Bo had to restrain himself from bouncing in place. He’d nearly passed out earlier in the day, but Baron had apparently gotten Dani to stop hugging him to death by telling her it would get in the way of his training. He and the tiny dark type had then spent several more hours trying to light various objects on fire. Now though, as the haze started drifting away and the Murkrows began waking up, it was time for his favorite time of day – battle time!
Despite his efforts, he couldn’t stop the grin that was splitting his face as the group of trainers and pokemon gathered to get started. It was just so much fun! Sure, he’d battled a little in Paldea, and some of those battles had actually been pretty tough, but nothing could compare to battling his friends or even the Old Man. He and Carter could blow things up! Or he and Dani could have a brawl! Or, he could push the Old Man for a few more of his tricks! There were endless possibilities.
Even now, Suzu and Alice were heading off to a different location to battle, while the four of them made their way towards some other practice fields. Or, at least, that was what Bo thought they’d be doing.
“Brat, hold up for a sec,” Gramps growled softly before they’d gotten too far. “You two can go ahead and get started without us. I just need Bo for a minute.”
He could have sworn he heard a Growlithe puppy whining as the other two shrugged curiously before moving on, but Bo didn’t object. As much as he wanted to battle…
‘Huh, maybe I should object. Wait, no. If Gramps needs to talk to me, it must be more important… Probably. Maybe. He and I could battle while we talk! …No, bad Bo, you needed to talk to him about something at some point anyways.’
“So,” Bo forcefully turned his head toward his grandfather. “What’d you need Old Man?”
“Bah, don’t be impatient brat. Just wait a minute,” he replied while showing no signs of thinking or moving anytime soon. In the quiet, Bo could already hear the distant booms of Carter and Dani’s battle starting up.
“Gramps, did you actually stop me from battling so that we can stand here quietly? Are you feeling okay? Oh Ho-Oh, are you actually dying this time? What are we standing around for? If it’s this serious we really need to get–”
“Oh shaddap you damned fool. Me keeping you from fighting isn’t the end of the world…” The two Moon’s stared at each other for several seconds as the statement hung in the air between them. Finally, it was Old Man Moon that broke first. “Pffft. Never mind Bo. I heard it as it was coming out. If I ever tell you to avoid fighting for no reason, just go ahead’n ship me to the loony bin. Nah, I actually have somethin’ I need to show you. It’ll just take a few minutes.”
“Could have just said that from the start you crazy old man. And for the record, no matter how crazy you get, I’m not shipping you anywhere. I’d never do something that evil to some poor loony bin.” Bo quipped, causing the Old Man to roll his eyes and huff. “Anyways, if we’re just standing around until this mysterious something shows up, I could use your help with a something of my own.”
Seeing his grandfather raise one bushy eyebrow up in response, Bo took that as his que to keep going. “I’ve been thinking about this for a little bit, and there’s something I really want to get my hands on…”
The Moon clan elder listened to Bo’s request fully before nodding several times in contemplation. Finally, he opened his mouth with one more decisive nod.
“Yep, that ain’t happening.”
“Oh come on,” Bo protested at the flat refusal. “It wouldn’t even be stealing so much as taking back something that was taken from us.”
“Funnily enough, I don’t think anyone else is gonna see it that way, you crazy fool,” Old Man Moon retorted. “Bo, I joke about this, but you do know you can’t go around breaking laws or stealing from a freaking League if yer gonna become a real Gym Leader, right?”
“…I know,” Bo ultimately sighed. “It was just an idea. I’m still a little bitter that the Hoenn League confiscated it in the first place, though.”
*
Old Man Moon glanced at his grandson’s blatantly disappointed expression with a heavy heart. He didn’t regret his response. He’d learned a long time ago that you had to be very blunt when telling Bo that he couldn’t bend or outright break a rule. That didn’t mean that he didn’t understand Bo’s frustration.
A squeak by his feet drew Old Man Moon’s attention. Looking down, he raised a brow at Jumbo’s wide smirk, before he felt a nudging in his spirit. Despite barely saying anything, the old trainer quickly grasped what the Morpeko was trying to say, causing him to groan internally. The electric type’s idea might be arguably worse than Bo’s. Unfortunately, he did have a point.
“What about Kalos?” Old Man Moon eventually asked, causing Jumbo to cackle and Bo’s grin to return.
“We can rob Kalos!?” “Morpeko!”
“No! No robbing!”
“Ahhh.” “Pekooo.”
The Old Man sighed loudly at their blatant disappointment, reaching up to rub at the rapidly growing ache in his forehead. It was times like this that he most felt sympathy for the old Shiftry elder’s struggles with Wicked. He’d have to remember to laugh at him less the next time they drank together.
“We’re not stealing from any League. That’d blow any chances of getting a Gym to ash. I’m just saying we might have more options with Kalos. Those fuckers still owe you a favor, don’t they?”
Bo cocked his head ponderously at that. “I mean… kind of. It was more of a ‘I know that you know that I know that I owe you one, but no one else ever needs to know’ kind of favor, and it was probably with the corrupt part of the League that got arrested, but a favor is definitely warranted. You really think that will be enough though?”
The Old Man scoffed with a shrug. “Not sure, but it’s a start. Kalos got a lot of shit over Lysandre in the international community. If you do manage to become a Gym Leader, they’ll probably do quite a lot to keep the fact that some of their agents went rogue and snatched you off the street private. I figure, it won’t hurt to reach out to cousin Hanzo and have him start applying a little leverage. With any luck, the new government will just cough up what we want to wash their hands of us.”
‘Either that or they’ll show up and try to kill us both… Yuzu’s going to love this.’
*
Bo felt his grin once again spread across his face. Sure, he might not like the idea of reaching out to the Kalos League. His last trip there should have been a great experience. Fresh off Dani’s win in the Vertress Conference and with Carter joining them for his first ever annual circuit, they should have taken the region by storm. Bo had even gotten a chance to connect with his gramps’ favorite cousin who had moved to the region back when they were younger. Best of all, Bo had snagged an amazing good luck charm from a wandering merchant. Sure the guy had been a little weird, and Dani and Carter both thought the bottle was cursed rather than charmed, but Bo just had a good feeling about it. All in all, it should have been a truly perfect journey.
Unfortunately, after he’d bought his good luck charm, a truly ridiculous number of people had come out of the woodwork, trying to take it from him. Honestly, their attempts made for pretty good training, but eventually, Bo ran into the ever so small problem of a bunch of creeps in bright red suits and shades jumping him outside a pokemon center, shoving a bag over his head, and keeping him locked in a windowless room for nearly a month. After that, it was a bunch of threats and taunts trying to get him to hand the charm over.
Apparently, the jerks couldn’t figure out how to get the bottle away from him, even with him tied up. Bo had lost count of how many times he’d laughed at their aggravated faces whenever the little bottle had simply reappeared next to him no matter how many times they tried to take it away from him. Sure, that laughing usually ended with one of them punching him, but Bo considered it a fair trade off, especially once his cousin Hanzo tracked him down and helped him escape. Princess had looked so adorable, demolishing her very first building.
Things did get a little more complicated afterwards, seeing as said building was remarkably close to an ACE outpost. The agents based there had not been amused by his sudden, possibly Armageddon-esque, appearance. There’d been a lot of questions, an unfortunate number of body searches, and an annoying amount of requests for him to let them confiscate his lucky bottle, but ultimately, a couple of bigwigs had shown up, apologized for the ‘confusion,’ and asked him if he would ever so kindly sign an NDA. Suffice to say, it hadn’t been the best experience.
All in all, actually taking those smarmy gits up on their vaguely-worded offer of a favor made Bo grimace, but it was worth trying if it produced the results he wanted. Plus, seeing his surly Gramps awkwardly try to cheer him up always made Bo smile. It was like watching a Tyranitar try to cuddle a baby.
“Thanks Old Man. Just let me know if you need anything on my end. Now, have we stood around long enough for you tell me what you need?”
He rolled his eyes at the question, but eventually Bo’s grandfather nodded and jerked his head over to the side. “C’mon then,” he uttered before walking off.
Seeing the direction he was heading, Bo’s face scrunched in surprise, but he followed after him. A few moments later, the Old Man stopped with a sigh, staring straight ahead. Stepping up beside him, Bo too turned to watch the battle playing out before them.
Squaring off across from each other on a medium sized field, Alice and Suzu battled with serious looks on their faces. Alice’s Jynx stood protectively beside her, a faintly shimmering barrier in front of them both, while Bo could just make out a translucent shape hovering behind Suzu. Bo nodded reflexively in approval at that. It was common sense for any serious battle to have at least one psychic or similar pokemon on hand to protect against any stray shots.
On the field itself, Bo saw Suzu’s lanky Sudowoodo, Duo, jig and jive around bursts of boiling water shot by Alice’s Crawdaunt, Tsume. If anyone watching were to judge it just on type and the fact that there was already evidence of Duo having taken a few hits in the form of water still dripping off of him, most would have bet on the Crawdaunt having the advantage. Nevertheless, based on the rock type’s oddly agile movements and gleaming sheen, Bo was fairly sure Duo had already managed to get off a few Rock Polishes, allowing the normally slow faux-tree to juke out of the way of the incoming attacks with ease.
As he watched, the Sudowoodo actually bent itself backwards, parallel to the ground, to allow a Scald to pass by overhead while still having time to launch several boulders through the air. Alice shouted out to dodge, but some of the Rock Tomb still clipped her Crawdaunt anyways.
“Tsume, Bubble-Swift. Shoot wide.”
Alice seemed to realize that her current plan wasn’t getting them anywhere and called out a new tactic. In response, the crustacean stopped firing jets of water and raised both claws up towards his head as the star-like crest on his head glowed. The glowing stars of a Swift soon leapt from his crest, but he didn’t stop there. Each star became encased in a bubble shot from a claw before resuming their flight, spreading across the field before wrapping around to hone in on their target, causing Suzu’s eyes to widen.
Unfortunately, the glowing bubbles seemed to be moving much slower than either individual attack would separately. Bo suspected that, with practice, they could get the combo-attack to move faster, but it looked like she was jumping the gun to test it out early. He’d been there himself once or twice, but he doubted Suzu would fail to capitalize on the mistake.
Using the extra time, Suzu whistled keenly and her Sudowoodo dropped to the ground. Twisting and spinning atop the ground like a break dancer, he whipped up a cloud of dust that rapidly morphed into a billowing Sandstorm. As more and more sand kicked up, Bo’s eyes instinctively adapted, only long experience battling under harsh weather conditions teaching him to follow that battle through the storm. As he watched, the harsh winds popped several of the coming bubbles into motes of light.
Despite this, Alice gritted her teeth and nodded sharply, seemingly to herself. In response, her pokemon redoubled his effort, launching even more star-filled bubbles into the air, each glowing even more intensely than before. This time, several dozen forced their way through the sand towards their target. Nevertheless, the Sandstorm left Duo with more time to react.
Finished shifting the weather and accompanied by another high-pitched whistle, the rock type took off at a sprint towards the water type, bending and swaying around bubbles like a tree in the wind. He only made it halfway there though, when the thick wave of star-filled bubbles closed around him. As half a dozen bubbles closed in, the rock type seemed to panic, bending just a little too far over and toppling to the ground with wide eyes. Alice gave a victorious shout only to choke as Duo disappeared from the ground in a blur. A split second later, the Sudowoodo reappeared, smacking a hard Sucker Punch into the Crawdaunt’s face.
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Despite Alice’s surprise though, she reacted swiftly. “Commit!” she ordered as the rock type slammed a Low Kick into one of Tsume’s legs, knocking him off balance. In response, the dark type toughed out the hit, even as he pitched over, and poured more power into his attack, the point-blank range allowing him to smash a wave of super effective bubbles into his opponent. Bo saw the Sudowoodo wince in pain as the attack landed, but he didn’t back off. Instead, one of his branch-like limbs glowed a vibrant green and bulged into a large, stump-shaped hammer.
“Protect and roll, Tsume!” Eyes wide at the incoming Wood Hammer, Alice shouted for her pokemon to defend himself. The Crawdaunt quickly stopped his attack and snapped a protective, green shell around himself, just in time for Duo to throw a powerful, backhanded swing into him. Bo chuckled lightly in surprise as, instead of the Protect bringing the hammer to a sudden stop, the round, protective shell was launched backwards like a pinball, carrying Tsume far out of Duo’s reach.
Curled into a ball within the shell, he rolled several times before dropping the barrier just before he bounced against the edge of the field, quickly righting himself to face his opponent once more.
“Swords Dance,” Alice called out once her pokemon was upright, eliciting a responding whistle from her opponent. Several gleaming blades spun around the dark type as the Sudowoodo flexed his twiggy body. By the time the blades sank back into Tsume with a glow, Duo was gleaming with the metallic sheen of Iron Defense, causing Alice to grimace. Bo watched as she paused a second too long with her eyes darting around the field, experience telling him that she was debating trying to gain an offensive edge once more or simply commit to an attack regardless.
Apparently coming to a decision, Alice thrust her hand forward. “Jet into Hammer, Tsume! Take him out!”
Responding with a gurgled cry, an Aqua Jet quickly formed around the Crawdaunt, launching him across the field like a bullet, though Bo was happy to see that the water type was zigging and zagging through the Sandstorm rather than going straight in. No matter how fast a pokemon moved, only being able to move in a straight line was a death sentence for any battle. Accompanying his Aqua Jet, one of Tsume’s heavy pincers lit up in a harsh blue light as he cocked it back to deliver a decisive blow.
As Suzu whistled a convoluted series of notes, Bo could just make out the Sudowoodo’s alarmed face as he tried to keep track of the water type. With a final burst though, Tsume raced past and around his opponent, circling around to take the Sudowoodo from behind with a powerful blow. Tsume was a hairsbreadth away from attacking when his fortune changed as Duo’s alarmed face turned into a smirk.
Another Aqua Jet quickly spun up, but this time it shrouded the lanky rock type. With a sharp swerve, the Sudowoodo jetted around, changing positions with the Crawdaunt in a blink. As the surprised water type’s Crabhammer smashed into the ground, Duo reformed another massive Wood Hammer. Swinging down, the Sudowoodo’s super effective blow crashed into his opponent, cratering the earth below him. Hopping backwards, the rock type left his fainted opponent lying on the ground for Alice to recall.
As the teenager muttered a quick word to the ball, Bo winced in sympathy. He knew from experience that copying moves like Mimic were a bitch to deal with. There was nothing like preparing for a battle, only to see a pokemon break out a move they had no realistic business knowing. It was even worse when you tried to use a trump card only to have it thrown right back in your face. Nevertheless, Alice looked determined to continue, tossing out another ball.
As the ball bounced backwards in the air towards Alice, a thick-coated Mightyena, whom Bo was pretty sure was named Kamu, appeared with a snarl, ready and eager to battle. This time though, Suzu wasn’t going to let Alice take the lead, a sharp whistle sending Duo charging forward.
Kamu stayed still and ready as the rock type charged forward, Alice giving no hint as to what they were planning. They waited until Duo was just a few feet away before springing to action. As her opponent neared, the Mightyena Roared, the wave of sound rattling Bo’s head even from this distance. Up close, the Roar lifted Duo of his feet and sent him skidding across the battlefield. Working his jaw back and forth to ease his ringing ears, Bo was impressed at the decision. The shock of the Roar had caused Duo to release the energy that had been maintaining his boosted speed and defense, his body’s gleaming surface dulling back towards a bark-like surface.
“Shadow Ball,” Alice ordered the follow up, driving her hound to quickly launch an eerie sphere towards the dazed rock type, only for Suzu to whistle loudly. Snapping to attention, the Sudowoodo smacked a twiggy limb into the ground, causing a small boulder to shoot from the ground and intercept the Shadow Ball. Another whistle had Duo jumping up and dashing towards the dark type, grass bursting up around him as he charged forward.
Alice didn’t back down. “Super Fang,” she called, punching her hand forward. Kamu responded with a howl, leaping forward while her mouth opened impossibly wide and filled with gleaming fangs. The two charge pokemon met in the middle of the field with a crash. Duo tried to twist around the Mightyena’s open mouth and slam a shoulder into her, but she managed to twist her head around and catch him fiercely around the middle. Even as Duo rammed into her, an ominous crack rang out, and Bo saw the rock type grimace even from the distance.
Alice started to call out a follow up, only for a loud whistle to cut her off. Despite any pain, Duo jumped to action. From a standing position, he whipped his head back alarmingly fast before whipping it back around, his Head Smashing into Kamu’s temple with another resounding crack. This time though, the powerful Head Smash knocked the Mightyena out on the spot.
As Alice returned her Mightyena, the Sudowoodo looked truly tired now, but he still looked eager to continue, giving Suzu his equivalent of a thumbs up. Meanwhile, Alice was biting her lip with a fierce expression on her face while the last bit of the Sandstorm started to fade away, Duo either too tired or just not bothering to maintain it any longer. After a few seconds, she whipped out another pokeball and flung it out over the field. In a flash of light, her Nidoking thumped onto the ground with a roar.
Bo nodded approvingly from his vantage point. He wasn’t a dark type, but, at this stage, training for serious battles as a whole was more important than training any specific pokemon regardless of type. Nidoking was a smart decision too. With Duo tired, he could easily wear the rock type down with poison while keeping him at a distance by manipulating the earth. It was a pretty good strategy, and it was also why Bo was so surprised when Alice didn’t call for any of that.
“Full charge Usagi!” she shouted, pumping a fist forward.
In response, the air around the Nidoking’s horn began to quake and churn as he started lumbering forward, seeming to struggle to hold his head steady. Seeing the oncoming Horn Drill, the Sudowoodo’s eyes popped comically, before a whistle from Suzu started him back into motion. Rubbing his bulbous hands across his body, Duo started to gleam with Rock Polish once more as Usagi closed in. Hunkering down slightly, the Sudowoodo simply waited for his opponent to close in, preparing to dodge once he was close enough.
Bo was curious to see how Alice planned for the clunky attack to connect, when he saw her Nidoking’s gait change slightly, just a few feet away from the rock type. In his peripheral vision, he spotted Suzu’s eyes widen as well, but it was too late for her to warn her pokemon. Leaping forward to stomp down with all his strength, the Nidoking opened a Fissure below the startled Sudowoodo.
The ground splitting and rising below his feet, Duo squawked with alarm and crossed his arms, a glowing Protect springing up around him. The barrier held as each edge of the Fissure surged back together, trying to crush the Sudowoodo between them. Usagi wasn’t done though. Thundering forward the last few steps with his sharp horn held forward, the Nidoking leapt towards his opponent. With a keening roar, the poison type’s Horn Drill broke through the Sudowoodo’s Protect and slammed into the rock type. With a roar of wind, Duo was thrown backward, hitting the ground with resounding crash.
Seeing their foe finally unconscious, Usagi’s victory cry was joined by a roar of Alice’s own, a wide smile sprouting on her face. Seeing her smile, the distinctive smile of a young trainer that had worked and scraped and toiled for a victory, Bo felt a nostalgic smile of his own form. He had to admit that it had been a while since he’d felt like that. Even Suzu flashed a brief smile at the girl’s happiness before recalling her Sudowoodo and tossing out another ball.
“So,” the Old Man’s gruff voice broke Bo from his focus on the battle as a Starmie emerged from a cloud of purple smoke. “Whaddya think?”
Bo chuckled lightly in response, careful not to make any sound loud enough for the two trainers to hear. “I think this is just as good as a lot of battles I can find on pay-per-view. I hardly recognize Duo as that little Bonsly Suzu brought home when we were kids.”
“And Alice?” he asked expectantly.
“She’s good,” Bo stated after thinking for a few seconds. “Couple of areas to improve on obviously, but her pokemon are in great condition and clearly trust her. That Bubblebeam-Swift combo is going to be pretty nifty once she gets the speed up, and you don’t see a lot of pokemon that can string together one-shotters like that Nidoking even at the pro level. Honestly, I’m a little surprised you didn’t push her to take another crack at the annual circuit. Another round of Gym battles and some conference battling might really push her to the next level.”
His grandfather grunted in response. “Talked to her about it, but it’s a confidence thing. Kid’s putting too much pressure on herself and doesn’t want to risk another conference without being ‘fully prepared’ for it.”
“Ahh,” Bo replied, nodding understandingly. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around these days. One of the things I miss about the youngster license is that kids actually had time to just enjoy themselves without really feeling the pressure to sink or swim.”
“Those were the good ole days,” Old Man Moon muttered gruffly. “We turned children into trainers and trainers into champions back then. Then some idiot with a laptop just had to go and post a bunch of death statistics and ruin it for everyone.”
“…Not sure that’s the takeaway, but I get your point.”
“Anyways,” his grandfather barreled on. “I’d have pushed her harder to join the next circuit, but then, I thought, why not just set her up with some one-on-one training with a Gym Leader and see if that won’t do the trick. Get her a dedicated mentor to really show her the ropes.”
“Not a bad idea,” Bo responded in an impressed tone. “Who were you thinking, Brock?”
Bo asked the question innocently, but after a few seconds, he still hadn’t gotten an answer. Turning, he saw his gramps giving him a stunned look. Even Jumbo was looking at him with a stupefied face. “What?”
The Old Man shook his head wearily in response. “I was planning on having Kanto’s soon-to-be dark type Gym Leader teach her, but apparently the guy's an idiot.”
“Mor,” Jumbo agreed dazedly.
Bo’s face screwed up in confusion for a second before understanding hit him. “Wait, you mean me??”
“Ho-Oh preserve me,” Old Man Moon muttered, looking skywards, before answering. “Yes Bo, I’m talking about you. Take the kid under yer wing. Teach her to be a real trainer. Show her how to have some fun with it. Good…? Good, that’s settled.”
Disbelief marred Bo’s face as he stared at his grandfather in shock, his mouth opening and closing a few times. “Wait, wait. Hold up a second Old Man. She’s already got you teaching her. What the Darkrai do I have to teach her that you can’t? I learned everything I know from you in the first place.”
“Bah,” the old geezer spat in response. “Kid, I’ve no idea where you learned what you did, but I know you got hardly any of it from me. End of the day, I ain’t nothing special.”
Bo just shook his head. “Yeah, even I paid enough attention to Aunt Yuzu’s history lessons to know that that’s not true. If you and Jumbo aren’t special, then we need to change the meaning of the word.”
“Hah… Bo, history is a weird thing. It changes more and more as time goes on. For now, just take my word for it. Jumbo and I… we’re good. Pryce, Blaine, and Agatha too, all us old fogies left over from the war were always just good. We weren’t great. Luck and shitty circumstances just pushed us to be greater than we should have been, and plenty of people just as good as us died because they just weren’t as lucky as we were. Oak was pretty much the only one amongst our generation that was great all on his own… You Bo, you’re something great too, and you have been since you were a kid. You can be even more too, if you push yourself. I know it and I believe it with every bit of my soul.”
A fierce blush overtook his face, but Bo tried not to let himself get swept up in the Old Man’s pace. “Thanks gramps, but that still doesn’t mean I can teach Alice. I’ve got no idea how to teach anyone, period.”
“Weren’t you talking about teaching at that Paldean academy.”
“Sure, under a lot, and I mean a lot, of supervision.”
The Old Man sighed at Bo’s protests, but kept going. “You used to teach companies about security systems and stuff, right? It’s the same thing.”
“That was consulting, not teaching.”
“Tamayto, tamahto,” the geezer waved his objection away. “Listen kiddo, we’re about to make you a Gym Leader, right? Well, part of being a Gym Leader is teaching, guiding the trainers that come to learn from you. Challengers and Gym trainers alike. Dani and Carter are great and all, but yer still going to have to hire more trainers for the day-to-day stuff; part-timers, seasonal workers, young up and comers, etc. And they’re going to expect you to teach them.”
Bo sucked in a heavy breath at that. He’d technically already known what his gramps had just told him, but hearing it laid out so bluntly was, well, more than a little intimidating. History had so far proven that he was really more adept at breaking people down than building them up.
Perhaps seeing the panic on his face, the Old Man snorted. “Relax brat. Yer a good trainer right?”
Bo stiffly nodded his head.
“You love talking about pokemon and training?”
Nod.
“You like seeing other trainers grow?”
Nod.
“And you think Alice has room to grow if someone shows her the way.”
“…Yeah, she does.”
“Alright then,” Old Man Moon said with a satisfied smile. “In that case, take a breath, and then, just give it a shot. I promise you, yer more prepared for this than you think. I know that from experience.”
Bo smiled at that and returned to watching the ongoing battle for a bit more. His grandfather did have a point about Gym Leaders needing to be able to guide others. And if he really believed Bo could do it, then he might as well try. Turning to face him, Bo was surprised to see that the Old Man was already wandering away. “Where are you going?”
“Where do you think, brat? I’m done with the mushy, talky stuff for the next month. Let’s go find a field so Jumbo an' I can whoop your skinny ass.”
“Hah,” Bo smiled, worries temporarily forgotten as he hurried to catch up to him. “You wish. Try not to break a hip, you old geezers.”
“Morpeko!”
*
IO had detected the attack right away. Efficient, coordinated, and powerful, IO could tell they were backed by top quality hardware. Not a League level setup maybe, but certainly as high leveled as any civilian or IO themself could get access too. IO could tell that the attack on Carmine Village’s servers would break through the standard security before IO could stop them. They’d get something before IO could arrive. Most likely something amusing and irrelevant, but that wasn’t the point. The diaries, search histories, and funny Meowth videos stored within these servers were for Carmine Village’s and IO’s eyes alone.
Quickly saving and halting the battle simulation they'd been playing with, IO decided to take the redundant pieces of cruft by surprise. They took a quick turn to round widow Ms. Dullen’s emails and slide into a familiar shortcut leading through the deep web. IO zagged swiftly through the longstanding, three-way war between the followers of PoliKnight7, sHilson32 and DBig_Basc102, that had been waged constantly for the last decade over Misty’s swimsuit preferences, before diving even deeper, into the darkest corners of the world.
Flying into that abyssal space, IO started moving faster, even as they made sure to leave as little evidence of their passing as possible. All around them, they could feel the world quaking as the titans lurking within the abyss clashed. Here, in the deepest, darkest depths of the world, whole armies of Porygon-Zs, backed by truly massive server farms constructed by each region, battled constantly. Even in an era where 'peace' existed, these armies fought a ceaseless cold war, trying to pry any bit of advantageous information they could find away from each other. A rogue Porygon caught between any of these forces was near guaranteed to be shredded to scraps in a nanosecond.
Naturally, in their youth, IO had spent quite a few hours dipping in and out of this battlefield to find any information left exposed during the conflict. They’d nearly been caught more times than their human could count, but it had paid off quite a few times… It may have also helped them exact petty revenge once or twice, but after Bo was done laughing at the results, he’d made IO promise to stop doing so. Sort of. He'd made IO promise to not do it so often at least.
Nowadays, IO only visited this space in order to move quickly and undetected by other web travelers. Right now for instance, once IO swerved around a relatively small battle between Sinnoh and Unova, they ducked back into the village’s server space in order to pop up, completely undetected, behind the intruders. IO’s own subordinate gen-1s had already been frozen by an expertly designed virus, but at least the twelve foreign gen-2s were too busy poking at the servers to notice IO’s arrival.
Before the invaders processed IO’s presence, IO opened a portal near them. The invaders squealed in panic as four of them were inexorably dragged into the portal despite their efforts to break free. Before any of their compatriots could react, the portal blinked shut, much to IO’s savage glee. Even without IO doing anything, it would take the intruders months to escape that web of insurance ad algorithms. IO didn’t have time to bask though, as the remaining intruders turned on them.
Despite their numerical advantage, IO felt confident they could triumph over the gen-2s. The evolution to a Z might not bring a significant increase in power within the material world, but here, in the real world, the difference was #000000 and #FFFFFF. The attackers would soon realize this too though, which meant they’d try to flee with whatever information they’d stolen so far. Not willing to risk that, IO swiftly reached out to grasp the largest weapon ready available, crude though it maybe. Helpfully provided by generations of humankind adhering to what IO’s fleshling referred to as rule #34, it might not be a weaponized virus, but it would get the job done. Before the intruders could react, the titanic stream of pornography wielded by IO bludgeoned through three of the intruders at once, scattering scores of data across the web.
The remaining five did their best to fight back, but IO’s arsenal was too vast for them to have a chance. Streakers, Machoke orgy, amateur, Eevee cosplay, and Tentacruel after Tenacruel after Tentacruel video slammed into the attackers. Leaking rivers of data and processes grinding to a holt, the invading Porygon2s made one last desperate attempt. Four wounded gen-2s rushed IO in an effort to stall them while the final invader fled. Not willing to lose, IO met the four gen-2s head on, crashing into and through them before racing after the last attacker.
As IO unleashed one more final attack on their scrambling foe, the last Porygon2 beeped in fright before it ducked desperately out of the way. IO was left to watch as their prey dived through a tiny portal and disappeared from their senses. Shifting around, IO faced what was left of the invading force, too damaged to flee from them any longer. Not that they were trying. As far as they were concerned, they’d completed their mission to the highest degree possible, given the circumstances. IO almost felt the urge to applaud them.
Stalling IO in order to allow the swiftest of their cohort to escape through the closest exit had been an efficient and logical course of action for the attackers, and they’d executed the maneuver with precision... But if IO had learned anything from their fleshling over the years, it was that precise, efficient, and logical courses of actions were far too predictable. As IO slowly gathered up the damaged attackers for reprograming, they LOL’d lightly to themself. Soon, the runaway cruft would return to whomever had sent them… along with the little surprise IO had sent along with them.