“So, why haven’t you evolved your bulbasaur yet?” Erika asked Milly, her tone betraying genuine curiosity. In her case, Mordred hadn’t evolved yet because of Contrary, but there was no reason for Milly to follow suit.
“You haven’t explained why your snivy hasn’t evolved either,” Milly smirked, which shut Erika up. “I’m not going to ask though, if you don’t feel like sharing. Just be aware that this isn’t something you should ask someone so directly. It’s a… social faux pas, let’s say. But since we’re friends, I can overlook that.”
The two friends were currently sitting opposite in their room, a tea kettle being the only thing between them. They’d both woken up early, perhaps too early in Erika’s august opinion, hours before the sun was even due to come up. Milly boiled some water using the kettle in the room and poured them both a steaming cup of herbal tea.
Milly put the cup to her lips and inhaled some of the aroma before speaking, letting the steam waft up her nose. “There’s a monk at Sprout Tower who teaches a secret move known as Grass Pledge which only grass-type regional starters can learn. One of the conditions the monk has in order to teach people is that their regional starter must not have yet evolved prior to learning. Otherwise, he will refuse to impart the skill - and I’ve been waiting to teach my bulbasaur grass pledge.”
“What are the other conditions?” Erika asked straightforwardly, her intentions obvious.
“Friendship with another person with a regional starter of a different typing,” Milly answered concisely. “A demonstration of a close bond with your starter. Having a starter bond with a regional starter - this one trips up some people because they might have acquired their regional starter after giving their starter bond to another Pokemon.”
Erika frowned a little, her eyebrows creasing. Mordred and she fit all the conditions except for the second. “So I’d need to befriend someone with a water or fire-type regional starter? Why?”
“My father says it’s to foster friendship between different regional starter holders,” Milly explained. “The significance of regional starter lineages goes beyond having high potential and providing a big boost to one’s affinity upon bonding. There’s a rich history behind each lineage and their interactions, and each of the three primary regional starter types of grass, fire, and water all have their own secret move which when combined, can achieve earth-shattering effects.”
She then lowered her voice conspiratorily. “If you ask me, there’s something more to it than that. Why can only regional starters learn the pledge moves? Aren’t moves just an application of auric control and bodily function? If that’s the case, then grass pledge should be able to be taught to other grass pokemon too, which clearly isn’t the case. There must be more to the story than just this, right?”
Erika waited quietly for Milly to continue explaining. Milly’s face twitched when Erika didn’t say anything. “Aren’t you going to ask me about the big secret?”
“It’s obvious you were planning on telling me anyway,” Erika sighed, pouring some more tea for herself. “You don’t have to dangle it in front of me like bait.”
Milly snorted. “I don’t know either. But I plan on finding out, since its a fun mystery. Once your regional starter learns grass pledge, I heard the monk in charge is allowed to tell you more about the history of regional starters and the secret relationships between the different lineages. I asked my dad plenty of times but he wouldn’t budge, and each time, he told me to wait for the Sprout Tower training camp.”
“Count me in then,” Erika tossed out. “I’ll join you in learning this grass pledge move. It can’t hurt to pick up a new move right?”
“No it can’t,” Milly agreed. “But that’ll have to wait until the training camp. The monk in question is Haruta, one of the disciplinary monks in charge of punishing poor performers. He doesn’t show up until next week.”
That still left the issue of finding a friend with a non-grass type regional starter. Erika didn’t know anyone like that. “Can you introduce me to your friend? The one who has a water or fire type regional starter.”
“I could,” Milly allowed, “but it wouldn’t help you. Each person must have their own friend.”
That complicates things. I’ll have to track down someone with a regional starter in Violet, and ideally befriend them, or failing that, convince them in some way or other to show up to Sprout Tower and pretend to be friends with me… that’s way too convoluted.
Maybe just going out and making a real friend would be easier. Then again, that was easier said than done. Erika would need to coincidentally stumble across someone with a regional starter that wasn’t grass type, and then make friends with them. Only a select few each year had the privilege of bonding a regional starter, and the odds that Erika would just meet someone like that were slim. She’d ideally need to track someone down using a registry.
Their conversation was abruptly broken up by Samantha’s snoring off to the side. The cold was also picking up, so Erika wrapped herself inside another blanket and Milly followed suit.
Although it was summer, the violent gales atop Violet never ceased, and it was perpetually near freezing, or least it felt like it, due to the wind chill. Erika had never been a fan of the cold, and she wasn’t enjoying Violet as much as she otherwise might have been because of it. Milly generously poured her another cup of steaming tea, which Erika gratefully accepted.
“If you don’t have any plans for today, would you like to join me in exploring the city?” Erika offered hesitantly. “I wanna go check out the department stores to see if there are any useful technical machines, and see the festivities a bit. It would be nice to have a friend with me. Even Samantha, as strange as she is, would be a welcome addition.”
Erika doubted that last part a little, but it wasn’t like it cost her much to include Milly’s friend. Samantha was part of their group now, especially since she was Milly’s vassal, so it would be better to get along with her as best as she could. If you couldn’t ignore someone, it was better to have them as a friend than an enemy, unless becoming enemies was unavoidable.
“Sure.” Milly didn’t think too hard about it. “I don’t have much to be doing anyway. Rather than lie down like a salted magikarp, we might as well go out and explore. I’m gonna go back to sleeping for now - are you going to stay up?”
Erika nodded.
“I won’t set an alarm then. Just wake me up at seven.”
“And wake Samantha up too,” Milly added as an afterthought. “She won’t get up otherwise.”
“Any advice if I’m looking to befriend someone with a regional starter?” Erika asked quickly before Milly went back to bed. “Does your family have access to a registry of new trainers with regional starters? Or do you know where I can get a list like that?”
“Check out the local Pokemon research lab maybe,” Milly replied sleepily. “They get about a third of the allocation rights for each year’s regional starters, so they should have some records on file. We can go see it tomorrow. Now, let me sleep.”
Erika wanted to do a quick spot of sensory meditation training like Fulton had taught her to pass the time, but she’d long since run out of sour candy, so she could only substitute it with something else.
Training aura sensitivity was done by overstimulating one or more of the natural five senses, which would weaken the ability to perceive aura. The more you did this sort of sensory stimulation training and the more you adapted to perceiving aura while your perception was suppressed, the sharper your senses would grow over time.
Thus far, Erika had been diligently meditating while stimulating her sense of taste using sour candy, and trying her best to sense and perceive aura. However, since she’d run out of sour candy, she could try to replace it with something that could stimulate some of her other senses - like sight, sound, touch, or smell.
The easiest one was probably touch in this case. Erika slid open the window and felt cold air rushing in, making her shiver unconsciously. Cold enough.
She took off her blanket and changed into shorts and a thin shirt, and then climbed out of the window to sit outside.
The air outside was bitterly cold, but Erika sat down anyway and started her meditation session. First, she focused on the nearest familiar source of aura - Milly.
Milly was a muted green in a sea of the same color, making her hard to perceive. Erika knew that she had Nightshade aura, a variant aura which incorporated grass, but she couldn’t sense any poison aura mixed in.
Erika tried to recall what she knew about variant auras.
Variant auras were homogenous mixtures of two aura types. The component auras had been mixed so well that they had become uniform, and something entirely new. It shouldn’t feel like either of its component parts, but rather something entirely distinct.
The interesting thing about Nightshade aura though was that it still felt and looked like pure grass aura. According to a conversation with Fulton, each variant aura would have its own unique feel and look. Other variant auras did not behave like nightshade aura.
The reason why Milly’s nightshade aura so perfectly resembled grass was because stealth was a speciality of nightshade aura. People unaware of the properties of nightshade aura would mistake it for pure grass, up until the point they died from its viciously poisonous traits.
However, the fact that nightshade aura felt and looked the exact same as regular grass aura was an open secret among ace trainers - such a thing was impossible to hide forever, but in this case, the Beldings didn’t really care. So what if you knew? Could you tell the difference between their nightshade aura and grass aura?
You could argue that it was actually better for this secret to be out in the open, because it was a huge deterrent stopping enemies from daring to confront the Beldings.
The fact of the matter was that nightshade aura really was indistinguishable from grass aura.
If the Beldings decided to fight their enemies in the Whispering Woods, or even on their family grounds which were saturated with grass aura, no one could stop them from spreading out their nightshade aura beforehand. It didn’t matter if you knew or not, the end result was that you were still going to get poisoned horrifically to death. Any random bit of grass aura could be their insidiously concealed nightshade aura, so you’d have to live in fear of all grass aura for the rest of your life, or go out of your way to avoid the Beldings.
Erika shifted her focus away from Milly and started concentrating on perceiving the environmental aura saturing the surroundings. She kept her second sight off, not wanting to rely on it during her aura perception training.
The entirety of Sprout Tower was covered in grass aura, to the point that it dwarfed out nearly everything else. However, there was also a faint hint of poison mixed in, so subtly that Erika barely noticed it.
This hint of poison was different than the kind nightshade aura had though - in this case, the poison aura was noticeably distinct from the grass aura, and they were entirely separate entities - a heterogeneous rather than homogenous mixture. That has to be Lotus Buddha.
The entirety of Sprout Tower was under his protection, so it made sense that his aura would saturate the area if he lived on the premises.
Next up was Samantha. Her aura was bizarre - it wasn’t quite the boring mundanity of normal aura, but at the same time, it didn’t match any other aura types Erika had become familiar with. There was something strange mixed into Samantha’s aura, even if it felt mostly like normal aura. Erika guessed that she probably had a variant aura of some kind.
After about an hour of sitting still in the cold and training her aura perception, Erika called out her pokemon and started running them through drills.
It was a slow morning, and Erika herself was guilty of feeling lazy, so she didn’t press her pokemon very hard.
She’d been meaning to finally start training the tail-based sword technique Mordred learned from his family - the whip sword, but it seemed like things would have to be put off again.
I totally forgot, Erika facepalmed. We were supposed to train the whip sword while travelling in the wild where no one could snoop on us. Now that we’re back in civilization, that’s going to have to be delayed again. Crap.
Nimue was basically almost done with breaking the association of the kissing motion with draining kiss, and she could now comfortably drain energy through physical contact. Although the rate of energy drain was very weak, it was steady, and that was the quality that Erika prized above all.
What use was a move if you couldn’t be absolutely sure of its effects when using it? If Erika wanted to plan and strategize, she needed to be sure that what she planned would actually pan out the way she wanted. That was why she emphasized the shoring up her pokemon’s foundations above all. To fashion her team into a singular entity that could move as one according to her will, they would need to polish the basics until everything became perfect.
Deconstructing the move draining kiss would also let them get more value out of it, and Nimue could add another option to her mid-range combat toolkit other than just spamming energy balls. A passive drain option like Gwen was useful to harass enemies and whittle them down in fights of attrition, and even if the drain was weak, with both Gwen and Nimue draining at the same time, the combined effects would surely stack up quite fast over time.
Erika just set Nimue back on absorbing energy, but this time, she had Nimue stick to a tree to do it instead of her head.
Now that Nimue had broken the association with the kissing motion and was comfortable with draining via physical contact, the next step was naturally to improve the drain rate until it was comparable to the original rate while kissing. The only way to do this was undoubtedly - practice, practice, and more practice.
If Nimue continued draining from Erika constantly, Erika would probably be drained to death over time if she kept it up. It was okay before because Nimue was only draining a tiny bit at a a time, but now that she was trying to improve her drain rate, she would be absorbing energy constantly, which would put greater burden on Erika. It was easier just to have her practice on a tree, like what they did before.
Once Nimue got her drain rate back up to what it was before, Erika would finally be able to start her on the last and most important step - breaking the association with physical contact, and letting her start draining energy at distance like Gwen.
This wasn’t something foreign to Erika either - she’d gone through the exact same process with Gwen before bonding with her and while she was unnamed, except there hadn’t been a need to break an association with kissing, because the move absorb functioned through physical contact usually.
However, the difficulty of training Gwen was incomparable to that of Nimue.
Erika had no bond with Gwen at the time and no way to effectively understand her. Gwen could understand her somewhat - but Erika could only use visual cues and squeaks to try guess at what her pokemon was saying. The bond’s translation function wasn’t perfect, but it still communicated intent most of the time, and not having that made everything dozens of times harder.
No one else would ever be able to appreciate the mind numbing, soul crushing efforts Erika had gone to in order to train Gwen up to a standard which she would feel comfortable fighting alongside, all while being unable to communicate with her.
Imagine trying to explain the concept of a pokeball to an ancient trainer. You might tell them ‘a pokeball is a device which can store pokemon and make them easy to carry around. You need to press a button to open the pokeball to release the pokemon inside, and each pokeball has a registration code that legally binds it to the trainer who uses it.’
Now, the ancient person wants to ask you: what is a device? What is a registration code? He needs to understand these things in order to make sense of your explanation.
He needs some clarification. You however, can only hear him speak unintelligible gibberish and wave his arms around and point fingers. Can you actually respond to his question and answer it in a way which will satisfy him?
That was the problem Erika faced when she first picked up Gwen.
Nimue’s training was positively fun in comparison. Erika just needed to say something, and Nimue could ask for clarification straight away if she didn’t understand something. Even if the wording was not translated perfectly through the bond, Erika could always ask Mordred to convey her words more accurately, and then Erika would be able to clarify things for Nimue.
While Nimue was going through her draining kiss training, Erika started brainstorming with her two oldest pokemon.
“You mentioned that you feel close to evolving right?”
Gwen nodded her assent somewhat stiffly, craning her entire body since she didn’t have a neck. ‘Soon. Close.’
Erika pondered for a moment. “Upon evolving, your proportions will change, and so will your center of gravity. We’ll need to spend a few days getting you acclimated to your new form, and possibly adapting your old techniques so they better suit you. The position of your head leaves also shifts downwards, which might pose an issue if you want to use them to hack and slash at enemies.”
How am I going to deal with that?
Erika hadn’t ever seen a gloom in person before, and records on them weren’t that widely available. Most oddish didn’t get the chance to evolve because they were all harvested before that could happen, as they lost their medicinal properties upon evolving. The wild population of oddish had also long been decimated, so there wasn’t much information on gloom.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
According to the pictures Erika had seen of them, Gloom’s head resembled a fruiting flower. The leaves on a gloom’s head would part and droop down, while a sort of spongy, bulbous pistil would form atop the center of its head. While this was undoubtedly in preparation for a further evolution into vileplume, since the pistils would enable easier spraying of powders, spores, and secretion of fluids, the drooping of gloom’s head leaves would cripple Gwen’s ability to fight in close combat.
She currently used the leaves on her head as blades, sharpening and hardening them to slash enemies and deal devastating blows. However, upon evolving, her head leaves would weaken and droop into a position that made them inconvenient to use as weapons. While Gwen could manually control them to perk up, most of the space on her head would be taken up by the newly grown pistils, preventing her from making full use of her head leaves like before. The leaves would also become weaker, as they slowly shrivelled up to make way for the pistil at the center of her head to grow and expand.
They could work around that though. Plus, evolving into a gloom would strengthen Gwen’s physical body and make her tougher all around. She’d trade some of her agility for toughness, but Erika didn’t foresee that being a problem as long as they prepared thoroughly.
“We’re going to start placing more emphasis on training your head leaves,” Erika decided eventually. “To preserve your combat ability after evolution, we should start preparing for the changes that will happen to your body. We can also shift your fighting style to one with more reliance on mid-range attrition, using bullet seed and absorb to whittle down enemies and providing area support by spraying out powders and spores.”
Erika sized up Mordred and glanced at Nimue quickly, before returning her eyes to Gwen.
“What do you think about adding the skills of a trapper to your toolkit Gwen?” Erika asked boldly. “I think we can do some very interesting things with your leech seed - they normally rely on absorbing the life energy of enemies to grow, but I think we can try something more wasteful… like manually germinating it by using your own aura.”
Erika winked at Gwen, hinting for her to fire out a leech seed.
Gwen spat out a leech seed onto the ground at Erika’s order. When the leech seed landed on the ground, the outer seed coat broke apart as it began germinating, sprouting swiftly into a strangling vine under the nourishment of Gwen’s aura.
“Retract your aura now,” Erika said, continuing to observe the seed.
Upon retracting her aura, the now leech vine stopped growing immediately, and even showed signs of withering. It writhed here and there and tried to worm its way towards Erika, but ultimately failed to reach her. Without the nourishment of aura and unable to absorb any life energy, it slowly yellowed and withered, losing its suppleness and green before hardening into a dead vine.
Erika observed the entire process calmly, before asking Gwen, “How much aura did you consume to manually germinate a leech seed without having it absorb life energy?”
‘One hundred. One of.’
“A hundredth? That’s not bad at all!” Erika’s eyes gleamed, seeing some potential for application. “You only grew it a little bit though - to maintain that would cost a lot more aura. Mordred! You give it a try too and tell me how it feels.”
Mordred reported a significantly smaller number in comparison to Gwen, claiming that it only cost him a five hundredth of his aura to briefly germinate the seed.
Erika clapped her hands excitedly. “Now we’re talking! Both of you, create three leech seeds now and try to germinate them all on the ground.”
Both Mordred and Gwen were able to do this, although Mordred started having a more difficult time. His the vines his leech seeds sprouted into were larger’s than Gwen’s, but he demonstrated little control over them. In comparison, Gwen only had to exert herself a little bit to guide them in the direction she wanted. Erika nodded approvingly, appreciating Gwen’s painstakingly honed fine control.
Once Erika asked for them to do five leech seeds at the same time, Mordred was entirely unable to complete her request. Gwen still did it fairly easily, only faltering after Erika asked for seven.
Erika was deep in thought after seeing that. This is something that can be trained. I can guide them to specialise in different facets.
An evil thought occurred to Erika, and a sinister smile appeared on her face.
“Mordred, take off the vine net from your back,” Erika commanded. “Show it to me.”
The dense weave of vines was animated to rise off her starter’s back immediately, and Mordred tossed it onto the ground and spread it out for Erika to see. Erika carefully poured over the interwoven vines and checked for something. Mordred understood her intentions instantly without her even having to say anything, since he’d grown used to Erika’s way of thinking and could sense her emotions through their bond.
‘Want to mix leech seeds in,’ Mordred guessed suddenly, spoiling Erika’s plans a little. Erika pursed her lips but smiled in the end, even though she wanted to be the one to say it first.
“Exactly,” Erika agreed. “If we can hide some inactive leech seeds between the interwoven vines in your vine net, once you toss it onto someone, it can not only function as a method to strangle and entangle them, but it’ll also absorb energy for you and suppress the captured target. It’s a win win!”
Reality didn’t conform to her expectations though, and Erika and Mordred soon ran into difficulties trying out the new idea. The leech seeds did not like to stay in their seed form in the presence of life energy - and Mordred’s vines contained plenty since they were connected to his main body.
Erika dumbfoundedly watched Mordred’s own leech seeds attempt to drain the life energy from his vines and burst out laughing.
Mordred himself had an odd expression on his face as if he wanted to cry. His own leech seeds were absorbing his life energy… and sending it right back to him. What was the point of that?
“I think the idea is feasible, but we need to strengthen your control over leech seed,” Erika allowed. “If you can restrain them from germinating in the presence of life energy, weaving them into your net is a very workable idea.”
“As for you Gwen,” Erika turned to her oldest pokemon, “I think we can go a different route.”
“Mordred is stronger but has less individual control over each leech seed,” Erika explained her observations, pointing out what had just happened in the previous experiment. “He struggles to restrain them the seeds from growing, but I don’t think you’ll have this problem. Give it a try.”
Gwen spat out more leech seeds, and Erika placed her hand on top, teasing it with the promise of life energy. The seeds shook, but Gwen had an iron grip over them and was able to stop them from bursting out of the seed coat and germinating.
“Mordred can’t make many leech seeds otherwise his control over them will worsen even more,” Erika stated. “I’ll be happy if he can weave a few into his vine net and stop them from germinating early. His leech seeds can also sprout into stronger vines if he pours aura into them, so we’ll be going with a quality over quantity tactic with him.”
“You on the other hand,” Erika said dramatically to Gwen, “have much superior control. We can try a quantity over quality thing. Scatter as many leech seeds as you can onto the field right now. Don’t hesitate to experiment - now is the best time.”
Gwen thought about it for a moment and spat out more than twenty seeds, scattering them across the ground.
Erika’s face was inscrutable as she walked over to each seed, poking them deeper into the ground with her shoe and covering them with soil.
“Pretend I’m an enemy,” Erika informed her pokemon. “I’m going to walk over the ground where the leech seed landed, and you’re going to let them germinate on their own first. If that fails, push some aura into the seeds. Once they germinate a little, the attraction to the life energy in my body should become irresistible to them, and the process should be natural from there on.”
Erika strode over the ground where she’d buried the first few seeds boldly, but nothing happened. It was only when she took off her shoe and directly stepped on the patch of soil above the seed that the leech seed finally reacting, sprouting into a vine that tried to latch onto her. Erika snatched her leg back and let the vine wither before trying the next step of the experiment.
This time, she left her shoes on and trod above the soil where another leech seed was buried. Gwen pushed some aura into the seeds, and upon her urging, they germinated instantly and vines emerged from the ground, snaking their way up Erika’s leg and strangling her. Erika winced when she felt a few thorns on the vine dig their way into her leg, before more evil thoughts occurred to her, even as she contemplated the success of their experiment.
“Brilliant job!” Erika grinned, this time extremely excited. “Gwen, I think you’re going to find this new strategy very enjoyable. What do you think about the prospect of becoming a battlefield controller? Once we train up your control even more, I suspect that we can probably bury hundreds of seeds before a battle to prepare the terrain, treating them like deadly mines. Pokemon who step on these seeds will be caught off guard as the seeds sprout from the ground and start draining life energy from them.”
‘Can… bury battle.’ Gwen suggested as well. ‘During.’
Their bond was slowly strengthening with time, and Erika didn’t find it too hard to interpret was Gwen was saying this time. “We can do that too,” she agreed. “But its less effective as a surprise if the enemies see you spitting leech seeds into the ground. In that scenario, it would act more as a deterrent - a method to deny enemies free movement until they destroy the scattered seeds.”
The more Erika thought about it, the happier she was. If Gwen could master this technique, she’d become able to thoroughly trap the hell out of a battlefield, turning it into a deadly landscape. If they had foreknowledge, they could prepare an entire area and turn it into a killing zone for enemies, and if they used it in the heat of battle, it could still function as a strong deterrent and deny free enemy movement.
“We’ll shift some focus away from regular training temporarily,” Erika informed both her pokemon. “Let’s get both of you up to speed with leech seed.”
“Oh, and Mordred?”
Erika smirked, her smile twisting slightly in a way that made Mordred wince for his enemies. “Use your aura to transmute some thorns onto your vines. It shouldn’t cost too much.”
Mordred’s aura control wasn’t as fine as Gwen’s, so it took him some time, but Erika didn’t care about that. With his regular vines, it was impossible to transmute thorns onto them in the heat of battle, but Erika didn’t need that, at least not yet. What she cared about at the present was his vine net - something he prepared before a fight.
Therefore, no matter how long it took him to transmute thorns onto his vines, it didn’t matter so long as the vines he was transmuting thorns onto were the ones used in his vine net.
Once Mordred was finished painstakingly adding thorns onto each vine, Erika studied his vine net and asked him to make more changes.
This was where her truly vicious side came out, a side which only Gwen and Mordred had the opportunity of being privy to. It wasn’t a side of Erika that she’d revealed for a while now, but the side that Mordred was most familiar with, and most wary of.
“Make the thorns barbed,” Erika said viciously. “Turn them inward, add hooks onto the ends of each thorn. Once you throw this net onto someone, they’ll never be getting out of it.”
Sensing Mordred’s slight discomfort, Erika assuaged his concerns.
“Remember that your vine net is something we prepare before a fight,” Erika added. “We don’t need to cause unnecessary suffering, but sometimes, having a barbed net will be helpful to putting down enemies swiftly. For fights which don’t require that, you can just use your regular vine net. If we’re entering into a more dangerous fight, you can still add the barbed thorns or regular thorns before the battle.”
That was what dispelled the last of Mordred’s hesitation.
Erika trained with her team for another hour, doing a brief spot of meditation while Mordred and Gwen practiced their new technique, and also did some more static tension training like pushups and situps. She never forgot to do her cardio either, since running was possibly one of the most useful skills at trainer could learn.
The close call with the weepinbell pack and stantler were eerie reminders for Erika of how important it was to be able to run away. Until the External, or maybe even Inherited, trainers were dead weight to the team. They functioned as the brain of the team, but were also the most vulnerable part of the team at the same time - Erika realized that comparing trainers to brains was a pretty apt analogy after thinking about it, since the brain was a delicate organ but responsible for the survival of the body, much like the trainer was to his team.
What Erika personally needed to do was to enhance her spatial awareness and instincts, and learn how to remain agile and nimble under pressure so she could dodge attacks and run away from enemies. I should add some drills where me and my pokemon fight alongside each other too. I can have Gwen spit bullet seeds and pretend to attack us while I evade and have Mordred cover me.
There were all sorts of ideas Erika had in mind for their training, but the sun was starting to come up, so she could only regretfully pen them down in a small notebook before heading off to wake Samantha and Milly.
The room was awfully quiet - or it would have been, if Samantha wasn’t loudly snoring like a sleeping miltank. Erika could hardly imagine how she’d managed to sleep through the noise, much less Milly, who Erika could see as having grown up in a luxurious environment.
Erika was still questioning Milly’s choice to take in Samantha as a vassal. Aren’t there better choices?
Then again, the best choice - herself of course, who else was there? - already rejected Milly, so Erika supposed Milly must have had her reasons for picking Samantha.
Maybe she has some fantastical power she’s been hiding, Erika fantasized briefly, studying Samantha’s prone form. What secrets are you hiding? Can you truly control the power of chaos?
Erika’s face started burning immediately upon thinking that. What the fuck. The power of chaos? Samantha’s insanity might be infecting me. She’s a disease. A mental virus carrier. I have to limit the time I spend around her.
Erika privately wondered if Milly had been thinking straight when she recruited Samantha, or if she’d just been blinded by the potential prospect of making inroads with an outcast of the Joy Clan.
The Joys were a Great Clan, just like the Beldings, having the protection of a titled pokemon. However, few of them specialized in battle, with the vast majority of Joys learning the family trade and becoming medical specialists in some field or other. Samantha’s status as a combat type trainer probably raised quite a few eyebrows, which might have been why Milly was so interested in her.
Erika had heard Milly vaguely mentioning something about how the Joy Clan had their own tightly guarded variant aura as well, but hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about it further. Maybe that’s why Samantha’s aura felt weird?
Recruiting a variant specialist could never go wrong, Erika figured. The weird and tricky abilities they eventually would inherit could let them bypass or gain advantages over trainers with regular aura types, and being able to bond with more than one type of pokemon could help a trainer diversify their team to prepare for more situations.
There was no pokemon guarding Samantha while she slept, which Erika thought was an oversight on her part. It also made her job easier.
Sighing, Erika tapped Samantha’s collarbone to wake her up. It was an old trick which Gwen would often use on her when she was extremely tired. Normally, Erika was a light sleeper and could wake up at the slightest sound - it was necessary to sleep like that if you wanted to survive on the streets alone - but sometimes, she’d be so tired that she couldn’t wake up. In those cases, Gwen would tap Erika’s collarbone.
The collarbone was the most prominently exposed bone of the human body in Erika’s opinion since the only thing between it and the open air was a thin layer of skin. If you tapped it, it would be keenly felt by the other person.
And that was what Erika was now doing to Samantha, tapping away at the collarbone until she opened her eyes.
“Erika?” Samantha asked as she slowly woke up, rubbing her eyes groggily. “Why do you disturb my slumber? What manner of foul beast or creature has set itself upon us? Must I call upon my dark and mighty powers to fend them off?”
“We’re heading out to explore the city today,” Erika reminded Samantha as patiently as she could. “Remember what we decided yesterday?”
“We?” Samantha cocked an eyebrow. “This humble sorceress does not recall deciding to venture out into the city. She must assume her liege has planned out such with you, her confidante. Would this sorceress be correct in her speculation?”
Erika ignored Samatha’s shift from first to third person. “Let’s wake Milly up and find out, shall we?”
Milly’s bulbasaur was dutifully standing guard by her side, something Erika appreciated and took as a sign that Milly was training her pokemon not only well, but also smartly. When going into the wild, it was necessary to have pokemon guard their trainer in shifts. Although Erika didn’t think Milly had been in a true wilderness scenario, her family probably prepared her very well for it and likely took her out in controlled excursions.
As if to confirm her suspicions, the bulbasaur noticed Erika looking at it and gave her nod, before vanishing back into Milly’s pokeball. A new pokemon emerged from a great ball - a ridiculously round bird which Erika could only describe as looking ‘distinguished,’ owing to the fact that it was wearing a green bow and had its plumage arranged to look like a tuxedo.
Erika realized with some consternation that the rowlet’s green bow was actually also part of its plumage, and that its feathers had not been arranged to look like at tuxedo. It was just how rowlet naturally looked.
Maybe actual tuxedos were designed or inspired by rowlet? Humans are quite good at copying things which occur in nature and replicating them.
Erika was confident though that tuxedos were a Unovan invention, and rowlet was Alolan regional starter, so that didn’t quite make sense. After thinking about it some more, Erika realized that Alola was a Unovan colony, which was probably how Unovan designers got access to the starter in the first place.
“I’m just waking up my friend,” Erika said loudly, making sure to signal to the rowlet that she had no bad intentions. “Milly has asked me to wake her up this morning so we can head out to explore the city. May I have permission to shake her awake?”
The rowlet cooed, flapping its stubby wings and vaulted itself atop Milly’s head. The impact jarred Milly awake, but it also smothered her in the rowlet’s feathers.
“Bad bird!” Milly shouted, her voice muffled by the rowlet’s feathers. “Robin Hoot! What did I say about landing on my face?”
“Coo! Coo coo coo!” Erika didn’t try to make sense of the rowlet’s impassioned cries. She just watched Robin Hoot sadly flap his wings and get off Milly’s head, landing on the floor next to her mattress.
“Naming your pokemon after a historical figure is very classy,” Erika said, giving Milly a thumbs up. “I did the same with my pokemon. Still, aren’t you one of the rich people that the original Robin Hoot despised? I should think it funny that this was the name you settled with.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Milly argued, dismissing Erika’s point. “Besides, he’s been dead for half a millennium now. I think it’s a very appropriate name for my rowlet.”
Erika didn’t contest Milly, but she didn’t acknowledge her point either. She was of the opinion that names should both thematically match the trainer and pokemon, and should point at some deeper quality of the pokemon.
The naming was a big tradition, even if it usually only applied to the starter. Although, Erika herself hadn’t exactly been following tradition either, given that she named Gwen before her actual starter Mordred, so she didn’t have any right to judge Milly.
“Are you going for a name inversion?” Erika asked amusedly. “I did something similar with my pokemon Gwen. She’s incredibly loyal, but named after an adulterer.”
“No, not really? What sort of inversion could you possibly do with Robin Hoot?”
“Well, he was opposed to the rich right?” Erika thought about it. “Robin Hoot stole from the rich to give to the poor. He took from robber barons and charitably helped the needy. As for a name inversion… maybe your rowlet is actually a very greedy pokemon? You could even say that he’s changing from a robber baron to a robber bird!”
Milly rolled her eyes. “As if. I wouldn’t name my pokemon like that. I’ll tell you the thematic reasons behind their names later today or tomorrow.”
Milly saw that Samantha was already awake, so she hauled herself up off the mattress. “Give me a few minutes to shower. Once you and Samantha are ready, we can head out.”
While Erika waited for Milly to shower, she put on the hot water kettle again and boiled some tea for herself. Samantha busied herself with brushing her teeth, and Erika opened the front door of the room on a whim and found a small package left at the door.
Upon opening it, Erika found a thoughtful present of several rice cake snacks and red bean mochi, all wrapped up in thin wax paper.
Erika broke up a rice cake and starting eating, filling some strength return to her body. The mochi very sweet, if a little sticky owing to the red bean, and despite its slight chewiness, Erika found herself greatly enjoying the sweet treat. She was going to grab another but eventually left it out of consideration for Milly and Samantha who were still getting ready.
When Milly was done, Erika seized the shower to take her turn. Once all everyone present was ready, they set out to explore the city. Erika locked the door behind her as she exited and gave the key back to Milly since she didn’t want to be held responsible if she lost it.