I waited for Sahara, Kaiju, and Winnie to line up in front of me underneath the shade of a large tree.
I needed to make sure the Glados knew who was a friend or enemy, so I had found a hidden corner of the ranch where I could introduce her to the rest of the team in peace.
I put up my left hand and watched as a bunch of ones and zeroes swirled out my watch, converging into the one and only Glados.
“Alright everyone this is Glados the Porygon-Z. Winnie you’ve already met Glados, everyone else say hi.”
“Garchomp.” Sahara nodded as she eyed the new addition to the team, probably wondering how much of a challenge the virtual Pokemon would be in a battle.
Kaiju simply stared at Glados with an open mouth and drooled, I already knew what he was thinking.
I turned back to Glados, “Glados, this is the team you will be working with. Look out for them and they will look out for you.”
“PorryyyygoOUUuuweeeuuuuzeeeee…” Glados said, acknowledging my command.
“RUNNING. THROUGH. STRATEGIES. WITH. TEAM. TO. OPTIMIZE. ELIMINATION. OF. ENEMIES-S-S-S-S.”
Winnie and I exchanged a glance and I waved my hands at Glados, “Woah, woah, woah. Actually, lets clarify some stuff, yeah?”
Glados’s head twitched as it looked at me.
“Umm, most Pokemon battles don’t require us to ‘eliminate’ opponents, just incapacitate them. No killing, okay? That can get us, more specifically me, into a lot of trouble.”
“AND. LIFE. THREATENING. SITUATIONS…?”
I pursed my lips, “Uh, let’s create a code word for that okay? You’re only allowed to do that if I tell you to uhhhhhhh…Go into murder mode!” I clapped my hands together, “Yeah, murder mode. How does that sound?”
“ACCEPTABLE.”
I gave an internal sigh of relief. Winnie tilted his head and looked at something behind me, “hey, that’s the old guy named after a tree!”
I froze in place and then slowly turned around. It indeed was Professor Rowan, he was standing with a Staraptor perched on a tree branch behind him.
The Professor scratched his chin and seemed mildly curious as he took a long look at Glados.
“Hmm, a Porygon-Z. Is that the one you used to defeat Team Galactic yesterday?”
How did he find me here? It literally took me forever to find this place!
“Uh, yeah?” I hesitantly replied as Kaiju ran over to Rowan and licked his hands. The professor smiled and patted Kaiju’s head, “Hello boy, you’re looking good.”
“Deino!”
He looked back at me, “That’s good, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one used outside of the STEM industry.”
The Professor cleared his throat, “Well anyways, I’m just going around and making sure that everyone involved in the incident is okay. So, how are you and your team doing Azalea?”
He’s not gonna mention Glados any further?
“We’re doing great, I was planning on doing a training session today.” I replied. “By the way, is Marcus okay?”
I hadn’t seen a hint of the guy since yesterday.
Rowan nodded, “He’s still a bit shocked from yesterdays events, but he will recover. I will tell him you asked.”
There was a moment of silence before Rowan continued and asked, “If you don’t mind me asking Azalea, how did you know about Team Galactic? Your friends told me that you knew about them.”
My blood pressure exponentially rose as I tried to collect my thoughts, miserably failing to keep a straight face.
“Ummm, a friend in Sinnoh told me about a sketchy job interview that turned out to be recruitment for Team Galactic.”
Rowan raised an eyebrow, “Really? Who’s this friend?”
I scratched my head, “Umm, I-I don’t know their real name. They lived in Sinnoh and I’ve never been outside of Unova so I’ve never met them in person. Uhh, yeah they were an internet friend and I kinda stopped talking to them after a while. Yeah, so I don’t know that much.”
Urgh that was so bad! Even a toddler wouldn’t believe me! Stupid! Stupid!
It’s not that I didn’t trust Professor Rowan, it’s just that I needed to organize the facts I knew about basically every villain organization and have a proper exit plan first before I spilled anything in case things got dicey.
The last thing I needed would be be put on Team Galactic’s hit list and have I dunno, Hunter J sent after me, cause I knew that she worked with Team Galactic in the anime.
I also didn’t need people questioning where the hell I got this info, cause I didn’t think they were going to take, ‘I’m from another universe where I saw all of this in a kids TV show’ as a convincing argument. Well, that would depend on how much the Pokemon League already knew about Ultra Wormholes.
Much to my relief, Rowan seemed to either believe me (highly unlikely) or he picked up on the fact that I didn’t want to say shit about Team Galactic.
“Hmm, that’s too bad. It would be helpful to have any lead on Team Galactic.”
There was an awkward pause, then Rowan spoke again, “And, have you told your family about yesterday’s incident yet? They must be worried.”
Great now I have to talk about my family that doesn’t exist. Hopefully he doesn’t ask to talk to them.
“Uhhh, yeah. Yep, they know. They know that I’m okay.” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “My parents are pretty keen on me being independent and they know I can take care of myself.”
“I see.” Rowan said, his expression gave nothing away. Meanwhile I was sweating bullets. He totally doesn’t believe me.
RIIIIPP! My eyes widened in surprised, “Kaiju!” I shouted as the little dragon playful growled, running away with a piece of the Professor’s lab coat, and hid behind Sahara.
The landshark rolled her eyes and walked away, grumbling something under her breath.
“I’m so sorry about that! He usually doesn’t do that!”
“It’s fine, it’s just a run of the mill lab coat. When does a young Pokemon not get up to something mischievous?” Thankfully the Professor didn’t seem the mind his ripped coat and changed the subject after dusting himself off, “So, what do you plan to do once the expedition has ended?”
I walked over to Kaiju and took the piece of drool soaked cloth from his mouth and replied, “Heck if I know.” That’s actually a good question, I’ve kind of been just going with the flow ever since I got here. The invitation to the expedition was pretty perfectly timed.
“I definitely wanna challenge gyms and try to make it to a conference and travel a lot.”
“You have any regions in mind?” The Professor asked as I handed him back the soggy piece of cloth.
I shrugged, “I dunno, all of them?”
I guess it would be beneficial to plan out what team I want so I can travel to those regions first and get said Pokemon before I challenge any gyms for real. I’d rather spend time training and exploring cool places than scrambling to look for Pokemon to fill a team slot within a limited time frame.
“It’s okay to not be sure, you have plenty of time.” Rowan replied, pocketing the piece of cloth.
Not in regards to evil organizations trying to destroy or take over the world.
Rowan’s watch alarm began to beep and he glanced at it, “Hmmm, sorry to cut things short. I have a meeting to get to.”
He said goodbye and walked away, the Staraptor accompanying him taking off from the branch it was roosting on and gliding leisurely above the Professor.
“Yep, got it. Bye. Have a good day!” I waved after the Professor and Staraptor until they were out of sight waited and sighed as soon as I knew they were out of earshot.
I rubbed my neck and sighed again, “Shit.”
Winnie looked at me quizzically, “you need to work on your lying skills.”
“Deino dein!” Kaiju helpfully added.
“Kaiju says you lie worse than his siblings do.” Winnie translated.
“Good to know.” I sarcastically retorted.
He was poking me for info, thank Arceus he didn’t ask anymore questions.
There was a lot of new stuff to address, first of which being: What’s up with the Porygon-Z stuff?
I sat down on a nearby rock and pulled out Rotom, “Search up those articles about Porygon-Z please.”
Winnie hopped onto my shoulder to get a view of Rotom’s screen and Kaiju sat down next to me.
“Bzzt!”
“Shit.” I sighed as I actually took time to read through the stuff I had skimmed before. Fuck my short attention span. This would’ve caused me a lot less stress if I had actually read the articles.
If I had taken a slightly closer look, my dumbass would’ve seen that the articles were from eleven years ago. Eleven. Years. Ago.
Scrolling down a littler further revealed a few more articles from just a few years ago talking about investigations into bootleg Dubious Discs causing Porygon-Z’s to malfunction after evolving.
Eleven years ago, there was a high demand for Dubious Discs but low production due to the item being hard to make, so Team Rocket decided to line their pockets by selling bootlegs versions, which inevitably resulted in defect Porygon-Z’s running about and causing mass destruction.
Up until five years, ago there had been a ban on evolving anymore Porygon2. Then the league confirmed that they had retrieved all the bootleg copies and lifted the ban.
The news was kept somewhat under wraps, and not many places reported on it, I guess partially to make Porygon-Z a less in-demand Pokemon and prevent another repeat of the bootleg incident. Some regions had disabled the non lab issued Pokedex apps in order to not have Porygon-Z registered on it.
Nowadays, the Porygon line was almost exclusively used in labs and with tech stuff. That’s why Professor Rowan didn’t seem to care much about Glados.
I snapped back to attention as I heard Winnie growl, and looked at a cluster of bushes to our left that he was growling at.
“What is it now?”
Winnie hopped down form my shoulder and made a head gesture at the bushes, “there’s a brat hiding over there. why don’t you stop spying and come out to face us?”
The underbrush slightly rustled and Yamask floated out from them with a somewhat fed up expression on both his mask an face.
The ghost raised his hands up in a gesture of peace as he glared back at the little fox, “Hey, I’m not here for a fight you mongrel.”
I pulled Winnie back a bit and smoothed down his hackles. “What’s up Yamask?”
“I’m here to talk about Team Galactic. I’ll be straight and tell you I was suspicious of you because you guys clearly knew more than you were letting off, but after witnessing how terrible of a liar you are, I’m sure your the last person who would be chosen for a spy.”
I rolled my eyes, “Gee thanks. These guys have made it quite clear alrea–”
“You need to tell the Professor what you know.” Yamask interrupted.
“Really?” I replied with a raised eyebrow, “Why do you of all Pokemon want me to blab about Team Galactic?”
“what, you really need help from us Yamask?” Winnie chipped in, using a fake tone of concern.
Yamask’s face and mask shifted to annoyance, “Why? Because I don’t want my family to get hurt again. They’ve been through this type of shit before you know, and they were almost killed because of it.”
Oh shit, really? By his family he means Justine and Angela right? Justine was so cheerful all the time and Angela was so strong that it didn’t even occur to me that something bad could’ve happened to them in the past.
I frowned, “And you think that Team Galactic is gonna try something similarly as bad?”
Why am I asking that? If they team up with someone like Hunter J they definitely would do some messed up shit, and I know their end goal.
Yamask growled, floating forward and pointing a finger in my face, “Yes. You morons literally got attacked by those guys, and Marcus could’ve been killed. You really think they’re playing nice?”
Winnie snapped at Yamask’s hand, making the mask ghost quickly withdraw and glare back at Winnie. I put a hand on Winnie’s head to silence him.
“Just wait until they begin to recruit more competent henchmen, then you’ll see what they’re truly willing to do for their goals. If you need any proof, just take a look at what those Aqua and Magma morons in Hoenn did when the Hoenn league left them to fester for too long.”
“So you want to kill the weeds before they can grow out of control.” I stated.
“Essentially yes.” Yamask affirmed with a stately nod.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, “Trust me I’d love to tell someone about what I know, but I would also have to keep my anonymity.”
Then I pointed back at Yamask, tapping it’s mask, “If you know what it’s like to be a victim of these types of people, then you must know how important it is for a kid with no solid backing to stay off of their hit list.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Slightly backing up, Yamask’s eyes widened a bit before he looked away, “I see your point. Fine, if we can come up with a way to protect you identity and get your info to the right people, would you be willing to help?”
I nodded, “Absolutely.”
Crossing his arms, Yamask smiled, “Good, I have a plan then.”
The mask ghost then turned to Winnie and pointed in the white fox’s face, “And you, you just wait, I’ll be beating the crap outta you soon.”
Winnie batted the ghosts’s finger aside and growled back, “i’d like to see you try punk. you wanna go? we can fight now–”
“Calm down guys.” I picked Winnie up, much to his protest, shoving him into my hood, and pulling the hoodie strings tight to turn him into a burrito, “What’s your plan Yamask?”
The mask ghost cackled a bit at how I handled Winnie and “I know a guy in Interpol, a few guys in Interpol who can help out. All I need you to do is give me all the dirt you have on those Team Galactic punks.”
I saluted, “Roger that.”
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“So, what have you guys found out about Azalea?” Celia asked, idly tapping her pen on the table.
The ice-blue haired researcher was sat a meeting table with all the senior members of the expedition team—Tim, Marcus, Angela, Leo, and Jason.
“Not much besides that she knows more than what she’s saying. Rowan said that she was obviously lying but he didn’t want to push her any further in case it would make her more hesitant to talk about it in the future.” Tim reported.
“My ghosts caught her talking about the names of Team Galactic admins and the organization’s goals with her Zorua. Something to do with the creation trio.” Angela added with a slight frown.
Jason looked up from his laptop, “And I couldn’t find anything about her in the Pokemon League’s systems. It’s like she didn’t exist until right before Professor Juniper contacted her.”
“But there’s a record of her and her family in the Unovan system.” Tim pointed out.
Jason nodded, “Yes, I’ll correct myself. I meant that there’s been no record of her since the death of her parents. It’s like she dropped off the face of the earth and then suddenly reappeared a month ago.”
Leo briefly raised a hand, “Did she say anything about her parents?”
“Nothing much. She didn’t say anything about them.” Tim said.
“So do you guys think she has anything to do with Team Galactic?” Jason asked, “This might be a situation like how Team Plasma used that kid with the Zekrom in their schemes, Pokemon translator and all.”
Angel exhaled a breath of smoke despite not having any cigarettes and shook her head, “No. I got word that my sister’s Yamask spoke to Azalea about exposing Team Galactic soon after Rowan left her. She’s not lying because she’s affiliated with the group but because she’s afraid of retaliation from them.”
“Perhaps she was in a similar scenario to what you and your sister experienced with Team Rocket.” Tim suggested.
Celia frowned and asked, “What scenario?”
Angela languidly played with the smoke wafting around her, “My parents were Interpol agents, they worked as undercover agents in the Team Rocket mafia.”
The smoke shifted into a male and female figure dressed in Team rocket attire, “They were found out as moles and killed.” The figures heads violently exploded as if they were shot by a gun.
Then a two little girls formed from the smoke, with dragonite in front of them, shielding them from a group of Team Rocket grunts, “The Blackthorn clan helped protect us from Team Rocket and we had to fake our deaths in order to avoid being targeted and killed.”
Marcus nervously spoke up, “It…doesn’t really make sense that she’d be hiding from Team Galactic though. They only recently became powerful, and they still don’t have the manpower to do something on the same level as Team Rocket.”
The smoke around Angela dissipated as she spoke, “But Team Plasma did, not to mention Ghetsis had the Shadow Triad to assassinate people for him. They’re skilled enough that even Unova’s Elite four had trouble capturing them.”
“How did her parents die?” Leo asked with an expression of concern.
“They’re listed as kill in action twelve years ago,” Jason stated, typing away at his laptop, “They were rangers working in an exchange program. I couldn’t find where Azalea was at the time of their death. No extended family either. I don’t get it, this still doesn’t explain how she knows about the admins and goal of Team Galactic.”
Celia sighed, “We might have a clue if we’re able to contact who raised her. Did any of Unovan’s childrens or protections systems have anything on her?”
“No, they didn’t even know she existed.” The electric type specialist said.
“Then who the hell raised her?” Tim muttered, “She was two when her parents died.”
“Maybe Pokemon?” Marcus suggested, “I-I mean, there are cases of Pokemon raising humans right?” He looked at Celia, “You’ve found missing children who were raised by Pokemon before.”
Celia shrugged and nodded, “Yeah I have, but they were completely unsocialized and took years to become accustomed to human life. Azalea is having no problem fitting right in and is educated.”
Angela held up a hand as she thought of something, “Hold on, Marcus might be right.”
Celia tilted her head, “Oh yeah?”
Angel took Jason’s laptop, earning a “Hey!” of protest from the electric type specialist as she began typing, “Ghosts are infamous for kidnapping children.”
Everyone looked to the whiteboard as the projector flickered to life and showed a trainer profile of a man that looked similar to Azalea. The ghost specialist clicked on Gengar’s profile, “Yeah, see? Her dad had a Gengar that disappeared after his death. It could’ve taken her with it.”
“Wouldn’t anyone notice?” Leo asked with a frown.
“Not if Gengar hypnotized them. Even without that, she doesn’t seem to have any family outside of her parents, it would’ve be hard for a kid like her to slip through the cracks.” Angela replied.
“So you’re saying that her father’s Gengar raised her.” Tim said.
Angela exhaled another breath of smoke that formed into tons of different ghost type Pokemon, “More like a coven of ghosts. That would explain the handful of young ghost Pokemon following her around and all the money and items she has. Her parents weren’t rich you know, how else would she suddenly have a high grade Devon bag and hundreds of thousands of dollars in her bank account?”
“The ghosts gave her the stuff they looted from previous victims.” Leo stated with a slightly shocked look, “Wait then what about the rare Pokemon?”
A giant ghost silhouette formed above the of the smoke ghosts as Angela replied, “The Coven Master, probably helped her catch them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it taught her everything about how to be a human too.” She typed into the computer and pulled up a map of the world with detailed labels and zoomed into Unova.
“The ghost type community has a list of covens in each region. Azalea appeared in Humilau, there’s one in the northeast of Unova. She also mentioned to my sister something about a ‘Great Deku Tree’ giving her the ability to speak to ghost Pokemon. That would be…” The map zoomed further in to show one particular red circle. “This! The Haunted Forest Coven. It’s ruled by a Trevenant.”
The smoke around Angela formed into a massive Trevenant with malicious red eyes.
Jason leaned back into his chair with his arms crossed, “And how does this have to do with her knowing about Team Galactic?”
“She might’ve learned about them from Trevenant or one of the other elder ghosts. Or maybe from a ghost that still had memories of its life as a human.” Angela replied.
Leo tapped the table, “How can we get the information from her then?”
“She made a plan with Yamask about organizing a list of information about them. I’ll have one of my ghosts ask him and report back.” The ghost specialist answered.
Tim sat back in his chair and sighed, rubbing his face, “Kids these days. Why do they think they have to bet he only ones to handle these situations? Can’t they leave stuff like this to adults and not get involved with criminal organizations?”
Leo sat back in his chair too and chuckled, “That’s just how the world is. Don’t you remember, Red was fifteen when he helped take down Team Rocket.”
“Hilda was in her teens too when she faced Ghetsis and N from what I remember.” Marcus added.
“Yeah and she mysteriously ended up dead not long after Ghetsis escaped with the Shadow Triad.” Tim snapped, “Throat slit, gutted like a fish, and her Pokemon missing.” His voice slightly choked up.
Marcus patted his colleague on his back, “Yeah I know, it was shocking to hear. A promising trainer extinguished just like that, she was one of Juniper’s favorites too.”
“We don’t need another case like Hilda’s, we’ll need to keep an eye out for Azalea and the other kids.” Tim sighed, the others voiced their agreement.
“And I still can’t believe Kenta thought it was a good idea to get into a fist fight with a Pokemon.” Leo added with a slight chuckle.
“He’s just asking to get poisoned, criminal organizations might as well specialize in poison and dark types.” Jason irritably said as he grabbed his laptop back from Angela.
Leo rolled his eyes and waved at Jason, “Hello, dark type specialist here.”
A look from Celia made Jason sigh and apologize, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend, I was just emphasizing how much they prefer those specific types.”
A loud tapping on the table got everyone’s attention, Angela stood up with a Banette floating behind her, “Well if we have nothing else to talk bout, I’m out. I have a Yamask to interrogate.” The ghost specialist strode out of the room, a trail of faint, scentless smoke trailing behind her.
Everyone looked at each other and agreed to end the meeting, they indeed had nothing else to talk about.
----------------------------------------
“You got this Sahara!” I shouted encouragement as she took another swing at Mienshao and missed.
The landshark was struggling a lot more than usual due to the power set she had demanded that I equip her with after I explained how they worked. She’d have basically every stat nerfed during her training sessions in exchange for more growth in power.
For actual battles, Sahara would get the muscle band, and the choice band once she had mastered Outrage to the point of being able to shake herself out of it.
I looked back over to Kaiju and Winnie, who were doing their usual hide and seek training, Winnie was hiding in his illusions and Kaiju was tasked with finding and tagging him with a few moves.
This time Winnie got a spell tag, which was currently tucked into his tail. The ghost fox was pretty excited about his new item, and after using it a few times, told me about how it made it easier to create large illusions. He was already hard at work using the power of the spell tag to mimic Sahara and create a small illusion sandstorm.
Kaiju on the other hand got to wear the extra Power Lens I had to train his special attack. I was originally planning on having him try out the wise glasses but he got excited and began shooting Dragon Pulses at everything.
So no wise glasses for Kaiju, they would be going to Glados instead. The usually wacky looking Pokemon looked pretty fashionable with the wise glasses on and I told it as much.
The glitchy duck looked pretty satisfied with its new item, though it seemed confused about the purpose of me just saying it looked good wearing the wise glasses. I had to explain to it what compliments were and I think it understood? Despite talking like in the flattest robot voice ever, I swear I could began to hear a hint of emotion in the AI’s speech patterns as it told me that it liked the glasses.
All in all, the team was happy with the new items I had forgotten about until just recently.
In addition to the new items, I organized all the TRs in my bag to see which ones I had. I should’ve been more proactive in making TRs when I was playing Violet, but there were still ones that would be useful for the team, for example, surprise surprise! I had a TR for Thunder Fang. How convenient.
I wanna use the Terra Orb but I already told everyone that this was my first time outside of Unova. How would I explain having something exclusively from Paldea?
I would’ve preferred having access to Z-Moves or mega evolution instead, but eh, that was another problem for another time.
Anyways, back to new moves. Using TRs and TMs was a simple enough process. The user would just have to return their Pokemon, find a into this machine thingy with a screen and a slot to inset the discs. Put the discs for the moves you wanted you Pokemon to learn in, and then tap the Pokeball’s button to this round indent underneath the screen and hold until the machine chimed to indicate that the process was done.
So bam! Thunder Fang and Protect, two new moves for Sahara to add to her list of moves to practice.
With Glados, it could just go into the machine once I had inserted the discs and download the information for Protect.
While the process was easy for Sahara Glados, the same couldn’t be said for Winnie cause he didn’t have a Pokeball. There was no other way to use a TM or TR, but we both wanted him to learn Protect and Substitute.
With the promise of going to a fancy restaurant after the expedition had ended, he ended up agreeing to temporarily being caught in a luxury ball.
One Protect and Substitute later, I released Winnie from the luxury ball. He shook himself off and stated, “that was unpleasant. i don’t see why sahara and kaiju can stand being in those things.”
I just shrugged, “I dunno, you can ask them later if you want.”
After that, it was back to training. Kaiju and Winnie were paired off to take turns using Protect and while the other tested the strength of the move with an attack.
Sahara went off to practice her new moves with Kenta’s dragons in the ‘Dragons only’ section of the ranch, so I wouldn’t have to worry about lunch for her. The ranch staff usually took care of feeding the Pokemon on the ranch who weren’t with their trainers and they did a good job, though Sahara made sure that she had her bottle of extra hot chili sauce to put onto her food.
So I was left with Glados, and we had some work to do.
I took another look at the moves she had before coming up with a list of goals.
“Well first thing is that you don’t need Thunder Shock, it’s just a less powerful version of Discharge.”
“AFFIRMATIVE. DELETING. THUNDER. SHOCK. Ë-Ë-Ë-Ë-Ë-Ë”
I took a look at a list of moves it could learn, then whittled down the list to ones that I thought would be more important for it to learn.
Psychic wasn’t hard to teach to Glados myself just because all it had to do was use psychic type energy to move things around, and for an attack, crush them.
Gravity wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be. I thought having Glados force everything within a certain radius downwards would work but it wasn’t as powerful as I thought it would be.
So we went off to visit our local psychic type specialists! I asked them to help out with Zen Headbutt too if they had to time cause Glados only knew one physical move, Double Edge.
The twins were happy to help, any excuse for them to procrastinate on their homework was a good excuse. It was actually pretty easy for them to teach Glados the moves I requested, due to their ability to communicate with Glados psychically. I guess it was easier to show the AI how the moves worked in their minds, and Glados had the basics of the moves down by lunch.
Zen Headbutt and Gravity were still incomplete, but Glados would have a better grasp on them after a few days of training. As my old flute tutor used to say, practice makes perfect.
----------------------------------------
“Okay, since you know the type advantages and disadvantages, you should be able to use that to help with Conversion 2. For example, if you’re facing a water type, you would move which type to the top of your list…?” I paused for Glados to answer,
“ELECTRIC.”
“Good yes! You’d put one of your electric type moves to the front of your list and switch your type to electric for more same type attack bonus.”
Glados’s body and wings spun around in what seemed like pleasure as it spoke again, “ACKNOWLEDGED.”
I continued, “Conversion 2 can also be used that way if you don’t have access to a move of type needed or Conversion is disabled. You can hit yourself with one of your moves to switch types, and we’re going to work on only letting the enemy’s attack graze you so that you can still switch types without taking an unreasonable amount of damage.”
“ACKNOWLEDGED.” Gladoes said as it jittered around.
“Bzzt!” Rotom flew out of my bag and flashed the time on its screen, 2 pm.
“Ahh crap, I lost track of time again. Thanks Rotom.” I said before hurrying back with Glados over to where Winnie and Kaiju were training, the two would definitely be mad about the late lunch.
Winnie and the ghosts helped out with cooking as usual, and Glados kind of helped out with Psychic. The virtual Pokemon was still far from being able to handle more delicate things with its new move, so it was assigned with tasks that didn’t not require very fine movement.
We had sandwiches and berries again. It was my go to food cause it could be customized to suit the tastes of whoever was eating it.
Kaiju and Winnie weren’t really picky eaters, but some of the ghosts were, especially Shuppet. Her sandwich took the longest to make because she kept wanting to switch ingredients out for something else cause it didn’t go well the taste of (insert whatever food item).
Besides that, it was nice having a picnic with everyone in a quiet section of the ranch. Winnie took this time to tell the other ghosts the ‘harrowing story’ of how we defeated Team Galactic and saved the day, unenthusiastic_yaaaaay.mp3, etc.
The other ghosts listened in awe while Shuppet looked skeptical about Winnie’s wild exaggerations of the fight. Me too bud, I highly doubt Winnie and Glados have the capability to fight off an army of Pokemon the size of Sahara.
I didn’t spoil their fun though. I had other stuff to worry about regarding my deal with Yamask, like the list of all the shit I had on Team Galactic and turn that into some sort of thesis to expose Team Galactic. Okay, I’m exaggerating, just giving the info I knew to whoever Yamask had in mind wouldn’t be the end all be all to taking down Team Galactic.
Whoever at Interpol who was investigating the group would have to double check the facts and make sure the info I gave them was actually true, so I would have to give them info that they can double check.
I wonder how Yamask ‘knows some guys’ as Interpol.
I sighed, I’ll do it later. I don’t have enough paper or patience for this at the moment.
My mood lightened a bit as I remembered the Pokeflute. I hadn’t had the chance to try it out myself yet.
I carefully took the instrument case out and almost reverently lifted the Pokeflute from its bed. It looked a bit funky due to the Pokeball in its lower midsection, and was a a few inches longer than a recorder.
Kaiju slowly reached his head over and tried to lick the new object and I gently pushed his head away, “No Kaiju. Dude, you literally just ate.”
“Dein.” Kaiju grunted as he plopped back down.
I blew a note on it and was pleasantly surprised. It looked and probably was played similarly to a recorder, but it sounded more like a wood flute.
I looked up the fingering notes for it and then immediately played a few notes from Megalovania.
Part of the reason why I had started learning to play any instrument was purely because of video game music and some movie songs that I liked. Since this was the Pokemon world, I switched to playing a broken up version of the original Pokemon opening.
Rotom floated in front of me, its screen had a music composition app up as I tried to record the notes to the song cause it wasn’t like I could just search up sheet music to a song that didn’t exist in this world.
Shuppet floated over and curiously looked at Rotom’s screen, “What are you doing?”
“Playing music.” I replied, then I slightly shrugged, “Well, more like practicing.”
“Cool.” Shuppet said.
One of the Litwick waddled over and asked, “Which song is it?”
“Ummm, Gotta catch em all.” Or Pokemon Theme, but the first option sounds better. “There are lyrics to it too, you guys want me to teach you the song?”
Misdreavus floated over and grinned, “Sure!” The other ghosts made their way over and chattered excitedly about singing.
Winnie looked a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t get to continued his exalting tales of battling bad guys but still followed everyone over.
I cleared my throat and put the Pokeflute down on to rest on my lap, “Well it starts with, I wanna be the very best~…”
The ghosts quickly got a hang of the song lyrics, and we quickly turned the picnic into a mini party with my rookie Pokeflute playing and the slightly unharmonized singing of the ghosts. It certainly wasn’t anything professional, but we were having fun, and that was all that mattered.
Winnie and Shuppet almost immediately got into a singing competition, trying to out-sing each other, though they never specified how they would decide the winner.
If they were deciding who won by the loudest singer, that award would have to go to Duskull. It was usually a pretty quiet and reserved Pokemon that liked to sit in the corner and just stare, but once it felt like it had a good grip on the lyrics, it went full opera singer mode and drowned out everyone else’s singing with its loud dramatic opera version of the song.
Misdreavus was the best singer, apparently it had gotten singing lessons before, though it didn’t mention where from. The dark turquoise ghost was the type to say show off and then act bashful about how good it was in order to fish for compliments.
Most effort went to Kaiju. He was jumping and shaking his head around like this was a heavy metal concert, rocking his head back and forth like it was a hammer, and spraying bursts of Dragon Breath everywhere. The litter dragon was sadly, completely tone deaf, but no one had the heart to tell him to stop rocking it to the song.
I had Rotom download an app where I could write the music notes down for some songs I could only remember parts of and had to slowly piece together.
Most of them were from Legends of Zelda, and while the others liked the songs well enough, they were disappointed with the lack of lyrics. So I gave them the job of making lyrics for the the songs that they liked while I tried to remember Lugia’s Song.
It wouldn’t be super useful cause I doubted that I would have to calm any legendary birds from fighting each other, and hopefully I never would have to, but it was still a beautiful song.
I blinked as certain song came to mind. Oracion! That song from the Rise of Darkrai!
That one might come in useful, granted, only if the same logic from the anime applied to this world, but I didn’t see a reason why not.
“Hmmm, ya know guys,” The ghosts looked back at me from their little lyric planning session, “We’re gonna go visit Alamos town once we’re done with the expedition.”
Winnie trotted over and asked, “Why?”
“The Space-Time Towers!” I waved a hand in the air to try to get across how bit the towers were, “Alamos town is famous for them. Rotom, you wanna pull up a picture?”
“Bzzt!” Rotom’s screen changed to a picture of a massive pair of golden-bronze almost cathedral-like towers with intricate stained glass windows, looming over a small town.
Litwick, “Woah, they’re so pretty!”
I smiled, the Space-Time Towers were even prettier and more massive than the cathedrals I’d seen in Europe, it was kind of hard to comprehend just how big they were through a picture. “Yeah, they’re the largest musical instruments in the world. They have this bell system inside that can play music. It’s pretty cool.”
“why are they called the space-time towers?” Winnie asked.
I pursed my lips and tapped my chin, “Uhhh, I’m not super sure, but I think it has to do with it having the ability to calm the gods of space and time with its music. The people of the town used the towers to play a the song Oracion in order to calm Palkia and Dialga down from a fight and save the town from being destroyed as well.”
I sat back and smiled as I remembered by favorite childhood film, “A mythical Pokemon called Darkrai helped out too by fighting Dialga and Palkia by itself, it sacrificed itself to give the people time to find the music disc for the song and activate the towers.”
“wow, darkrai must be really strong then.” Winnie commented.
“Deino dein.”
I nodded, “Yep. Its got a pretty overpowered signature move called Dark Void.”
One of the Driftblim raised a ribbon, “Can we hear Oracion?”
I smiled and nodded, “Sure, gimme a few minutes to try to remember and write down the song notes.”
I wonder how effective Oracion really is. This’ll be a good chance to test it out the ‘power of song and friendship.’ Heh.
It wasn’t too hard to remember most of the song, cause it liked to play it a lot on my flute back in middle and high school. Once I was done writing down what I could remember, I practiced it a few times and then got to playing that most complete part that I had.
Despite fumbling a few notes, I could see that the song had some sort of effect. Everyone quieted down, even Kaiju stopped chewing on my shoe and listened, slightly swaying to the music.
“And that’s all I have at the moment. You guys like it?”
“Deino!” Kaiju opened his mouth wide in a smile.
“it’s nice to listen to. it’s calming” Winnnie said, the other ghosts voiced their agreement.
“I can see why it was used to calm Palkia and Dialga.” Shuppet added, still with a dreamy smile on her face.
Huh, I guess it did work. Kaiju went back to chewing on my shoe.
Well, not a hundred percent, but it worked. Dunno how useful it’ll be in the expedition, I don’t think I’ll be playing the Pokeflute while running away from an angry Beartic lol. And it’s fucking cold there.
Last thing I’d be doing would be playing an instrument in a freezing arctic-like climate. I could still remember having to play the flute in marching band in the freezing fall rain and at late fall football matches. At least some of the band kids were smart and brought hand warmers. I did not have the foresight for that.
It was pretty miserable and this trip would have weather worse than that, I’d freeze my fingers off if I removed my gloves even once. Also, cold temperatures were not good for instruments.
“NINETY. EIGHT. MINUTES. HAVE. ELAPSED. THAT. SHOULD. BE. SUFFICIENT. FOR. A. BREAK.”
I looked up at Glados floating ominously above us in the air. Its arms were spinning rapidly and it kept rotating its head. I guess it was impatient to get back to training. Oh wait, it’s impatient! That’s a new thing.
I stretched and sighed, “Yeah yeah, I got it.” I took out a cleaning kit and quickly cleaned the cleaned the Pokeflute before putting it back in its case and getting up.
“It’s back to training everyone.” I said as I stretched my legs too, slightly shaking my chewed up and slobber covered shoe in hopes of somewhat drying it off. The ghosts groaned that their fun time was interrupted and began dispersing.
“Don’t worry, we’ll have a jam session another time.” I reassured them.
Then I turned to Winnie and Kaiju, “Keep practicing Protect, Winnie you also need to keep working on Substitute, but make sure you have time to recover in between uses.”
Winnie nodded and did a cat stretch before trotted away to the clearing he and Kaiju were training in before. Kaiju quickly toddled after Winnie.
“Now, Glados where were we?”
“USES. OF. CONVERSION. AND. CONVERSION2.”
“Ahh yes. So, what you do say about a few battles? I think Abigail and Sandslash are overdue for a visit.”