-.-.-Chapter 22-.-.-

“Diffindo!” I snapped as I flicked my wand in the familiar pattern again, this time being rewarded as a red streak shot from the tip of my wand and hit the lake surface, causing the waters of the lake to divide only a few inches before they fell back with a splash.

Lowering my wand I sighed, it had taken me four hours to make this much progress with this spell, four freaking hours, and the spell was still so weak, it had taken me a full hour to get the spell to actually work, and another hour to get it to cut even an inch of water.

My dad patted me on the shoulder, “Progress is progress lad, don’t let it get you down,” he told me, with both my parents having sat by and watched trying to give me pointers the whole while.

My mum nodded from the blanket where she had moved my two school books to read over them herself to try and help me figure out what I was doing wrong, “your wand movements for each spell are right, and your incantations are all correct, and as far as we know you’re visualizing everything correctly, perhaps it will just take more practice, same with the other spells,” she said as she closed up the books.

I nodded, still a little disappointed, I’d of course tried casting the other spells after the first two hours of lackluster results, hoping that one of them would work. I had gotten each of them to work, but only barely, which annoyed me. I was a wizard damn it, I should be able to do this.

“Cynda” Cyndaquill cried as it rubbed its head against my knee trying to encourage me, having come and joined the three of us during the first hour watching me train.

I smiled as I knelt down and gently pet his head, “Well, this level of results means I won’t be able to do much in the dungeon, guess it’ll be up to you most of the time little buddy” I mused.

“Cyn, Cyndaquil” Cyndaquill nodded his head before rubbing against me again.

“What about that other Pokémon token you said you got?” my mum commented as she got up from the blanket.

I frowned, I hadn’t wanted to use it yet, wanting to get Cyndaquil a bit stronger before I brought another Pokémon into the mix. I had hoped that with my magic that I could fill the gap and let him get stronger before then, but with my lackluster showing, I knew I’d need more help in the dungeons if I wanted to make any real progress.

“Guess I’ve got no real choice,” I muttered as I stood up and with a thought brought up my inventory screen and took out the token.

“Any idea which Pokémon you’re gonna pick?” my dad asked as I tore the token and a list much longer than the starter Pokémon list appeared in my vision.

I hummed to myself as I looked it over, “hard to say, there are lots of choices” I said as I thought which to go for. Taking note that the Pokémon on the list were only in their first evolution forms, so I couldn’t choose an evolved or even a fully evolved Pokémon.

If this were in the game, ideally, I’d want to go for a type that covers Cyndaquils current and future type weaknesses. As a fire and future ghost type, that meant Dark, Ghost, Ground, Rock, and Water types would all be super effective against it.

Currently it was only the last three that would be an issue for the time being, so It’s best to try and counter them, a Grass type would be perfect, but therein lay the problem. Aside from the starter grass Pokémon and the few others that weren't on this list, Grass type Pokémon were rather frail. Add onto that, they didn’t exactly have many moves that I wanted to be able to learn for myself later.

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My only other option was to try and counter each of the typings specifically, while also filling certain roles that I had in mind.

As this wasn’t the Pokémon game, and was more of a dungeon crawling than anything with mobs and likely boss monsters to beat, I needed to think wider than just type coverage. I needed Pokémon that would fill not only type coverages but RPG roles as well.

Tank, Healer, Scout, Melee attacker, Ranged attacker, Rogue and so on.

Cyndaquil would fit the role of Ranged attacker perfectly with his high special attack and fire and ghost typing, he’d be able to use some serious AOE (Area of effect) moves later down the line to really bring the pain. But for now he needed another Pokémon to cover his back when I couldn’t.

I immediately thought of getting a fighting type to both fill the role of the melee attacker as well as cover both of Cyndaquils rock type weakness and give him back up, but the first fighting type I thought of made me pause as it didn’t actually learn any fighting type moves for a while. While not a completely bad thing, it meant that it would be useless for half the reason I wanted it.

‘I need a Pokémon that has a STAB attack right from the start or shortly after that, and can be a good physical attacker’ I thought to myself as I looked over the list another time before my eyes settled on one of them and it clicked.

It wasn’t perfect, but it would fill the role I wanted as a physical attacker very easily definitely, and it would provide a cover to one of Cyndaquil’s weaknesses, and it would also provide me with good moves to learn myself later. Adding to that, it had only one type weakness that it shared with Cyndaquil so I wouldn’t have to think too hard on what type to choose next time.

“You’ll do,” I muttered before making my selection as the screen vanished and this time instead of a pokeball appearing in my hand, the small figure of my Pokémon appeared several feet in front of me.

It was small, just about two feet high, and most of that was made up of prong like horns on its head. Its body was completely yellow with black stripes running around its rather thick forearms and its round body, except for its chest where a black lightning bolt symbol was present.

“Elekid!” It cried out as it raised its arms in the air, announcing itself to the world.

“Oh my” my mum gave a little jump at the sudden cry

“Feisty little fellow isn't he” my dad chuckled.

Learning from the past I opened my system and navigated to Elekids page bringing up its information.

Name: Elekid

Gender: Male

Level: 1

Ability: Static

Moves: Quick attack, Leer

I nodded, to myself, just as I thought, while he didn’t have a STAB move right from the off he would likely get one quickly, and in the meantime his ability would fill the role of paralyzing enemies that he fought to make openings to take advantage of. Quick attack would also mean that it would be guaranteed to get the first attack in.

Overall Elekid was the best choice for me at the moment, his electric typing covered Cyndaquils weakness to water, and he’d become a bulky Electivire eventually, a real powerhouse. And his electric moves would be a huge boon to me down the line. While I obviously would have went for Pikachu as an eclectic type, sadly it wasn’t available on the list, only its first form, Pichu was, and I remembered how in the anime Pichu had difficulty using its electric attacks without hurting itself, that was not something I wanted to deal with at this point.

Stepping up to Elekid I knelt down in front of him and smiled encouragingly, “Looks like we’re going to be working together from now on little guy, my names Leo,”

“Cynda” Cyndaquil chimed in as he came up beside me to introduce himself.

Elekid looked between the two of us for a moment before nodding with a small smile, his whole body moving as he did so before sticking out its right clawed hand to me, “Ele, Elekid”

I smiled back and reached out taking his hand, “glad to have yo..” I began to say before suddenly yelping as I pulled my hand back as I fell on my backside from an electric shock.

“Ele Ele Ele Ele Ele!” Elekid roared as he fell back as well onto his back.

My dad burst out laughing at the scene while my mum giggled a half second later

I blinked several times before I registered Elekids roars as laughing and couldn’t help but chuckle as I realized I’d just been pranked.

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Chapter word count: 1486