Something sharply nipped my hand and jolted me awake. Blearily blinking my eyes, I shooed the offender away
“Deino!” Kaiju licked my face and jumped off the bed, clumsily landing and almost tripping over his own feet.
I groaned and stretched, “Rotom, what time is it?”
“Bzzt!” Rotom answered from Sahara’s mouth. What did it do to annoy her?
“it’s morning!” Winnie helpfully relied.
Kaiju’s stomach loudly grumbled and I felt the lil guy stand nom on my fingers, covering my hand in saliva. Yay.
“Mmmph. Okay, breakfast time. Sahara, let Rotom go please, I don’t want a broken phone.”
The landshark obliged and spit Rotom out onto the carpet. Rotom chattered indignantly and zoomed into one of my bag pockets.
Winnie was still dozing next to my pillow. I gently pat the soft fur on his head to wake him up, as I sat up. “Winnie it’s time for breakfast.”
The little fox yawned and stretched like a cat, “Tell me when the food is ready.” He muttered before he promptly went back to sleep.
----------------------------------------
After breakfast, we were all ready to go and do stuff. Well, everyone besides me, I was still stiff and a bit fatigued from that whole ordeal through wilds, but I’d wake up with a bit of exercise and just go to bed earlier today.
Sahara and Winnie were eager to do some training. I could hear Winnie talking about battles with her, or something related to learning new moves.
No idea what Kaiju was thinking about besides food even though we literally just ate. Food would probably be a useful incentive for getting him to actually obey so I wouldn’t have to worry about him eating another trainers Pokemon.
Since the Pokemon center still wasn’t super busy, I was able to get one of the battlefields behind it for ourselves. There was one other trainer who was hanging out with his Swanna, but they left not too long after we got there.
With my team lined up in front of me, I gave them directions.
“Winnie, your current goal is to continue training your control over illusions. I want you to start incorporating not just fooling your opponents vision, but their other senses. Like hearing, touch, smell, and that all stuff. You are only allowed to use illusions, Detect, and Agility.”
“alrighty az!” Winnie nodded and saluted, he had a tricky grin on his face.
“Kaiju. Earth to Kaiju?” The little dragon snapped back to attention, the little guy had been drooling and staring at nothing.
“Dein?”
“Kaiju, you’re going to be training with Winnie. I want you to work on using a newmove combination and your reaction speed. Work up, then Astonish, and then use whatever biting move you find fit. But you have to let go once you’ve hit Winnie.”
That last bit went in one ear and out the other as Kaiju literally shook from excitement from being allowed to bite someone without getting into trouble.
I sighed, “Rotom, you’re gonna be in charge of managing Kaiju’s bite control. Zap him until he lets go if he doesn’t listen.”
I wouldn’t dub Rotom as reliable, but I knew it would be more than happy to zap anyone for any reason. Especially a Pokemon who’d tried to eat it on multiple occasions.
Rotom spun around and gave me a happy, “Bzzt!” It was happy about being able to get back at the little terror of a dragon.
Hopefully this won’t result in a broken phone.
“Winnie, Deinos are basically blind and don’t rely on their eyes to get around. So you’ll have to work on fooling Kaiju’s other senses in order to dodge his attacks. You can use all your moves except for Will-o-Wisp. Get Rotom to call me over if one of you needs a heal.”
“You three got it?”
“Deino!”
“yep!”
“Bzzt!”
I shooed them away, “Then off you go!”
Now it was time to address Sahara. “Sahara, I’m going to be working with you to upgrade one of your moves and work on one of your abilities.”
Sahara nodded with brighter eyes than usual, this was probably the first time she looked particularly excited about anything since she joined the team. Maybe she’s a battle junkie?
“First, I want you to work on turning Sand Tomb into Sandstorm. Then we can apply one of your abilities, Sand Veil. It increases your evasion in a sandstorm, which will give you a huge advantage over your opponents.”
Sahara nodded and growled in approval. “Gabite!”
Sand Tomb was a ground type move while Sandstorm wad a rock type move, but I was pretty sure that the way Sand Tomb functioned was good enough to use as a simple template for Sandstorm.
“Alright, first let me explain the concept. You have to use the same type energy you use for Rock Tomb, but instead of creating a ton of rocks, try creating a pile of sand, don’t worry about moving it around.”
Sahara’s first try was just a normal rock tomb, she was only able to make a single grain of sand the second time, and the third. The landshark kept trying, and I kept encouraging her. After countless attempts, she succeeded in making a small pile of sand.
“Great!” I cupped my hands and held them out to Sahara, “Now move them to my hand, don’t try to move each individual grain like you’d move the rocks in Rock Tomb, move it as an entire group. Like you’re trying to transport water from one cup to another.”
It only took a few tries this time for Sahara to get the hang of moving the sand. Then I had her increase the amount of sand she generated and moved each time until she found it too difficult to control.
We stopped at that amount and switched to her generating a small Sandstorm around herself and she created one that looked similar to Sand Tomb. It didn’t last as long as the actual move, but it was a great start.
“Good job! You got everything down a lot quicker than I expected. Now it’s just up to practice, practice, and more practice.”
Sahara gave me a determined look and roared, “Gabite!” Another miniature sandstorm kicked up around her. I stepped a few paces back to not get caught up in the storm.
“Keep practicing your control over the sand, I’m gonna go check on the others!” I yelled into the small storm before walking over to the other side of the field.
The two were panting as they eyed each other down, Kaiju didn’t have any visible injuries but one of Winnie’s legs was covered in a light layer of frost and his fur was sticking out like he’d gotten electrocuted.
Rotom was hovering over them, a huge grin on its face.
“Heya! How’s it going you guys?” I waved to get their attention.
The two trotted over to me and Winnie let me apply the ice heal and paralyze heal I had pulled out.
“i think i figured out how to do the stuff for other senses, but it’s not as good as i want it to be.” Winnie said.
I finished applying the potions and he shook himself off. Kaiju wanted a turn even though he didn’t have a status effect, I just pretended to spray some potion on him and he was satisfied with that.
“Alright, show me what you got Winnie.”
Winnie was instantly replaced by a smaller version of Kaiju’s mom.
“Wow! Looks like you mastered creating a visual illusion. I’m so proud of you Winnie!”
Fake Hydreigon happily growled and flapped it’s wings at my comment. I could clearly hear the flapping of the dragon’s wing and it’s growl, but when I reached out to touch it, my hand kinda phased through it. There was the slight feeling that I had touched scales but I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t paying attention.
Hydreigon disappeared and Winnie was in its place again.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hmmm…I can see you’re struggling with.” I scratched my head, “Tell me how you create your illusions, what’s your process?”
“i imagine exactly what i want the others to see and then apply them to the illusion. it works perfectly fine for illusions that others can see and hear, but not so much for the other senses. kaiju wasn’t affected by most of my illusions and i got bit a few times.”
“Deino!” Kaiju proudly held his head. I pat his head as I thought.
“What about just imagining how the illusions would sense, you imagine what you would sense and apply that?” I suggested.
“huh, i dunno, lets try it out.”
“Sure, show me one round, I’ll give you both some more pointers if it’s needed.”
The two ran a bit away before beginning their sparring match.
Kaiju stomped his feet, using Work Up before roaring. The sound from Astonish was sharp and Rotom and I flinched. Winnie had a trick up his sleeve and used a hollow half sphere of ghost type energy to counter the move and essentially block it.
“Is that a new move? Rotom?” The plasma Pokemon gave me a cheerful “Bzzt!” and showed me a new scan of Winnie.
“Huh, Shadow Ball and Night Shade. Impressive.”
Winnie ran at Kaiju, turning into a snake that I recognized as a Seviper that wrapped around and trapped Kaiju in a tight coil. The poisonous snake emanated a venomous hiss, threateningly waving its tail around.
Kaiju bit into the illusionary snake multiple times, using different biting moves but was unsuccessful in getting free.
“Kaiju, use a normal dark type Bite.”
With a grunt, dark type energy poured out of Kaiju’s mouth and the little dragon bit down on Seviper’s head. The illusion wavered and was slow to reform as the dark type energy somehow disturbed it. Because of that, Kaiju was able to wriggled out of fake Seviper’s grasp and began trying to Bite the Seviper even more.
“Okay, we can end the match here Winnie.”
The snake disappeared and Winnie appeared from my shadow, giving me a small surprise.
“How did it feel?”
Winnie grinned, “better than before! i think i get it a bit more now!”
I smiled back at the little fox, “Good. Keep practicing that. Keep in mind until you get stronger, your main strategy will be to hide and trick your opponents with illusions while you wear them down from a safe distance.”
Then I turned to Kaiju, “I think you’ve got the basics of attacking down, but you need to work on dodging and defending. You didn’t even try to defend yourself when Winnie’s Seviper attacked you.”
Kaiju cocked his head to the side as he absorbed what I said before grunting, “Dein!”
“Okay, this time Winnie will be the one attacking–no status effect moves allowed by the way. Kaiju, you’re only allowed to dodge and use Dragon Breath to keep Winnie at a distance.”
The two nodded and I waved at them to go back to practicing.
My team trained in this manner for the rest of the morning and into early afternoon. I’d switch in between working with Sahara and changing the rules of Kaiju and Winnie’s duels.
Sahara was able to create a sandstorm big enough to cover half of a field and keep it up for a minute before it petered out. While we waited for her Sandstorms to die out so that she could reset them, Sahara would work on her ability Sand Veil by hiding amongst the sand and attacking rocks she’d set up earlier using Rock Tomb.
Winnie was able to greatly improve his illusions and the speed and quantity at which he produced them.
Kaiju kinda learned how to dodge, his first instinct always was to charge headfirst at his opponent before he remembered that we was supposed to get out of the way. It sort of got better as he kept practicing but it was slower than I would’ve liked.
On a more positive note, he somehow ended up adapting Dragon Breath into Dragon Pulse and Dragon Rage. The lil dragon taught himself two new powerful moves but couldn’t get out of the way while something’s charging at him.
Maybe he was some sort of Pokemon savant? Or younger Pokemon just learned faster like how babies learn new stuff super quickly?
I’d have to think of a better way to teach defensive stuff to him.
----------------------------------------
After lunch, I took the team to view the Marine Tube. It was a huge underwater tube that let people safely view the aquatic wildlife in the Humilau bay area.
Sahara wasn’t interested in any of this so she returned to her ball to wait until we were ready to train again. She probably wouldn’t have been allowed in anyways, the sign outside the Marine Tube’s entrance had a list of prohibited Pokemon, probably to prevent them from accidentally destroying something or cracking the glass.
Unlike in the Black and White 2 games, the ocean outside the tube was filled with colorful coral reefs swarming with a huge variety of Pokemon. There were a few bright pink and blue Corsola blending in amongst the coral, some of them had branches decorated with tiny Horsea clinging to them by their tails.
Schools of Basculin, and Magikarp swam by, there was a ton of Remoraid there too, some of the smaller schools swam underneath the few Mantyke and Mantine that were gliding through the reef.
Winnie pointed out an Octillery I didn’t seen before, it was blending in with the red corals. The octopus Pokemon patiently waited for one Remoraid school to get close before striking, grabbing one as the rest of the school scattered.
Remoraid evolve into Octillery though right? Isn’t that technically cannibalism? Well, cannibalism is pretty common among animals, so why not Pokemon?
The Octillery tore the poor Remoraid apart before retreating and lying in wait for its next victim, which happened to be a Qwilfish that swam over to eat the scraps that Octillery hadn’t eaten.
The pufferfish viciously eyed Octillery and spit a bit of purple stuff at the octopus, prompting it to angrily spit black ink at Qwilfish before swimming away from the cloud of poison.
A Lumineon led a small school of Finneon over the tube and the people watching them oohed and awwed at their iridescent glittering scales. I swear I saw Lumineon smugly grin at the people admiring it and its school.
On the other side of the tube, there was a section of coral that had clusters of Clamperls, but they were all closed.
A small crowd gathered to watch as an enormous Kingler slowly approached the Clamperl cluster it got to work mechanically prying their shells open one by one to eat what was on the inside.
Kaiju began to drool and began to lick the glass, he wanted a bite too. I quickly pushed his head away from the glass and gave him an admonishing look before looking back at what Kingler was doing.
Kingler only got through three and a half Clamperl before a Clawitzer rocketed over and shot water at the giant crab, pushing it away from the Clamperl. Kingler clicked it’s mandibles in outrage, the two began squaring off for rights to the food source.
I was expecting to see Corphish or Crawdaunts here instead of a Clawitzer, but they were freshwater Pokemon who were usually found in lakes or ponds.
Guess they also didn’t want to have to compete against two other viable species for a spot in the same niche in this ecosystem.
The crowd watching them got bigger, but the entire reef population scattered as an enormous serpentine shadow flitted over the area. There was a loud splash, my eyes widened at the goddamn Gyarados that had just dived down towards the reef.
People began chattering in excitement and taking pictures of the Gyarados. They were a lot less scared than I expected them to be.
“Deino!”
“woah! az, what’s that? it looks so cool!”
“That’s a Gyarados, you wanna pull up the Pokedex entry Rotom?”
“Bzzt!” Rotom flew out of my bag and its screen showed the Pokedex page for Gyarados.
“Gyarados, the Atrocious Pokemon. Pokedex entry. When Magikarp evolves into Gyarados, its brain cells undergo a structural transformation. It is said that this transformation is to blame for this Pokémon’s wildly violent nature. Once Gyarados goes on a rampage, its ferociously violent blood doesn’t calm until it has burned everything down. There are records of this Pokémon’s rampages lasting a whole month.”
“wait, if it’s so violent, why isn’t this one angry?” Winnie asked.
“I dunno, there’s always an exception. That Gyaradoes probably likes this place enough not to destroy it is he comes here often enough to become famous for it.”
I spotted a sign next to a bench with a picture of a Gyarados on it and walked over to read it, nudging Kaiju with my knee to walk in front of me so that I could monitor him.
“that looks like the same gyarados as the one outside, what does it say?”
“It says that this Gyarados is a local celebrity. It was allowed to stay because it’s super amicable compared to other members of its species. Also because this area is part of its territory, other Gyarados don’t come near the city and that’s gotten rid of their problem with raging Gyarados’s. The Marine Tube staff have nicknamed this one Joe.”
We went with a crowd and a member of the Marine Tube’s staff who was doing a tour, following Joe as he swam alongside the tube. The tourists took pictures and videos of Joe, who seemed to enjoy the little crowd of people following and admiring him.
The tour guide talked about Gyarados’s as a species and then explained Joe’s history with the city dating up to eighty years ago when he first appeared.
The crowd followed Joe until the we reached the end of the Marine Tube, which was a deeper section that hung over the open ocean and watched the blue serpent swim deeper into the depths of the ocean.
At the encouragement of the tour guide, the crowd clapped for Joe until he fully disappeared from sight.
Heh. Joe managed to rizz up an entire city just by living here, what a chad.
We waited another hour in hopes of seeing Stacy, another local Pokemon celebrity. She was a Wailord that liked to bring her calves to Humilau bay, using it as a rest stop. Joe’s presence meant that most predators stayed away, and male Wailord who might kill her calves were too big to safely enter the bay without getting stuck.
During that time, Winnie helped me keep Kaiju from doing anything stupid. I ended up promising Kaiju a super duper yummy treat if he could keep his mouth to himself. Kaiju agreed and after that only needed a few corrections, but he actually put conscious effort into behaving. I made sure to constantly praise him for it to hopefully encourage him to do this in the future without me prompting it.
Soon after that, I spotted the signature white outfit of a an Aether Foundation Employee. He was leading another group of tourists and basically telling them about the Pokemon found around the Marine Tube.
I wasn’t expecting to see someone from the Aether Foundation here, but I also wasn’t surprised. It made sense considering that the foundation was all about protecting Pokemon and their habitats, so having employees go out to inform the public about Pokemon was on brand. From what I knew, I wouldn’t consider the organization as a whole as evil, just the people at the core of the operation.
Either way, I wasn’t exactly at the liberty to say anything about the ultra beasts or Type:Null unless I wanted to get deleted from the face of the earth.
Yawning, I made my way outside. Stacy probably wouldn’t be appearing today cause the time she usually came around had passed and Sahara was probably getting impatient to train.
“Rotom, pull up directions to the park.” I said as I took out one Herba Mystica from my bag and gave it to Kaiju, who instantly scarfed it down. He didn’t even bother to taste the herb… I put one in my lunch sandwich and it was literally one of the best spices I’d ever had. No wonder it was so high in demand.
I wanted to get my team and I some actual battle experience against a trained Pokemon and trainer who knew what they were doing.
Squinting my eyes as they got used to the bright sun after the dimness of the Marine tube, I raised an eyebrow at something I didn’t notice before in my hurry to get to the Marine tube.
There was a large building being built diagonally across from the Marine tube, the banners on the metal chain fences that surrounded the construction site said, “Humilau Gym Coming Soon!” With a photo of a dark skinned young man with dark turquoise-blue hair in blue swim trunks and a blue Jellicent posing in front of the Wave badge.
One of the locals, an elderly lady, saw me staring and happily told me that the Icirrus Gym was going to be replaced by the Humilau gym because the league wasn’t able to find an ice type specialist to replace Brycen.
She and most of the locals were happy about this because having a gym gave a city some pretty high prestige, better funding from the league, and even more money from tourists and trainers passing through the area.
The local gave me some cookies in a typical kindly grandma fashion before we left for the park.
I wanted to switch gears and have everyone train something different for the afternoon just to keep training interesting. Sahara was deadset on mastering Sandstorm, so I left her to it.
Winnie was to practice the power behind his moves and the speed that he could output them, and I’d be working with Kaiju to get his dodging up to par.
Offense was the only thing Kaiju seemed to understand or care about, no matter how I tried to explain it. So I just decided to adapt and turn his offense into defense.
There were a few other trainers at the park willing to battle us, so I had Kaiju battle a few other Pokemon. First was a Growlithe that I had Kaiju grapple onto by the scruff to prevent it from being able to attack while he continuously used Dragon Breath.
We used a similar strategy against a trainer and their Sandile, then switched to staying at a distance and spamming Dragon Rage and Dragon Breath against a Boldore and paralyzing it with Dragon Breath's secondary effect. I could have had Kaiju use Dragon Pulse, but the move was too draining for him to spam a lot like with Dragon Breath.
The most difficult battle was against a Joltik who latched onto the back of Kaiju’s neck and continuously used Bug Bite and Discharge while Kaiju tried to throw it off. I seriously thought I was gonna lose the battle (and 20 bucks), but then Kaiju screamed. Oh gods did he scream. My ears were ringing like crazy, it was a wonder that my eardrums didn’t burst.
There was a reason why I had yet to have Kaiju use Hyper Voice. Joltik instantly fell off, eyes spinning from the completely unexpected damage it took. Well that…certainly was effective.
Everyone in our vicinity stared at us, some were glaring. I shrank down a bit and my face reddened from embarrassment.
“Pssssssst hi. Hey. Hi.” I raised an eyebrow and glanced at where the sound came from. Who the hell keeps whispering in my ear?
Still clutching one of his ears, the other trainer handed me 20 bucks and left for the Pokemon center to get his Joltik healed and also probably get his ears checked up on.
We had no more battles after that, and Kaiju wasn’t allowed to use Hyper Voice again unless I allowed him to. It wasn’t his fault for using Hyper Voice. I never told him not to use the move, but my ears were still ringing hours later and I would like to not have permanent hearing loss.
Sahara and Winnie both gave Kaiju some shit for his use of Hyper voice, but Winnie comforted him afterwards and complimented his other battles, which cheered him up.
On a lighter note, Sahara had gotten a better hang of Sandstorm and could use the move at about 70% the proficiency it would normally have.
I promised my team some extra delicious food as thanks for their hard work as soon as we got back to the Pokemon center.
Someone had other plans though, I was approached by one of the employees of the Pokemon Center, “You’re Azalea Lang right?”
Shit, is this about Kaiju using Hyper Voice in the park?
“Yeah, what do you need?”
The guy gestured towards a door near the PCs, “There’s someone on video call who would like to talk to you. You can enter the private meeting room over there.”