I sighed as another kid (at least five years my ‘senior’ but still a child in my eyes) locked onto me, pointing as I walked over the grassy hill. “You!” She cried, running up to me.
“Nah, I’m not you; I’m me.” I replied instinctively, the bad joke confusing the teenage girl. She screwed up her face trying to parse it before shaking her head, her black twintails flying about.
“Whatever, I want to battle you!” You and every other Uva Academy student. It seemed the price of fame meant more battles. Which I wouldn’t be against, it’s just…
“Ok, let’s go. How many Pokemon are we using?” I asked, stepping back to make room for our battle.
She thought about it for a moment and said, “I’ve got two Pokemon, so let’s make it two on two!”
Nodding, I tossed out Fraxure, who gave a proud roar… once he realized it was a fight and I hadn’t sent him out just to play. Though really, it’s not much different, I thought as our foe released her Cufant.
The small elephantine Pokemon landed with a heavy thud, weighing three times as much as Fraxure but was only a bit taller. Her Steel Type nature led to her being much denser than most Pokemon, as well as making her resistant to most of Fraxure’s attacks.
Miles, who had been the Pokemon I had out at the moment she had challenged me, took their place off to the side to count us in. “The battle will begin in three, two, one… begin!”
“Swords Dance!” I shouted immediately. Such a Move was probably overkill, but I was hoping that Fraxure could manage it in a battle setting.
Unfortunately, I could see that his motions were slightly off from the start. He waved his tusks about effectively, evoking the power of a blade, but each shake of his head was accompanied by a sinuous motion of his body. My newest Pokemon also had to abort the motion as Cufant began rolling towards him.
He probably only got half a boost there, dodging the Rollout like that. I’ve got to have him train with Riolu more, see if he can learn to incorporate dodging into the Move. While I doubted he would have the level of mastery and Auric control needed to turn it into a perfect avoidance and boost Move like she did, it would still be enough to get his evasiveness up to a general level, even as he danced.
“Crunch,” I called out, feeling like half a boost would be enough. It was.
With fast feet, Fraxure rushed the Cufant as she was unfurling, still trying to get her bearings after missing. My Pokemon sunk his teeth, the Dark Type energy around his fangs letting him easily pierce her tough hide. He lifted her up and swung her about, unclasping his jaw and letting her fly toward her Trainer, defeated.
“Wha- how did you beat us?! In just one hit…” And that’s the reason why these fights are annoying; no one here is good enough to even challenge my freshly caught Pokemon.
“I’m not giving up though! Crocalor and I got this!” She shouted exuberantly, releasing her next Pokemon. Enthusiasm is good, but you have to have a plan. Do you? “Tackle,” she commanded as her fiery crocodile-like Pokemon took the field, awkwardly charging at Fraxure on stubby legs.
“Breaking Swipe, followed with Assurance.” Swinging around, Fraxure smacked the Fire Type with his long tail, our Move nearly tripping them up completely and taking a lot of the strength out of the Tackle that landed into Fraxure.
Not all of the strength, however, which meant that immediately after they slammed into Fraxure, they were able to fire back, landing a heavy palm blow that knocked the Crocalor back. Struggling, they tried to get back on their feet.
I held a hand up and asked, “Do you want to stop this? Any further and they won’t be able to battle, and I don’t think you have any other Pokemon left.” She paled significantly and nodded her head, bringing the battle to a close. Not having any Pokemon out here in the wild can be very dangerous, though admittedly slightly less so in this place.
Most of the wild Pokemon here were friendly, like Cyclizars or Pawmis running about, or at worst indifferent to the passing of humans, like the Magnemites.
“Wow, I can’t believe you won so fast. I mean, I can, given how fast you beat Brassius, but still,” she gushed. “Guess I’ve got a long way to go, haha.”
Yes. “You might want to stick with ranged attacks for Crocalor if you can. Especially against Pokemon that are as physically tough as Fraxure.” My advice was taken well, and she brightened up.
“Oh yeah, that’s really smart, thanks!” She waved at me as she left, and I waved back as she went over the hill and out of sight.
“Frax?” Fraxure asked, and I affectionately rubbed the top of his head, which was met with happy crooning noises.
“You did good out there. Unfortunately,” he stiffened up at my words, as if sensing what was coming. “The Trainers here aren’t tough enough to push you. So we need to go further. Luckily, Riolu can handle that well.”
He was outright whimpering now, and as I released Riolu from her Pokeball, he dropped to his knees, claws clasped as if begging me. “Have fun!” I said in a chipper tone as the far smaller Fighting Type menaced towards him.
Putting the sounds of violence out of my mind, I turned away and released Phantasm. She glanced over at me to see Riolu ‘training’ Fraxure, frowning slightly. “Hey, he’ll be fine; you know how he can be a drama queen about that stuff.”
Which was quite a surprise. He’s a hard enough worker when it comes to training, but I didn’t get how big he would overreact to little things like that. Almost as surprising as how easily Phantasm has accepted him. I had worried when I introduced them that she would be aggressive towards Fraxure, given her evolution and her previous stance on me taking on new Pokemon. Instead, they talked for half an hour and were soon getting along great.
Maybe it was because she evolved, so she doesn’t feel nervous about being the weakest on the team? Or perhaps just because they joined me from similar situations, looking different from their kin. In any case, I was quite glad that I didn’t have to spend time mediating between them and could spend that time training, helping them get up to the level of the rest of the team.
“Phantasm, I’m going to have you practice getting in tune with Dark Type energy with Miles. You’ve gotten so much stronger since evolving, and Nasty Plot is only going to make that greater.” Both of them looked a little confused, so I offered a few more ideas.
“You might want to try using Torment as a base, then try and… invert it? Take the idea, the feeling of that punishment you’ll inflict on someone else, the anticipation of that feeling to start shaping it.” Right, can’t just treat everyone like Dun. Miles is good at using Moves and learning them from experience, but they don’t have Dun’s natural genius of just hearing half a sentence of description and mastering an unknown Move from there. Still, I’m sure they’ll do well with a bit of time.
Turning away, I looked back at Fraxure, who was ‘sparring’ with Riolu, the lithe Fighting Type slipping past his guard to land a few weak blows before darting back to avoid the Dragon’s wild counters. She launched a few Vacuum Waves out as well, the attacks rippling through the air before they slammed into him.
“Alright!” I said, clapping my hands. “Think that’s enough of a warmup.”
“Raaaaax,” Fraxure croaked out in relief.
“You did alright there, but there’s some room for improvement. If faced with a faster opponent, try using Scary Face to slow them down. Your greatest strength is, well, your strength. That physical might you have is huge.” He beamed, proud of the praise. “However, that strength means nothing if you can’t reach your foe.”
His jaw dropped, and he suddenly looked horrified. Wow, if you weren’t a guy and were a Psychic Type, I’d be tempted to call you Anya for how dramatic your expressions are. We were still trying out names. Luckily, I had a lot of options considering different fictitious dragons in my old world, but nothing had quite stuck yet.
That was a side issue for the moment, most of our time spent training and slowly making our way to Levincia. According to the map, we should be just about ready to see the city once we pass this hill. From there I’m thinking we can go down to the beach before cutting back up to Levincia; there’s a ton of different Pokemon there. Should give them some unique training experiences.
“Work on the Scary Face, then Riolu can help you with Aerial Ace.” The two of them went back to work, more focused on Fraxure getting the Moves down than landing points on each other.
Seeing Fraxure use Scary Face against Riolu greatly improved his ability to fight her, though she still held a slight upper hand with her skill, deflecting several of Fraxure’s attacks. “Don’t be reckless, but don’t be afraid to use your tusks either.” That’s going to be a tricky balance to find, but key to his growth and evolution. Speaking of which…
After they got tired of that, I had Fraxure practicing Slash alongside Phantasm, who was starting to get too frustrated to make more progress with Nasty Plot for the time being. Calling Riolu over, I asked, “How is Aura Sphere going?”
She gave a so-so gesture with a paw. So by Riolu terms, it’s great, but not perfect. Taking a stance before me, she demonstrated the Move, gathering energy in front of one paw, then using the other paw to manipulate it from the side. This combination helped give the sphere a cohesive form and spin to its motion before she thrust it out. The ball of blue energy shot forward into a tree, coring out a large chunk of it as it grinded in, before bursting apart as it lost cohesive form.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“That's pretty impressive; you should be happy even getting it to work at this stage.” I.e., before she evolved. You should also be happy I read Naruto before reincarnating here to steal that idea for you.
“Riolu, lu.” She definitely didn’t pout, and I held back a chuckle at her adorable face.
“Anyone ‘can’ do better; you’re already doing great. Still, if you are looking to improve the Move, I think there are some Claunchers on the beach by Levincia. Their line are masters of Aura and Pulse Moves,” I said, making sure to stress the ‘Moves’ part so Riolu wouldn’t feel I was slighting her line and their Auric mastery. “With any luck we’ll find one of them or their evolutions that knows that Move. Then you can Copycat it and measure how it feels different from what you do now.”
She brightened up, tail wagging rapidly, until she spotted my gaze. Furiously, she turned around to glare the offending body part into submission before adopting a stoic mien and giving me a respectful bow. She wants to ‘grow up’ so hard.
With night approaching, I recalled the team I had out, all of them tired from the vigorous training they had gone through. Releasing Nightwing, I pointed at the cliff on the other side of the river. “Hey, I know it’s not your favorite thing in the world, but mind taking us over there?” I asked, pointing at where I wanted to go.
“Scor,” she replied curtly, not moving from where I released her.
“Yes, you’ll get a shot at this Gym, I promise.” My voice was only slightly tinged with exasperation. Of course I’m going to use you against Iono; you’re the only one both Immune to her Type specialization and with STAB super-effective Moves against most of her Pokemon. But also, it's been a while since Katy, and I do want to rotate the team around to give everyone a good chance against the Gym Leaders. So far we've outmatched them, but they're the biggest challenge we've faced so far and will be the best practice we can get against the Elite Four (barring Champions randomly dropping by to battle us, of course).
With a self-satisfied click of her pincers, she readily scooped me up, wrapping her tail gingerly around my waist and taking off. For my part, I used my Aura to lighten myself so she could carry me easier. Doing my best to avoid looking at the bright city before we got to our destination, I instead immersed myself in thoughts of team composition.
Nightwing hasn’t been as big a fan of Fraxure. Nothing major, but I’ve just noticed she pranks him a bit more and will be a little harsher during training. I’ll have to have a talk with her about it… maybe sometime after she’s holding me a hundred meters above a river. Dun might be a bit standoffish to him too, but it’s hard to tell with him; despite how well I know my starter, he can be annoyingly stoic sometimes. Man, I have no idea how Gym Leaders balance literally dozens of Pokemon. The answer was, I likely knew, staff to help them out, but I couldn’t bear the idea of someone else Training my team.
We landed down with the sun just finished setting over the horizon. Not that it did much to dim the light, as looking over the dusty cliff edge, I saw Levincia lit up, shining brightly with all the colorful beams of light shooting up into the night sky, mixing into a dazzling array with the sleepless city’s regular lights as well, from buildings and massive billboard signs.
I released the rest of my team to let them take in the sight as well, all eight of us staring on in awe. “Ok, I can see why this one deserves to be called one of the ‘Ten Sights of Paldea.’ It earns its name.”
“Would you like me to take a photo of you beside it, bzzt?” Miles inquired, and I nodded enthusiastically.
“Yeah!” I gathered all of us around the landmark sign, with the lights shining brilliantly in the background. Which took a bit more work than I had anticipated; some of the team was excitable, and Fraxure had to be directed to face the camera and not the lights (he still didn’t get a lot of how technology worked yet). Then, after we had our photo taken, I took the phone from Miles, and they hovered in the same spot that we were before, and I took a photo of them so my Rotom could edit themselves into the picture after.
There, that’ll make for a nice memory, and I can send it to my family and friends. I’d kept them up-to-date on my training and general location, but there wasn’t a lot of substance between our communications in the past while with my focus on training.
With the entire team out, I took the moment to address them. “I know we’ve been working hard, but it’s all going to be worth it. For views like this, discoveries undreamed of, and of course, epic battles we’re going to win.” Pointing out behind me at the city far below, I finished my small speech by saying, “Thank you. Thank you all so much for following me and working together to reach our dreams-”
It was at that point I was stopped by Notch enthusiastically ‘hugging’ me. Given that they didn’t have arms (yet), their hug was very akin to how they would use Body Press. If that hadn’t taken the wind out of me, the rest of the team dog-piling me in the hug would have.
“Urk- Please, heeeelp,” I desperately called from underneath the mound of Pokemon. Miles, my faithful, stalwart steward, the one who had been by my side from the start, looked on at this… and repossessed their phone body, taking photos of my plight.
“Traitoooor,” I croaked, to much laughter from my Pokemon, and eventually wheezing sounds from myself as I joined in despite how much pressure was on my lungs. This really is… magical. I’m so glad that I’m here.
***
Levincia was a very interesting place, with a unique history, as I had found out in the days I had spent just exploring the large city. It had apparently been two cities at one point in time, Levi and Cia, to the north and south, respectively. Over the ages they had been bitter rivals on opposite sides of the river, to grudging trading partners, to sister city-states. As technology improved, travel between the two became easier, until fifty years ago, when to announce the joining of them as a single entity, a massive structure was constructed to bridge the two.
And then in the spirit of the capitalism that brought them together, they slapped a million advertisements on it. My internal snark wasn’t actually what the sign said, but I felt it would have added a bit of flair to this large circular ring.
Riolu had little care for my internal thoughts or the sign, barking at me insistently. With a sigh, I turned from what I had been reading to look down where she was pointing. “Yes, we’re going to the battlefield, but can’t you appreciate the history of this place? Especially since we have… fifteen minutes left to meet your tutor,” I said dryly.
There was a slight shift to her eyes, the closest I was going to get to a guilty admission from her, and I sighed. It’s not like a bit of extra practice will hurt. “Alright, let’s go down to the battlefield. You guys can practice some of your new Moves there.”
Another thing we had done in Levincia was go on a bit of a spending spree. That took almost as much time as the rest of my exploration had, but it was well worth it. There was a large variety of stores in Levincia, as befitting the second largest metropolis of Paldea. With a bit of hunting around, I was able to find Battle Items like a Dragon Fang, Fist Plate, King’s Rock, and even some unusual items like Iron Ball, Flame Orb, and Target Ring.
The vast majority of it, however, was spent on Technical Machines. Fraxure needed to learn a bunch of Moves to help him catch up to the others. While he could learn some of the Moves from them, the machines would give him a huge leg up in that regard, and we could just help him perfect the Moves from there.
Nightwing and Phantasm also had room to grow in terms of their Movepools. In Phantasm’s case, we were experimenting as much with Moves she couldn’t use as with ones she could, in large part because the Pokedex could only help us so much in terms of Moves she was compatible with. Blizzard had been a bust, but somehow Icy Wind and Snowscape worked.
I also got a few machines for Notch, Dun, and Riolu as well (Miles had cited wanting to perfect the Moves they currently had), even if those ones didn’t ‘need’ the increased number of Moves as much.
No such thing as being ‘too prepared’ after all, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of them achieving high overall Movepool proficiency (which from my eye, it hasn’t). Plus, it gives some options. Riolu had Aerial Ace for Bug Types and Ice Punch for Flying, but both of those required her to get in close and might not work well depending on the secondary Typing of Pokemon that are resistant to the majority of her Moves. Rock Tomb gives her another counter, one that doesn’t require her to get up close, and by slowing the enemy, makes it easier for her to use one of those other Moves if she does need to after.
I was ready for her to put those Moves to further practice when we got down to the arena, but as we stepped onto it, a portly man waved us over. “Are you Nemona?”
Nodding, I asked, “Are you Dave?”
“Yuuperonie, that’s me,” he replied in a very genial fashion. He is… not what I expected when I put out the request on the message board. Dave was wearing a floral button-up shirt and cargo shorts, a very comfortable build, more than the average Trainer had. Then again, I’m hardly in a position to judge him. A lot of people took one look at me and thought I was too young to be a ‘serious’ Trainer.
I used those thoughts to distract me from the sudden paranoia that tried to grip me from talking to a stranger. It’s pointless; I’m the one who put out a request on the message board for that. He had no reason to know who I was before he offered to complete the request, and I checked, and he’s a verified Trainer. We’re out in the open; there are no criminals trying to hurt me.
Telling myself all that and more didn’t manage to assuage my irrational fears, but I pushed past them as we walked to an open spot in the arena. He released his Clawitzer, the lobster-looking Pokemon giving a proud cry as he took the field. His small left pincer helped him remain upright on the ground, given the size of his right arm, a massive pincer covered in faded blue plates, bigger than the rest of his body combined.
“So, you just need to see my boy use Aura Sphere?” Dave asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice. Understandable, getting paid a few thousand Pokedollars just to perform a Move is a bit much, but so worth it if it can help Riolu.
“Yeah, a couple of times if you could. You ready?” I directed the question to Riolu, who barked an affirmative, her eyes glowing faintly as she channeled her Aura, intently analyzing the Pokemon before us.
The Clawitzer raised his pincer/launcher up, gathering energy within it, then shooting off a powerful blast into the sky above, where it traveled about a dozen meters before violently bursting apart in the air. Strong, even without STAB, much stronger than Riolu's. Admittedly, he has an Ability that boosts it, but still.
They repeated the process a few times, and then Riolu used Copycat, performing the Move herself. Dave blinked in surprise at seeing this. “Well, I’ll be! Your Riolu already knows Aura Sphere?”
“Yes, but we’ve been having some issues with getting it to work perfectly. Thank you for doing this; it helps a lot.” Or at least I hope it does. I had Miles transfer Dave the money as I watched Riolu perform shot after shot with each hand, blasting out Aura Spheres almost as large as her body.
“How’s it feeling?” I asked her. My own Aura sight was far less developed than her own, but I could feel all kinds of different Aura channels pushing and weaving the Move inside the Water Type’s overly large pincer. Despite the biological differences, I got an eager response from her.
“Riolu! Ol, iolu.” Holding a hand up, she steadied herself, gathering that familiar blue light in front of it, then with a slight push of her arm, launched it forward. It was slightly smaller than the previous shots she had been firing and a little slower, but I could tell how big an improvement that was.
“You didn’t need to use Copycat!” She smiled, her tail wagging freely behind her for once. Impressive, very impressive. She’s getting quite strong, even unevolved, and even that… It might have been hopeful thinking, but at this moment, I felt it might not be far off.
“Well then, I think we’re ready to take on Iono.”
“Olu!”