As Bert and I enjoyed the honey-soaked bits of some kind of meat we’d been given, Mete was across the room making some kind of phone call. To whom or what about, I couldn’t say. The distance, angle, and blaring TV all worked together to make that an impossible task.

“Hey.”

I turned to Bert, who like me had practically inhaled the sweet meal. It was still odd eating out of a bowl on the floor, but it wasn’t like I could really use utensils or sit at a table. What I was slowly starting to recognize as the pokemon side of me shrugged off my human side’s trepidations over the whole thing easily.

“Don’t worry about Leer. You’ll get it.,” the Charmander said, putting a claw on my shoulder in an oddly human gesture.

“Sure,” I said, and I knew my own tone made it clear I wasn’t sure.

“Although,” I continued, my mind turning on the problem from a new angle, “there is something I’m curious about.”

“What’s that?” Bert said, but I had already turned away from him.

Mete was pretty wrapped up in his phone call, and his bag sat on a seat not far from me. I considered for a moment, but eventually decided the worst that could happen was that he might admonish me for getting into his stuff. And it wasn’t like I could exactly ask.

I hopped up onto the seat with ease and pulled the bag over before carefully finding the zipper and sliding it down far enough to stick my head in.

Finding the pokedex took no time at all - it was one of the few things in the bag that didn’t seem to have its own pocket or slot. After pulling it out, I carefully pushed the back right-side up again. It wasn’t closed, but it wouldn’t spill out its contents at least.

With some careful examination, I found the button I could press to cause the pokedex screen to come to life. I glanced up at Mete again, but he was still engrossed in his call.

The pokedex was a little more in-depth than I was expecting. Instead of simply being a listing of pokemon by dex number, the moves they learned, evolution, and a few other stats, it put me in mind of an actual research tool. Those basic things were there, yes, but every single page was stuffed with links to studies and statistical data.

As admittedly interesting as all that was, I was after the simpler bits. It didn’t take long to track down data on my own species. To my suprise, the Nidoran male and female lines were listed together rather than as separate species. Which, you know, made sense. There were certainly clear notes on the species’ sexual dimorphism and identification.

At last I found the subject of my search: Nidoran move data. It was interesting to note that the pokedex didn’t list levels that moves were learned, but rather the general growth range they tended to be first observed at, and a general ordering of the moves. But there was a very clear note that the data was not exact and that individuals of a species might learn moves in an entirely different order, or learn moves entirely outside the observed set. There was even a footnote about some research into something called Personality Alignment Move-Learning Advantage.

Based on the list though, there didn’t seem to be any reason I should be having difficulty with Leer when Peck gave me no trouble.

There was also a listing of some confirmed Technical Machine compatibilities, though the brevity of the list made me suspect it wasn’t anywhere near complete. For one, I didn’t see Toxic anywhere on the list and I was certain that it was learnable for Nidoking via TM.

Though if I was being honest, I couldn’t actually remember if that extended to the basic level of that evolutionary line.

I hadn’t exactly found what I’d been looking for – I wasn’t any closer to Leer or understanding my difficulty with the move – but I’d tried the most obvious source of information. And with my primary curiosity sated, I found my interest drifting back up to the technical machine information.

In the games, if you wanted to teach a Pokemon a move it didn’t normally learn, you used a TM. But how did they actually work?

I navigated to a page on Technical Machines and began to skim.

…invention commonly credited to the Sylph Corp[3] though legal disputes[4] continue…

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

…designed to induce specific neural patterns[11] to facilitate the learning process…

…studies[26] performed laid the groundwork for modern understanding of the…

…not a guarantee that a pokemon will learn the associated move[49]…

…replicable results in producing pathways through natural means[62]…

…contentious[70]. Professors in many regions have argued[71] against…

There was no guarantee that the world worked the way the games I remembered did. In fact, if there was any scientific rigor, there was no way that pokemon researchers would have missed pokemon learning moves at specific levels. So there was at least pretty solid proof that it didn’t work the same way. But it seemed like it was fairly close.

Bulbasaurs evolved into Ivysaurs. Pidgeys learned Peck.

And at least theoretically, Nidokings could learn Toxic. Even if there was no existing research suggesting as much. Probing my memory, they should be able to learn Surf and Thunderbolt as well… other moves not listed. But at least Toxic was thematically and type-wise an obvious match for a fully evolved Poison/Ground-type Pokemon. Earthquake too, if I was remembering right.

I perused the rather limited list once more for my quarry.

Wrong type

Unconfirmed

Dig could… no wait I’m not actually Ground-type yet…

And I found it. Sludge Bomb. A Poison-type move with confirmed compatibility with Nidorans via Technical Machine. And in both the pokedex and in my own spotty memory, not a move typically learned via natural level progression.

The outline of a plan was forming in my mind, though not one that I would be able to pursue any time soon. Hell, I was probably better off starting with the Poison Sting that Nidorans could typically learn, and according to the pokedex that didn’t usually happen until after a Nidoran has already learned Focus Energy and Double Kick.

Seeing as I’d gotten more than the base information I’d set out to find, I was fairly content to carefully maneuver the pokedex back into Mete’s bag, even if I wouldn’t mind wiling away the hours reading more. It was fascinating stuff, seeing real pokemon data pulled apart and scrutinized by academics.

As Mete finished up his phone call and I hopped down to the floor, I silently congratulated myself on a silent reconnaissance mission well done.

“Find what you were looking for?”

And then I just about jumped out of my skin as Bert reminded me that he’d been there the entire time. You wouldn’t think a bright orange lizard would be able to pass unnoticed, but the Charmander managed it.

“I did,” I said, my fur raising on end as I prepared for the interrogation to come.

An interrogation that didn’t materialize.

“That’s good,” he said, looking back to Mete as the trainer approached. And that was that, it seemed.

My eyes tracked Mete as he shared an easy silence with the Charmander for a moment amidst a break between the television’s programming before the next show started.

“Okay guys. I think it's time for us to take a look at the forest to the east, and see if we can find any clues as to what is agitating the local pokemon so much. Bert, you’ll be with me, obviously.

“Nidoran, because we’re going to be going into an area with a lot more aggressive pokemon, I’m uncertain about putting you into that situation before you’ve had more time to train. I also don’t want to tell you that you can’t participate. So I think I’m going to list out your options, and let you choose what you’d like to do.”

I blinked at that. I had sort of expected a trainer to be more… decisive? Not that I didn’t appreciate having a voice in things. I remained silent as Mete listed out my choices.

“You could go with us anyway. It’ll be dangerous, and there’s good odds you could be injured again and have to wait out recovery afterwards. You just recovered from an injury, and while potions can seem miraculous, they’re not the same as long-term recovery. If you’re injured again so soon after, the odds of the injury being very serious go up.

“You could stay in your pokeball, or we could be prepared for me to recall you to your ball if things get more dangerous. I have my own concerns about that – it’s not conclusive, but there are some studies that suggest it’s not healthy for pokemon to spend a lot of their time in a pokeball. I’d still use it without hesitation in an emergency or to keep a pokemon safe, but I don’t think it is something we should use lightly.

“Lastly, you could stay here with Ysabel and Rolfe,” he said, turning towards Rolfe, visible through the entryway into the couples’ kitchen, where he sat reading a newspaper, “They’ve been very kind, and I can’t imagine they would be against you staying with them for a few hours. But I am concerned about leaving you essentially alone. You’re in your earliest stages of growth, and it's understandable to have a lot of energy to burn.”

As Mete listed out the options, it was clear to me he had concerns over each, even if it felt like he wasn’t voicing all of them.

The more I listened to the trainer, the more I was also beginning to suspect he’d had a very thorough education. I didn’t have any other trainers to compare him against, but I couldn’t imagine that his attention to detail and knowledgeability were common.

That aside, I had a decision to make.