After a moment, the glow of the two evolutions finally faded, and I could clearly see the result. Houndoom was now roughly the same height as Machoke.
At first glance, it was obvious that the innocence he possessed as a Houndour had completely evaporated during the transformation. Houndoom looked fucking terrifying. He was a massive, tall hound, capable of looking me almost straight in the eye. Sharp white horns curved dangerously backward. Massive bone structures were formed not only around his neck but also around his paws—clearly acting as a natural reinforcement for the inner parts of his legs to absorb hard impacts. Bony ridges ran along his back, complemented by a thin, elegant, yet incredibly long tail.
His dark, menacing aura vanished in a split second, however.
"Hound!" he barked happily, wagging his tail energetically from side to side. He immediately stepped closer, rubbing against me affectionately, and slowly wrapped his long tail protectively around my chest.
I reached right out and started scratching him in his favorite spot between his horns. His deep red eyes remained locked on me for a moment until he closed them in pure bliss.
From the other side, Wartortle approached with heavy footsteps. He wasn't nearly as tall as Houndoom—while the hound could almost look me in the eye, Wartortle only reached slightly above my belly button. He didn't cuddle up like his partner. Instead, he greeted me with his signature, slightly cocky smirk: "Wartortle!"
"You've grown too," I noted appreciatively, giving him a firm smile.
Pointy white ears had sprouted on his head, and his skin had visibly darkened to a deep blue shade. The shell on his back had thickened massively, growing to perhaps twice its original size. Two sharp fangs protruded from his mouth, and dangerous-looking claws had erupted from his front paws. His tail had bulked up just like the rest of his body. At first glance, it was obvious he was far more muscular, athletic, and definitely more dangerous.
"War, Wartortle!" He clenched his clawed fist tightly in front of him, and for a split second, I thought I saw pure flames of determination flicker in his eyes.
"Machoke!" barked that tall bastard again, stamping his foot firmly into the dirt and flexing his muscles to show off his massive new biceps.
I slowly began unwrapping Houndoom's long tail from my chest and nodded toward Machoke with an amused smirk.
"I'm really glad the three of you evolved. Later, we'll check your exact stats—height, weight, and of course, your aura energy, to see if it changed after evolution. But first, I need to earn some respect with Machoke here," I calmly announced to the team.
Houndoom immediately spun toward Machoke, and so did Wartortle. While Houndoom lowered his head and let out a low, guttural growl that echoed menacingly across the clearing, Wartortle stomped both feet firmly onto the ground, immediately dropping into the fighting stance I had taught him myself. With those new claws on his hands, there was no doubt he could slice through skin, muscle, and bone without a hitch.
"Macho, Machok, Machoke!" Machoke protested, gesturing toward them with his hand: "Macho!"
"Yeah, calm down," I ordered the duo, who were clearly ready to tear him to shreds at the slightest hint of an attack against me. "It's just sparring. You can watch and keep an eye on us."
"Do you think that's safe?" Bran's serious, worried voice came from behind me. "He'll definitely have trouble controlling his new power right after evolving."
"No, it's not safe." I shook my head without taking my eyes off Machoke. "But no risk, no reward, and you simply don't back down from a direct challenge from your own fighting-type Pokémon... especially when you've only had him for a short while."
"Machoke, try to control your strength so you don't tear me apart in your bare hands," I ordered him with a smirk. "Ready? We fight until one of us submits."
Machoke nodded determinedly and squared up wide like a pro wrestler. He completely ignored the stance I had taught him back in Mt. Moon when he was still a little Machop.
"Let's do this." I nodded, stepping toward him in a solid Muay Thai stance. In my chest, a faint trace of fear mingled with a rush of pure, adrenaline-fueled excitement.
I immediately threw a quick jab to keep my distance. The light strike caught him square in the face. He instantly tried to grab my arm, but I snapped it back out of his reach in a flash. He just gave a curt smirk and pressed forward. I hesitated for a moment to commit to a heavier combination—I knew for a fact that if he got a solid grip on me, I was completely fucked. But I didn't have a choice. While the quick jab kept him at bay, it wasn't doing any damage at all. Every time he tried to grab or clinch, he missed, until I finally built up the nerve to throw a full combination.
Jab. He immediately lunged to grab my hand, but I was already snapping it back. Pivoting smoothly on the balls of my feet, I channeled my entire body's rotation into a hard cross straight to his solar plexus. It caught him off guard. Finally, it looked like I actually hurt him. He dropped his hands slightly to guard his chest, but I didn't stop. Pivoting on my toes again from right to left, I followed up with a sharp left hook to the chin, putting all my weight behind it.
With a loud crack, I connected so cleanly his head snapped to the side. I didn't wait. In a fraction of a second, I finished the combo, pivoting once more to launch a right high kick directly at his temple.
It was a fucking mistake.
Machoke sidestepped with lightning speed. My rotation couldn't adjust in time; he absorbed the high kick with a soft thud, and suddenly, he had my leg clamped effortlessly in one of his hands.
"Machoke!" he roared triumphantly, pounding his free right fist hard against his chest.
I didn't hesitate. If he twisted my leg in that grip and broke my knee, I'd be finished for good. I immediately closed the distance, pressing tight against him, and without a shred of fear, I began mercilessly driving elbows into him. I didn't have to worry about balance at that moment. I rained sharp elbows straight onto his temple. It seemed the blows actually rattled him, because a second later, he used sheer brute force to fling me to the ground by my own leg.
Before I could even catch my breath, he lunged at me. Driven by pure instinct, I immediately pulled my knees to my chest and, with a sharp backward roll, kicked him hard over my head, launching him behind me. In an instant, I sprang back to my feet and stood guard, waiting for him to rise.
"Machoke!" he acknowledged with a small smirk, nodding.
Fuck, he took so many clean punches and elbows, and he still looks completely fresh, I thought with a creeping sense of despair, but I resolutely raised my guard back to my chin.
We continued fighting. It was a game of cat and mouse where, even though I felt like the prey, I refused to back down. He remembered what I taught him in Mt. Moon—he hadn't broken my knee, even though he'd had the perfect opportunity. My fear evaporated completely, and I started fully enjoying the raw rhythm of the fight. I threw more combinations, testing everything that came to mind, and mixed in a heavy Dutch-style kickboxing approach. I ruthlessly finished every single combo with a low kick. Once, with a hard leg sweep, I actually managed to dump him right on his ass, shaking the entire clearing with the impact.
He kept trying to grab, clinch, or slam me, but without success. Then, he suddenly started copying me at lightning speed. His first real strike absolutely shocked me. I barely managed to throw up a tight high guard against my forehead. The blow nearly shattered my defense. The forearms I used to absorb the impact immediately throbbed with a dull, sickening bone pain. I knew I couldn't keep taking hits like that, so I tried to dodge every subsequent attack with head and body movement.
The problem was, the bastard was learning fucking fast. His battle IQ was unreal. He was copying my entire technique—individual strikes and whole combinations. Every slip and roll I did got tighter and tighter. After a while, I had to start pivoting hard at angles so his own body rotation would block him during every lunge.
I only had one final option left. Take him down and control him on the ground.
I could see how much he was absolutely loving this spar. Smirking, he kept pressing forward. He threw a hard jab, which I blocked with my guard again. My forearms flared with such sharp pain that I felt like he was about to break them for good. I knew exactly what was coming next. But I couldn't afford to drop my hands from my head. I clenched my abs as hard as I could to protect my internal organs, held my breath, and leaned back slightly.
His heavy body blow connected, and it hurt like absolute hell, but I had to keep defending immediately. Right after, he launched an overhand hook that I barely managed to absorb with my left guard, immediately pulling my hands to the left.
Exactly as expected—Machoke threw a high kick with a smirk. In a split second, I fluidly executed what he had done to me earlier. Gritting my teeth through a painful wince, I absorbed his kick, trapped his leg against my lat, clamped down hard, and pulled it back to throw him off balance and drag him closer.
At that exact moment, I lunged forward. I hooked my right leg behind his supporting leg while keeping his other leg pinned tightly against my side. With a sudden, technical driving force from my entire body, I slammed the monster ruthlessly to the ground.
I didn't give him a single second to breathe, immediately dropping my full weight right on top of him.
Pure adrenaline took over completely. Without a second thought, I used my body weight to pin his legs to the ground, ruthlessly stomped my left knee onto his right arm without an ounce of regret, and slammed both of my palms onto his left hand, forcing the dirt beneath us to crack ominously under the pressure.
Without hesitation, I pinned him down with my chest as a thick cloud of dust billowed up around us. I jammed my left elbow directly into his chin to crank his head the fuck away and immobilize him, while my other hand firmly controlled his wrist. I locked in a perfect joint lock and, without a shred of mercy, ripped it aggressively.
A sharp, tearing pop echoed through the clearing, followed by Machoke's cry of pain.
The sound snapped me right out of my adrenaline rush. With total ease and bursting with unexpected energy, I sprang to my feet. Immediately after, I stared at the site of our clash in sheer disbelief. The ground beneath Machoke was deeply cracked, as if a destructive heavyweight battle between two Pokémon had just taken place. The kicked-up dust hit my nose, making me sneeze uncontrollably.
Yet, I felt absolutely amazing. Strong, powerful, and so energetic it felt like I'd been reborn. Surprised, I looked down at my own hands. Where the hell did this kind of strength come from? Just moments ago, before I got Machoke to the ground, my cardio was rapidly failing and I was losing my breath.
Meanwhile, Machoke was laboriously pushing himself up from the ground using only one arm. He didn't look anywhere near as fresh as he had at the start. He looked more like he'd been run over by a fully loaded semi-truck, though I was certain all that damage stemmed solely from that final moment when I slammed him down and pinned him with my chest. Using his right hand, he physically hoisted his dislocated left arm into the air and forcefully wrenched both arms toward his body. Another sharp, dry pop rang out, and Machoke let out a massive sigh of relief. He began rotating both arms forward and backward as a precaution. There was no sign of the dislocated shoulder anymore.
The entire clearing remained plunged in a graveyard silence, but I could intensely feel eyes on me from all directions. No one spoke; not a single leaf rustled. The only sound in that moment was Machoke's slow footsteps as he walked toward me.
I stood relaxed, without a fighting stance. Subconsciously, I expected the conflict to continue, but with how incredible I felt at that moment, I was a hundred percent sure I could take him down again without any trouble.
Machoke looked deep into my eyes. I felt like his dark red pupils were looking straight into the very bottom of my soul. After a moment that felt like an eternity, he slowly raised his right hand and thumped his chest with respect. The booming sound echoed through the surroundings, and he immediately bowed deeply to me in reverence: "Machoke!"
Right after, a deep, guttural laugh rang through the clearing, one I was well used to. This time, however, I could feel genuine excitement in it.
"Haunt, Haunter!" My specter immediately floated over to me with his signature toothy grin. "Haunt, Haunt, Haunter!" He began wildly waving his clawed hands, demonstrating a slowly forming, dark sphere of a Shadow Ball above his right palm. In that exact second, I felt a familiar energy radiating from him. It was identical to the energy currently pulsing through my own veins.
"What the fuck...?" I muttered under my breath, just to be sure. "What do you mean?"
"Haunt, Haunter, haunt!"
"You mean you feel a ghost aura coming off me? A human can't evolve!" I protested, though I knew deep down that this madness was the only thing that made logical sense.
It was simply impossible for me to feel this amazing after a fight where I had been on the back foot from the very start. And I definitely shouldn't have been able to crack the solid ground beneath a fighting-type Pokémon with my bare hands in a clean one-on-one fight.
"We'll discuss this later!" I ordered sharply when I caught Bran walking over to us from the side out of the corner of my eye.
"Machoke, Mach!" my Machoke smirked at me, giving me an approving thumbs-up.
"Thanks. You too," I returned the smirk, nodding appreciatively.
"How the hell did you manage that?" Bran blurted out in amazement the moment he reached us, his eyes practically glued to the cracked ground a few paces away.
"Look at Machoke... he gained so much weight that when he fell, he smashed the whole place up," I laughed, though my laugh sounded a bit forced. "But we're done here, at least we know exactly what we need to work on, right, Machoke?" I immediately changed the subject to avoid digging any deeper.
"Macho!" he nodded in agreement. "Machoke? Macho?" he asked curiously right after.
"Mhm." I nodded. "You learn really fast, but we need to flesh out your own fighting style. You tried the wrestling approach, but you were only relying on raw strength, not technique. You copied my stand-up well enough, but it was still just straight-up copying. We need to go through the absolute basics and build a system of your own. You can't just copy mine, because my style is custom-tailored for me—I'm tall, athletic, and weak in terms of raw power compared to you. First and foremost, we need to leverage your brutal strengths," I stated pragmatically.
"Macho!" he clenched his fist with determination.
"Houndoom!" my secret favorite chimed in, while Wartortle simply gave a solemn nod.
"Yeah, we're all going to train," I agreed, scanning the whole team. "But first, I'm going to scan you. Three evolutions at once... well, better late than never. We'll record your new stats, and then we'll test your moves in practice. We've got some fucking brutal training ahead of us, and since you guys aren't little runts anymore, it's going to hurt a lot more. And apparently, that goes for all of us," I concluded, shooting a subtle nod toward Haunter, who returned it with an understanding look and a silent promise.
The first thing I'd try to secretly learn on my own would be Shadow Ball. But what about Bran? Could I even trust him with this?
"I'd like to stay here for today, Bran." I turned to him with a friendly smile. "If you want, you can go ahead to Cerulean on your own; the road should be relatively safe by now. We're going to spend the whole day doing hard drills."
"No, we set out together, we reach the destination together," Bran refused flatly and without hesitation. "I'll train with Poliwhirl too, and maybe I'll even pull Zubat out of my pack... though I originally planned to let him out only after a checkup with Nurse Joy. What do you think?" he asked with an innocent smile.
Looks like I won't get rid of Bran that easily, I thought, sighing deeply on the inside while only shrugging vaguely on the outside.
***
Author's note:
Even though Houndoom looks absolutely terrifying now, he's still the same big sweetheart he's always been.
That was a brutal, gritty showdown between our MC and Machoke! An experienced, fully trained Machoke would have absolutely wrecked our MC. But an inexperienced, newly evolved one who kept his strength relatively in check—not snapping or tearing off a leg when he had the perfect opportunity—made for a relatively manageable opponent.
And this is where another part of our MC's heritage starts to show itself. Haunter is absolutely thrilled!
Fun Fact: To properly describe how to lock in a "Kimura" in a simple way, I actually used my girlfriend. She willingly lay down on the couch while I slowly went through the motions of the technique. Doing it is easy—it's pure muscle memory for me at this point. But translating that into words? That's the hard part. Thanks to her being such an absolute sport, you guys got a much more accurate description! :D
***
Step into the Restricted Section
The shadows are shifting, and the story goes much deeper... If you can't wait for the next update, Advanced Chapters are already waiting for you.
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Upcoming Chapters – Already Written(15):
32. Houndour: The Strength of the Pack
33. Above Average
34. Of Eggs and Iron
35. The Road to Cerulean
36. Boiled Lobsters and Double Beds
37. Cerulean After Hours
38. Shadows, Sparks, and the Bro Code – 18+
39. The Cost of Power
40. Of Iron and Fists
41. No Mercy
42. The Girl in the Pink Cap
43. The Price of Arrogance
44. Of Bro Codes and Psychic Radars
45. Where the Forest Meets the Sea
46. Sun, Sand, and Cerulean Waves
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