Jun stood at the edge of Lake Miloch, the soft humid breeze rustling through the tall grass. His gaze was fixed on, Echo, his partner, a dottler with his yellow and purple polka-dotted carapace that reflected the sunlight like a prism.
His mentor, Professor Aria, was en route to Galar, and Jun wanted nothing more than to impress him. Professor Aria had shown him nothing but kindness since they had met and the thought of his arrival in just two weeks pushed him to spend most of last night meticulously crafting an intense training regimen for Echo.
“Alright, Echo! Are you ready to start grinding?” he called out, a spark of determination igniting in his chest. The Dottler pulsed a wave of agreement, sending out ripples of telepathic energy that shimmered in the air.
Beside Jun stood Gardevoir, the professor’s loyal guardian and a reassuring presence. The elegant Pokémon’s green gown swayed softly, her eyes reflecting the calm intelligence of a sage. Jun smiled at her, finding solace in her silent approval.
As the days unfolded, Jun and Echo spent every daylight hour outside, diving headfirst into the untamed wilderness of Galar's Wild Area. They encountered a variety of wild Pokémon, some playful, others fiercely territorial. Jun sought out formidable foes, determined to push Echo beyond its limits. From the original camp in North Lake Miloch, they slowly made their way further north, until they reached the dividing line between North Lake Miloch and the area marked as Motostoke Riverbank.
Jun had designated this area to be his training zone for the next week, where they could battle pokemon around their power level, but could also briefly cross the bridge into the Motostoke Riverbank area to challenge foes of higher level once in a while.
The duo practiced with fervor, their synergy sharpening day by day. The thrill of battle ignited something primal in Echo, its determination igniting like a flame as they faced off against mighty opponents. Using its telepathic abilities, Echo honed its perception of their enemies' moves, anticipating attacks before they struck. Many a time, Echo and Jun would get in over their heads, requiring Gardevoir to get involved, which usually ended in the powerful Psychic type launching the opposing pokemon away with her psychic prowess.
For instance, one afternoon, they faced a wild wandering Corviknight, its metallic feathers glinting ominously in the afternoon sun. Jun called out commands, and Echo responded with precision, launching a flurry of moves. As the battle raged, both parties tested each other's mettle until Jun and Echo ended up exhausted. Echo even having begun draining some of Jun's aura to fuel his moves, causing Jun to begin feeling breathless. At the last moment when the Raven pokemon was about to break through and finish off Echo, Gardevoir, still holding onto a snoozing Toxel, swooped in with her gown fluttering with unleashed psychic might. She quickly barricaded the Corviknight in a half translucent room formed from barriers, before quickly grasping her green gloved hand towards the bird. The area within the barrier suddenly glitched and then the whole dimension within the barrier began swirling like a washing machine. Jun and Echo both watched with amazement as after 30 seconds, Gardevoir dissipated the barrier and a witless Corviknight dropped onto the torn up earth like a sack of beans, having passed out during the process. Jun nonchalantly brushed past the Corviknight, realizing that it was level 40.
“That was insane.” Jun remarked as Echo, still bruised and dirty from the scuffle, stared up at Gardevoir in worship.
‘That's one of the reasons I get you to practice moving your psychic energy in the evenings, creating a move like this, is to combine multiple moves and use them at the same time. This had a much harsher requirement on psychic energy control than using regular psychic type moves.’ Gardevoir explained to the starstruck Dottler.
Along with the multitude of battles throughout the day, Jun also began to help Echo with its nightly practice, spending an hour before bed hiding marked rocks and other knick knacks around camp for Echo to find, or tossing pebbles at Echo while he was blindfolded to train Echo's psychic detection and reflexes. Through Gardevoir, Jun also learnt some tips and tricks for Echo to use in the future, once his movepool opens up after his evolution.
After five days of rigorous training, Jun felt Echo was ready for the next challenge.
Pokemon: Dottler
Name: Echo
Ability: Telepathy (+)
Gender: Male
Nature: Bold (+Defense/-Attack)
Level: 25 (+)
Moves: Struggle Bug, Sticky Web, Light Screen, Reflect, Confusion, Recover (+)
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Stats: [expand]
Items: N/A
Status: Alert
He spent the morning moving his camp from the edge of North Lake Miloch completely into the Motostoke Riverbank area. Over the past 5 days while Echo had been leveling up, he had also been scouring the Motostoke Riverbank area with his binoculars at every opportunity. He had noted that Toxel often roamed the areas across the bridge, but only during thunderstorms. Since they only came out during storms, that meant they must be hiding during other times. Now that Echo could actually evenly battle the pokemon in this area without Gardevoir's constant protection, he wanted to harness Echo’s psychic powers to help locate them. By sending focused waves of psychic energy into the air, Echo could imitate the workings of a radar and sense the unique energy signatures of the pokemon present in a roughly 300m radius, but the distance was slowly improving every time Echo used it.
In the corner of his mind, he could hear Echo’s thoughts brushing against his own. Together, they stepped into a thick thicket, the sun filtering through the canopy like golden rain.
“Alright, let’s find us some Toxel,” Jun said, his voice intertwining with the sounds of nature around them. He closed his eyes and waited, allowing Echo’s psychic vibrations to wash over him.
The air grew charged. Jun felt a tingle along his back, a sign that success was imminent. Echo's focus intensified, widening waves of psychic energy pulsing outwards. Jun felt the tug of emotion as Echo struggled, reveling in the newfound complexity of locating the elusive Pokémon.
After a few minutes Echo's feelers drooped. ‘No Toxel's, I can sense a few Corvisquire, a Noctowl, some Skorupi and an Eldegoss.’
Undeterred by this failure, they went to battle the Eldegoss and Noctowl, before leaving for the next area to continue their sweep for Toxel.
A few hours later, in an area covered by the canopy, Echo’s antennae perked up. A rush of telepathic energy jolted Jun’s mind, sending an electric shock down his spine.
‘There! Over there!’ Echo indicated with his head, circling excitedly before rushing forwards into the undergrowth. They moved forward quickly, before Echo slowed and began creeping forward stealthily into the thicket, curiosity propelling their every step.
Within moments, they spotted a Toxel, half hidden in the hole of a large tree.
Waving Gardevoir over from the back where she stood guard, Toxel peered curiously from her perch in Gardevoir's arms over at the other of her species, before nuzzling Gardevoir and turning away, as if the other Toxel was beneath her notice.
Jun whispered to Gardevoir, “Could you use Hypnosis on the wild Toxel to make sure it doesn't wake up?”
Gardevoir nodded, then a thin pink beam emanated from her eyes and directly hit the purple shape in the treehole.
Jun carefully made his way to the tree, reached in and pulled out the Toxel. Grabbing a brightly colored tag from his pocket, he tied the thin strip around the base of Toxel’s tail, then activated it. Tugging firmly at the tag showed that the tracking tag was somehow holding on securely, the engineers back at the lab sure knew what they're doing.
Placing the still sleeping pokemon back into its home, the quartet silently left the area before both Echo and Jun jumped with joy. They had their first tag!
Quickly opening his phone to the accompanying app, Jun quickly labeled the newly activated tracker and compared the data received with the one on his SystemDex.
On his phone, the details from the tracking tag read:
Pokemon: Toxel
Gender: Female
Level: ~25
While on his SystemDex.
Pokemon: Toxel
Ability: Static
Gender: Female
Level: 26
Moves: Nuzzle, Growl
As Jun expected, the SystemDex was much more accurate, but he was still surprised at how such a small device could gather this information.
After briefly marveling at the technology of the pokemon world, Jun quickly returned his phone to his pocket and continued his scanning with Echo by his side.
As the day wore on, the party only managed to meet two more Toxel, both hiding away in burrows or caves. One Toxel had dug a burrow so deep that he had to ask Gardevoir to levitate the baby pokemon out of its hole. Aside from finding Toxel, Echo also participated in a fair share of battles throughout the day, taking on plenty of Corvisquires and Noctowls, and at the end of the day, meeting a wandering Sigilyth floating through the air. At Echo's request, they decided to take the challenge on, with Gardevoir on standby.
The fray began. Jun and Echo worked seamlessly together, showing off the results of the past week’s worth of battles. Echo quickly unleashed a wave of psychic power that quickly solidified into a Lightscreen, having gleaned that Sigilyphs were special attackers from Jun's mind. As the Sigilyph began amassing psychic energy in preparation of a move, Echo quickly launched a Struggle Bug directly in its face, lowering its special attack in the process.
As the battle heated up, instead of directly launching attacks over and over again, Echo waited patiently and observed the Sigilyph, every time the Dottler saw that his opponent was almost ready to launch its move, it would send out a burst of Bug type energy in response, disrupting the moves formation. Gaining more and more information on the Sigilyph’s habits. As the Sigilyph began to get more and more frustrated with the battle it had gotten into, it gave up on manipulating psychic energy and launched a quick Air Cutter at the Dottler instead.
With Echo’s keen insight he had gained in the psychic opponent, he quickly lowered his carapace, allowing the wind blade to glance off almost harmlessly to the side. Seeing that his attack had succeeded, the Sigilyph launched a multitude of Air Cutters and Air Slashes at the Bug type. Echo, using expert movements, deflected those that he could and tanked the rest, using Recover repeatedly to bolster his rapidly declining status.
Minutes passed and as the Sigilyph began to tire, Echo was finally prepared to make his move. He began the tried and true tactic of covering his for in sticky web, and whenever the Sigilyph tried to use it's psychic powers to pull them off, Echo would launch a targeted Struggle Bug, disorienting the avianoid pokemon. After several more layers of Sticky Web and liberal usage of Struggle Bug, Echo emerged victorious.
As Echo caught his breath, Jun beamed at his starter, “You did it, Echo! You managed to solo him all in one go!” The thrill coursed through him, he could scarcely believe it, every battle, every strategy had made Echo into what he is today.
Moving over to the downed Pokemon, he briefly contacted its body.
Pokemon: Sigilyph
Ability: Magic Guard
Gender: Male
Level: 36
Moves: Gust, Confusion, Gravity, Hypnosis, Air Cutter, Psybeam, Whirlwind, Cosmic Power, Air Slash
Jun whistled in the confines of his mind, Echo took out a level 36 pokemon, turning to Echo’s page in his SystemDex. He saw that this battle had tipped Echo over to level 28, making it the third level up of the day.
After a brief moment of indecision, he took out a fresh PokeBall and caught the Sigilyph, Marco had mentioned that the lab needed some psychic types in his recent messages and Jun saw no reason not to help out his friend in this situation.
Turning to his exhausted starter, he returned Echo to his ball for some well earned rest while he, Gardevoir and Toxel made their way back to camp.
Back at camp, he released his pokemon. Echo wearily lay by Jun as he sat by a bubbling brook, staring at the sunset as he pondered over the upcoming arrival of Professor Aria. “What do you think he will say, Gardevoir?” he asked, glancing at her. She tilted her head, her expression serene and knowing.
“Yeah, I hope he’ll be proud,” he added, his fingers trailing through the rippling water. “We’ve worked so hard.”
Gardevoir, sensing the unspoken worries in his heart, gently placed a hand on his shoulder, her psychic energy enveloping him in a calming embrace.