Everyone was glum, grumpy and angry. The group of 3 rag tag ruffians were marching. Moving away from serpent mountain. This was their 3rd day. Carlos thanked his lucky stars that his body had changed to the hew-mons of this world. Carlos doubted he would have been able to keep up the 6 hour march through untamed mountains in his old body. There was no easy path. Often him and his team had to climb small parts of the mountain they were on.
Carlos didn’t want to start going around the; bumps in the road lest he lose his way. It was challenging enough to constantly use the sun as a compass. Easy in theory, hard in practice. It took him by the second day to find out that he was on the southern part of the hemisphere. He may or may not have accidentally gone west for a full day, instead of south.
“Fuck, I hate being a leader already.” Carlos grumbled, everyone was pissed mostly because they couldn’t get revenge, including himself. He really wanted to wipe that smug grin of that arbok. It was something that he couldn’t stop thinking off even 3 days later.
”No way, does that litd’l shit get to live rent free in my head.” Carlos muttered.
No matter the potential of his team, thats what it was, potential. If he could detect the level of a lvl 23 geodude but not arbok, then there was no way they could beat him, not even in arbok’s sleep. Not to mention his posse of psycho cats, kamikaze poison slimes and salandits.
at the end of each day, after marching. He had Poochyena run her normal TE dry with tackle and her dark TE doing swipes with her paws at random logs, with instructions to try and make it sharp. He had seen the way a mightyena had casually sliced a bear’s head off with a sharp dark crescent wave. Tackle, simply because he wanted her to know quick attack. She didn’t like to run herself ragged but after the offer of riding on Carlos shoulders in the morning trek of the oncoming march, she threw herself into the training at the end of the day. For Carlos it was training during the morning instead of during dinner. Unlike his mon’s, his TE was thoroughly drained after every march so far.
Mankey was told to try and learn detect. Mankey hated it. His species simply couldn’t fight without rage active, messing with the focus required and detect was diametrically opposed to how he thought. When Carlos suggested to use his rage to make sure he didn’t get hit by a tackle, a light seemed to go off in his head.
He stopped screeching and seemingly focused. Other then that, he told Mankey to use fury swipes but not full force. He wanted mankey to hit as softly as possible to inflict the least amount of damage.
When mankey had protested at the silly alpha, Carlos had smiled so wickedly, mankey hid behind a tree. “If what I suspect works mankey, you will be grateful for the rest of your life. So stick to the training”.
Mankey hadn’t complained again and started training in controlling the damage output of fury swipes and detect. Failing miserably but at least he tried.
Carlos had thought long and hard about Mankey and had come to the conclusion that rage, was a pitfall if not managed properly. It required to get hit six times to fully stack. Reaping the benefits of that was awesome in theory but in practice, easily countered. So far he hadn’t seen many Pokemon last more then 5 moves that landed even with type advantages, like with the now deceased alpha primeape.
If mankey could simply hit himself with minimal force with fury swipes to whip himself in a literal frenzy, ala mike tyson. he wouldn’t just stack atk through rage but also speed with fury swipes. Right now fury swipes used a whopping 10% each time Mankey swung. Mankey’s current fighting style drained normal TE fast, which jarred with his actual talent, outlast and outgun.
Poochyena had Quite a few moves that only used a flat amount of TE. He theorized Poochyena had better control over her moves but he had no point of reference.
The fact that they listened so intently was a blessing in his mind.
Carlos was bored with the constant marching, he wanted to really train and figure out the limits of his Pokemon besides the basic training he had them do before dinner. However he knew they needed distance from that sadistic Arbok before it got it into his head to play a game. While walking Carlos distracted himself with reading the partial journal of Reid.
Meanwhile Poochyena sniffed and looked for tracks of potential prey, nickits, bidoof, pidgey, rattata’s where on the menu. Meanwhile Mankey was on the lookout for TE berries, he moved from branch to branch from one tree to the next.
Carlos was positively surprised that the partially available journal of Reid contained a treasure trove of information. A treasure trove he could use for his pokemon. It wasn’t so much training tips, but Reid’s way of thinking that gave him dozens of ideas for his 2 comrades in arms.
The guy had lived and breathed pokemon. A total training nut from beginning to end. Reading about the effort he had put into the training of his Mon’s, the theories, the endless discussions he had with them, the thought of what those training files would have looked like… chills.
Carlos felt inadequate towards his team comparing himself to Reid. He didn’t show it to them. They needed him to be strong.
Carlos was happy with their progress in regards towards each other over the last few days. O they definitely had a competitive rivalry going on, always trying to beat or one up the other. Hunting hadn’t happened yet, Pokemon and animal gave them a very large birth, Poochyena with her keen sense of smell, found water no problem.
Carlos had explained his reasons to both mankey and poochyena, for preserving the meat of their deceased Kin. He had been surprised they wanted to eat the jerky of their own kin instead of the other. Something to do with inheriting the spirit and strength of their pack or troupe. This was a ritual for both.
They had eaten the meat only in solitude. Carlos had heard the soft sniffles of poochyena on a few occasions. She was definitely a hound with fangs so to speak, she had to be but she quickly began to show a softer side Carlos hadn’t been ready for. It caught him off guard how much she needed physical contact. How much she still needed a parental figure. even his stern comments about some of her more mean spirited pranks, she absorbed without complaint.
To Carlos who was/had been a parent, it was quite obvious, the pranks were only half hearted, and subconsciously a way for Poochyena to get more attention and guidance from him. He knew from his own experience in raising dogs, that canines, like poochyena needed this. They needed to know exactly where the boundaries were, otherwise they grew restless and eventually aggressive.
He suspected something very dark about one of the mightyena he had stripped for meat. He really didn’t want to think about it, he definitely didn’t ask. He silently gave her the treatment she came for.
Mankey was less emotionally dependent, he said something about his parents being absolute douchebags, He liked scratches though. And both refused to sleep in their pokeballs. All 3 huddled together in his sleeping bag tent, it smelled bad, but it was warm and toasty.
Both pokemon reacted overwhelmingly positive when he did simple things such as saying: “good job” or “your best is all I want”.
He hadn’t heard mankey sniffling while eating the jerky, mankey usually found a branch in a tree for himself during dinner and ate it quietly, it would be a mistake though, to think this didn’t affect him.
Mankey was simple but with depth. A small river that ran deep. All three had spoken sporadically but had taken the 3 days so far to reflect and digest everything in shared silence.
It cut into Carlos raw, the depth of emotion both pokemon tried to hide from him, they put up a front of dependability, which he understood quite well. As a man and husband, he had been quite traditional. Sure he was a powderkeg of emotion, but he had been forced early on in life into stiff-upper-lip mentality by necessity.
He imagined it was the same in a pack or troupe. The pack/troupe needed all members to perform, no matter how young. He remembered how humans in the early days, before sticks and stones, had to run and outlast prey. The whole group had to run along, the young and elderly included.
The anime skipped over the harsh reality of wild pokemon. He vaguely remembered a war being mentioned due to osmosis of that electric gym leader he couldn’t remember the name of, being a lieutenant. The whole show had been during peace times with this happy go lucky mentality of elders sending their 10 year olds on, what should be, a life threatening journey. Everyone the protagonist met, seemed to be brimming with altruism and kindness, with the exception of evil teams.
Carlos had jotted down a few things. Team rocket the lava and water dudes that either wanted to evaporate the ocean or the opposite. Something about a king with his tiny flower pokemon, and team plasma but who and what they were he had no clue.
He sighed. He hoped that as far as timeline, he was either at the very beginning to prepare or at the end of it all, not slap dab in the middle. He put his ruminations in his pokedex and continued reading the journal of Reid the trainer.
He was surprised to find out that all Pokemon. Either had normal or ghost typing. Living or dead. In a way, that made sense.
and from all the snippets mentioned in Reids journal, he made himself a graph with all the peculiarities of each typing.
Normal: 25% increase to TE, Defense, HP, reflex 1 to 1 ratio conversion for all types except psychic and ghost Normal moves against ghost types have their speed cut in half. Rock: 50% increase to HP and defense
A/U/S boosted attacks cause flinching
and crits are trippled.
1 to 1 ratio with ground and steel typing, imune to poison & burn Fire: 100% increase to attack A/U/S boosted attacks cause burning Immune to burning and resistant to freezing
Flying
50% increase to reflex and speed
A/U/S boosted attacks cause gusts of wind that will fling lightweight Pokemon away In TE boosted flight, a Flying pokemon will increase its speed up to double in a descent. Water: 50% increase to defense and HP A/U/S boosted attacks cause Knock back and drenched 1 to 1 conversion with ice type
Psychic
A/U/S boosted attacks gain 100% speed Immune to sleep & confusion
Grass
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25% increase to HP and TE.
A/U/S boosted attacks cause spore effects based on move. Quickly regenerates TE and HP in forest or sunlight.1 to 1 conversion with fairy type. Bug 100% increase to TE. A/U/S boosted attacks cause 1 to 1 ratio with poison and ground. All bug types have 1 shed skin use per day.
Electric
50% increase to speed.
A/U/S boosted attacks cause paralyze Speed is used for reflex. Electric types don’t have a reflex stat. Electric typed special moves, double their speed. Except vs rock, ground or against a mon with the grounding ability.
Ghost
All Ghost moves ignore half the defense of their target. A pure normal type doubles its defense against ghost types. All ghost pokemon can fade. Fade doubles speed and reflex for a ghost Pokemon. Fade does not work against Dark type. Ice: 100% increase to defense A/U/S boosted attacks cause freezing and frostbite Ice typed moves ignore dragon type defenses.
Dragon
100% increase to HP
A/U/S boosted attacks cause burning, or bleeding
Fighting
50% increase to Hp, atk & reflex
A/U/S boosted attacks can be normalized. Fighting types are hard to kill, only 25% instead of 50% of maximum TE is consumed when fainting. Dark: 50 % increase to speed and reflex A/U/S boosted attacks cause defense and reflex to be lowered, doesn’t work on fighting or bug typed Immune to any status effects inflicted by fairy, ghost or psychic typed moves
Poison
50% increase to speed and reflex.
A/U/S boosted attacks cause poisoned status Immune to poisoned status
Steel
150% increase to defense
Immune to poisoned status.
Ground 50% increase to HP and Defense
A/U/S boosted attacks cause blind and reduce speed. 1 to 1 ratio with rock and steel type. Immune to poisoned & burn Fairy. 100% increase to reflex A/U/S boosted attacks cause drowsiness, enough drowsiness causes sleep. All fairy typed moves with a status effect ignores half of a mon’s defense.
It was a lot to unpack.
Broadly, people in this world had 3 categories for typing.
multi types : a mon with 3 or 4 typings one of which was normal or ghost
a double type: a mon with 2 typings, of which one was normal or ghost.
and Pure typing: obviously there were pure normal types and ghost types but there was a third variant. this variation still had normal as a typing but had been evolved using a evolution stone.
These pure type mons still had their respective normal typing TE. but no longer increased their reservoir with level up or training. Their physical makeup had changed drastically so much so that normal type no longer affected their physical makeup. This process didn’t work with ghosts.
As an example. Pikachu and Raichu. Raichu, the kanto variant, was considered pure electric. After it had evolved using an evolution stone, it stopped increasing normal TE, when it increased its strength and level. This had pro’s and cons. The biggest, was that Raichu lost it’s vulnerability to dragon moves.
The biggest downside of this was a fundamental shift in their character when done too early. Many trainers ended up abstaining from using an evolution stone. Since the bonding with said pokemon usually had to start over.
Dragons typing was effective against normal which meant dragon types had a massive advantage and were usually apex predators that everyone had to take into account, when forming a team.
Because humans were disproportionately pure normal types, dragons, in the back of their mind, always registered humans as prey. Which made training and bonding very difficult, unless you had been born with fighter or dragon typing.
”Huh nice to know I have the option” but Carlos kept reading.
Pure non normal-typings were one of the answers trainers far and wide had begrudgingly accepted for partially dealing with dragons. Reid wrote quite in depth about Raichu’s reputation in the kanto region for their ease of access.
It sounded complicated but it was simple to remember. Each TE a pokemon had access to, was a typing it had in its physical makeup. It’s body as such, had resistance or weakness against the various typing’s based on that.
Both Carlos’s mons belonged in the double type camps.
What the anime/games did get right is that mankey got its attack STAB bonus, only with fighting or what his system referred to as A/U/S multiplier.
The exception to this was normal type. Only pure normal types or mon’s with the normalize ability gained the normal type provided stat boosts and the normal TE specialty of efficient energy conversion into other types.
Reid considered the fact that Pure normal types had such a ludicrously large pool of moves to pick from, it’s best ability, often calling it 3 abilities in one. He mentioned wanting a powerful ursaring but never found one that wanted to join. To prove his point about the power of pure normal types, he had a video linked of ratatta/raticate trainer/breeder.
The video was of a trainer who exclusively trained kanto based rattata and raticate as part of his team and had his own reserve/breeding farm for them. Everyone thought he was a moron, a joke of a trainer. When a wild mega-Salamence and his murder flock, had decided to come down from the mt Chimney for a snack, their eyes had fallen on the rattata reserve. Lance and the other elite four. had been called in to deal with it, everyone expected raticate whisperer to die. Lance and the elites rushed in. Only to be met by the entire Salamence murder flock, brutally murdered by 6 simultaneous gigantimaxed alpha Raticates. The video showed their arrival right as a giant raticate, whisperer’s ace, used extreme speed or its dynamax version and barrel straight through a fleeing salamence. Blood and gore everywhere.
No one called the raticate whisperer a joke after. The best part of the video was that the Raticate whisperer shoed the elite four off his property straight after, stating “you are scaring the little ones.”
Carlos couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the video. He showed the video to mankey and Poochyena, who immediately adopted a tag and chase game of “kill the salamence”.
As a side note. Quite a few Pikachu’s , including Reid’s pikachu, had the normalize as a hidden ability. But it was very difficult for them to master. Other than that, normalize could be triggered for anyone with normal typing but this was exceedingly difficult.
”So that’s why ash’s Pokemon could just spam thunder and lightning bolt. Huh, the anime must have been some sort of celestial inspiration when our universe’s started to collide”.
Carlos digressed his own thoughts and kept reading fully engrossed. Reid had a lot to say about his mon’s, his secondary ace Charizard especially.
A charizard gained A/U/S with fire and flying.
now here came the part that made most, go gaga over multi types. Especially quad types like charizard.
Each typing provided a bonus to the mon’s base stats or as reid called them, aspects. These bonuses did not get averaged out. At all.
In mankey’s case he received a 50% increase to his HP, atk and reflex stat due to fighting. And no benefits from his normal typing except that ghosts did a bit less damage and dragons a lot more.
A fighting pokemon could normalize fighting moves without the normalize ability, this was mostly handy to get a advantage against poison types and nullify its disadvantage against fairy, psychic and flying. It really felt like Fighting was kinda busted. With more advantage than disadvantage.
A charizard as far as base stat increases, which it would get, starting as a charmander including the dragon & flying type bonus, even though a charmander didn’t actually have the actual TE yet.
Received a whopping 100% due to fire typing to atk.
100% to HP due to dragon typing.
And 50% to speed and reflexes due to flying.
and if you managed to unlock normalize as a hidden ability, all the bonuses from normal as well.
advantages and disadvantages of type damage, unlike the anime, didn’t stack like in the games for 2x or 4x but averaged out.
If a dragon move was used against a charizard, who had 4 typings influencing its physical makeup. The damage averaged out from 2x due to normal + 2x due to dragon + 0.5x due to flying + 1x due to fire = 5.5/4 = 1.37.
Aka leading to a 37% damage advantage. That was significant, but to a high level Pokemon, nothing more than something to counter.
A charizard could get hit for reasonable damage by pretty much all types. Very few typings, had below 80% damage against a charizard. But only dragon did 37% extra damage. Rock did 75% extra damage but Reid couldn’t remember the last time his Charizard got hit by a rock move.
The battles Reid described, definitely noted this typing advantage, but he focused heavily on strategy and tactics vs types and their usual moves. actually having to rely on type advantage was rare for him. He couldn’t repeat it enough. If a move didn’t hit, it didn’t matter.
There was another thing. Reid referred to levels as 4 stages and how far along a Pokemon was in each stage.
Delta, (lvl1-25). Beta, (lvl26-50). Gamma (lvl 51-75) and alpha. (Lvl 76-100).
This had a massive effect on Pokemon size. It explained why the zealot golem, sadistic arbok and mega tyranitar, had been so much bigger than the anime portrayed them as. Reid’s pikachu deep into alpha, had been the size of a black bear from back on earth.
It was definitely a better explanation than magical plot armor. Considering his pikachu loved picking fights with the local salamence. Sometimes to challenge itself an alpha onix.
these 4 stages, also coinsided with the natural evolution with most Pokemon. Into its final, mega evolution, which was permanent in this world.
and then there was omega for legendary. Roughly 8 times more powerful then a lvl 100. mythical 8 times more powerful then legendary, and whatever Arceus and his crew was.
dynamaxing was a thing in this world. Apparently it applied to all mon’s. Extremely difficult to do but it allowed an alpha mon to reach omega level for about a minute.
Back to “normal” pokemon.
The way the 4 base stats, HP, and TE increased. was a minimum of 10% increase per level.
Stats had 24 points, spread evenly that set atk, def, reflex, speed. All at 6. Not all mon’s had them spread equally.
every mon started with base HP of 40 and 600TE in total, at level one. All these aspects, could be trained further for a total of 20% per level.
No matter how hard Reid had tried, 20% was the upper limit for each aspect. And he had only managed an average of 3 maxed out aspects of 20% per level, which he had lamented.
Reid felt that something was missing. He blamed it in part, that he only gained poke-speak years after he had aquired his team.
According to Reid many considered multitypes or dragons to be superior. Multi-types could train their TE and compensate for their lack of cardinal moves with massive reservoirs of TE.
Dragons came with massive typing advantages simply because such a large number of pokemon, were vulnerable to dragon moves.
Reid talked about the pros and cons of the 3 types of mon’s, Pure, double or multi.
Multi mon’s usually had no complicated strategy, because they had overwhelming aspects.
His opinion on the matter was that it was all balanced. Many abilities double types or pure types got, Reid considered broken. Especially defiant kept getting mentioned but none of the available journal alluded to why.
As a matter of fact he was of the opinion that defiant in combination with rage on the mankey line, was completely slept on.
He had theorized a primeape, well trained, and its almost natural tendency to learn revenge, counter and rage fist. Could potentially take out a legendary in a double take down without having to dynamax from the alpha level.
“How the hell is a primeape, supposed to do a double take down on a legendary. Considering the power levels he’s talking about”? Carlos scratched his head.
He understood with what mankey had as a base, how he hit harder and harder the more he was hurt but taking down something 8 times more powerful? He was missing a lot of context.
But it didn’t frustrate him. Knowing that a “simple” mankey had such potential in the eyes of a legendary trainer, gave him the assurance that it really didn’t matter who decided to tag along with him or who he felt would be a good fit on the team. As long as they wanted to grow stronger there would be a way, as a trainer he would have to find that way.
For Poochyena he was thinking an evasive slippery hunter with utility buffs outlasting opponents without ever getting hit. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that whenever she howled, him and mankey gained the bonus of howl as well. She was less defined then Mankey but Carlos believed she needed to find her groove. Her naturally high speed due to her dark typing and her quiet nature, fit well in Carlos’s opinion on what path to take for her. it seemed straightforward that she would quite naturally turn into a prowling unseen huntress.
He kept reminding himself that he had to be careful in his approach. The girl mon was far too eager to please her alpha. He wanted her to follow a path she herself wanted to follow.
Carlos closed his pokedex and tucked it away. He looked at the setting sun and called for his Pokemon to halt.
”Alright time to set up camp you both know the drill! Chop to it!”
“Yes boss!” They both chimed.
Carlos smiled and for the first time as their boss it felt natural. He knocked on wood.
”We might just make it.”