It was two or so months after first coming to this place, this mountain range, this world. That Carlos reached the height of a small mountain belonging to a nest of Onix who didn’t mind his intrusion. That he first saw it.
In the far distance, a massive glimmering mountain that shone in the light of the morning sun. The tip sharpened itself like a dagger trying to pierce the sky.
“Mount Silver” he whispered, there was no question in Carlos Mind. In the distance, further beyond. Two smaller but still impressive sized mountains, one with a thin Column of smoke trailing into the sky, mt Chimney. The last one massive yet so inconspicuous, daring you to overlook it completely, it felt like it was teasing you, moments after looking away, did you really see it?
“Mount Moon it has to be” he whispered. He felt quite emotional. He had managed on his own strength and the help with his loyal friends, to get this far. Not just survive but thrive in their own humble way.
The bonds he had with each three, had grown exponentially. They didn’t just rely on each-other for pragmatic reasons. They all had something to contribute to the social dynamic. It was uncomfortably fast for Carlos, who was used to a much more reserved way of approach when it came to relationships, always this testing and prodding for red flags back on earth, not Pokemon, they threw themselves at the relationship, the bond wholeheartedly, it induced a very subtle but significant drive to always have their backs and protect them with Carlos. He was sure psychologists and psychiatrists would deem it very unhealthy and dangerous, but Carlos didn’t want it any other way. It felt so good to just pour his heart out with his dear friends and them, wholeheartedly receiving it in turn and vice versa.
It made everything vibrant and bearable.
He looked at his partners, each of them had been forged into the finest examples of their species. Carlos lamented that they grew up so fast. Their cuteness was gone. They had grown in size. Gawain’s snout had already shortened a bit and his body lengthened. Growing into his next stage as a Quilava. Carlos, Kong and Dianne had all taken it upon themselves to make sure Gawain was doing ok emotionally, Relatively speaking he was, but his timid nature made it difficult to sometimes gauge his emotional state.
Kong’s shoulders had widened giving him the more humanoid look of a Primeape and his fur began to lengthen. Under it all curling muscles of steel grew and grew. It made Carlos a tiny bit jealous.
Dianne had mostly just grown in size. The difference between mightyena and Poochyena less distinct.
”One of these days I can ride you into battle Dianne.” Carlos quipped, smiling at her. Both their eyes glinted at that thought.
”I-if we have fireproof clothing.. y-you could ride me too sir.” Gawain stuttered out.
”or me!” Kong chimed in.
Carlos laughed heartily at that.
Carlos himself at first glance hadn’t changed much. The intense heat endured from the dying breath of Gawain’s parents had seared his beard off and his chin, to this day, was still smooth. His eyebrows saved due to his own sweat.
He carried a makeshift bow with arrows and 2 makeshift kukri/glaives from the scythes of a dead scyther. The scythes had organically merged with the 2 sticks he had prepped with his knife. After a while he had figured out how to infuse his hands with normal TE and by extension the scythes who absorbed the TE and stayed sharp. It was some sort of organic bone that was still alive in some way. The merging between wood and pokemon parts was morbidly fascinating to Carlos.
He had done the same thing with a mighty stick and some webbing from a friendly? Arriados, after he bribed it with 3 dead caterpie’s that is.
Somehow the TE reacted to intent and the wood had slowly and subtly changed it form to be used as bow. The web strings served as a bow string. Carlos had no idea what the pull weight was but an arrow fired from the bow shattered smaller branches and pierced thicker ones. It was his preferred method of fighting. He could spar with Kong for about 10 seconds in melee before he got bodied. Kong loved it, not because he was winning but because of the deep way Carlos fought.
aka Carlos improvised a lot. Seemingly a bit of a foreign concept to Pokemon.
Although still a ways away, the evolution of Pokemon it seemed, was a more gradual process. He had seen an evolution happen from a distance. It wasn’t as impactful as in the show. But it wasn’t that far off either. It seemed most mon’s would first grow into the size of their next stage.
After Carlos had figured out you could gain better stat growth from hunting stronger prey and had begun their hunting of stronger pokemon. Although the results were notable it wasn’t as big as he first hoped. Yes his mon’s gained some increases to their maximum possible gains. It also required an opponent that had a higher level than all of them combined.
At first this was doable but as things went on, it became practically impossible. Higher level mon’s all had human or higher intelligence and had sometimes exotic tactics. He didn’t complain though. all 3 of his Mon’s had made a lot of additional progress. But it started to flatten out.
How could one hunt a more powerful Pokemon who by all accounts should be able to take them on all 4?
Turns out, that even pokemon are subject to breathing, muscle spasms and whatever it was that allowed their metabolism to function.
Each pokemon, no matter its strength was subject to the rule of 3. As in 3 moves could be used in quick succession. Before a 1/3 second flinch occurred. This 1/3 second flinch reduced a pokemon’s reflex and speed by half and was detrimental in a world where Pokemon could reach supersonic levels of speed. Although basic dodging was sort of an exception, once that flinch happened, it happened.
Carlos had noted the intensity of the moves down, detailing which moves lead to this flinch first. At first he thought there might be a connection to how much TE was expelled with a move but that had no bearing.
As long as this self induced flinch didn’t occur, a Pokemon could dodge using its natural speed. The rule of 3 seemed to always reset after a second or so, which largely depended on how much the Pokemon was moving.
This could be lessened with training of course but so far he only saw high level alpha mon’s do such things
The highest he counted was with a fast sleek but massive looking Pidgeot. 3 young Arbok’s tried to ambush the big bird, that put the Roc from earth’s mythology to shame.
The massive pidgeot had shredded the big snakes with quick precision air cutters 2 for each and didn’t even flinch. If this had to do with its mastery or some break through with the rule he didn’t know.
Although Kong couldn’t technically flinch, he was still limited to 3 moves like the other mon’s, he could still dodge and weave, just not retaliate. Dodging full force would increase this delay but the raging furball was never caught flat footed. Which added immensely to his survival and staying power. Unlike the other two, who had to rely heavily on double team, Kong bobbed and weaved on the field off battle like a drunken boxer. Although he didn’t have the move taunt, it was still effective. A mankey outsmarting you with a smug grin on his face was usually enough to trigger the more arrogant Pokemon they encountered.
Most Mon’s in the wild, especially the predator types, had only 1 or two stats that they managed to train beyond 10%, predominantly that was speed and/or atk.
Specifically, the poison types didn’t like to scrap, since they had weakness against normal type moves. Moves practically every mon had access to. So in order to hunt they would strike quick, fast often in numbers and let the poison do its work.
Dark types. As was evident with Dianne were also on the more fragile end of things. Additional levels exacerbated the issue.
These wild poison and often Dark mon’s, like the nickits who got more cunning in their evolution thievul but not a whole lot more intelligent, Predominantly focused on quick attacks and speed but they were rather lacking in a one on one.
They had decent reflexes of course but they simply couldn’t deal with the incredible speed that was Diane and the skull crushing power that was Kong when they flinched. Carlos had a stomach of steel at this point. You had to, when grey goop got rained on you.
Each of his mon’s were becoming powerhouses of their own right.
Kong the Mankey, lacked ranged moves or special moves of any kind. And his solution to this glaring problem, came in the form of the move lock-on. Which he miraculously gained on level up at lvl 7. Carlos checked his banged up pokedex and was absolutely sure Mankey’s shouldn’t be able to.
Reid had theorized about Primeape and written quite a bit, including an extensive list of moves the Primeape line learned and could learn.
Lock on was supposedly a move that allowed you to automatically hit an opponent with ranged moves. According to his dex, Lock on was a move learned by intelligent and technical Pokemon who had the ability and brain to calculate exactly where an opponent would be.
Mankey learning it made no sense and Carlos had given up on trying to figure it out. His pride told him it was because he was an awesome trainer, a notion he crushed. He knew there was more to it.
besides Kong’s version was different. It had a few caveats. First of all, instead of making sure his hits would land, it instead made sure Kong was in the right place for the strike to land. And it worked without fail.
If Carlos didn’t know any better Kong simply teleported to its opponent. But after using detect to observe, he realized Kong simply turned his capacity to hyper focus, into an explosive burst, as if he used extreme speed. Locking on, as it were, with his hyper focus on one enemy and one enemy only. It only worked on living things that pissed him off.
Turning himself into a mad-gleeful raging bullet for a split second. It required intense focus but combining it with counter, bide and revenge usually resulted in a one hit KO.
Counter added reflex to speed for the next move. It was a completely broken move in Carlos opinion especially because it synergized with detect. Counter was the biggest cause for this insane speed whenever he used lock on. The move was only supposed to work with melee, Kongs lock on somehow circumvented that. Bide added more damage and if Kong was already injured revenge did even MORE damage.
at some point a shellgon had hit Kong with a critical hit rock slide, knocking 2/3rd of Kong’s health. The counter/bide/lock-on-revenge had hit for a whopping 400+ damage after taking his fighter advantage into account. It would have been a crit and instant KO, if it wasn’t for the shellgon’s thick armor and his naturally high HP that kept that shellgon alive. It made a run for it after. With Kong heavily injured, they didn’t bother to chase.
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The combination of moves Kong could combine allowed him to out-punch way above his weight class. And it’s what made their hunts of stronger Pokemon possible.
Furthermore Kong had mastered Fury strikes and managed to combine it with the move Defense curl. Reforging it into curling fury, as a separate move from Fury strikes or Defense curl. After learning Curling fury, Defense Curl disappeared from Kong’s known list of moves. Technically he no longer needed to hit himself, but it severely freaked other mon’s out when they saw him do it, while he laughed maniacally.
Stupid names not-withstanding, he always began combat with punching his face, psyching and literally jacking himself up on endorphins. Carlos resolved to get Kong’s head checked first thing when he got back to civilization.
All of this would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the fact that bide, counter and Detect only required a TE investment and didn’t tax this rule of 3. Carlos also wondered if that was normal or if something else was going on with Kong.
Carlos was following the blueprint that Reid had laid out for the most part.
Dianne, in their sparring, ironically had to use taunt on Kong to prevent him from using his tripple-buff, one hit setup. Whenever Kong managed to get off a Lock-on Carlos had ruled it an automatic loss for Dianne.
She moped about if for a while but after a dumbass Thievul had fought Kong in a similar fashion using taunt. Kong with his last bit of TE got a Lock-on within a small window between taunts and the Thievul got it’s head splattered over the forest soil and shrubbery.
”Unless every pokemon has endure, Im not even sure if I can use this combo in a trainer duel, definitely gotta unlearn him to automatically use bide.” Carlos muttered Darkly. It wasn’t lost on him that his Team was quickly becoming a lethal force to other Pokemon.
Survive required 50% of your total TE. Doing tripple someone’s max HP killed you outright.
He did notice the prevalence of Endure with the higher level Pokemon they encountered and hunted. The interesting part of this move, is that it triggered automatically if a move was lethal, fainting the Pokemon in question. Whenever it triggered, it worked without question, preventing a lethal blow.
Gawain, if he would catch up in levels, could potentially rival or even beat Kong. His combination of explosive smoke, Fire quills and a few well placed Embers, would be too much for Kong once Gawain could catch up.
Gawain with his naturally higher defenses HP and defensive moves, especially Endure, could already tank 2 high powered revenge or axe kicks. He was surprisingly adept at using double team, tricking Kong into hitting phantoms before peppering Kong with ranged attacks. Kong still won but not by much. Mostly to do with higher levels and superior stats.
During their training before their dinner each night, Carlos was focused on letting Kong hit Dianne with controlled punches while she took it and attempted to use endure the way Gawain and Carlos explained it. It was a very difficult process for her but he was adamant.
”I know you hate getting hit girl but you are gonna learn endure is that clear? I don’t care how fast you are. You need to be rivaling Kong and endure will give you that.”
Carlos said to Dianne after a particular nasty uppercut knocked her over.
“I thought you were going to make me untouchable?” Dianne quipped cheekily, but before Carlos could respond “I know alpha I will do my utmost” she saw the pained look Carlos had, seeing her get hurt. Any snappy comments melted away.
Carlos nodded at that.
Dianne in her bouts with Gawain, made short work of Gawain. When Her moves worked, well it was painful to see the stout badger lose so badly to Dianne.
Both Dianne and Gawain compensated their lack of punch, with prodigious creativity, which had Carlos scratching his head. Although Lock on and curling fury was prodigious on Kong’s part the rest of his moves, had come purely from the training routine Carlos had set up for him, that is to say Kong’s development had been heavily influenced by Carlos.
At level 7 Gawain had learned swift and Dianne Double team. Both taught eachother those moves all on their own and Dianne picked up smoke screen as well. Hers didn’t explode, she didn’t want it to.
Dianne had created 3 whopping moves, which Carlos was pretty sure, were unique to her. partially due to her frustration in dealing with Kong. Carlos tried to explain the rock paper scissor nature of their dynamics but she didn’t want to hear it. Carlos didn’t try to stop it too hard either, seeing how it fueled her competitiveness.
First was shadow clones. A ghost/dark variant of double team. They looked exactly like double team illusions. Except they could use all her moves. Which was insane if you thought about how that helped her circumvent the rule of 3. it required 30% of all her TE to use shadow clones but the potential was insane.
On top of that, she created 2 variants of swift. Stilleto, combining assurance with assurance and poison dagger combining the corrosive aspect of poison fang, which was another move she picked up after observing the various poisonous snakes.
Accurate delivery of the poisoned status. In combination with shadow sneak, as an opener was deadly, as long as she wasn’t hunting fighter Pokemon with the defiant ability.
Her poison, once applied multiple times, could reduce a Mon’s base atk by half but in Kong’s case, who gleefully threw himself into her poison darts, it got doubled. Needless to say Carlos had to stop the sparring, he returned Kong to his ball and he unleashed Kong on a poor ekans. That ekans was reduced to a pile of goo.
They were currently hunting a young weavile. Munching on a ratatta. At first glance you would think this mon could take them.
Weavile
Lvl26 Ice 700 HP 140 Normal 700 Atk 21 A/U/S 6/2/6 Defense 28 A/U/S 6/2/0 Reflex 35 Dark 700 Speed 60 Thief Rash Male (Hidden)
However As much as Dianne loved to complain about Kong’s bide and lock on bullshit. Kong always shivered when she literally disappeared into the shadows.
That was the crunch of that move. it was expensive but Ludicrous. While Dianne was in the shadows she used shadow clones dropping her to 60% of her Dark TE. The Weavile knew something was up. Its instinct screamed at him, evident in how it kept looking around, softly growling.
Both of her clones emerged from the shadows and blasted the weavile with poison darts honing in on the weavile.
The weavile had constantly been using detect and thus saved its own life when it exploded into motion with a readied quick attack and fury swipes taking out both clones. Lastly right on the moment it struck with fury swipes flinching from the quick usage of moves it took all three darts from Dianne, due to its poisonous typing it didn’t get poisoned.
Both Kong and Gawain, right next to Carlos, exploded into action. Gawain launched itself forward with quick attack and pelted weavile with fire quills of which the weavile still managed to avoid one but 2 landed straight into its throat. Causing it to flinch and screech without sound.
Kong came down upon the weavile with a crushing axe kick that landed straight onto its skull. The snap of the skull cracking caused the weavile to swerve in a daze Dianne and Carlos finished it off both with the move assurance.
Carlos infused his handmade arrow with his handmade bow all infused with TE on a daily basis, the bow radiated with a vitality as if it was a tree. The string, made from pokemon webbing, it’s tensile strength equal to steel wire.
Dianne’s version of assurance created a small sphere of inky blackness between her fangs with her maw open. Launching it caused it to spike in a thin beam that had tremendous piercing capacity going straight through the skull of the weavile. She launched two in quick succession. One to trigger it’s last ditched endure, the second to finish it off.
The whole fight didn’t last longer than 6 seconds from start to finish. One on one this Weavile could have played with its food, while sadistically shredding them apart, which so happened to be the favorite way for solitary Weaviles to hunt.
”Came to the wrong neighborhood ya lidl shit.” This particular Weavile had taken a little too much pleasure in killing its prey. The fact it wasn’t with its pride meant even it’s fellow kin had rejected its vices. The cries heard from its victims had vexed Carlos and his team.
Carlos wondered what type of Pokemon, what type of character, could lead a pack of dark types and keep them on the straight and narrow.
It had to be happening otherwise they would be constantly beset by vicious, vindictive Pokemon that were out to hurt him. But by far and large he was left alone.
”Seems like that Golem told me the truth, my blood is dangerous for Pokemon.” Carlos muttered to himself
“What’s that alpha?” Dianne had walked over to him, Kong had taken it upon himself to skin the weavile. Not much meat on its slim body but waste not want not. None of them particularly liked the meat.
”O nothing, I was just wondering what type of character a Dark type pack leader has to be in order to be successful in keeping the tendencies of dark pokemon in check.” He looked at Dianne. “It hasn’t gone unnoticed on me what kind of impact dark typing has on me when I use it. The thrill of the hunt is sometimes overwhelming.”
Dianne thought on that for a moment and nodded. “It’s true, dead-uncle always seemed greater than life, untouched by the lure of the hunt. Always knew what to say to breathe out the need to kill of the pack.”
A few months ago, Carlos would have shivered and felt fear at that admission. Now he was perfectly ok with it. That urge was necessary here in the wild. It made him lament he hadn't tried harder with the murkrow he met when he had caught his first two mon’s and meeting that Alpha Arbok.
On the other hand he didn’t know if he wanted another speedster on his team like Dianne. Both Gawain and Kong were quickly turning into different versions of Al rounders but he wanted a tank. Someone that didn’t necessarily hit hard but could take it and keep taking it.
While Kong and Gawain were setting up a fire to cook and eat the Weavile, Carlos and Dianne kept a vigilant watch to make sure no one would ambush them.
”You know I think Detect, although a fighter move would suit your fighting style well. Once we get you proficient with endure we will work on that.”
”I’m already working on it, but I’m struggling with the TE conversion.” Dianne responded.
Carlos raised an eyebrow at that. “Even if Fighting TE so closely resembles normal TE?”
Dianne nodded while perking up at a sound. “It’s opposite of how I think. Did you hear that?”
Carlos activated his detect to match Dianne’’s keen senses. “Someone is stalking us” he whispered. “At the ready” he spoke softly but both Gawain and Kong immediately dropped whatever they were doing and they hopped over to Carlos and Dianne forming a closed circle.
”Sunny day” Carlos commanded, Gawain immediately used the move and lit up the twilight shadows with a mini version of the sun. An ever so slight flinch in the bush to Carlos left had him launch an arrow. Both Gawain and Dianne launched a swift. A muffled hissing grunt had Kong’s ears perk up and his hyper focused anger zoned in on the thing stalking them. “Found him! Triksy snake!”
Arbok
Lvl40 Poison 1470 HP 196 Normal 1470 Atk 24.5 A/U/S 6/2/6 Defense 14.7 A/U/S 4/4/2 Reflex 66.5 Intimidate
Speed 118.5 Shed Skin Naughty Female Unnerve
Carlos saw his life flash before his eyes as the Arbok launched itself, a crack of air told him how fast it was going at its natural speed. Lightning sparkling on its razor sharp teeth. He was saved by a shadow clone from Dianne barreling into the Arbok’s maw with extreme speed that caught the Arbok by surprise as it chomped down using a move on empty air. Kong launched himself at the Arbok with an axe kick. The Arbok went along with the blow and disappeared into the ground almost instantly but not before it launched a nasty blob of sludge that was poorly aimed and luckily for Carlos he managed to dodge most of it. But some got on his skin biting into his flesh with a nasty corrosive strength.
Gawain for the first time sparked his back into flames and inhaled deeply and let off a flamethrower into the hole left behind from the move dig. It was poorly managed and although it was boosted by Sunny day it took a big chunk of Gawain’s fire TE. He let go and billowed out massive amounts of incendiary smoke, both Kong and Dianne stood at the ready. The arbok came bursting out of the ground burning and squealing a pained hiss. It wriggled in a uncanny unnatural way and shed its burning skin. Gawain who had predicted where the snake would be, let of an ember and the smoke around the Arbok ignited in an explosion. Somehow the Arbok with its insane speed managed to fling himself to the ground escaping the worst of the explosion but Dianne began peppering him with stilleto’s from herself and the remaining shadow clone. Screeching from pain from the multiple wounds it flung out it’s tail and threw a barrage or sharp TE rocks and peppered
Carlos couldn’t dodge and endured the barrage covering his face. Kong who had taken the brunt of the barrage locked in and exploded forward and a normalized revenge, landed on the Arbok’s jaw finally flinching it. Both Dianne and her Clone burst forward and bit into the Arbok after which it flinched a final time, slumping down. Dianne used a double assurance to kill off the Arbok.
except Gawain who had avoided getting hit, they were all down on their last legs. Everyone had less than a third of their TE which they would desperately need for their recovery. Although Carlos knew how to use Pokemon moves, Endure was inevitably what saved his ass considering he was made of paper compared to Pokemon.
His clothes had been schredded and he was bleeding from all over the place. Dianne was just as bad for wear. She had been forced to use extreme speed multiple times and she was limping. One or her front paws had broken from too much use. Kong was doing a bit better. The Barrage of rocks hadn’t hurt him as bad but his TE was dangerously low.
”Alright, I hate to leave meat like this lying but we gotta find a safe place to recover.” Everyone nodded, Carlos returned Dianne and let Kong take the lead to a cave they had been using the last couple of days.