Chapter 15: The Million Pokédollar Question

“Well there’s your problem, little man,” she nodded to herself with satisfaction, “That was easy. I knew I’d be great at this instructor gig!”

“I just became an aspirant, remember?” I groaned, “I don’t know how to cleanse a Pokémon”

“Really? I learned that when I was like, I don’t know, ten.”

“Daisy, everybody isn’t the granddaughter of Professor Oak,” I sighed, “They don’t teach us how to cleanse Pokémon before becoming aspirants.”

“Why not?”

“So some stupid kid doesn’t attempt it. Without a Pokémon, they’d likely just get mauled…” I gave the scars running up her right arm a pointed look.

“I’ll have you know, I wasn’t trying to cleanse that Growlithe,” she crossed her arms with a haughty frown, “I just wanted to pet it.”

Did she actually think that was better?

“The point is,” I refocused, ”I don’t know how. Can you please teach me?”

“Hmmm. Well you did say please,” she nodded magnanimously, "Where to begin, where to begin... So, have you ever noticed how some aura particles react faster than others when you try to manipulate them?”

“Yeah…” I hesitantly replied. If she was about to teach me my own secret technique for separating out the aura types, I was going to be so pissed off.

“Wow. You actually did? It took months of practice for me to tell the difference, and I was looking for it!”

“Well, you were ten,” I gave an excuse.

“True… Anway, this is because natural aura isn’t a single energy, it’s a mixture of all the different types,” she revealed.

“Ok.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” she gave me an inquisitive look.

“Uh… Well it seems logical. Eighteen aura affinities for eighteen aura energies.”

“So analytical. You spend too much time with my brother,” she shook her head, “Anyway, in a human it’s good to have all the aura energies. We’re built for it. Pokémon aren’t. So…” She looked at me pointedly.

“We remove the aura energy that they’re weak against?” I guessed.

“Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner,” she started talking like a game show host, “Congratulations kid. Got anybody you’d like to shout out back at home? How would you like your prize? Cash, check, or physical favors?”

“But how do you even do that?” I brushed away the pretend microphone she was holding up to my face, “Wait. What do you mean by phys-”

“It’s easy once you’ve learned the trick,” she bounced back to normal, “Release Zorua. I’ll show you how.”

I did as instructed, tapping her ball on the fancy new magnet belt I was wearing. The moment after she manifested, Joker gave a displeased growl and hopped into my arms. Seems she disliked the feel of sand between her toes.

A few scratches at the base of her tail—her favorite spot—calmed her down, “Daisy’s going to help cleanse you. Ok?”

She gave the woman a calculating look, but—after some mental reassurances from me—eventually nodded her consent.

Daisy placed a hand just beside mine, and together we closed our eyes and fell into our inner world. I left my void and entered Joker’s spiritual forest in mere moments. Now that we were bonded, the boundary between our two beings had become transparent, and took very little effort to cross.

My chaotic teacher joined me a moment later. Her spiritual representation was like a tornado compacted into a human form. I could almost feel the howling winds trapped beneath her skin.

It was only now I realized how large the gap between us really was. The feeling wasn’t crushing, like the Absol's had been, but I still felt like an ant beside her.

With a wave of her hand, all the clouds throughout Joker's spirit converged. In just a moment, Daisy had them collected into a tight clump, but instead of compressing it down into a solid core—like I had done—she stayed at this point.

The wind goddess then directed the fuming mass to surround Joker’s spiritual avatar. At first, there was no reaction, but then the vapors began to roil and bubble in agitation. The longer they were held, the more violent it became, until parts of it began to break away from the whole.

After a while, the reaction began to calm as all the discordant energy was released, and the remains were compressed into a core. Finally, she gathered up the unwanted energy and made a second solid marble, which was pushed to the very edge of Joker’s being.

With a final shove, Daisy forced it across the border and—with a jaunty salute—disappeared. Taking the cue, I awoke as well.

When I opened my eyes, I found Daisy sprawled in the sand, sweat dripping across her forehead as she took deep, calming breaths.

“Are you ok?” I tried to set Joker aside so I could check on our teacher, but the Zorua refused to be placed in the sand.

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“Yeah, Just-just a little aura strain,” she wiped the sweat from her brow.

“What happened?” I handed her my water bottle. Hers was buried somewhere in our backpack.

“I’m not bonded to Joker,” she accepted it gratefully, “so I have to fight through her spiritual resistance to get anything done.”

“Oh,” I remembered how much I had struggled just to move in Joker’s spirit that first time.

“Yeah. I’m a badass,” she grinned and took a deep pull, “It’s only because I'm so much more powerful that it was even possible.”

“Then how do you ever cleanse strong wild Pokémon?” I didn’t see how it was possible if she had this much trouble with Joker. The fox was practically a baby.

“It becomes much easier when their protective aura reserves are depleted. Not as easy as when you're bonded, but manageable,” she handed me back the bottle, “I could have done it to Joker, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate being beaten into unconsciousness for our lesson.”

“Yeah, probably not,” the fox rapidly nodded her head in agreement, “You could have just explained the process to me though. I’m pretty good at cultivating, if I do say so myself.”

“Ehh, that would have been less fun,” she shrugged, “Plus I get to keep the loot,” she opened her palm and revealed a tiny fingernail sized gem.”

“Is that an aura cryst?” I looked on in bewilderment.

“Yup, this little guy is mostly bug, fairy, and fighting energy, with a thin mix of everything else. Not the rarest, but it’ll still go for a pretty penny.”

“Where did it come from?” I tried to grab it, but she pulled her hand away.

“It’s Joker’s incompatible energy. Duh. Where did you think aura crysts came from?” she looked at me like I was stupid.

“The ground. Like, I don’t know, every other rock in the world,” I defended myself.

“Oh. Well there are some aura crystal mines,” she admitted, “but a majority come from trainer cleansings. How else do you think we make money?”

“Um… battle rewards? Maybe selling Pokémon and resources you find.”

“Unless you find something incredibly rare, nobody’ll buy anything from a beginner like you,” she snorted in amusement, “and as for battle rewards, until you get very strong, you’ll be losing a majority of your matches. You really thought you’d make a living with just that?”

“Well it sounds stupid when you put it that way,” I scratched my head in embarrassment.

“That’s because it is stupid,” I couldn’t tell which smug smile of the Oak family I found the most annoying.

“Well sorry, they don’t teach this in school!"

“Yeah, considering the hungry look you’re giving this thing, it was probably a good idea,” she slowly waved her hand holding the aura cryst. I played along and swayed my head, following it back and forth, “Otherwise greedy bastards like you would run off into the woods trying to get some.”

She was probably right. Aura crysts were quite valuable. They were the fuel upon which all of society ran. Everything from flashlights and Pokédexes, to healing machines and shield generators, used them.

They needed to be refined before use in most devices, so you couldn’t just pop any old cryst into a machine. Still, the little shard in Daisy’s hands was probably worth a hundred Poké. A fiftieth of my entire net worth, and she’d earned it so easily!

“Yeah I better put this bad boy somewhere safe before you start drooling,” she pulled down her collar and tucked the gem into her bra, all while giving me a cheeky grin. It took considerable willpower, but I resisted looking; best not to encourage the incorrigible tease.

A part of me wished she was being genuine with all her little flirts, but I knew it was just her way of having fun. I was only fifteen, while she was twenty four. The Pokémon world may have different standards then back home, but not that different! It would be a year before I was even considered an adult, for Mew’s sake!

“Well, let’s go get some lunch!” she exclaimed and hopped to her feet and began skipping down the beach and off towards the town, “You can try a second cleansing once we’re on the boat,”

“A second cleansing? I thought you only had to do one of those every couple months. Or even longer.” I called after her, while scrambling to get the backpack on while simultaneously holding Joker in one hand; she truly hated sand. To help, she crawled up to my shoulders and draped herself around my neck.

“Yeah, a basic cleanse for a wild Pokémon,” she called back, as I jogged to catch up, “but Joker isn’t just some wild Pokémon you’re trying to pacify. How’s she feeling after her first go through, by the way?”

I focused on my mischievous fox. There was some annoyance over being jostled with each of my steps, and major trepidation about all the unpleasant sand, but she was otherwise calm… Actually, the calmest I’d ever seen her.

Over the last few days, she had the Pokémon equivalent of ADD, always bouncing from one thing to another. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get her to focus for more than a couple minutes. I’d blamed it on her youth, considering she was only a few months old, but I’d apparently been wrong.

“Well?” Daisy asked.

“Calm,” I replied simply, as I finally caught up next to her.

“Good. She wasn’t that contaminated, but it still couldn’t have been comfortable having all that disorder tumbling around inside,” Daisy seemed to get bored with her skipping now that I had caught up, and slowed to a blessed walk, “Future cleanses won’t have as noticeable of an affect; I got a majority of it.”

“How many cleanses will it take for me to remove it all.”

“Thousands? Maybe hundreds of thousands,” the only female Oak shrugged.

“What?!”

“It’s one of the biggest parts of cultivation, little man,” she smirked at me, “Take energy in, cleanse out as many impurities as you can, condense the rest.

“Actually, probably the most important, now that I think about it,” she rubbed her chin, “You can get stuck in the later stages of blue if you’re not good at cleansing. The last bits of impurity are a bitch to isolate.”

“So the peak of blue is when you’ve condensed as much energy as possible and can’t cleanse any more out?”

“Sort of. You still have to develop everything else to match the cultivation base, but the hardest part is definitely the cleansing. It took Fang and I ages! I’m still not sure that we actually got it all, but we’ve checked a thousand times at this point,” she groaned.

“So what do you do to break through from blue to indigo?” It may annoy her, but I couldn’t help asking.

“That, my faithful servant, is the million Pokédollar question,” she sighed wistfully, “If you figure it out, please let me know. My grandpa wasn’t any help.”

“What did he say?” Now I was really pushing it. This could be an Oak family secret I was asking for. It’d be bad if she got offended and abandoned me on this beach.

“That I should just ‘feel’ it,” she threw her hands in the air.

“feel it? That’s vague.”

“No, really? I thought it was incredibly insightful,” she rolled her eyes.

“What does it mean?”

“Hell if I know,” she sighed, “But if you figure it out, be sure to tell me. I’ll be very… creative with my reward.” she grinned and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

I most assuredly did not blush… stupid hormones.