Getting an affirmative from Gastly we all moved into the gym area to work out our next steps, firstly I needed to put him through his paces and see where he was with the moves he had at his disposal. This went relatively smoothly, though some of the more esoteric moves like ‘hypnosis’ and ‘confuse ray’ were a bit harder to test. Upon finding out that they weren’t too dangerous if outside a combat situation, Cinder was willing to be the recipient of the moves.

Seeing the effect of both moves on Cinder showed that they didn’t cause any visible injuries, though after they had worn off, he looked a bit shook. Going over to reassure him and check how he was going it didn’t take him long to shake the after effects off, and he looked back to his normal self, though he looked at Gastly with some apprehension.

Needing to know what the effect was on a human being as we had a different make up to Pokémon, I put myself forward to also be on the receiving end of the moves. It wouldn’t be as extreme due to the changes the aura and psychic powers had wrought on my body. Moving in front of the floating ball of gas I prepare myself and give him a nod.

Next thing I know is that I’m surrounded by bodies, copies upon copies of people I had seen over the last few days, from the goons to the victims of their attention. They all seemed so real and yet not at the same time, I could vaguely sense that there weren’t any minds linked to the bodies yet they were so real.

Not being able to accurately figure out who was real and who wasn’t was very trippy, I knew I was in the apartment and I had Cinder and Gastly with me, but my sense of them kept jumping around; I stayed like that for about 15 or 20 minutes, or at least that’s what it felt like until it all faded away and I saw my Pokémon in front of me.

“Well that was really weird, I definitely don’t want to go through that again, I had no idea what was going on, who was where and whether you were there or not. This is going to be helpful going out into the city.”

“Gast gastly”, feeling his excitement to the idea of going outside.

“Char char mander char.” Seeming concerned.

“Yes, I know buddy, but it wasn’t great seeing you be put through the moves either. Don’t worry its just one more.” I don’t know why but he didn’t seem reassured from my comment.

“Alright Gastly, one more let’s give ‘Hypnosis’ a shot”, making eye contact with the ghost I saw his eyes gleam and then everything faded to black. That’s all there was, just black, as far as my eyes could see, which to be honest wasn’t too far in the current situation. I couldn’t see, hear, smell or touch anything at all, I was getting flash backs to my previous time in limbo post death and the thought sent a shot of fear racing through my mind and chills through my body.

‘I couldn’t be back here, could I? Does that mean I died? What about Cinder? I can’t leave him. NO! this can’t be happening, NOT AGAIN!’ what felt like hours going round and around in a never-ending cycle of fear and depression ended, just as abruptly as it started. I looked around and saw Cinder staring at me with concern in his eyes and Gastly seeming inquisitive about what I just saw.

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Thinking back on what I just experienced I shook slightly but managed to recover quickly especially with a little fire lizard wrapped around my leg. Patting Cinder on his head I reassured him that I was alright. I suppose I know now why he was so concerned before, it all seemed so real that I almost got lost in it.

Looking up at Gastly I saw him watching me expectantly waiting for a response.

“Well, Gastly I can honestly say that those two moves of yours, while they don’t physically hurt anyone, it is safe to say that the effect they have on people would certainly cause some form of trauma.” Maybe we could use those to help people change their ways, I mean going through an existential crisis would have that effect on some people. Thinking about some of the possibilities, “now as long as we can see the result of the last move, I think we could bring you on our expeditions at the most tomorrow if not tonight given that all goes well. Come on lets go test the last one.”

Knowing that ‘Lick did cause some damage I didn’t want either Cinder or myself to bear the brunt of the move, so I set up one of our more human looking training dummies. Standing to the left of Gastly I pointed down range, “Use ‘Lick’ on the dummy.”

Seeing Gastly shoot forward at a pace that would terrify anyone on the receiving end of that, I mean seeing a floating ball of gas with eyes and a wide mouth bearing down on you; it would give anyone nightmares. But I digress, he made it to the dummy and a great big red tongue flopped out his mouth and with an upwards motion covered the neck and full face of the dummy.

Upon completing the move, he floated back and I could see the area which was licked slightly discoloured to a dark grey almost black colour. Some energy had been injected into the dummy and I could see it shake in place slightly. It seemed that the paralysis came down to a sudden injection of energy that potentially overloaded the body causing the nervous system to shut down. Watching it last almost 3 minutes, this would be fantastic out in the city, we could take down criminals and they would be paralysed for a brief moment taking them out of the fight.

Gastly would be a beast when it came down to crowd control; being able to move through objects due to his intangibility and then to put them in a hypnotic trance which also traumatised them or hit them with a confuse ray that could make them turn on each other. Finally, being able to paralyse someone and remove them from the equation turned him into the perfect support team member.

Making eye contact with the ghost, “well I think it's good news Gastly, your moves don’t seem to be lethal or overly dangerous that would cause someone to be injured fatally. I think that if we put some more training in for the rest of the day, then tonight we can all head out as a team.” Seeing his eyes filled with excitement I smiled and remembered to talk to him about the poke balls and why we need to use them, he seemed ok with them and upon telling him about how they assisted us in maintaining our anonymity kind of sealed the deal.

With that, the rest of the day progressed pretty smoothly, Cinder and Gastly practices their moves in the open area of the gym, and I sat down to try and wrangle this aura sense under control. Having Cinder and Gastly either having learned or will learn moves that distort the vision or the mind I thought it prudent to improve my ability to sense life force around me, to ensure I am not collateral damage for a way ward move and are still able to function if that does happen.