows how long, he had been banned from work until he properly recovered.
“Oh wow~ Just as I expected, they are different.”
Tim looked closer at the computer screen and nodded, “That explains a lot.”
I raised an eyebrow. Zoroark and Winnie’s illusions of a Polteageist looked identical to the naked eye, but I guess the energy reader was seeing something different.
“Mind explaining this stuff for the dummy here?” I asked, pointing at myself and looking over Justine’s shoulder at her laptop at the completely incomprehensible nonsense of geometric shapes and constantly changing numbers being displayed on the computer screen.
Nodding, Justine turned to me. “Simply speaking, Zoroark and Winnie’s illusions have similar functions but are built differently. Zoroark’s illusions are made out of dark type energy and are generally more stable at the cost of being more energy consuming and therefore not sustainable for extended periods of time. Especially with mass illusions.”
The purple haired girl turned back to the computer and types in a few things, changing the screen to display another set of randomized wavy lines and more numbers and she continued to explain,
“Winnie’s illusions on the other hand, are less stable due to the mix of ghost and normal type energies, and are susceptible to interruption via dark type energy. But this has the benefit of being more energy efficient due to ghost type energy having less need for structure and generally being more suited for illusions.”
Leo, who was standing next to me, clapped his hands together and pointed at the computer screen, “Oh! I see, that’s why we’ve seen this sort of behavior with Hisuan Zoroarks but not with normal Zoroark, right? Zoroark and I have been trying to replicate a bit of the mass illusion what we saw last time but it just hasn’t been working.”
Justine leaned back from the energy reader and turned a bit more towards us with a smile, “Yeah basically! There’s also the caveat that ghost types are generally better at creating illusions than other types, as seen with how most ghost type species make use of them in one way or another That’s not to say that Zoroark can’t create mass illusions, he’d just need to put in some extra work to do so.”
“Zoroark, zor zorark?” Zoroark asked Leo, who nodded as if he understood what the dark fox had just said,
“I gotcha. Then why do you think Zoroark, or just any member of my team were having trouble getting through the illusion last time if it’s supposed to be susceptible to dark type energy?”
“It would be because of the power difference between you guys and the Pokemon who created the illusion. It would be like trying to use a small dull knife to cut through a huge block of instantly regenerating cold butter. I also suspect that said Pokemon included curses into the illusion to make it more durable, it’s a trademark of ghost types.”
So we’ll have to watch out for dark types until Winnie gets strong enough that their dark type energy can’t overwhelm his own ghost-normal combined illusions. I wonder if he’ll be able to use curses later on too, though I dunno how that works at all.
Leo nodded, “Ahhh. Okay.”
Zoroark crossed his arms and snorted derisively, dispelling his illusion.
Winnie did the same and began to whine, “are we done yet? we’ve been here doing nothing! i wanna go do something elssseeee! this is booooorrrrring.”
I sighed, “Winnie’s getting fussy. You guys done?”
Justine nodded, “Yep! I’ve answered all my questions and Marcus will be apoplectic if we continue without him, so we’ll wait until he’s got his beauty sleep.”
Hearing this, Winnie’s complaining turned into a cheer and he began bouncing in circles around Zoroark. “great! i wanna go train! come on zoroark! come on! lets go fine weavile!” Winnie pulled on the dark fox’s paw in an attempt to make him hurry up.
During breakfast, Zoroark and Leo’s Weavile had promised to teach Winnie some new stuff. I didn’t get anymore details than that, but I was more than happy that Zoroark and Weavile were so willing to teach Winnie some tricks.
For reference, Leo and his team had placed among the top four in multiple conferences, so their experience would be invaluable and this would be a great learning experience for Winnie, me, and the rest of the team.
As for how I found out about Leo’s accomplishments, after last nights training session while we were walking back to the lab, Justine blabbed to me all about the other members of the expedition team. These guys were some of the best trainers in the world, though she made sure to emphasize that her sister was the strongest among them.
Bennett and Collin had also placed among the top four in multiple conferences. In Bennett’s case, he won the Sinnoh Conference but lost to the Elite four.
Speaking of the Elite four, Angela was actually strong enough to become a member. Being Agatha’s best student, she was offered a position in the elite four after she swept the Indigo league with her ghost types, but she said no, citing her own irresponsibility and hatred for paperwork as reasons for declining.
Angela’s younger sister Justine, despite not being a super strong trainer was literally a 200 IQ genius who had worked with multiple regional professors and other important science people on a bunch of stuff I couldn’t even begin to remember the names of. The reason why she was allowed to come along was because her older sister recommended her and would be lending Justine some of her own ghost Pokemon.
Dragonair guy, aka Kenta, had placed top 16 in both conferences for his first two seasons and was recommended by someone from the Blackthorn clan.
The only member of the security team whom I hadn’t seen yet was a duel ice and steel type specialist from Alola called Abigail. She won her first conference in Hoenn and was recommended to the expedition recruiters by Alolan styled Professor Oak due to the strength of her team and her skills with traversing mountainous icy terrains.
The non-security members weren’t slacking off in achievements either. Tim and Marcus were accomplished and well respected researchers, and Celia had a ton of successful expeditions into dangerous territories under her belt.
Not to mention that despite their teams not being particularly geared towards battles, they were all strong enough to be rated by the Pokemon Battle Commission as having seven crown teams, which would put them on the same level as a conference quarter-finalist as the weakest.
The twins were brought in as the team’s emergency exit plan due to their talent in teleporting long distances. Combined with the psychic powers of their Pokemon, they could teleport anywhere in the world as long as they’d been to it. Extremely impressive considering the average psychic struggled to even twist a spoon or properly use telepathy.
I kinda wished I got teleportation powers, traveling would be so convenient. Or I could just get a psychic type in the future to teleport for me.
Last but not least, computer guy, aka Jason. He was an electric type specialist tech whiz that the team had borrowed from Volkner’s gym, much to the gym leader’s reluctance. Despite having retired from being a Pokemon trainer, Jason was still strong enough to occasionally sub in for Volkner against high ranking trainers whenever the gym leader felt like not doing his job, and he had won a few conferences before he retired.
Safe to say, I was feeling rather underqualified for the job, as the only reason I was here was because I had a Hisuan Zorua on my team.
On the bright side, because these guys were so much stronger and more experienced, I might as well take advantage of their knowledge and get all the help I could from them.
As I said before, this was probably one of the best training and learning opportunities me and my team would ever get, and I wasn’t gonna pass that up just because I felt intimidated by how accomplished everyone else was compared to my measly: You died and got Isekaiied! achievement.
I put Rotom in charge of helping me take notes on any nuggets of useful information the others dropped either during their training session or while they were answering my questions.
As Justine and Tim were packing up the energy reader stuff, Winnie left with Zoroark and Weavile to train in private and probably plot the most embarrassing way they can defeat Yamask.
I didn’t have to take care of Kaiju at the moment cause he was being babysat by Leo’s Meowscarada and Houndoom. Kaiju had been enamored by Meowscarada’s magic tricks and I guess Houndoom just felt like hanging out with them.
That all meant that I would have plenty of time to work with Sahara. It was about time we expanded her moveset a bit more and work her new moves.
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“So kid, are ya ready to learn?” Zoroark grinned as he gestured for Winnie to follow him and Weavile into the forest near the ranch.
Winnie mirrored Zoroark’s grin and jumped with excitement, “of course! next time i battle that yamask brat, i’m gonna beat him so badly, he’ll never wanna show his face around here ever again!”
Weavile ruffled the white fox’s head, “HA! That’s the spirit! First thing you gotta do is learn a few useful tricks. One of that Marcus guy’s mons told us which moves you could learn so we’ll start with the easier ones.”
“why are you teaching me easy ones! i wanna get straight to the powerful moves!”
“Battles aren’t just about powerful moves kid, even purely offensive Pokemon have a lot of utility moves to support them through a battle. For example, moves that increase your attack.”
Zoroark flexed his claws and slashed at a nearby tree, cutting halfway through it’s thick trunk.
“Now look at what happens after I use Hone Claws.” Zoroark swiped his claws against each other and then repeated his slashing attack on another tree that was thicker than the previous one, cutting clean through the entire thing.
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There was a loud creaking groan as the tree tilted and crashed to the ground.
“woooaah!” Winnie ran over to the downed tree and gaped at it.
“See? There are also moves that can decrease your opponents power or prevent them from using moves that increase their power. That’s what we’ll be teaching you.” Zoroark slightly puffed out his chest, the younger Pokemon’s admiration was pretty flattering.
Feeling the need to show off a bit as well, Weavile flexed her claws and slashed at the tree’s downed trunk, slicing it into pieces.
“Once you get those down, they’ll be basically like reflexive movements during a battle. Then you’ll be ready to learn a few more advanced moves from us.”
Winnie jumped up and down, “well, lets get starte–” He paused and the three looked up as they heard a loud high pitched whistle from above. In the distance, a bright ball wreathed in dragon fire flew up into the sky.
Weavile tapped Zoroark’s arm with a claw, “Hey, Zoroark, is that a…?”
The fireball burst into tons of smaller fireballs and began falling back down to earth.
“A Draco Meteor. Which dumbass decided to use one in the middle of the ranch?!” Zoroark grumbled.
Weavile waved her claws at Zoroark as she lead them all to a nearby overhanging boulder to take cover, “Aaaahh, don’t you complain. I’m gonna be hearing all about this from Mandibuzz and ol’ Stoutland for the next few years and about, ‘how disrespectful young ‘uns are these days’.”
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“So. What should we teach him first?” Meowscarada asked.
Meowscarada, Houndoom, and Kaiju were sat under a tree in a field. The two watched the little Deino chase Houndoom’s tail as they talked.
Since Kaiju had taken a liking to the cat magician, Meowscarada was more than happy to show his new admirer around the ranch. Houndoom joined in, citing that she was bored and had nothing to do at the moment.
They had agreed that since Kaiju would be coming with them on the expedition, they’d help him prepare as much as they could for the harsh conditions in the icelands.
Houndoom flicked her tail and smiled as Kaiju toddled after the pointed arrow of her tail tip. “The basics probably. He’s young but he should get the hang of simpler dark type moves easily enough cause he’s a dark type like us.”
Meowscarada nodded, “That’s fair.”
Houndoom grunted as she stood up and shook herself off, “Alright Kaiju, it’s time for Auntie Houndoom to teach you why being a dark type is so awesome!”
“Yay!” Kaiju cheered as he ran around Meowscarada and Houndoom in circles.
“You wanna do Taunt?” Houndoom asked Meowscarada.
The grass cat nodded, “Yeah, that’s a have too. You can do that one I’ll think of what else we should teach him.”
Houndoom smiled, though it looked more like a snarl, “Okay, Kaiju, to use Taunt, all you have to do is say something really mean that can make your opponent angry at you and imbue a bit of dark type energy into the words. Like this,”
Houndoom shouted a bunch of cusses and a challenge at an imaginary target.
Meowscarada jumped up and batted at Houndoom’s muzzle, “Houndoom! Don’t teach the child swears!”
Houndoom rolled her eyes, and groaned,“Oh come on, he’ll learn them eventually. Older Pokemon aren’t gonna fall for the Taunt if he calls them a meanie pants instead of a–”
“Yes, I get it. But no. Lemme try.” Meowscarada interrupted, turning back to Kaiju, who was staring blankly at the two.
“Okay Kaiju, see that rock over there? That’s your pretend enemy. Say a bunch of mean words at it that aren’t what Houndoom just said.”
Kaiju stared at Meowscarada for a second before smiling, “Okay!”
The little dragon took a deep breath. Then instead of actually saying anything, he screamed at the rock with Hyper Voice.
Meowscarada and Houndoom fell to the ground, grimacing in pain and tightly covering their ears until Kaiju stopped screaming.
Scrambling to get up, Meowscarada grabbed Kaiju’s face, “Kid!”
“Yesh?”
“Don’t do that again. No screams while we’re teaching you, okay?”
“Awwwww, weally?”
“Yes. No screaming.”
“Okay…”
Pushing Meowscarada aside, Houndoom gently nudged Kaiju to look back at the rock/pretend enemy.
“Now, let’s try that again. But you say what I say at a normal volume.”
Kaiju perked up again. “Ok!”
Crouching down a bit and putting on a superior grin, Houndoom shouted, “Come at me you fucking bastard I bet you couldn’t–”
A bunch of flowers popped up in Houndoom’s mouth. The fire dog coughed and spit the flowers out, burning hem to ashes with Flamethrower.
“Houndoom!” Meowscarada chided with his arms crossed. “What did I tell you literally a few minutes ago?”
Still trying to get the taste of plants out of her mouth, Houndoom snorted fire out of her nose and scoffed, “Ignore the pussycat and say what I just said at Meowscarada. Make sure to be as mean about it as you can.”
Kaiju tilted his head, “Like how mommy talks to invaders?”
“Yeah, sure, like how your mom talks to invaders.” Houndoom said.
Kaiju took another unnecessarily deep breath and the two other dark type mons took an unconscious step back, bracing themselves for another Hyper Voice.
“GETOUTYOUSONOFAMUKLITTLEDIGLETTBRAINEDASSHOLEFUCKOFFORELSEIWILLTURNYOUINTOAPIECEOFBURNTUPSHITYOUMOTHERFUCKER!!!” Kaiju’s voice echoed through the area.
Meowscarada gave Houndoom and accusatory glare and Houndoom just shrugged, “Well that’s a start. I think I felt a bit of the effect form Taunt, did you?”
Meowscarada sighed and scratched his ears, “Just a bit, but I think we should switch to something else.”
“Naaaaah, he just got the hang of it, lets finish what we started.”
And so Meowscarada and Houndoom continued to encourage Kaiju’s practice with Taunt, but he was only allowed to copy what Meowscarada said.
“I think he’s got it down now, and only after a few tries. We sure are great teachers, aren’t we?” Houndoom said with a smug look.
“Sure.” Meowscarada sighed, he wasn’t in the mood to argue with Houndoom, especially in front of Kaiju, though he didn’t seem bothered by anything they did or said.
Houndoom didn’t spare him any rest time as she thought of the next thing to teach the little dragon, “Okay, Nasty Plot. This one’s easy, think about how you wanna hurt–”
“YEAH!” Kaiju roared, “Huwt them weal bad! Like how mommy wipped all the limbs off that purple flying one and then she cooked the human with it so that it would be easier for us to eat!”
There was a pause as the two dark types processed what Kaiju just said.
“You ate…humans?” Houndoom asked almost hesitantly. Out of all the things she expected for such an innocent little nugget to say, that was not it.
“Yeah! It tasted like that bacon Azalea cooks fow us in the mornings but moewr burnt.”
A stunned Meowscarada and Houndoom glanced at each other, speechless.
Then Meowscarada cleared his throat and clapped his hands together, “Anyways! Try thinking about doing that to you opponent– for the record you’re not allowed to actually do that–and then use a long ranged attack.”
Meowscarada knelt down next to Kaiju and pointed at a nearby tree, “Try a Dragon Breath that tree over there.”
“Okay!” Kaiju unhinged his jaw, pointing his head at the sky.
Grass cat and fire dog had a bad feeling about this. “Uh kid, you’re supposed to point at–”
An enormous ball of dragon type energy shot out of Kaiju’s mouth, pushing the Deino back a few paces from the sheer force of the move.
The ball of dragon type energy rocketed up into the sky with a high pitched whistling sound before exploding into tons of smaller balls and falling back towards the ground at a breakneck speed.
“Holy mother of–SHIT TAKE COVER!” Houndoom shouted, going to grab Kaiju to run for it.
Meowscarada pulled the two back closer to him and then grinded his feet into the dirt. A frenzy of massive tree roots burst out of the ground, whipping around, redirecting any stray Draco Meteors that came too close and covering the three from any damage in a dome of thick reinforced roots.
There was a series of more high pitched whistling noises and ground shaking BOOM’S that lasted for a good minute before they finally stopped.
The tree roots retreated back into the ground and Meowscarada and Houndoom stared in disbelief at the destruction this tiny little dragon had just created.
There were big smoking craters all around them, and a bunch of rather disgruntled looking Pokemon coming out of their hiding places.
“Yay! I hit the twee!” Kaiju cheered. The tree he had targeted was indeed gone.
“Urghhh.” Houndoom groaned, “Yeah, the problem is that you hit everything else too kid. Meowscarada, let’s book it.”
Meowscarada nodded in agreement. “Yep. I think we’re done for the day.”
Meowscarada grabbed Kaiju and he and Houndoom and hauled ass back to the lab before they could be confronted by a mob of angry Pokemon.
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Once I was free, I found Sahara sparring with Collin’s Mienshao, it looked like it was giving her some martial arts lessons. I didn’t really know how they could apply to the fighting style of a dragon, but it looked useful.
Since we’d be heading into cold territory where there’d be an abundance of Ice types, Sahara would have to learn some extra moves to counter them. Brick break would be effective but I wanted more type coverage.
Luckily, we had just the right person there to act as a move tutor in the form of Ben. Who better to learn fire type moves from than a fire type specialist?
Ben was more than happy to move tutor Sahara. He and his team began teaching her Fire Fang and Flamethrower, while I sat on the side and took notes on how they taught Sahara new moves.
It was interesting seeing the teamwork between Ben and his Charizard. Ben was able to clearly explain the move concept while Charizard demonstrated the move for Sahara.
Instead of just explaining the move to her, Ben had Charizard use a weak version of Fire Fang on Sahara a few times to introduce her to using fire type energy. She was fine because of her resistance to fire and was eventually able to create a small flame after a few tries.
After that, Sahara and I battled Ben and his Charizard to use battling to get her to improve her use of fire type energy. All Pokemon improved the best via battling, and dragon types were certainly the best example of improving through challenging themselves.
Sahara’s earlier training with Mienshao also began to show as her battle style was cleaner and more practical than it was before. She wasn’t necessarily using any specific martial arts style, her attacks and defending moves just felt better judged.
Anyways, Fire Fang and Flamethrower weren’t too hard for Sahara to get a hold of once she could produce the necessary amount of fire type energy to use those moves. For Fire Fang, she just had to coat her teeth in fire, and for Flamethrower she just had to shoot fire at her opponents similarly to how she did with Dragon Pulse.
“Char! Charizard!” Charizard put up a claw to stop our current match.
“What is it?” Ben asked. There was no need for Charizard to answer.
We all looked up as we heard a high pitched whistle coming from above, it was kinda like how a firework sounded while it was shooting up in the air. A bunch of bird Pokemon burst out from the surrounding area, trying to get away form the incoming dragon type move.
In the distance, there was a bright blue-purple and yellow ball of energy flying up into the sky in a slightly arced line.
“Huh. That’s weird, no one’s allowed to use Draco Meteor on the ranch.” Ben commented, “I wonder who did it.”
“Maybe that Kenta guy? He’s a dragon specialist afterall. Or some other dragon on the ranch?” I suggested.
Ben waved that suggestion away, “Hell nah, that guy follows rules to a T. There’s no way any of his dragons would do that without his permission, and I don’t think there are any other adult dragons on the ranch at the moment besides yours and his.”
Yeah but Sahara is here with us, and Kaiju’s too young to learn a move like that. Guess it’s not one of mine.
We watched at the Draco Meteor broke into smaller bits and fell back to the ground, resounding booms echoing from where they impacted. It was honestly kind of pretty, and I wondered how a Pokemon coordinator would make use of a move like that.
Not long after the meteors had stopped falling, Houndoom and Meowscarada holding Kaiju ran out of the woods and veered over to us after Houndoom spotted me.
Grass cat and fire dog looked fine, if not a bit frazzled and Kaiju just looked confused and was drooling.
“Hey guys, what happened?” I asked as Meowscarada handed Kaiju to me.
“Meowscarada, meow meowscarada scar.”
“Houndoom! Hound.”
I put Kaiju down, “Umm, just a sec.”
Looking back at my shadow, I asked the ghost gang, “Is Shuppet here?” There was a small chorus of no’s and nopes.
“Anyone able to translate please?”
There was a pause, then a Litwick popped out of my shadow. “Yes! But I want a leppa berry!”
“Deal.”
“Okay! They said that Kaiju used Draco Meteor. They didn’t teach him the move, he just used it, and Houndoom is a potty mouth who taught Kaiju a lot of swear words.”
“Houn, doom!” Houndoom growled indignantly.
“Ok, I got the jist. Kaiju?” I knelt down to get to eye level with him.
“Dein!”
“It’s great that you learned Draco Meteor, I’m really happy about that, but from now on, you’re not allowed to use it unless I say so. Also, you’re not allowed to swear until you’re a grown up, okay?”
“Deino!” Kaiju nodded.
“Good boy.” I pat the little dragons head and turned to Ben,
“Am I gonna be in trouble for any of this?”
The fire type specialist shrugged, “Probably not. I mean, if you get in trouble for this then Collin and I are gonna be in a world of trouble.”
I frowned at that, “What did you guys do?”
“We destroyed one of the barns. Collin’s Tauros smashed it down by accident so my team burned it to destroy the evidence, and no one’s said anything about it since then.
“That sounds dubious.” I commented with a rather unamused expression on my face, “Destruction of property and arson, I didn’t peg you as the type of guy to so something like that.”
Ben raised his hands defensively, “Hey, it was an unused barn, okay? And I think we’re not talking about the bigger issue.”
I crossed my arms. “What?”
“You can talk to ghost Pokemon and never told any of us!”
Oh yeah. I forgot to mention it to anyone.
“Yeah. And?”
“YOU CAN TALK TO GHOSTS!?” Justine popped out of nowhere and grabbed my shoulders, practically shaking with excitement. She looked like she was ready to dissect me like one of those frogs we dissected in middle school.
I leaned back as far as I could, trying to wriggle out of Justine’s grip. “Yeah.”
I glared at Ben as he slowly backed off, trying to sneak away. He saw this coming!
“Why didn’t you tell anyone! That’s amazing! I thought only Agatha could do stuff like that!” Justine continued to rant with a slightly crazy look in her eyes.
I brushed her hands off my shoulders an shrugged, “I dunno I just didn’t think it was important to mention that.”
“How long have you been able to talk to ghosts? How, are you able to talk to ghosts? Can you understand all of them or just a few?” Justin continued to fire away at me.
“A long time, the Great Deku Tree gave me the ability to talk to ghosts by turning a curse into a blessing, and yes form what I know, I can understand all of them.”
Urhg, this isn’t gonna turn into me explaining my fake backstory to her right?
“A Great Deku Tree? Is that a type of Pokemon?”
“No, it’s a video game reference.” I backed a bit more away from Justine and gave Sahara a look that said, let’s go!
“Anyways, why don’t we talk later, Sahara and I have to get some more training done before dinner.” I said, waving bye at Justine before speedwalking away with Sahara close behind.