I blinked, struggling to assess the situation in front of me.
The rest of the night had been normal. I'd gone to sleep, letting Zuko take the first shift. After that we'd swapped out.
Now it was morning, and I'd decided to take out the ultra ball to see what this Eevee had to say about stealing so much food.
However, there was no brown furred puppy like pokemon in front of me. I'd had high hopes, seeing the lasso fall through one of the Eevee. A ghost type eeveelution would be pretty cool. While it had looked like a regular Eevee, if its parent had been a potentially new eeveelution that was ghost type, giving it a predisposition towards those kinds of powers, the lasso falling through it could still loosely be explained.
Instead, there was a small black and red fox like pup, grinning mischievously.
Zorua.
The Zorua walked around camp like it owned the place, ignoring the dangerous growls of Zuko, barely even noticing the lethal glare the yellow dragon was giving him.
The Zorua simply walked around, smelling different things. It walked up to me, sniffing my clothes. It scrunched its nose as it got a whiff of the stench coming from my shoes.
Then, it moved on to inspect Zuko. The small fox pokemon nimbly ducked under Zuko's paw swipe, and simply walked under Zuko as it sniffed his scales. Then, as it walked back in front of the angry lizard, Zuko swiped again, his powerful and sharp claws digging into the Zorua.
Or, well, that's what I thought was happening. Instead, the "Zorua" crumbled into nothingness as Zuko's claws passed through it.
Then, the Zorua reappeared in front of Zuko, a couple feet back, snickering.
Light manipulation? How was it doing that?
Zuko's claws had met resistance when hitting the "Zorua". It wasn't just an illusion. There had been something tangible there, even if it was weak.
Yet it clearly hadn't been the actual Zorua, as that swipe would have crushed it.
My brain sputtered as I tried to come up with an explanation.
Zorua, seemingly done inspecting the place, walked back up to me.
I was confused. Getting captured by a pokeball or ultra ball didn't naturally make a pokemon fond of you. It didn't change their personalities at all. That's why catching wild pokemon was a dangerous game. If they were strong enough to kill you, that intent to kill didn't go away once you trapped it in a pokeball. Hell, it might make it far worse.
Yet this Zorua seemed very tame. It was almost civil. It seemed to be analyzing us, completely confident and comfortable, even despite the very pissed off hulking dragon that would very easily tear it into pieces, and in fact had already tried several times.
I narrowed my eyes.
Zorua looked back at me, matching the expression by narrowing its own eyes at me. Then, breaking off eye contact, the Zorua snickered.
Then, it promptly disappeared.
Like actually just vanished.
No smoke. No buildup.
One second it was there. The next second there was nothing. Like its very atoms had been deleted. No sound. No shower of sparks.
I jumped to my feet, looking around.
Zuko likewise sprinted around the area, looking for it.
Nothing.
I looked at the now empty ultra ball in my hand. It was still assigned to the Zorua. But I could only return it by hitting it with the beam.
I sighed, sitting back onto a log. It was the best sitting log I had found in the area. The perfect height. It was hollow, so easy to move around. The top was flat, with no sharp twigs poking out. The perfect sitting log. For all the good it did me here.
What was I supposed to do now? Zorua was actually a solid catch.
Psychics and Ghosts were terrifying in this world. A very smart dark type would be a very good counter to that sort of thing.
I don't understand. It didn't add up.
If this Zorua was capable enough to essentially turn itself invisible, I don't understand why it ever would have let itself get caught in the first place.
Did it somehow know that pokeballs can recognize whether a pokemon has been assigned to a ball? If you toss a pokeball at a pokemon that already is assigned to a pokeball, i.e a trained pokemon, the pokeball won't work.
Was this a ploy? The Zorua, now having been assigned to this ultra ball, would never have to worry about being caught. At least, not by any conventional legal pokeballs.
But, I could very easily reset the ultra ball, like I had just done, so that I could catch it in the first place. That would undo the protection the Zorua has now. Well, the protection the Zorua would have if I kept the assignment to the pokeball when I got back to civilization, and its data was updated to the servers which keep track of that sort of data, letting trainers only catch undesignated pokemon.
I don't get it. The Zorua could have been invisible the entire time it was stealing the food. If it could create separate illusions, like it showed with the mirage that Zuko had attacked, it could remain invisible, attacking its enemies with ranged moves. It had no reason to masquerade as an Eevee.
Maybe it had wanted Zuko to catch him? And then subsequently wanted me to catch it with an ultra ball?
And for what?
To disappear immediately after again? What did this Zorua stand to gain?
I heard the approaching steps of Hurricane and Gallade. I was struggling to wrap my head around this. I'd try to think about it more later.
"Yo Gallade, feeling any better?" I asked, adding a weak smile.
Gallade stopped as he saw Zuko.
Zuko dipped his head, nodding in respect.
Woah. That's the first time I've ever seen him do that. And why? I don't think he's ever seen him in action. Why would he… oh. Maybe the fact that he has a martial aura with his evolution means he's more attuned to sensing aura of that type. And Gallade is bound to be oozing fighting aura in spades.
Gallade continued on, shooting Hurricane a raised eyebrow. Hurricane merely shrugged. Or the closest equivalent that he could achieve while on all fours.
Gallade sat down, almost looking envious of my sitting log. He looked towards me, giving me the hint to let him know what the hell was going on.
"Okay, uh, let's get started I guess. You and Tristan have been conked out for a little over two weeks. Starfallen saurs attacked, they had reinforcements somehow. Rage powder or something." I waved my hand away. "It was a whole thing. Anyway, Siba told Hurricane to get Tristan and I out of there, so we booked it north to get away."
I turned my head. Wait. This would be way easier to explain with the map I'd made. A minute later, Gallade stood next to me viewing the map I'd carved into the tree, with Zuko having gone off to scout for our next meal.
Hurricane had gone back to laying next to Tristan.
"So. Hurricane's been saving our asses, fighting off wild pokemon and stuff. Then I came up with the plan to steal the electric webbing so we wouldn't have to fight off wild pokemon every night. Then Zuko evolved and ruined the whole thing. Well, kind of. It was probably going to work if everything went right. Anyway, some Venemoth gave me some more trauma that I'll just shove down for now I guess."
Gallade blinked as the info piled on. He spared a glance at the whole repressed trauma bit, but I ignored it.
"Then we found a wind tunnel, I got some of the powders out of your lungs, we pulled out the razor leaves and healed you up."
I nodded.
"And uh yeah. That's about it. Lot's of random encounters mixed in there. Zuko evolved. Azula's still kicking. Caught a scumbag Zorua and then proceeded to lose it. That actually just happened. And now I guess my future plans depend on you. Any luck with those psychic powers?"
Gallade's expression dropped at the last question. He brought his arms in, small flecks of pink light coalescing around him. They slowly got pulled in, getting closer and closer to Gallade until…
Gallade collapsed, large sporadic bursts of black lightning shooting all across his body.
Shit.
I helped up the elbow bladed pokemon.
"That bad huh. Well that's not promising. Well, if I had to guess, we're about two weeks out of Champion's Hold if Tristan's in this state. If he gets better, that trip time lessens more and more the faster Hurricane can go without killing Tristan. We're pretty set up as we are now, so if you can continue to make him better with that aura bullshit, I think that's our best bet."
Gallade nodded. He had a faraway look as he processed. I saw a small spark of pink light behind his eyes before Gallade dropped to one knee, his head bleeding out black lightning.
Oh shit. Did he just try to communicate with me psychically? Damn. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to be unable to use such a core part of you.
I put my hand on Gallade's shoulder. "Hey. Don't worry about it. You being able to stand and walk is huge. You have no idea how bad these last couple weeks have been. You doing the aura thing is the only thing that's made Tristan look even remotely better. We're in a good spot. Nothing really makes it through the webs, and even if they did we're running shifts overnight."
I remembered a small red and black fox, realizing that last sentence wasn't quite true.
"Also, keep your eye out for a Zorua. Or Eevee. Or any small creature I guess. Or if you can notice any movement that doesn't make sense. Like if the grass moves when nothing is near it."
Gallade was giving me a really skeptical look.
I internally facepalmed as I realized I just essentially described wind. How do I describe this? Hell, I still don't understand why the Zorua had shown itself at all in the first place.
"You know what, don't worry about it. I'll try to come up with a couple ways to help your condition, but in the meantime we can just coast here. Food and water aren't a problem. The shelter is fine. I'm sending out smoke signals every time I go to cook, so hopefully some Rangers can find us. If not, we can just wait until Tristan looks well enough to travel and then head back South."
Gallade nodded his head. He was looking at his hands with disappointment, but curled his fingers into fists with a renewed expression.
He met my eyes, and gave a much firmer nod. He then walked back to where Tristan and Hurricane were.
I sighed.
It would have been cool for Gallade to have been able to teleport us out of here. But, as usual, my luck didn't seem to be very helpful these last couple weeks.
This wasn't too bad though.
In terms of places to train, the wild of Starfall was pretty solid. I knew this land. I knew where it was safe. I knew where the extra danger kill things were. Or at least knew their general patrolling routes well enough to suffice.
I shivered as I pictured the purple moths with pitch black eyes.
I could make this work. We could make it work. I had powerful allies now. I knew what my resources were. I knew what the threats were. Now, all I had to do was be patient.
Either Gallade would get his psychic powers back, or Tristan would heal up. We could leave if either of those things happened. Seriously, how long could it possibly take for one of those two things to happen?
~~~~~~~~Starfall~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~Starfall~~~~~~~~~~
3 Months Later
Well, three months have come and gone.
My hair has grown longer than it's ever been. I have a weird patchy beard. Washing myself in the river no longer gets rid of the stink. Honestly I'm now convinced that it never did.
To be fair, I can't really tell anymore.
I just know that Myst and Azula scrunch their nose every time they get near me.
Oh yeah. Myst. Short for Mysterio.
That's what I named the scumbag Zorua. It turns out that he had come to the same conclusion I had. With Hurricane leaving the nest for the first time, and us returning with Gallade, Myst had thought that we were about to leave.
You see, the little bugger had been having too much fun foiling all my traps. Turns out it was the most interesting thing he'd come across in the Eternal Forest. Apparently the wild pokemon, no matter how smart, had simply fallen short of the standards for the cunning little fox. Given that he could actually bend light around like it's some cheap parlor trick, that really doesn't come as a surprise.
Anyway, as soon as Zorua realized that we weren't actually leaving, he dipped out, clearly not having had his share of mischief yet.
For the next two weeks, Zorua had done his best to steal every single scrap of food that we had. I knew he didn't need to eat it all. With his small form, I don't think he physically could eat it all. He was only doing it to serve as an incentive for me to catch him.
My traps had to get more and more elaborate.
Eventually I had an entire electric net covering the food. The webbing was intertwined so closely that Zorua wouldn't even be able to stick one paw in without getting shocked.
Then, invisible hands had held open the net, failing to get shocked, and two pieces of Stantler jerky subsequently stolen.
Even if Zorua had been invisible, prying the webbing open would still electrocute him.
That, plus some other bullshit he had pulled with illusory copies, had given me some hints to how the energies of this universe interacted. Specifically, how dark type energy seemed to work.
For starters, aura was bullshit. So were any sort of powers.
Some of it seemed in line with science. Others, not so much. However, as I came to understand these things more and more, the more links I found.
Dark types were typically glass cannons. They really can't take much damage, but they tend to dish a lot out. They can travel through the Void, or at least some of them can, which is known for being super duper dangerous, especially given the gravity wells and the like.
Was the Void their power source? If so, did other pokemon "types" have similar sources?
These were the kinds of questions I'd been asking myself recently.
However, grounds for any theories come from observations. I need to find certain rules. If everything is unknown, random speculation is a waste of time.
I came across my first rule two weeks back.
You see, Gallade has been regaining his psychic powers bit by bit. He meditates with Tristan every single day. In fact, Zuko and I have recently been joining him. I'll get back to that more later. The important part is that, either through just natural biological processes, or the fact that his fighting aura is focused so strongly for so many hours every day, Gallade has been able to use his psychic powers.
To be honest, it might also be the hot baths he's been taking. I had to travel far to find a Cloyster. Once Zuko and I emptied out the shell, Azula could heat it from the bottom, making a nice warm bath for Gallade to try and let toxins out through his pores.
Regardless, progress had been frustratingly slow. He had only recently, two weeks ago, been able to teleport himself for the first time. It was five whole feet. He couldn't manage more than that without the dark lightning wracking through his system. That also served as support for the void poisoning to have gone far deeper than just his bloodstream.
It infected his aura. Somehow.
So the baths might not have helped at all. Not that it was a waste of time. Cloyster soup was actually quite delicious.
His teleportation had been getting better bit by bit, and he could manage better distances. Nowhere close to Champion's Hold in one go, but he'd gotten up to multiple miles at a time. Plus, Gallade was able to use the weakest of psychic attacks now.
This is where the first rule came in. Void energy was immune to psychic energy.
Like completely immune. And yeah, it's like that in the games. But how the hell does that make any sense in the real world?
Myst's dark pulse completely ignores Gallade's light screens. When we tested it, even his weakest dark pulse could shred through the psychic barrier with ease.
I would have thought that stronger psychic types might be able to trounce dark types. To be fair, they still could, just not by using psychic moves, but the sheer bullshit that even a small weak dark type could break through a barrier made by the strongest psychic type?
Psychic types certainly seemed a little less bullshit.
However it tossed into question how those sorts of energies react with one another. What was psychic energy, and why did it react so violently with dark energy? And why the hell could dark energy, even in its weakest form, shrug off any sort of psychic influence?
So, after weeks of testing, I had come to a conclusion that I kind of already knew. And I still couldn't be completely sure of it either. One candidate for void energy was not enough to be conclusive, as Myst might wield void energy in a slightly different way than others.
However, it wasn't the only observation I had made with void energy.
Myst had been a fantastic partner for my studies.
After he had retreated back into the wild, our battle of wits had continued. The electric web didn't work. The swinging logs of death didn't work. The flying dragon sky bomb didn't work. Even the hide in the middle of the food pile while staying perfectly still didn't work.
The fucker had stolen some food, leaving behind illusory copies, until he had gotten far enough away. Then, having gotten far enough away, he let the copies fade.
It was ridiculous.
His copies he left behind still had weight to them. He pulled an Indiana Jones level switch, except he was invisible, the food he left behind was fake, made of some weird bullshitery energy that somehow still had weight, while also somehow making zero sound.
That had been when I realized that this was a game. It had always been a game. Myst had only been caught because he thought the game was ending.
That had been the biggest question mark in my head. How the hell could this brilliant creature ever let itself be caught?
Sometimes, the answer is simply impossible. If he hadn't wanted to be caught, he wouldn't have. There was no simple mistake.
This brilliant creature had spent its entire life alone. Zoroark were not pack animals. They were lone wolves. Zorua had been abandoned at birth. The litter of foxes was not to be cared for. He had to learn to survive. And learn he did. As far as I knew, he was the only survivor of his litter.
The fact that there might be a mama and papa Zoroark out there in the Forest was a little terrifying.
And so Myst had survived. He had learned how to hide himself. He had learned how to trick others. In fact, he had gotten so damn good at it that he had become bored.
Being forced to think of solutions made him crave that sort of critical thinking. It was what he lived for. Yet at a certain point, he didn't get to use it anymore.
The solutions he came up with were limited. No matter what illusions he made, he couldn't take down bigger pokemon. All he could do was trick them so he could take their prey for himself.
There were only so many ways that he could do that. Or rather, there were an infinite number of illusions you could use in such a scenario, but the fact that nearly any of them would work meant that it was boring.
It was only fun when it was hard to come up with the right answer. Otherwise the answer didn't mean anything.
So, once I realized that the fox simply wanted to play, I got more creative.
I made a small box of Stantler Jerky. This would be separate from the food pile. Now that I knew it wasn't about the food pile, I could simply make him work for the prize he actually wanted.
I suspended the jerky box from a singular line of webbing, hanging fifteen feet in the air.
The next morning, the jerky was gone, but the food pile had been untouched.
The next day I spent all day setting up a platform, about 7 feet in the air, that I would be able to sit on.
Then I suspended a log in the air, hanging from a subsequent line of webbing, but so that the log was swinging under the Stantler jerky.
Then, I tied one of the spectral blades of Oblivion onto that log.
That had elicited some bad responses from Hurricane. He wasn't too happy that Oblivion had been reduced to being a sharp stick that was part of my trap. However, I wasn't too worried about it. If the ghost had a problem in being used in such a way, it could stop being so empty husk like and complain about it.
I'd spent the next couple hours of the night sitting on that platform, simply swinging the log back and forth, the sword tied to the log swinging back and forth under the treasured jerky.
Again, the jerky disappeared at some point. I never really knew when. Now that I knew the fucker could create illusory copies of the jerky at any point, I couldn't trust just seeing the jerky. And I wasn't going to check on it every couple of minutes. That would ruin the game.
Following this came 3 more weeks of traps.
By the end I had incorporated moving pulley systems, pressure triggers that would release nasty prizes like Venomoth sleep powder or Parasect stun spore, moving lines of electric webbing, hell there were even some fire traps.
I'd used the gas that Azula secretes to make flame. Oh yeah. Fun fact, Charmander and their line are constantly secreting a certain gas that naturally combusts when exposed to something in the air. So, that means Azula does fine in water. The flame isn't what means she's alive. It's the constant stream of gas. So, if a Charmander stops secreting that gas, then the flame will go out, so the lore from the anime is sort of right.
Basically it just meant that noting the size of Azula's tail flame was actually a not terrible way to measure her health. She also had small saliva like glands to shoot the gas out of, which is how she uses things like Flamethrower.
Hence, another confusion with how pokemon have different "type" powers. The Charizard line seemed to have fire powers that came from gas. I knew however, that the Salazzle line used some sort of flammable chemical, rather than a gas. I had researched some other fire types during my time and Champions Hold. So while some types, like fire, could use different sources for their fire powers, all void pokemon seemed to pull from the same source.
So… only some types have some kind of bullshit cosmic linkage? The elemental powers seemed pretty straightforward.
But yeah, Azula's gas had been extracted very carefully, making sure not to contact with any air, and had been stored in the remaining repel bottle, which I had emptied out before hand.
Anyway, the game continued. It was about two and a half weeks in when I caught Myst for the first time. A new iteration of the moving electric webbing traps had finally caught him off guard.
Showing I was the bigger man, I let him go.
I caught him again a week after that. However, I didn't use this chance either to confine him to the ultra ball.
I knew that this wouldn't work if I did things that way.
Finally, one whole month into the charade, I sat down on one of the platforms. By then, there were many that I had made all around the Galvantula nest.
This platform, however, was the first one I had made.
I simply sat down on the platform, with my back against the tree. In my hand was the box of Stantler jerky.
I had fallen asleep by the time Zorua had arrived. When I woke, the jerky was eaten. And Zorua was curled up next to me, fast asleep.
From that day on Zorua didn't leave the camp again. At least, not without one of us with him. Not because I thought he needed to be watched. But because he didn't feel the need to leave unless he was going somewhere with one of us.
Myst had been a huge help in getting things done around here. Granted, most of that came from the fact that I no longer spent the entire day trying to create new traps for a sneaky little minx. Either way, though, Myst now gets along really well with everyone here. Especially Azula. However, the little pranks that he pulls on Zuko always seem to piss him off. He'd take off Myst's head if he believed that he could.
But enough on Myst. Training. 3 months have gone by. Two months of those have been productive. Obviously I wouldn't let that much time go by without excessive training. Life or death scenarios just show you how much more you have to learn. How much stronger you have to be. Basically, train until you are at a point where every single one of those past instances would have been a fucking cakewalk.
Where to begin.
Oh yeah.
Azula evolved. Without me. I swear this was actually really annoying. I had yet to see a single pokemon evolve since I had been dropped in this godforsaken region.
Evolution was still the greatest question mark of this world. Despite pokemon growing constantly, evolution was a pretty big jump. Hell, Zuko gained at least a hundred and fifty pounds on evolution. Einstein would have a heart attack from that much mass sprouting up out of nowhere.
The only answer was evolution energy. E=mc^2. Mass gained meant energy spent. But where did the energy come from?
If I had just been able to see an evolution, I might have an answer to that question by now.
Maybe pokemon pull energy from the environment around them. Maybe there's some time meter bullshit based off stored energy. Basically, one of the theories I have for evolution is that pokemon store energy their entire lives. Essentially they have a little pocket dimension or something similar devoted entirely to evolution energy. Every single time they expend energy, in the form of attacks, or anything else, a small tax is collected. A little bit of energy, every single time they use it, get stored in that energy bucket held somewhere.
Where? Maybe it's coincident to their position in this realm, but held somewhere else. Maybe it's held across every single one of their atoms, holding more and more energy, until eventually it overflows and causes them to evolve.
Hell, it might even be an actual energy storage unit. Like biologically. I haven't studied pokemon biology. Maybe they just have a fucking battery inside them, storing energy, until they need it enough or have enough stored to evolve.
All of those theories could explain the world I was seeing. That was the annoying part. The last theory seems like it would mean people would know about it, since pokemon biologists can't be that uncommon.
But if some shady group had ever exploited that evolution battery, maybe draining them to steal energy, or maybe supercharging it to force evolution, or a dozen other terrible things they could do with that knowledge; if such a group had exploited that, I can definitely see why the leagues of the world would agree to then censor that sort of information.
I imagine that's why mega evolution was all hush hush. There's probably tons of things that are simple and playful in the games and anime that are actually stupid dangerous in the real world.
On one hand, from a science perspective, I absolutely wanted to find more about this world because of that. Research everything anybody has ever done. Find out how the physics of this Universe make any kind of sense. On the other hand, I value my life. And playing dangerous games seems to win pretty fatal prizes here.
I remember Oak said that Professor Sycamore in Kalos studies evolution exclusively. That is someone I would absolutely love to talk to.
Either way, Azula is now evolved. She had been showing the signs for a while. Then, after about two weeks of training in the fields with Hurricane, she evolved. Without me. Both of my pokemon had chosen to evolve without me.
I wasn't salty.
I mean, to be fair, evolution didn't seem to be that voluntary. You couldn't just press b.
Or maybe you could. Maybe I could just return my pokemon as it was evolving, and it would just cancel the whole thing. Again, evolution was the biggest question mark. Well, one of the biggest question marks. Myst's void abilities were up there too.
Having bored Ranger pokemon to help out with training my pokemon has been a huge boon. I have had essentially two months to pick the brains of two masters of their own specializations, two exceptional tutors for my little dragons.
Azula and Hurricane go to the Stantler fields every other day. I go with them sometime to cook. At first, I had basic things I wanted Hurricane to teach Azula, but eventually Hurricane essentially told me to fuck off. This was his territory. If he wanted me to teach her, he would do it his way.
And teach her he did.
Hell, the tiny lizard that used to be Azula can now spit out fire blasts. That's one of the most advanced techniques a fire type can learn to use. Hardly any fire type learns it before their final evolution. Some rare Magmar, sure, but they hardly counted. Magmar rarely evolved, so they were basically a final evolution.
Now, my 5 foot tall Charmeleon with sparkling blue eyes would be able to take down a two story building with ease.
Hurricane has really been honing in her control. As a fire type, and an exceptionally fast one at that, his control is ridiculously fine tuned. He's able to hit targets while moving at near supersonic speeds after all. That takes a hell of a lot of coordination and control.
So I don't quite know all of the specifics of how he trained her. I imagine some of those fire type techniques are actually forbidden for me to know. Like actually. I remember blast burn being one of those techniques in the lore. Fire is a very dangerous element. So the fact that Hurricane didn't trust me with any similar techniques isn't something I took personally.
If anything, all it means is that Azula must have impressed him considerably. Hurricane is a noble canine. The most headstrong pokemon I know. For what I know of him, he would never teach such dangerous techniques to something as prideful and arrogant as a dragon. Azula has always been far too kind. I haven't met many dragons, personally, but knowing their reputation I have to. Azula was something special. Hurricane had seen that. He trusts her. Hell, it's been three months and I still don't think he trusts me.
Sure, he trusts me to hold his back. He trusts me with his life.
But he doesn't trust me with dangerous information. That's a different kind of trust. You can trust somebody to come through for you without trusting their judgment.
Basically, Hurricane was letting me know that he trusts me in the moment. That he absolutely will have my back, because I have his.
But he doesn't trust every possible future version of me. He doesn't trust what I could become.
He does for Azula though. He doesn't just trust Azula for who she is now. He trusts Azula for what she could be. Dragon's are prideful. Scarily so. That becomes more and more of a problem as they evolve. Azula is only at her second evolution. But her character impressed Hurricane so much that he's still willing to trust her. To trust that even in the future, even after she evolves again, she will stay true to who she is.
I fucking love this dog. I can't believe he's so careful with his judgment. That his decisions have so much thought behind them. That his character has so much weight to it. I absolutely do not take it personally that he doesn't trust me with this sort of information.
I train dragons. Zuko is dangerous. Myst is dangerous. I know the potential dangers there.
That's why I couldn't be more grateful that I have somebody like Azula to help balance it out.
I always knew that the little blue eyed dragon was something special, but for the noblest of creatures, a pure Arcanine, to judge her that way, it really means something.
I mean hell, fucking Kommo-o, King of the Endless Forest, thought the same thing. I don't think I deserve to train such a magnificent little lizard.
I'll make sure to give Azula extra Stantler jerky next time I see her. I'm running out. The Stantler jerky being Myst's favorite snack means we've almost hunted them to extinction. At least in this area of the forest.
We do need to get out of here soon. We're honestly messing with the ecosystem at this point.
So yeah, while I don't quite know the full extent of it, I know that Azula has gotten significantly stronger.
On to Zuko.
This is where I have been spending a lot of my time. Zuko, Gallade and I have been training together for the last two months.
For starters, we have the forced meditation, sending off waves of fighting energy to Tristan, for at least 4 hours every day.
It really helps focus martial aura. With Gallade to correct on the spot, Zuko and I have both learned to tap into that brown orange energy, focusing it and releasing it.
From there, Gallade has been teaching us a lot of martial arts. Like actual martial arts. Not basic fighting moves, like karate chop.
Some sort of Jiu-jutsu Krav Maga Flowing Water Crushing Fist type martial art.
I don't actually know if there is a name for this type of fighting. Hell, they probably learned it in the Tree of Iron Scales from Kommo-o and friends. However, it's centered around fighting opponents bigger and stronger than you.
Which makes sense, for Gallade and Tristan, especially if they practiced against giant powerhouses like Hariyama, Pangoro, Machamp, and Kommo-o. Well probably not Kommo-o. That monster could wipe the floor with anything by just breathing.
However, that didn't mean he didn't know how to fight things smaller than him either. Or the same size for that matter.
He taught multiple different strategies for taking on many different kinds of opponents.
After all, not every pokemon is humanoid. You have to worry about tails, claws, pincers, wings, and all kinds of other potential attacks.
Basically, the training for me was a little different than the training for Zuko. While I would have to fight enemies bigger than me for likely the rest of my life, that would not hold true for the growing yellow dragon.
On all fours, he had been smaller than Hurricane when he evolved. Three months later, that was no longer the case. Half of the hunting I did was to feed the infinite cavern of bellowing hunger than was Zuko. Despite doing his own hunting, he still ate at least half of the food I would bring back for the others.
He was bigger than a fully grown Arcanine. And he was only in his second evolution. I was already worried that he would struggle to roam the streets of Champions Hold. When he evolved, that probably wouldn't be an option.
On a brighter note, Azula had come to find that riding on Zuko's back was her favorite past time in the world.
There were a couple days where we did some moving target practice drills, where Myst would create illusions of birds in the sky. Azula, riding on Zuko's back, was tasked with condensing her fire attacks into thin laser like attacks, aimed at taking down the illusions.
Anytime that one was hit, Myst would make the illusion blow up in a massive explosion, which was a tad dramatic. But it did well. Having to account for the movement of Zuko as well as the flight path of the illusionary birds was an excellent challenge for Azula's tracking.
But anyway, back to Zuko. We could both target any area of our bodies and coalesce martial energy in that spot.
Whether it be the fist, for an over the top powerful punch, or in the end of the tail, in Zuko's case, we had gotten close to good fine control over martial aura.
This sort of thing was supposed to take longer, at least in my case, given that I was a human. However, the fact that I had nothing else to do all day, as well as the necessity of the martial meditation, since it was to help save a friend, meant that I didn't have the option to not progress. The fact that Zuko and I worked on it together every day also helped.
It was weird.
Now, it was almost like we could share experience. Like if he got better at something, I would also get better at it. If I got better at something, he would also get better at it. It felt unfair. It meant that the more we worked, the better we got. And the growth curve was almost exponential.
We made hardly any progress the first two weeks. The third week we made more progress than the first two weeks combined.
As soon as we nailed down the fundamentals, the other things we struggled with came easier.
It made sense, intuitively. As soon as you know how to transfer energy to your fist, transferring it to your feet was easier. To be able to transfer energy to your fist in the first place meant you had to understand where that energy was coming from, how to shape it, and how to hold it in place even as it reacted with force.
So when I was punching, I couldn't let the martial energy dissipate as I punched. If it did, I would punch the tree trunk with my naked hand. That shit hurts. If I let go right after I hit the tree, I would still splinter my knuckles on the follow through.
So I had to hold onto the energy, protecting my hand the entire time.
So when I finally mastered that, being able to hold concentrated martial energy in certain spots around my torso, protecting me from Gallade's kidney shots, seemed far easier in comparison. I didn't have to relearn where the energy came from. I didn't have to relearn how to hold it. I just had to apply it to a different part of my body.
It all came down to reinforcement. That's what martial energy was. Fighting energy. Not hardening, like rock or steel types could do. Reinforcement. They might sound the same, but they're very different.
If I had to explain it in simpler terms. If you throw a baseball, you have to practice that throw a thousand times to get it right. But after you get it right, all you have to do is that same motion again to have another perfect throw. Reinforcement makes it so that muscle memory isn't just rerun. You pour more energy as you go through the motion. If I throw a basic jab, I plot where I start the punch, and where I want my fist to hit. I reinforce the motion to make sure my hand gets from point A to point B. The better I get at the actual fundamentals of the jab, the more it gets locked into my subconscious, the more I can focus on reinforcement. That way, I can use that energy to add more speed and power behind the punch.
That was the gist of our training with Gallade. Working on those fundamental motions, and then learning how to apply them in real battle scenarios.
It was weird. This was kind of the opposite I had ever done any sort of coordination training before. My way of running through athletic motions was never about rerunning motor programs. I didn't practice things 10,000 times to get them right. I always improvised. Coming up with something that would work, in the moment.
This was kind of the opposite of that. It wasn't just practicing the same motions 10,000 times. It was also learning 10,000 different things.
And then finding the best times to use them.
If I tried to use my previous method of how I tackled these things, I couldn't reinforce my muscles or bones. It was only when I was running through those cataloged movements.
So Zuko and I learned the proper stances.
Defensive stances.
Offensive stances.
How to apply pressure with proper footwork, keeping your distance but making your opponent back off.
Of course, that was mostly for me.
Zuko kind of forces opponents to back off, simply because of his sheer size. To put his strength into perspective, his tails are easily the weakest of his limbs. Yet if he flicks one of his tails, even without reinforcing it, he can demolish trees. Well, small trees. Bigger trees would take multiple swings.
Finally, Mysterio.
Resident prankster and anarchy incarnate.
I didn't really know what to do for training with Myst. Every test I gave him, every challenge, he passed. Easily.
Like he didn't even have to try.
Make a giant illusion of Tyranitar 30 feet tall.
The tiny red fox didn't even bat an eye.
Create a hundred Eevee's, each doing a different motion.
The Zorua had the gall to look bored. One hundred different Eevee's! The fucker even tossed in two shinies. They all did different things. Some were playing. Some were napping in different positions. Some chased each other through the trees.
I cannot express how much brain power and focus that sort of thing should require. Myst didn't even sweat a single drop.
Hell, I even got more creative with the challenges.
Okay Myst. Try making a dark pulse, charge it up. But not a regular dark pulse. Shoot it up in the air, make it explode, creating a bunch of other miny dark pulses, and have them rain down like Draco Meteor.
Yeah. That move shouldn't even be physically possible to do. Dark type specialists that I researched couldn't master techniques that complicated. The sort of firepower to even power the move would be off the charts. The fine control needed to split the pulse in the air, ridiculous. By the time they reached the ground, they should be harmless meek vestiges of void energy.
Myst merely smirked as he obliterated all 3 square miles of Stantler field.
So yeah, how the fuck do you even begin to train that kind of monster?!
Well, short answer, I didn't. I came to realize that Myst was probably some trickster god in disguise. What Legendaries dabbled in illusions? Maybe Giratina?
That would explain it. I mean the fact that I genuinely believed the Primordial God of Chaos masquerading to be a pokemon on my team was more likely than this being a regular Zorua should tell you the absolute bullshittery that was this pokemon.
To learn that an entire month of creating traps hadn't even made this tiny red fox even scratch the massive cesspool of energy that he could access was a little depressing, to say the least.
However, I decided to just go with it.
This Zorua was apparently invested in staying with my team now. I don't think I have a say in the matter. Honesty, I'm a little scared of what could happen if I question him about it. I'm just going to play along, hoping the Primordial God of Chaos eventually decides to leave me alone and get on with its life.
So I wouldn't really call it training per say.
I just give Myst challenges to do, and he completes them. The harder the challenge, the more fun he has.
He seems benevolent. Actually no, that's not the right word. He doesn't seem homicidal. So I don't think my team or Tristan's are in danger.
At the end of the day, all I can do is carry on. Give the fucker more mental challenges to spice up his day. And then at the end, he'll curl up next to me or Hurricane for warmth, pretending like he's not Giratina in disguise.
Maybe Marshadow?
Or Darkrai?
Yveltal? That's a scary thought. The bird of death, content to sit in an ultra ball on my belt, just because I give it fun puzzles to tickle its brain.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
My head perked up as I heard a voice screaming nearby.
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY LEGS!"
Welp. Seems like Tristan's awake.