Harsh grains of sand violently whipped around with a loud whoosh, grating at anything within reach like sandpaper on wood. Two Pokemon were running around in the raging sandstorm, throwing out attacks while trying to prevent themselves from being hit.
Sahara rushed forward and bit down on Winnie’s head, dispelling the illusion with dark type energy from Crunch. The landshark roared in frustration, this was the eleventh illusion she had destroyed and she had yet to land a proper hit on Winnie.
On Winnie’s end, despite having landed a few hits on the dragon, the illusion fox quickly realized that he had to avoid using physical moves too often because he kept getting cut on the sharp edges of Sahara’s scales.
“Try out the Twister and Spike combo again Sahara remember to use wide ranged attacks and field hazards to deal with opponents you can’t easily hit! Winnie remember you can use Psychic and Protect to deal with AOE attacks or field hazards!”
Sahara grunted and slammed her tail on the ground, kicking up a bunch of Twisters that she then threw a bunch of Spikes into. Then with a swipe of an arm, she let the Twisters full of sharp metal loose on the battlefield.
Winnie wasn’t visible but I could see wavers in his illusion as he was hard pressed to avoid the Twisters throwing Spikes everywhere. A psychic force grabbed the spikes out of the tornado and began hurling them at Sahara.
“Good job guys! Keep at it!” I yelled from the bench on the side of the field.
“Zweilous!” One of Kaiju’s heads shouted in encouragement. Having gone from a runt at just under two feet, to being almost six feet tall–a foot taller than a normal Zweilous, he was now too big to sit on the bench without breaking it so he was forced to sit on the ground next to me. Guess he really was his mama’s boy, he was gonna grow up to be a massive boi.
Kaiju has been using my hand as a lollipop for some reason. The moment the right head shouted encouragement to Sahara and Winnie, Leftie stopped letting Righting lick my hand.
I shook slobber off my hand as Rightie got mad at Leftie and the two began fighting, nipping at each other.
I sighed and pushed the two heads apart as they tried to keep fighting each other. “Oi, guys, stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Hey, no, no, stop, no.”
I called out to the two training, “Sahara! Remember to counter Dig with Earthquake! Winnie, you can’t dodge everything with Dig, why don’t you try combining Will-O-Wisp and Substitute as another way to avoid attacks?”
I cuffed both of Kaiju’s heads as they both took deep breaths, “Kaiju no! No Hyper Voice!”
Both heads turned to me and let out a whine in protest. While Leftie was turned away Rightie opened his mouth like a muppet and blasted Leftie with a Dragon Pulse, narrowly missing me. Leftie swiveled around and shot a Dragon Pulse back. Rightie went to bite Leftie, who ducked out of the way. RIIIIIIIP!
I raised my right arm up to look at my now torn jacket sleeve. I sighed and looked at Kaiju who was now squabbling with himself and running around the bench as each head blamed the other for ripping my jacket.
Kaiju was a lot harder to handle now that he was a teenager. Sahara even refused to spar with him anymore because he kept spamming Hyper Voice and Draco Meteor like a little shit despite me having banned his usage of them during spars.
By now, Sahara and Winnie had noticed the disturbance. I exchanged a look with them and nodded.
Winnie immediately blew an Icy Wind at Kaiju’s feet, temporarily freezing him to the ground. Sahara grinned and stomped over to Kaiju before kicking him over onto his back and watching with glee as the younger dragon squealed and rolled around like an upturned turtle struggling to get back on his feet.
“Hey! Good morning guys!”
I leaned back and looked at the Pokemon Center back entrance where Justine and her crew were emerging from. Cheerful as always, Litwick excitedly waved at us from atop Justine’s head like a cute sentient hat. “Hi Azzy! Hi foxy! Hi chompy! Hi zweizwei!”
Golett and Yamask were in their usual positions right behind their trainer, Golett gave us a polite wave and the mask ghost nodded at us as he spoke, “Sup losers?”
Winnie grinned and replied to Yamask, “Oh, just feeling…fully evolved ya know?” The illusion fox then cackled at Yamask’s subsequent scowl and eye roll.
“Gooood morning.” I replied to Justine and Litwick.
Justine pulled a Luxury ball out from her pocket and waved it at me, “This is the surprise I was talking about yesterday!”
I whistled at the luxury ball, “That’s pretty fancy.”
“Wait till you see who’s inside~” Justine pressed the button with a flourish. There was a pop and flash.
A Hisuan Zorua appeared and sneezed before looking directly at me and grinning, “Hi human! Remember me?”
It took me a second to recognize the little fox.
Winnie scurried over and laid down in front of the smaller fox with a big smile, “mii!”
“Hi Winnie!” Mii yipped, mimicking Winnie’s posture and wagging her tail as they squealed at each other. It was reminiscent of those videos of squealing foxes on Youtube that I used to watch.
I looked back up at Justine, “How?”
“This cutie wanted to see the outside world.” Justine said, “But since she’s the Mountain Lord’s great–something grandchild, Angela had to help convince her grandmother to let her come outside. She’ll be traveling with me from now on!” Justine leaned forward, pointing at herself with a thumb.
I smiled as I looked back at Winnie and Mii giggling at each other like little kids, “That’s good. It’ll be nice for Winnie to have someone he can relate to nearby.”
“I know right?!” Justine beamed, “And I wanna give her a nickname, you mind telling me what you think of the one I have in mind?”
I nodded, “Go ahead.”
Justine scooted back a bit and crouched down next to Mii, “I was thinking of calling her Agatha, after my sister’s mentor.”
I raised an eyebrow at that and exchanged a look with Mii. Mii did not look like an Agatha.
“That’s a terrible name.” Yamask scowled, “No one should be named after that old hag.”
“And my name is Mii! Not Agatha!” Mii piped up, “Agatha is a weird name. Tell her that Az!”
I looked between Mii and Justine, “Uhhh, she says her name is Me, not Agatha, she doesn’t like the name Agatha.”
Justine snapped her fingers, “Oh yeah! You can talk to them. Her name is Me?”
Mii growled and huffed, “Again, it’s Mii! Not Me! Why can’t you get it right?”
I carefully crouched down to talk to the little fox, “Hey, you keep saying your name exactly the same way, what’s the difference between Me and Me?”
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
“One is Mii, the other is Me.” Winnie helpfully added.
Banette floated out of my shadow with an amused grin, “I don’t think she gets it. They’re spelled differently.”
“What does spelled mean?” Mii asked Winnie, who shrugged, “it has something to do with the symbols humans write.”
With a dramatic sigh, Yamask floated over with a stick and began drawing in the sand, “Here, I’ll show you illiterates.”
The mask ghost shot Winnie a superior look, probably because Winnie can’t read or write like he could. “One is spelled with two i’s, the other is spelled with one e.”
“M-i-i?” I asked, scratching my head. Like a Mii from those Nintendo games? “Okay. Yeah, I can’t hear the difference between the words when you guys say it.”
Justine leaned over to look at Yamask’s writing in the sand with a slightly confused look. “Uhh, whatcha talking about?”
“Uh, it looks like I’m incorrectly pronouncing Me’s name.” I replied. Oh yeah she must’ve just been hearing my one sided conversation this entire time. Oops.
“It’s Mii!” Mii indignantly squeaked. I put my hands up, “Right, sorry.”
“Mii is a super cute name! I’ll stick to that then.” Justine grinned then she lightly sighed in disappointment, “I really thought she looked like an Agatha though.”
Mii noticeably did not correct Justine’s pronunciation this time. I pointed at Justine and asked the little fox, “Wait, she didn’t say your name wrong?”
Mii shook her head, “No. She said it right.”
Hooowwwwwww???
“Well, that’s much better than the nicknames Justine tried to give Golett and I.” Yamask said in a gruff tone. Golett shuddered.
I raised my eyebrows, “Really? What were they? They couldn’t have been that bad right?”
Yamask pointed to Golett, “She was gonna name him Steven,” then he pointed to himself, “and me, Wallace.”
“I see a pattern here.” I said.
The mask ghost shrugged, “She thankfully gave up on nicknaming us before she got Litwick.”
“i dunno yamask, you really look like a wallace to me.” Winnie said with fake enthusiasm, earning another dirty look from the mask ghost.
“Are you guys talking shit about me?” Justine asked with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow.
Before I could answer, a victorious roar from Kaiju turned our heads. The tornado of terror was back on his feet. The two headed dragon quickly toddled over, mouths set on getting a taste of Mii.
I got up, nearly tripping over myself as my right leg had gone completely numb, but I was able to grab Kaiju by one of his necks and push him back a bit. The free head tried to chomp Mii, who jumped back with a wild giggle.
“You can’t catch me zweizwei!” Mii shouted in a singsong voice as she ran away laughing. Kaiju grunted and wriggled out of my grip before running after the tasty snack.
“Winnie, go keep an eye on them please.” I sighed resignedly. With a nod, Winnie ran off to join the two.
“Garchomp.” I looked over at Sahara, who was impatiently tapping her foot and growling. She wanted to get back to training.
“Sorry Sahara.” I tapped my watch, “Glados, go find another field and train with Sahara. I want you to work on your new ice type moves.”
Glados swirled out of my watch and flew to one of the empty battlefields with Sahara.
“Wait for us!” Banette shouted as she grabbed Yamask and Golett and dragged them over to join the training session.
“Everyone is quite lively today.” Justine commented.
I voiced my agreement as I sat back down on the bench. Justine and Liwtick joined me.
“So, did Professor Rowan agree to let you go to Kalos?” I asked the researcher.
Justine smiled and gave me a double thumbs up, “Yep! I’m gonna be flying to Kalos by the end of the week!”
“That’s fun, you’re gonna get to study mega evolution.”
Justine paused for a second and blinked in surprise, “Wow, you know about Mega evolution?”
I frowned and returned her look of surprise, “Yeah? Am I not supposed to?” Shit, mega evolution isn’t well known until Ash goes to Kalos.
“Nah, it’s just not super well known.” Justine waved a hand, “So how’d you find out about mega evolution?”
“Uhh, well I was interested in Diantha’s Gardevoir’s forme change so I did some research and found out about Mega evos. I kinda assumed that the Kalos lab would be researching the phenomena because that’s where it first appeared. It’s the same for the Galar and Paldea with Dynamaxing and Terrastrializing right?”
That seemed to make sense to Justine and she nodded, “Yep! I wanna be the first to discover a new ghost type mega evolution, they’ve only found one for Sableye, but there surely are more!”
A Gengar-like grin appeared on her face as she said in a lower tone, “And between you and me, I’m gonna obtain mega evolution before my sister and Agatha.”
“Nice.” I fist bumped Justine, “I wanna get mega evolution too, but I dunno how I’d get access to the materials.”
“Well the first step would be to go to Kalos,” Justine said, “that’s where mega stones and keystones naturally appear.”
“Hey, if you plan on going to Kalos next we can travel there together!” Justine said, clapping her hands together in excitement.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” I said before giving Justine a serious look, “Just as long as I don’t get pulled into another fucking expedition.”
The ghost specialist laughed, “Nah. We’ll be in Lumiose city, no one’s sending an expedition there.”
I wonder if the mega stones in the X and Y games are in the same locations here. I don’t remember all of them but I think I know where I can find a Garchompite. The only issue will be obtaining a keystone and staying out of Team Flare’s way, cause Interpol probably isn’t gonna be taking them out within a few weeks like they did with Team Galactic. They’ve got other world-ending problems like Necrozma, Guzzlord, and Eternatus to worry about.
I smiled and tapped my pocket to let Rotom know I needed it, “Have you booked your flight?”
“Not yet,” Justine replied, “I was gonna wait until after I asked you. Let’s book our flights now.”
Rotom flew out of my pocket, yawning and stretching. I waited for it to finish waking up before I opened up the Pokenet, “Oh right, I have to swing by Jubilife first to meet with Professor Rowan.”
“That won’t be a problem, all International flights depart from Jubilife.” Justine said, then she scrunched up her mouth, “Actually I’m pretty sure most International flights depart from Jubilife besides the ones to the Indigo plateau and Hoenn. Anyways what I mean is that we’ll be going there anyways.”
I nodded as I looked through flights to Lumiose, “That’s convenient. Which airline should we pick?”
----------------------------------------
“Let’s get this quickly sorted, I know you and Justine have a flight to catch.” Professor Rowan said as he opened a drawer in his desk and began looking through the manilla folders there.
“If you look at your account, you should be able to see the danger pay you’ve been sent.”
I nodded.
“Okay, here it is.” The Professor took out a manilla folder with a few papers inside and placed it on the desk. “I’ve noticed that you don’t have any sponsorships.”
I nodded again.
“The reason I asked you to come here was because I would like to sponsor you.” Professor Rowan said.
I blinked in surprise and the only thing I could say was, “Uh, really?”
Rowan raised an eyebrow, “Yes, really. To be frank, you’ve only been a trainer for a few months and you’ve already got two pseudo-legendaries, a small horde of ghost types, a battle trained Porygon-Z, and you have made notable contributions to a major expedition. If I didn’t offer you a sponsorship now, another lab or organization would do so without a second thought.”
I feel like more stuff goes into choosing a sponsor though. Don’t people who get regional lab sponsorships usually take some sort of test beforehand? I mean, being sponsored by a regional lab sounds pretty good though. The extra money will help a lot with the food costs for Kaiju and Sahara.
After a short moment of deliberation, I replied, “Well, I certainly won’t refuse a regional lab sponsorship.”
“Great,” Rowan opened up the manilla folder and slided it and a pen over to me before he began pointing at stuff on the paper, “Here are the benefits, here are a duties you might be asked to carry out on behalf of the lab, here’s everything else. Ask me if you have any questions.”
I took a closer look at the paper, which thankfully had been mostly dumbed down from legal speak, probably for the sake of the trainers reading it.
Basically, I would receive a stipend of money at the end of each week, and care supplies for my team would be paid for by the league.
In exchange, I’d have to represent my sponsor in any major competitions I participated in, carry out research tasks within reason, and basically help people if they’re in trouble.
It all seemed pretty straightforward, so I signed.
“Okay, now that’s done.” Rowan put the papers away as he spoke, “Regional labs usually provide a trainer with a Pokemon. The Sinnoh starters have all already been taken by our other sponsors this year, but we can provide you with any other Pokemon within reason. If you would like a Sinnoh starter, then you will have to wait a few months.”
I shrugged, “That’s fine, I already know what I want. I would like a Rufflet.”
Why a Rufflet? Because Braviary! Big bird! Big eagle! I could ride an eagle like they did in the Lord of the Rings movies! For the more practical reason, it was because I couldn’t ride Sahara anymore. My weak leg would be numb for hours after a short while of being strapped into a dragon saddle, so I’d have to get a Pokemon that could carry a basket instead.
The Professor sagely nodded, “That won’t be a problem. Once we get a Rufflet for you, I’ll have someone send it over to Sycamore’s lab for you to pick up.”
“Bzzt!” Rotom buzzed in my pocket and my watch lit up as Glados put an emoji on the watch screen of a Mr Mime pointing to a watch on its wrist.
“I’ll have someone teleport you back to the airport.” Rowan said, pressing one of the buttons on his office phone.
We both stood up as an Alakazam opened the door and came in. “Alaka-zam.” There was a Natu perched on its shoulder that immediately focused its intense gaze on me.
Professor Rowan gave Alakazam a short greeting before saying to me, “Thanks for coming by Azalea. One more thing before you leave,” He took out a small wooden box and handed it to me. “There’s a note inside.”
I looked at the box and then turned to Alakazam as it gave me an impatient “ahem.” I thanked the Professor and hurriedly grabbed Alakazam’s hand, not wanting to test the rather grumpy looking psychic-type’s patience.
In an instant, the quiet of the Professor’s office was replaced with the loud constant chatter of the airport. I blinked and looked around. Alakazam and Natu had already left.
I spotted Justine, Litwick, Mii disguised as another Litwick, and Winnie disguised as a Herdier at one of the Pokemon item shops near our gate. She did say something about wanting to find a good dusk stone for when Litwick would eventually need it.
They saw me as I approached them, Winnie ran over to me and followed me back to Justine, who asked, “So you got the sponsorship?”
I raised an eyebrow, “How’d you know?”
“I work for Rowan, duh.” Justine replied, “Also my research group gossips like old ladies.”
“Ah, I see.” I said as I turned my attention to the wooden box.
“what’s that?” Litwick pointed at my box. Mii hopped a few times and sniffed the box, “That smells like Meemaw.”
I shrugged, “It’s something the Professor gave me.” I opened the box lid. There was a note on top of a purple object with some rather messy handwriting.
An Azure Flute as a replacement for the instrument of yours that I broke. Angela helped me obtain this one. Hopefully you will be able to play a song that sounds less like a dying Weavile’s screech the next time we meet.
I took the note out, there indeed was a brand new Azure Flute in the box.
Bro, I sounded like a dying Weavile because I literally was dying, because of you. But okay I accept the gift.
“so, what is it?” Winnie asked.
“It’s an Azure Flute. To replace the Pokeflute.” I answered as I examined the new instrument as if it would break into a million pieces just from my handling it wrong.
I felt Justine tug my sleeve and point to our gate. People were beginning to line up to board. She headed for the end of the line and I followed her as I carefully put the box into my bag.
Well, I guess I have a new instrument to practice.