“Throw a razor leaf at six o’clock,” Erika said under her breath softly to Mordred. “Make it as sharp as possible for a clean cut.”
She didn’t even dare to move, holding her breath to keep her body absolutely still to avoid startling her prey. Mordred too was fixed in position, training his eyes on the target Erika had given before transmuting many leaves into existence and firing them at maximum speed.
There was a soft thwack noise from the treetops and two pidgey fell to the ground, their spinal cords having been severed by Mordred’s razor leaves and dying instantly.
They’re a skittish species, Erika recalled from her studies. Make too much noise and pidgey will run away. If you hunt them, you need to take them out in one decapitation strike to avoid them fleeing.
Erika exhaled loudly now that her prey was dead, and she started collecting the bodies of the pidgey and stowing them away in a pouch strapped to her waist. There were already two more pidgey inside, as well as a variety of foraged roots and edible plants like cattail roots, wild garlic, and a few mushrooms.
The act of foraging wasn’t anything new to Erika really; she foraged plenty of times back when she lived on the streets to survive, but there weren’t any edible plants in the city itself so she had been forced to look around the outskirts of the forest. In the city proper, Erika usually stole if she wanted to eat because her dignity refused to let her dig through trash and garbage to survive. The few times Erika had been forced to scavenge a dumpster she did her best to only look for expired food that was still in clean condition.
None of the plants here are very familiar to what you could find around the outskirts of Celadon, Erika mused. Good thing I did my homework before coming here.
During her first day of journeying through Route 7, Erika stumbled across a clear pond filled with katniss plants and cattails. It was quite a good find, and Erika spent about half an hour wading into the murk and digging out as many katniss tubers and cattail roots as she could manage. Erika was wearing a muted green jacket and shorts, so when she waded into the pond, she had to raise her pants up to avoid getting it covered in mud. When she was done, Erika cleaned herself off with the pond water before drying her forage and stowing it away.
There weren’t many mushrooms that Erika dared to eat. Closer to the city, perhaps the risk would be more minimal, but Erika knew for a fact that Kanto had many, many native species of poisonous mushrooms growing along the routes, and she wasn’t stupid enough to risk her life over it. She only collected the circular-looking puffball mushrooms that she knew were absolutely safe, and nothing more.
Erika was confident, not stupid.
‘Arrogance is stupid,’ Erika heard Mordred say from behind. ‘Don’t be arrogant.’
Erika snorted. “Oh please.”
Mordred didn’t deign to give her any more words of wisdom, so Erika started setting up camp.
This was where the first advantage of being a grass specialist in the wild came in. Erika shimmied her way up a nearby tree and had Mordred use his vines to lash a few younger trees together, bending their flexible trunks inward and creating a sort of pseudo-platform which she could anchor her tent on.
Erika set up the Rex Tent and deployed it, letting it expand outward. She grabbed the corner of the tent closest to her as it expanded and shoved it roughly at one of the trees, getting Mordred to bind it with the tree, before doing the same for the other three corners.
Erika then jumped down, trusting her starter to catch her, which he did.
She appraised the tent.
“Cover it with some leaves and twigs,” Erika ordered. “Just sweep some up with your leaf tornado and bury the tent with it.”
Mordred animated the fallen forest leaves on the floor and sent them upward to join the tent, and Erika helped him arrange it messily until the body of the tent could no longer be seen.
Now, she had a place to sleep suspended in the air high above the forest floor where pokemon might prowl at night.
And the best thing? Erika and her pokemon could use their grass aura to harmonize themselves with the trees and blend themselves in, essentially eliminating their presence to wild pokemon further down. From an outside perspective, Erika’s aura and the tree her tent was lodged on would feel exactly the same.
The concentration of grass aura in a forest was also particularly dense, and if Erika didn’t obviously flare her aura as much as she could, a lot of pokemon would have a hard time telling her apart from the trees unless they were right in front of her. This was another benefit of being a grass specialist.
Once she was done setting up her tent, Erika began her favorite part of the journey: cooking.
Food was essential to survival, and Erika was of the opinion that it was one of the great joys of human existence. The ability to taste food - good food, was something she immensely appreciated, and every meal was a great comfort.
I think we should make hotpot today, Erika decided eventually.
“Mordred, could you make me a pot please?” Erika asked him. “Use a sharpened leaf to carve up one of the nearby boulders and hollow it out. I’ll start preparing the food.”
While Mordred went off to carve the pot they would use for cooking, Erika released Gwen for guard duty. Of course, Nimue was always nestled carefully on her head and always ready to defend Erika as well.
Erika spread out her forage and prey onto a clean cloth and started preparing the ingredients. Prior to this, she had also carved four rough looking wooden bowls that could be used to hold food, so she placed them onto the cloth as well.
First, Erika started dicing up the puffball mushrooms. They were quite large circular mushrooms, almost the size of a football, and it took her a little effort to work her knife around the shroom to fully slice off a portion. Erika repeated this process until she had divided it into five roughly sliced chunks, and did the same for the two other puffballs in her forage bag. She then cut them up into smaller portions that would be easier to stew.
Erika then set the diced puffballs to the side and started chopping up the cattail roots and katniss tubers.
Katniss tubers were one of her old favorites. They were quite sweet and starchy, and easy to find along the forest in ponds. Most people didn’t bother foraging them because you needed to wade into deep mud to pull them out, but Erika didn’t mind.
Erika crushed the wild garlic with the flat of her knife and released its distinctive aroma, scraping off the outer portion and keeping the insides.
The final step of this cooking process were the pidgeys Mordred had killed. Plucking them would be difficult if she didn’t soak them in boiling water first, so Erika set them aside and started preparing the campfire for when Mordred came back with the pot.
Now, I need a tree stump. There should be a few along the route, trainers pass by here all the time.
Luckily, there was one not too far away from them. “Could you cut up the tree stump over there and bring it to me Gwen? Just break it into four pieces.”
Gwen dutifully did as ordered and used her sharp head leaves to slice up the tree stump, severing its connection to the ground and then breaking it into four equal parts down its length.
Erika grabbed her knife and whittled down the insides of the stump pieces, scraping off the inner wood before pressing all four pieces of the stump back together, and binding them with a few nearby vines Mordred had left behind. The tree stump had essentially been put back together, but this time, with a hole going down the inside.
“Dig up some of the soil here Gwen,” Erika pointed beside her. “Make sure the depth of the hole you dig is about half that of the tree stump pieces, and make it circular.”
Gwen flicked her head and dislodged the dirt instantly. Erika smiled and shoved the tree stump into the ground, planting it firmly before kicking some dirt into the sides to fully encase the structure and prevent it from moving.
What she had just made was a wooden rocket stove, an extraordinarily efficient type of campfire-stove which would burn at high temperatures. When wood normally burned, it would release soot and smoke into the air. However, since a rocket stove had a small inner hole going down the middle, the volatile compounds like soot and smoke that it released would be trapped in the hole and combust more completely, releasing even more heat.
Erika had done this quite often back when she lived alone, although it hadn’t been nearly this easy. With a pokemon to assist her, the process was sped up hundreds of times, since she didn’t need to dig the ground or chop the wood herself. After all, I’m still eleven. My aura might be extraordinary, but that doesn’t lend itself to making me physically stronger. Not until I reach the realm of the External anyways, where aura corporealizes.
To activate the rocket stove was fairly simple. Erika already had a lighter on hand so she could skip the tedious process of trying to start a fire by hand. She gathered up the wood chips she had previously scraped off the tree stump pieces and chucked them into the hole in the center of the stump, and grabbed a few thin sticks and roughly shoved them inside until the hole was completely filled up to the brim.
The final step of this process was getting some tinder for kindling. Erika shaved some sticks down by whittling it with her knife, grinding the bark down into rough bits and shavings that she could scoop up and place in the middle of the tree stump. Then, she lit her lighter and set it ablaze, letting the fire start burning and consuming the ready-made fuel inside the tree stump’s inner channel.
‘Pot done being made,’ Mordred called out to her. He walked over with the stone pot tightly held high in the air, gripped with a multitude of vines. Mordred set the pot down onto the wood rocket stove with a rough thump.
“Can you gather moisture from the air yet?” Erika asked Mordred. He shook his head no.
“Use aqua tail to get some water from the nearby stream then,” Erika decided. “Just levitate some over. Your control is fine enough to move a rough mass of water.”
Mordred returned within the minute and filled the pot up, and Erika waited for the water to boil before throwing the pidgey in to soak.
She didn’t leave them in there for long - just long enough to loosen up their skin and feathers so that she could easily pluck them.
“Tip the pot over and fill it up again please,” Erika told her starter. “I’ll prepare the hotpot.”
Mordred walked away back to the stream to grab more water after tipping all the waste water in the pot onto the forest floor, and Erika used her knife to begin scraping off the feathers on the pidgeys they caught.
She wasn’t too skilled with deboning, but Erika knew the rough basics of butchering. She slit open the bellies of the pidgey and removed their viscera, and cleaned them out with a little water before laying them down onto a rock.
Mordred came back again and filled the pot up, and Erika started assembling the hotpot.
Fuck. It’s kinda hot actually.
The heat from the wooden rocket stove was overpowering at a close distance, likely made more prominent due to her grass affinity. Sweat trickled down from Erika’s brow, forcing her to wipe it off with her shoulder, before she could continue focusing on her task at hand.
From her bag, Erika retrieved a container of Mighty Mike’s All Purpose Seasoning, and started tipping a generous portion into the stone pot. The Route 7 journey would only take a few days at most if they made good time, so Erika wasn’t worried about running out. Once she got to Saffron, there would most assuredly be stores where she could restock.
The crushed wild garlic went in next, followed by the katniss tubers and cattail roots. Erika dunked the diced puffball mushrooms into the pot after that and whatever other greens she had managed to forage, and then after thinking for a bit, poured in some more all purpose seasoning to flavor the hotpot. The pidgeys were thrown in last.
When all this was done, Erika found a flat looking slab of stone and heaved it up onto the stone pot Mordred carved to cover the top. There wasn’t much to do after this point other than wait, so Erika decided to go over some quick training and review with her pokemon.
“You two should go off and train a little further away over there,” Erika suggested to her first two pokemon. “Nimue hasn’t had much one-on-one time with me, so I’ll be covering her training today.”
Nimue got off her head with a flourish and floated down to meet Erika at face level.
“I know we haven’t covered much,” Erika said sincerely, “But that’s because I was pressed for time training with Mordred and Gwen. I’m going to come up with a more comprehensive training plan for you now, but first, we should review what you’ve done already.”
“Show me your innate ability,” Erika ordered.
Nimue didn’t have to concentrate hard to do this, since innate abilities were usually passive in nature. Her aura swelled, expanding outwards and enveloping Erika in a gentle warmth that invigorated her mind and aura greatly.
Erika breathed sharply, feeling the enhancement to herself. Quite potent.
Erika jumped up and down and tried to run around, feeling a faint but noticeable energy boost to her stamina. She tired less, and the physical exertion didn’t take as much out of her. Erika’s mind also felt clearer and sharper under the influence of Nimue’s flower veil, and she knew from her readings that if someone tried to inflict a debilitating condition upon her, it would be instantly repelled by the flower veil.
Nimue spun in a circle.
“Good job,” Erika told her. “Your flower veil is getting stronger. For a passive innate ability, this is already quite good. Although the physical enhancement it offers isn’t great, what I truly value is the protection you can bring us. We’ll no longer have to fear the effects of mind-altering abilities or debilitating status moves, and we can move with greater impunity.”
“Let’s move onto your flower shield. Turn it up the max!”
Nimue’s aura spread out once more, and when Erika snapped her second sight on, she could see her radiating a gentle pink light that spread out in waves and pulses. When those waves washed over Erika’s body, they seemed to adhere to her skin and body before sinking in and vanishing. Of course, they were only invisible to regular vision. Erika could still see the pink aura soaking her body through the lens of her second sight.
Now, for the real test.
Erika took out her knife and ran it gently across her palm, letting it glide smoothly without pressing too hard. The knife only left a faint white line without drawing any blood. Erika pressed a little harder, noting with some surprise that it still didn’t draw any blood.
After thinking about it some more, Erika directly slashed her own arm with the knife, and it slid off harmlessly as if her arm were made of stone.
“Excellent job!” Erika said excitedly. “Your flower shield is finally at a usable point!”
Nimue preened a little.
“This doesn’t mean you can slack off though,” Erika admonished. “Right now, your flower shield is only good for blocking light blows. Any attack from a pokemon is most assuredly going to hit harder than that, so for now, your flower shield is only good for blocking glancing blows. However, you’re definitely on the right track.”
Erika could already see a couple of weaknesses in Nimue’s flower shield that could be exploited. Unlike other defense-boosting moves, her flower shield essentially layered grass and fairy aura to form a sort of force field shielding allies from harm. However, that didn’t mean it was an impervious defense.
If someone struck her roughly, much of that force would be transmitted through to Erika. The flower shield as it was currently was good at dealing with cutting forces, but it fared much worse with blunt forces, only ablating some of the force instead of stopping it completely. And to someone fragile like Erika, especially since she hadn’t reached the External yet, this was unacceptable.
The other category of defense-boosting moves revolved around using aura to actually transform and enhance the body, increasing the toughness of the body directly and making it more resistant to harm. While this method offered less comprehensive protection against cutting and slashing forces, it fared much better with blunt-force attacks. If Erika had access to both, she would undoubtedly have her team practice them, but to her best knowledge, this category of move usually only increased the strength and toughness of the user, and couldn’t be applied to an ally, unlike with flower shield. Examples of such moves included things like bulk up, growth, and so on.
Erika gave Nimue’s training some more thought, and settled on a basic short term training plan. Prior to this, Erika had been totally occupied with prepping Mordred and Gwen for the fight against Cesare, so she didn’t give too much thought to Nimue. She mainly had Nimue work on her helping hand and flower veil as they could be used to help Mordred and Gwen train harder and longer, as well as flower shield, since it was a crucial life saving ability.
“You’re going to be the team’s backline support and my personal guardian,” Erika informed Nimue. “Your species learns an extraordinary number of powerful defense and supportive moves, and we’re going to refine them as much as we can. Remember this - out here in the wilds, you are the most important team member after me! Without access to a hospital and limited medical supplies, YOU are the team’s backbone. If I or any team members are hurt or injured, it is up to you to provide relief and heal us. If we get afflicted with any negative ailments or conditions, it is up to you to detoxify or cure us. You are responsible for covering and protecting the team’s greatest weakness at this stage - myself, because I lack the extraordinary powers which aces have to defend themselves. Without the support you provide, our team’s longevity in the wild will drastically shrink. Are you up to this vital task?”
Nimue nodded vigorously. After nearly two months of doing practically nothing and getting limited attention, being told that she was extremely important was sure to boost her ego a little. Erika continued to butter her up.
“You must always be wary of ambushes,” Erika warned. “From now on, you are going to be responsible for keeping me alive. Mordred and Gwen engage the enemy, but you will sit on my head and defend me. If I die, it’s all over for everyone. As such, I will be focusing your training on learning how to attack from range, support your teammates from range, and how to detect ambushes, as well as train in a number of useful moves.”
Erika motioned for Nimue to get back on her head. She flew up to Erika and nestled down in her hair, assuming her position as a crown again.
“Rule 1,” Erika said loudly. “Unless I say otherwise, you must constantly spread out your aura to maintain your flower veil domain. I know that within this domain, you are able to weakly sense the existence of living beings. The primary purpose of flower veil is to guard and empower allies, but it can also be used to detect enemies. From today onward, you will practice sensing with your flower veil domain. If there is a pokemon within your domain, you will tell me. If there is a human, you will tell me. If there is a danger I need to know about, you will tell me. Is that clear?”
‘Yes!” Nimue squeaked out. ‘Understood!’
Erika nodded. “Rule 2! You must always remain on my head, unless I say otherwise! If you sense an immediate danger close to me and do not have time to tell me, you will immediately activate your flower shield! You will pour as much aura as possible into the flower shield, and prioritize saving my life. Is that clear?”
‘Crystal clear!’
“If you understand these two basic rules, we will be fine,” Erika told her. “Now, let’s go over your training. The three moves we’re going to prioritize, other than your flower veil and flower shield, are growth, energy ball and draining kiss.”
Erika pointed to a nearby tree. Through her second sight, she could see it light up with grass aura. “I want you to use draining kiss on that tree and take some energy.”
Nimue dislodged herself to move to the tree to kiss it, but Erika called her back instantly.
“What did I just say about rule 2?” Erika demanded.
‘...always remain on head.’
She flew back to Erika and reassumed her position as a crown.
Erika nodded. “Remember what I said. From now on, everything you do will be from range. When you support your teammates, you will do it from on top of my head. When you are healing them, you will do it from on top of my head. When you are defending me - have a guess. Where will you be doing that?”
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‘On top.’
“Very good,” Erika told her pokemon.
“Our primary practice will focus on converting all of your abilities into ranged ones,” Erika explained. “The goal is to get you to drain that tree from afar. Draining kiss works by using kissing and physical contact as a medium to drain energy, but this can be easily sidestepped as long as you know how.”
Erika moved right up to the tree she wanted Nimue to drain. “This process is going to work similarly to a concept known as the mind-muscle connection. I came across it while training Gwen back before I bonded with her.”
“Certain muscles in the human body are normally associated with the activation of others,” Erika started saying. “For example, in humans, the latissimus dorsi (lats) muscle is associated with the movement of the arm. Normally, humans cannot exert individual control over the lats. However, we can overcome this with training by moving our arms and flexing in specific ways. Over time, we can learn to distinguish the contraction of the individual muscles, and then learn to move the lats on their own.”
Erika pointed to where her lats were for Nimue to see. “I myself can’t move them individually, so you’ll have to take my word for it that there is a way to move individual muscle groups.”
“In the same manner,” Erika continued, “your draining kiss is an intrinsic move that you and many pokemon have come to associate with the action of kissing. You are unable to drain energy even if you make physical contact let alone at range, because like the latissimus dorsi muscle and its association with arm movement, you associate the action with kissing. We are going to rectify that right now.”
“You may leave my head for this,” Erika informed Nimue. “Go and wrap yourself around the tree.”
Nimue rose up and flew over, letting go of the flowers she held and wrapped herself around the tree trunk.
“Now, bring your face closer to the tree, as if you are about to kiss it, but avoid doing so. I want you to start using draining kiss - you may make the face for a kiss, but right before you make contact, I want you to abort the motion.”
Nimue did as told, and started puckering up to kiss the tree to drain its energy, but flinching back at the last second everytime. She continued doing this under Erika’s direction until a few minutes later something happened.
As Nimue flinched back and halted the kissing motion, a wisp of energy shot out of the tree and into her body.
Erika smiled when she saw that. “Great job! This is the first step to breaking your mental associations of draining kiss to the actual action of kissing. Now that you’ve managed to drain energy through physical contact with your body instead of actually kissing, I want you to repeat this until you can do it consistently.”
“However, you still require the motion of kissing to activate the move,” Erika observed. “Try to do it again without moving your head at all.”
Nimue tried, but failed to get it to work when she remained still.
“I thought that might happen,” Erika told her. “You still associate the kissing motion with the activation of the move. If you don’t lean in and pucker up, you have difficulty forming the move. Not to worry though - this problem will solve itself over time. For today, I want you to stay on this tree. Keep leaning in and puckering up to activate draining kiss, but do not let your face make contact with the tree.”
“Once you can activate draining kiss at will by going through the motions of kissing, we will start breaking your association of the move to the motion of kissing. After that, you’ll be able to drain energy just by making any form of physical contact. And then after that as well, you’re going to break the association of the move to physical contact itself - which is the point at which you can drain energy at a distance.”
“Am I clear?” Erika asked.
‘Very clear!’ Nimue replied enthusiastically.
“Awesome.”
Gwen had gone through the exact same training after Erika rescued her, in the months leading up to the formation of their bond. However, Gwen started out at a better point compared to Nimue, because she could absorb by making physical contact, and no particular motion was required to activate the move. Erika just focused on getting Gwen to break her association with physical contact to use absorb, and she’d been able to absorb energy from a distance ever since, even if the effect was weaker than normal. Nimue would go through the exact same process, just with a few extra steps.
“For energy ball, the process is comparatively simpler.”
Erika unzipped her backpack and pulled out a thin metal disk inscribed with decorative jade.
“Mordred and Gwen have already used this before.” Erika pressed the disk onto Nimue’s head. “Brace yourself.”
There was a sudden surge in aura as a connection formed between the disk and Nimue, and Erika could see grass aura flowing between the disk and her third pokemon using her second sight. Nimue cried out in pain, and the disk clattered to the floor.
She was briefly insensate before shaking herself awake.
Nimue looked dazed.
“Use energy ball right now!” Erika urged. “Cement it into your brain!”
Nimue weakly floated up and struggled, concentrating her aura and gathering energy from the plants surrounding her. It agglomerated into a dim ball of green light, which flew out and and exploded a patch of dirt, carving up a semi circular dent in the ground.
Erika had her do it a few more times before Nimue couldn’t hold herself up any more and sagged down to the ground.
“Good work,” Erika told her. “With a high grade technical machine, you’ve skipped the entire learning process of energy gathering and developed basic proficiency of energy ball. While you won’t be able to use another high grade technical machine for a long time, the benefits of learning energy ball and the principles of energy gathering are more than worth it.”
“I won’t cover growth today, since I need you in top form to defend me while we travel through Route 7,” Erika informed Nimue. “Growth is a very painful and taxing move, especially for new users, and I suspect that you never had reason to use it often before this. We’ll cover growth once we get to Saffron. For now, practice sensing with your flower veil domain, and learning to break the associations of draining kiss to the motion of kissing.”
“It can take weeks or months to meaningfully modify a move, let alone drastically change it as we are attempting to do,” Erika explained to Nimue. “Going from needing to kiss to drain to only needing physical contact to drain is the easy part. Going from needing physical contact to drain to being able to drain at range is much harder.”
“Compared to Gwen, you have it easy,” Erika said. “She had to go through the entire process without the technical machine you just assimilated. Going from physical draining to ranged draining requires a basic understanding of how to gather energy from your surroundings, if not a complete one, and that technical machine has just directly poured the knowledge into your mind. The remnant aura still lingers in you as well, which will guide your training in the move. Spend the rest of today working on what I taught you.”
Erika left Nimue to her practice on the tree next to the campfire, and called Mordred and Gwen back.
The food was nearly ready by this point, and it just needed a little bit longer to fully cook. Erika used all her might to pull off the top of the stone pot and took out a container of salt and pepper, and dumped some of it into the pot. She slid the stone slab back onto the pot and had Gwen go fetch Nimue.
When everyone was gathered, Erika heaved and pulled off the entire stone slab lid, and a nice aroma of food started wafting out.
Erika started grinning instantly, and her stomach began rumbling. She could hear Mordred and Gwen’s bellies do much the same. Nimue was a strict herbivore, so she didn’t seem as eager to eat compared to Mordred and Gwen, who were both omnivorous.
She grabbed the carved wooden bowls and started ladling soup into them, putting a pidgey into each bowl for herself, Mordred and Gwen. Erika doled out the cattail roots and katniss tubers to each bowl, but made sure to include extra for Nimue, since she didn’t eat meat.
The final pidgey was left in the pot for the time being.
“Good job today guys,” Erika said. “Let’s eat!”
With that, everyone started digging in. Mordred picked up the pidgey and started munching on it straight away, as did Gwen. Nimue looked a little ill seeing everyone else eat meat, but she managed to ignore it and focused on consuming her cattail roots and katniss tubers.
Nimue will get over it soon enough, Erika thought as she ate. It’s just the circle of life. Even Gwen acknowledges that.
It was a simple fact of life that pokemon ate each other, as did humans to pokemon, and vice versa. While she was being farmed, Gwen was fed with meat scraps and vegetables alike, and when she came to live with Erika, they continued doing the same. You couldn’t be picky when it came to stuff like this especially if you didn’t have money, and meat contained far more energy than vegetables, so Erika saw no reason to do otherwise. It was just how the world worked.
For her part, Erika was heartily slurping the soup and biting into the pidgey.
You should be honored to become part of me, Erika stared at the pidgey as she ate. Let your essence become the nourishment for my rise to greatness. Know that you have contributed to a historic great that will go down in the annals of world history.
Mordred choked suddenly while eating, and gave Erika a weird look.
Ah. I forgot about the bond. Even if Mordred can’t read my thoughts, he can still feel my emotions.
The katniss tubers tasted just as good as Erika remembered. They were a little sweet and very starchy, and had a rough, coarse texture. Erika ate them with relish, savoring a flavor she hadn’t tasted for nearly half a year.
When she was done with her meal, Erika just chucked her bowl onto the floor directly. It was a wooden bowl anyways so it would decompose just fine.
Erika had Mordred lift her up with his vines into the tent suspended above after he was done eating and sent her backpack up into the tent as well. Once that was done, she recalled her entire team into their pokeballs and released them again once she was inside.
“You’re going to take turns staying awake for watch duty,” Erika told her pokemon. “Mordred will go first, then Gwen, and then Nimue. I will go last, so Nimue, you’ll wake me after your shift ends. Each one of you will watch for three hours before waking up the next in line for shift duty.”
Mordred nodded his assent and took up position, and Erika recalled the others into their pokeballs. They could release themselves whenever they wanted, so Erika just went straight to sleep.
----------------------------------------
The next day, they were back on the road once again and making good time.
This trip was more of a way for Erika to dip her feet into wilderness survival than an actual training journey, due to the fact that Route 7 was a very short route, so she didn’t bother to train too much with her team. Erika just had them do some basic drills and continued her draining kiss training with Nimue.
They were over four fifths of the way to Saffron according to a map Erika had, which pointed out a few checkpoints and landmarks that she could use to gauge her rough position.
She stopped their walk every couple of hours for a brief training session, before continuing on the road.
Then, she came across a trainer.
The sight of a human face after going nearly three days without seeing one startled Erika a little.
However, Erika had been itching for a battle anyways, so she went for the tried and true method of shouting loudly at the trainer and demanding for a battle.
“Hey you!” Erika shouted. “Let’s fight!”
The boy was evidently startled as well, but he nevertheless pulled his pokeball out of his pocket. “Friendly spar?”
“Of course,” Erika replied. “Let’s just do a one-on-one. I’ve been meaning to get one of my new captures blooded.”
“You can leave my head Nimue,” Erika encouraged. “Go down and fight!”
Nimue floated off Erika’s head and imposed herself between the two trainers, dangling in the air with a curious expression.
The trainer released his pokemon as well - a fuzzy looking meowth, clearly still quite young.
Erika waited for a moment to let her opponent adjust himself before beginning.
“Whip up some magical leaves, Nimue!” Erika ordered.
Dozens of leaves around them lit up with a purple glow and started rising up slowly, before launching themselves at the meowth with deadly precision.
“Scratch!” The trainer shouted. “Carve up the leaves and watch your surroundings!”
Quite astonishingly, the meowth was able to react fast enough to cleanly intercept every single magical leaf. It leapt up and started scratching furiously in all directions, letting its claws tear through incoming magical leaves as they came and ducking and weaving under the ones it couldn’t intercept.
The meowth charged at Nimue, fangs bared and claws out, and Erika’s pokemon started panicking.
“Wrap yourself around the meowth and start draining it!”
Before Nimue could obey however, the meowth’s claws scored Nimue’s body and she let loose a sharp cry of pain.
“Quickly!” Erika shouted.
Nimue looked nervous and jittery, but she still did as commanded. She dived in to try latch onto the meowth, but it always stayed out of reach each time, clearly experienced at battling.
Erika had Nimue fire a few more magical leaves and go for a draining kiss again, but the meowth was far too agile and nimble to ever catch. Even though magical leaf could lock onto targets, the meowth easily disabled each of the flying leaves, and would continuously pressure Nimue by going for feints and glancing scratches that scored away at her body.
Nimue herself was much too timid to commit to a direct attack close up, so Erika was eventually forced to recall her.
“Good fight anyways, especially considering that it's your first time,” Erika comforted her pokemon. “You can return to my head now.”
Erika grudgingly pulled out 500₽ and handed it over to her opponent. “You trained your meowth well. It’s no amateur, I can tell.”
The trainer shook her hand. “I’m Adrian. Last name Furze. Thank you for your compliments by the way - Skittles is my starter, and I’m very proud of him. It took us a lot of training to get to this point.”
Erika thought about talking some more, but she wasn't exactly in the mood to do so. They parted ways immediately after the fight, since Adrian wanted to linger in the route a bit longer, while Erika wanted to get to Saffron as fast as she could.
It took about another day on the road before Erika finally arrived at the Western Gate of Saffron, and she was stopped by one of the guards on duty for ID.
Erika handed over her trainer badge signifying her membership in a great faction, which allowed her to enter without incurring any entry fees.
Once she was in, Erika immediately headed to a pokemon center for a shower.
The pokemon centers were technically controlled by the Joy Clan as they had an iron grip over Indigo’s medical sector, but they’d worked out a deal with the Indigo League to make provisions for trainers.
All trainers were allowed to stay in pokemon center waiting rooms free of charge for three days at the minimum, and healing would be covered for free as well. Erika wasn’t aware of the backroom dealings that had led to this happening, but it was convenient for her and every other trainer nonetheless.
Plus, it couldn’t be denied that the Joys got a lot of free publicity. The Nurse Joy trademark was a household name, and the very idea of medicine had come to be associated with their clan and family name.
“I’ll be leaving three pokemon here for healing,” Erika informed the nurse at the counter. “How long do you think the healing will take?”
“Probably about half an hour, give or take,” the nurse replied. “The free basic healing package allotted to all trainers registered with the league covers everything from light to moderate injuries. For heavy injuries which need greater and more complex treatment, we charge a corresponding fee. From what I can see of your pokemon right now, nothing suggests that they would need such a treatment. We’ll just give them a basic check up examination and a quick pass with some healing aura.”
Erika was satisfied after hearing that and left her pokemon in the care of the pokemon center, going off to take a shower. The waiting rooms provided were clean and orderly, and there was a small shower unit installed as well and stocked with provisions of soap and shampoo. Erika lathered it into her hair and worked the shampoo in, making sure to thoroughly wash out any grime leftover from her three day trek across Route 7.
The hot water felt especially invigorating, as it relaxed her tense muscles and aches. Erika felt herself growing drowsy in the shower, especially after she turned the heat up again.
She brushed her teeth quickly and started the process of drying her hair, mopping up any excess water with a towel and then blow drying it with her hairdryer.
Erika’s travel clothes had been thrown into a washing machine while she went for her shower, since she only had a few pairs in her backpack. Erika took out the washed garments and tossed them into a nearby dryer, and put on a clean kimono from her backpack.
There was still a few minutes left before her team’s medical checkup finished, so Erika occupied herself with watching the television and catching up on any recent news. She idly flicked through the different channels and searched for something interesting to listen to.
“...Moomoo milk is on sale for 60% off next week…”
“...a new type of pokeball is currently being developed by Silph…”
“...Mayor Roslin has announced a new change of policy for Saffron…”
“...analysts predict bad weather, trainers advised to avoid Route 3…”
“...strange sightings of unown have been spotted outside the Ruins of Alph… unusual since they never venture beyond the ruins normally…”
There wasn’t much of note to listen to, so Erika eventually just laid down and started scrolling on her phone to wait out the treatment for her team.
There was eventually a knock on her door, and Erika opened it to reveal Mordred, Gwen, and Nimue, each of them carrying their pokeballs.
‘We’re done. Let’s go.’
“Took you long enough,” Erika grumbled good naturedly. “Let’s go do some restocking, and then grab our seat on the Magnet Train.”
Erika took her team to a local mall and headed straight to the trainer section.
She made sure to grab more small compression bottles filled with seasoning and spices, since those were hard to find out in the wild.
An army marches on its stomach, and if we don’t have good food to eat, morale gets low.
Mighty Mike’s All Purpose Seasoning was good, but Erika didn’t have nearly enough of it.
Erika browsed through one of the culinary stores before coming across an expensive but useful item known as a culinary compression canister, which could stock up to two months worth of multiple types of spices and condiments in a relatively small space.
She filled it to the brim with peppercorn, cumin, garlic powder, salt, chili flakes, furikake, and hotpot soup base, and then brought it to the counter to purchase.
Erika thought briefly about grabbing a collapsible pot as well, but then decided that it wasn’t worth carrying the extra weight when she could just have Mordred carve out a stone pot if they needed to cook.
The next item on her list was a portable washing machine. The very idea of it sounded implausible, since most washing machines featured complicated circuits and electronics, but the model Erika was looking at was a hand operated washer which required pumping.
Essentially, the ‘washing machine’ was just a thin box that could be folded down, with a sort of spinning fan inside that would spin and toss your clothes around. The fan, incidentally, also could be folded flat, making it easy to store. Once you unfolded the box, you just had to unfold the fan and install it, then pour some water in. From there, you just had to pump the handle to spin the fan, and what you had was essentially a very basic but workable washing machine.
Erika purchased it along with some laundry detergent to use sparingly, since detergent was heavy, especially if you carried a lot of it. Erika bought just enough to sparingly use maybe once a week, which would let her stretch out its usage time to about two months, more than enough for her upcoming journey from Goldenrod to Violet.
There wasn’t much else Erika wanted to buy, or could feasibly buy, since Mordred was the one carrying most of the stuff.
It would be less of a burden once Mordred evolved and grew massive, but the issue with him right now… was that he couldn’t evolve. At his current size of around five feet something, he could comfortably carry all their supplies on his back, but if Erika bought too much, it would burden him unnecessarily.
Plus, if they got into a dangerous situation, Mordred wouldn’t be able to quickly shed the items he carried and come to Erika’s rescue. Erika made sure to buy just enough provisions to make them comfortable, but not so much that it would become a problem.
After their shopping trip was done, Erika still had a few more hours until the train was set to depart, so she went for a tour of Saffron.
The Silph Department Store was a major tourist attraction in Saffron, and one Erika was especially keen on visiting because it sold rare technical machines.
Erika was highly interested in acquiring light screen and reflect for Nimue, since they were vital life saving moves that could guarantee her safety, and that of her team.
Sadly, light screen seemed to be out of stock.
“We only have reflect for now,” the store clerk informed Erika. “Reflect and light screen are essentially two facets of the same move - which have been dumbed down and specialized to serve different purposes. Sometimes, you care more about protection from elemental attacks, so it's better to use light screen. Sometimes, you need more protection from physical attacks and kinetic forces, so reflect is a better choice.”
“What’s the purpose of splitting them up through?” Erika asked quizzically. “Isn’t it better to have a more comprehensive defense?”
“It is,” the clerk allowed, “but it's also more taxing on your aura to manifest both effects in the psychic shield. If you only need protection from elemental attacks, why bother expending aura on reinforcing the physical defense of the shield? The same logic applies vice versa. Eventually, one of the past sovereigns of our very own Saffron decided to refine the process of creating a psychic barrier down into two separate moves, and that’s how we ended up with reflect and light screen.”
“If you really want to get technical about it, the original move used to be called Wondrous Wall,” the clerk added. “But that was much too long winded and people just called it a psychic shield. The reflect-light screen split was popularized by that same sovereign, and it’s spread to other regions ever since then.”
“I’ll take the reflect TM please,” Erika said.
Nimue was given the technical machine to use immediately, and Erika let her try to gain understanding of the move.
Silph didn’t sell high grade technical machines to the public, only low grade ones, so Erika was forced to settle for a low grade reflect TM. It was much harder to gain comprehension of the move as a result, so Nimue needed to commit it to memory straight away.
To Erika’s knowledge, low grade technical machines could be used repeatedly without end, since they only contained a shadow of the move. Low grade TMs used technological means to create an impression of the move which the pokemon was supposed to learn. Using such a TM would let the pokemon gain minor insight into how the move worked, but it was up to them to comprehend the profundities within.
However, high grade technical machines were different. Since they actually contained the aura of the original TM creator inside, they could only be used a limited number of times before the guiding aura ran out. Depending on the quality of the TM and the amount of aura injected within, you would probably only be able to get two or three uses out of it at most. Erika’s energy ball TM had already been used thrice, and the only reason it hadn’t stopped working was because it was of top quality Silph manufacture.
Erika suspected that it had maybe one use left in it before it stopped working entirely.
This was why low grade technical machines like the reflect TM that she had just bought for Nimue were so much more popular - they were purely technologically based, and could be used so long as the electronics within kept functioning. The downside was that they were much harder to use to learn a move, but you had as many attempts as you wanted.
Nimue managed to conjure up a wisp of psychic energy after using the reflect TM a few times, but she failed to form it into a solid barrier.
“We’ll practice more on the road,” Erika told her. “For now, just focus on learning how to convert your aura into psychic aura. That’s the first major step.”
With about half an hour to spare, Erika made it to the Saffron Station.
Gwen was bumbling alongside her, and Mordred while carrying the team’s supplies. Nimue sat on Erika’s head as usual.
The train station was awfully packed, but Erika had booked a first class ticket so she didn’t have to squeeze in with the rest of the commoners.
Erika headed straight for the front compartment, scanning her phone’s QR code to check into the train and helped Mordred drag their stuff into the Magnet Train.
There was an alcove up on the ceiling where you could lodge your supplies, so Mordred used his vines to heave the backpack up into the storage and lay down in the corner of the room. Although he had grown much larger, there was thankfully still enough space to fit him. Erika let Gwen and Nimue out as well to enjoy the first class room.
Each first class passenger had their own mini room, complete with a table, folding bed, view of the outside, television, and a few other luxury installments like a minifridge.
Erika swung the fridge door open and cracked a soda open, putting her feet up on the table and leaning back to catch some sunlight. Gwen and Nimue did the same, pressing themselves up against the window to catch sunlight and possibly admire the outside view.
For her part, Erika was already feeling sleepy, so when the train began lurching forward and rolling down the tracks, Erika finally gave into her drowsiness and went to sleep.