1-3 Violet City
.
.
.
"Blue's off in Johto, studying some ruins," Red said a few days later, in the same disdainful tone as Claire would say 'cultivating the Fairy type.' "The Old Man offered to teleport us over to bully him into attending the Conference. Apparently, the nerd is planning to miss it in favor of licking rocks and writing hoity-toity nonsense for his Pokemonology degree."
"There is no such thing as a Pokemonology degree," I responded on reflex.
"Yeah, exactly."
I have never teleported before this week. This isn't unusual: teleportation was a rare move, a hellishly complex technique that only a scant few species could learn at all, let alone with enough proficiency and power to ferry humans alongside. Here in Indigo, that was the Alakazam line, though a few rare Xatu could travel short distances and, thanks to Unova, some World League affiliates had Gardevoir and Claydol. Additionally, the move had a number of caveats that made it impractical to rely on for common use. Besides its rarity, the distance, number of passengers, and Aura advancement of those passengers scaled the cost of the move exponentially; this could be circumvented somewhat by doing numerous, shorter hops, but at some point it just became faster to fly on Dragon- or Pidgeot-back.
Champion Oak had a Seventh Realm Alakazam, so Red and I appeared by Violet City in the blink of an eye.
I never saw it coming. I had expected to stand in a small circle engraved on the ground, uncomfortably close to Red and a hellishly advanced Alakazam, awaiting a countdown before being transposed over the course of seconds while fighting nausea and shutting out the polychromatic flashes. This is how it was always described to me, when Lance or Mother complained about having to respond to some distant emergency too far to reach on dragonback. It is not what I experienced.
One moment, I was walking with Red down a hall in the Oak Estate, on our way to the Champion's more private office; the next, we were in a small clearing in a dense forest, the chirping of Flying and Bug-types loud and close, the nourishing scent of fresh rainfall in the air. The transmission was so smooth, quick, and sudden, my stride didn't hitch, though Red's did: he appeared on the hill's downward slope, and when his foot didn't touch solid ground he fell onto his knees with an aggrieved cry.
"God damn it, Abby!" he shouted. "You've got to stop doing that! I'll get you back for this, you tyrant!"
A leaf floating in the gentle breeze shifted trajectory and slapped Red in the face.
Alakazam placed him there on purpose? I was impressed further. That kind of precision added an additional layer of complexity to the already tremendous feat; Champion Oak is truly a once-in-a-generation trainer.
"I'm sure it was an accident," I lied dismissively. "Maybe, if you treated 'Abby' better, they'd take more care. Thank you for the smooth transport, by the way, I appreciate it." A leaf did a brief loop-de-loop in the air in front of me, and I smiled in response.
Red snorted. "Yeah-huh, sure. Let's just get moving. Abby won't return us, so we only have two weeks to manhandle Blue into coming with us to the Plateau if we don't want to miss registration."
"Sure. Let's crash an archaeology site."
I didn't need to ask which direction we would go: it was blindingly obvious.
To the south, there was a Psychic Nexus many times larger and more powerful than Blackthorn's Heart of the Dragon or Mount Whitegrave, and far purer than either. Over the course of the minute since our arrival, it had shrouded itself and disappeared perfectly into the ambient Aura flow. There was a pause, a brief moment of absolute silence gripping Violet Forest, then the Nexus reappeared, growing, swelling. Breathing in, almost, like a thing alive.
I cycled a drop, and felt like I were punched in the gut.
-Gain glory or die.-
It was Aura same as any other, but somehow impossibly distilled, more potent. A shot of everclear when all I've ever had was watered-down wine. I had intended only a taste – to gauge the strength of it, and spit it out after – but it burned a hole in me, my soul. It hurt, and for a moment I panicked, thinking I was back on the Fantasia green with Lance and his hand through my chest gripping-tearing-ripping, but-
I smothered myself with refreshing Dark, detached with freezing Ice, and I was okay, again. I was okay. It wasn't an attack or a poisoned well, just… too powerful, for my level of cultivation. If I were Fourth Realm, like Red, or even Third, I'm sure it would be a great boon to my advancement, if I could stomach cultivating Psychic in my soul, anyway.
-May your heart never be vain because of what you know. Take counsel from the ignorant as well as the wise.-
The wound was already healing. I'd have to hold off cycling, until I fully recovered, but that wouldn't be more than a few days, and I shouldn't be cycling in a place this strongly aligned to an element I disliked, anyway. It was fine. I'm fine.
"Brisk," Red said, as if commenting on the wind. "I don't know if I want you near this weird Nexus, baby sis. It's bad news." Contrary to his words, his expression was interested, curious.
"I can handle it," I snapped.
He turned to look at me, face falling in a tense frown. "One breath did that to you? Fuck. I'll borrow a few Berries off Blue, should strengthen your soul enough to heal quicker. If I had known, I would've warned you."
"I thought you hated Berries," I countered.
"I dislike that it enables stupid people to poison their minds. Medicine is a worthy use."
I crossed my arms over my chest and let it go. Stupid master.
"You know what… here." He rooted through his bag, then handed me a small stack of cash. "That should be enough to buy enough Berries for a smoothie or a salad or however you're supposed to eat them, and a suite in a hotel too. You should be able to sense all the people in Violet City from here. I'll go interrogate Blue and find out what sciencey trouble he's gotten himself into, and I'll be back my morning, promise. There's no way I'm bringing you closer to that living Nexus."
I sulked, though inwardly I glowed at the length he was going for me. "I'm not a burden."
"You are, and that's fine," Red said plainly. "Venusaur was a burden for months until he hit his stride, and I was a burden to the Old Man for most of a decade. It's my job to carry you around and stuff you full of useful knowledge until you're strong enough to walk by my side. You'll get there, just not today."
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
I had nothing to say to that.
-Hold my hand in yours, and we will not fear what hands like ours can do.-
"Just in case, take…" he paused, hand over a ball in his coat pocket, then shifted and palmed another one. "Take Pikachu. If anyone in Violet bothers you, he'll stop their hearts."
I laughed.
"Take care of yourself. I'll be back my morning." He mussed my hair with a gloved hand, smirked, and walked south.
Holding his starter's ball in one hand and ten thousand dollars in the other, I watched him leave, feeling warm.
.
.
.
I had rarely strayed from Blackthorn City, and had never gone beyond Mt. Whitegrave to the east or Mt. Sonata to the north, until my desperate escape from the Fantasia Massacre. This was by design; rarely are scions of a clan under the aegis of Blackthorn allowed out from under the elders' watchful gaze until they reach the Third Realm, when the secrets and honor of the clan can be appropriately defended. As heiress of Fantasia, this was doubly true for me, and the most freedom I was offered was training excursions around the mountainside with Clair as my charge and Lance as our chaperone.
The first time I ate a sweet was two years ago, when Lance offered me a dumpling stuffed with red bean paste and sugar as congratulations for evolving my Dratini. I still remember the taste, and as my mastery of the Dark type improved, I had occasionally snuck into a bakery in Lower Blackthorn to acquire more, on bad days. I still paid, of course, but couldn't risk word of my indiscretions returning to the clan.
Silly. In hindsight, if I had only made the request, or just bought and eaten some with confidence, no one would have critiqued me for it. Who would? Who would care? I was never forbidden sweets, my parents were just the distant sort who never thought to give me any. That I associated sweets with rebellion and freedom was entirely my own conceit.
Pikachu tugged on a lock of my now-blonde hair, pointing at the bakery stall with his other hand, a pleading look on his face. I melted.
"Three of the red bean, please," I told the baker, and the kindly-looking gentleman cheerily wrapped them in paper for me.
Pikachu stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, chewing while vibrating happily on my shoulder. I wondered how often Red gave him sweets, unsure if he was too dedicated to the pursuit of power to cheat in this way or too relaxed not to, and decided this would be a secret between the three of us, for now. Razor approached his own with more caution, sniffing it before spearing it with a claw and licking it. Globs of red bean paste fell on the grassy path, but before long Razor was licking his claw clean with gusto, and I anticipated that there would be no wasted food next time.
Mine… didn't taste how I expected. The recipe was different than Blackthorn's. Not worse, but…
Pikachu made a cutesy grasping motion with a paw, and I gave him the other half. Razor made an aggrieved noise.
"We'll come back, sweet thing, have no fear," I told him, and he accepted with a grumpy pout. It was probably a lie; I would be hard-pressed to find this exact stall again, what with how large and byzantine the marketplaces of the Noctowl District was.
The people of Violet City numbered in the tens of millions. I had known this, intellectually, but I hadn't understood, not really. Blackthorn City had never broke a hundred thousand, much of that number spread across – and inside – a dozen mountains, somewhere in the realm of twenty thousand being clanless citizens. How easy it is, to look upon the lights of Violet City and Johto's other settlements every night for fifteen years and not truly appreciate its size.
It hadn't always been like this. Like most things, it was irreparably changed when Unova forced a treaty between Kanto and Johto. Suddenly, Violet Town – a small community of fifty thousand or so – sat directly on a valuable trade route that connected the two halves of the continent. There still existed oceanic trade, though that was taxed heavily by Unova and their peerless navy, and a few twisting, dangerous mountain routes across the Spine of Giratina, though merchants who braved it were as likely to be harassed by the Blackthorn clan as they were wild Tyranitar and Golem, but if it passed through the Indigo Road? It passed through Violet.
This put Violet City on the map. Within a few decades, their wealth rivaled Olivine or Cianwood, though not Goldenrod, and they even acquired a Gym. Of all the cities in Johto, it was here that pro-World League sentiment was highest, here that bore the most Kantonian influence. It was obvious in the architecture – boxier, lower to the ground, more obviously artificial and likely to be painted garish colors – obvious in the modes of dress and mixed accents. I even saw a shrine to the Three Birds of the Storm, tall and proud in the center of a forum.
I wondered how much was Unovan influence, and couldn't tell. The Fantasia clan was always hesitant to seem too knowledgeable or aware of Unovan culture or history, lest the Blackthorn remember where our founder hailed from, and so my education was incomplete.
Could Red teach me? I didn't know how educated he was on matters outside cultivation and the training of Pokemon. He learned under the Champion, but was not of his blood like his rival, nor did he hold much respect for the higher education that Gary Oak pursued. If Red had learned about Unovan culture and their meddling in Indigo's affairs at the Champion's knee, did he internalize any of it? Should he acquire the power to usurp that title, did he have the knowledge to wield it well? It had never come up.
"Pikachu, darling," I asked, "How intelligent would you say your trainer is? Academically."
Pikachu gave a mocking squeak. I was unsure how to translate it.
I had to cut across the street to avoid a performer, but when Razor stopped to gawk, I found a spot in the crowd and lifted him up so he would have a better vantage. The performance didn't interest me: I knew through my Aura Sight before my eyes fell on him that it was some Kantonian thing, a Second Realm with evenly split Fire and Flying and the tell-tale grooves of techniques. I was always taught such use of Aura was low-class.
The performer took a strange pose, leaning forward almost far enough to tip over with a hand held dramatically out to the side and the other cupped in front of his face. He took one obvious puff into his fist, then a second and a third, and with a flourish and a sound that reminded me of the night I lost everything he breathed a long plume of blue fire into the air above the crowd. There was loud applause and hollered cheers, but the Fire and Flying cultivator wasn't done. Channeling Aura through the Flying groove, a gust of wind blew behind the fire and expanded it into a great, spinning whirl in the air above his head, looking not unlike the Fire Spin move. Over the course of seconds, the fire flickered out in such a controlled way it appeared to transform into smoke.
The performer used his third technique, then, and channeled both Fire and Flying at the same time. The smoke began to dance and take shape, turning from a formless whirl into a cylinder and, slowly, into the shape of the mythical Moltres. Using his Fire technique he gave the bird of smoke burning wings and eyes, and commanded it to take flight over the heads of the crowd.
Razor was vibrating from where I held him in my arms. He turned to me and, gently with his claws, tugged on the sleeves of my jacket, as if to say "Hey! Did you see that?"
I gave him a sweet smile. "One day, Razor, you will create art out of ice and shadows that makes this performer look like an amateur."
Razor trilled happily.
The performer had great skill, and he was obviously dedicated to his craft; he had shaped his soul to better produce his art, and the results were self-evident. It seemed like a waste to me, though. Techniques carved into the soul took up space on the same 'canvas' as Pokemon bonds did. Of course they did: a technique is indistinguishable from a Pokemon move, its just called something different to clarify a human knows it. With three low-level techniques, that performer, being in the Second Realm and otherwise having the capacity for two bonds, likely didn't have a single Pokemon. And, unlike Pokemon that could be kept in stasis and the bonds shrunk, the technique would always be there.
There were some in my clan who knew the Shadow Step technique. It was invaluable for a spy and saboteur to turn to shadows and be able to listen in on a closed-door meeting, or teleport from shade to shade to infiltrate a building. We could get away with this where the Blackthorn clan couldn't because, as behind-the-scenes operators and not frontline fighters, being unable to field a full team didn't really matter.
As heiress of the Fantasia clan and aspirant to the Rising Gym Leader position, I wasn't forbidden from learning a technique so much as I knew that doing so would disqualify me on grounds of being too dumb for leadership. A Gym Leader or clan leader are expected to be able to field a full team of eight simultaneously in defense of their people, and if I learned a single technique, I wouldn't be able to do that.
Furthermore… well, it was kind of gauche, wasn't it? Why learn a single technique to breathe fire, when I could bond a Magmar that could learn a dozen fire techniques and use them for me while I sit on a chair and fan myself? Humans developed techniques to defend themselves against Pokemon in the age before Pokemon bonds were discovered. That age is long gone.
Up ahead, a tower reached far higher than the others on the street, a humble wooden design painted the red of a Johto shrine. It had obviously been retrofitted sometime in the past years – it was covered in wall-to-wall windows, clear glass of a quality so high it could only be Unovan – but, unlike its neighbors, maintained some semblance of what must have been Violet's original architectural traditions.
There was no signage, but after spending a half-week on the Plateau, I recognized it's function easily enough. I crossed the wide road to enter it immediately; this kind of entertainment was much more my speed. The crowd flooding the street made way for me – or, on further thought, for the Fifth Realm Pikachu on my shoulder – and I didn't hesitate to pay five hundred World dollars to reserve an hour on the highest floor.
The lounge was lush, gorgeous, and mercifully quiet. Only two others had claimed seats, one with her nose pressed against the glass and the other reading a book with only the occasional glance revealing his interest. There was a cabinet in one corner full of drinks and snacks, one of each I was allowed as part of my ticket and the rest priced double what a stall on the street outside would charge, and a game table of some kind I didn't recognize standing tall and velvet in the room's center.
I curled up in the corner on the same side as the girl, Pikachu quickly falling asleep in my lap and Razor vanishing underneath the couch. I didn't wait to get sucked into the show.
Kilometers away and viewed through Psychic-treated, telescoping glass, the Leader of the Violet Gym crushed a challenger beneath his heel. I couldn't see the Aura from here – only the visual appearance was conveyed through the glass – and so didn't know what Realm the bird was in, but it was easily as fast if not faster than the red Gyarados Lance had battled my master's Charizard with. That alone was impressive, even if the raw power wasn't in the same class.
A moment later, I remembered that other Gyms didn't seek to overwhelm their challengers with raw power, and instead meet them on their level. It was a difference in philosophy I truthfully didn't yet understand, but knew I probably would, in time.
I wondered: would Red let me challenge this Gym, once I reached the Second Realm and qualified for a Challenger's License? Or, would he claim a Flying Gym was too easy for a budding Ice Specialist, and fly me to Cinnabar or Pewter for a more difficult trial? I wasn't sure. Red could be mercurial and stubborn, but he wasn't unreasonable, not truly.
I was looking forward to what he had to show me, as we journeyed for next year's season.