The insides of the dark office were quiet, the only sounds to be heard were the ticks of a clock and the soft purr of a Pokemon. A button on the table lit up, blinking an ominous red. After a long press, a call connected to a screen on the other side of the room.
“Speak.” Commanded the man from his desk, a hand set comfortably on his Persians head.
The uniformed man with short, purple hair on the other side of the screen kneeled deferentially, “Sir, it seems our operation at Mt. Silver has been compromised. Contact with the personnel has been lost for multiple days by now. I can only assume the worst has happened and they have been found out and captured.”
Swirling his drink, the man took a swig before answering, “A shame.”
“Very much so,” The commander nodded, “It can be inferred that the situation has to do with the current news appearing from the mountain. A supposed sighting of one of the legendary birds. I assume you’ve heard the news?”
“You’d be correct.” He set down the glass, “With the way the situation has developed, we’ll be forced to lie low.”
“We will downsize all of our operations in Kanto,” The commander bowed deeper, “I’ll pass the info along and advise our operatives and grunts to keep a low profile.”
“Do that.” His finger pressed the same button to disconnect the call.
Another button was pressed, and after a short delay, a young woman with long purple hair and a black uniform with a large red “R” on it marched into the room, throwing a salute at the man at the desk, “Sir!”
He addressed the purple-haired grunt in his office, “What happened in that Mt. Silver incident?” He tapped his chin with a finger, looking for the name from the news in his mind, “That girl…Valerie…”
“Valerie Riston, sir.” The purple-haired grunt completed, “The girl managed to catch a Larvitar and a Natu. She is currently in the process of getting ready for the start of the circuit year.”
“How do you know that?” He questioned rightfully.
She bowed, “Sir, as I was attending the Gym, she signed up for a Gym Challenge. I gave her the first appointment.”
A grin spread on the man's face, “What a fortunate turn of events. We have to lay low, but we won’t see an opportunity like that, Larvitar often.” He once again pets his Persian, the Pokemon returning a purr of affection in return, “Take it from her, but be discreet.”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
…
“Training time!” She clapped their hands together as Larry cheered next to her.
“Alright!” Valerie corralled her Pokemon closer to her, sitting them both down in front of her like a kindergarten teacher, “We did some simple synergy training, but I think it is finally time for you guys to learn some new moves!”
‘New moves, finally!’ Larry thought to himself excitedly, ‘I wonder what she has in store for me.’
“With our current team, we already have a pretty effective matchup against a Ground-Type Gym, so I focused on moves you can learn that should be easy to get down pat in the next two weeks.” She explained. First, she pointed at the resident Psychic, “First, Sybil. For you, I want you to learn Night Shade. It’s a Ghost-Type Move you should be naturally able to learn. Its big advantage is that it becomes stronger the stronger its user is.”
Sybil turned her head to the side, “But I am quite weak, am I not?”
“Don’t say that! You’re great, Sybil!” Larry encouraged.
Valeire didn’t quite catch Sybil's troubles. “It's similar to Stored Power, because it gets stronger the more power you have. But while Stored Power is mostly affected by Status increasing moves, Night Shade naturally grows with you as you grow.”
“It might not be the strongest right now, but imagine how powerful of an attack it will be when you’re more experienced.” That got Sybil's attention, forcing the Pokemon to stare off into the distant sky in imagination.
Her eyes flashed an iridescent color before quickly returning to normal. She bowed afterwards, “I see, I will learn it.”
‘She just saw the future again, didn’t she?’ Larry raised an eyebrow at the sight, but let the bird off the hook this time without questioning it.
If Valerie had noticed, she didn’t look like it. “Great! We’ll also do some more reading and training of your Psychic-Type Moves after. I think that will come in handy in the future as well.” Valerie wrote something down in her phone before turning the screen to Sybil, “Here is a clip of a Pokemon using the move in a fight to get you an image of what it's supposed to look like.”
Larry scooched closer to the phone and watched the fight. In a rocky arena, a giant, blue, and bulbous Pokemon, which looked close to a jellyfish, was battling a giant, blue bell. Larry immediately tracked the Pokemon as Jellicent and Bronzong, an unusual matchup in his eyes, ‘This is probably a high-level fight.’
The fight escalated as the Jellicent shot towards the Bronzong, using a jet of pressurized water from its bottom to propel itself forward. It was hit by something, the action too fast for Larry to tell apart, and it split up into various small copies, ‘What? It can do that?!’
“Watch for it, this is the move!” Valerie warned as the Ghost-Type recombined, its eyes began to glow an ominous red before a beam of black with a pulsing purple outline shot out of them, hitting the Bronzong square in the face.
Pausing, Valerie switched apps on her phone. She showed the two of them a small diagram she’d seemingly scribbled out on her phone screen, “From what I saw, you take Ghost-Energy and charge it into your eyes until you can shoot some sort of laser. It's pretty confusing, as most Pokemon use the move differently. I saw a Gengar that shot out a projection of its eyes at its enemy as well, so I think you should take your time with it and try and find the right way to do it.”
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Sybil took the advice earnestly, nodding along with her, “I will do it.” It hopped onto the field and began its training.
Their trainer turned, “Now, what I have planned for you, Larry.”
Nodding as well, Larry readied himself, “Hit me with it!”
“For now, I want you to learn Rock Polish, and after that, we’ll try and improve Bite to Crunch. You’re really strong, but it feels like your speed is missing, so I wanted to get you something that could help with that. Our Type-Coverage for a Ground-Type and Rock-Type Gym is good, but Pokemon of those Types are quite slow. If you can outspeed them, we shouldn’t have any issues.”
Larry let the idea through, but nodded along by the end, ‘She makes a fair point, Larvitar aren’t the fastest on their feet. I’ve been getting away with it by using Dig to get away from sticky situations, but that won’t work all the time.’
“Also,” Valerie added, “Rock Polish is a move I could buy a TM for, but if we can manage to learn it by hand, I’ll go and look into other moves you could learn by TM, and we can give learning those a try.” She grimaced, “I don’t want to buy them, they’re pricey.”
Scoffing, Larry agreed. He couldn’t be entirely sure without a Game Guidebook or Wiki Page in front of him, but he was pretty sure he’d already learned some moves that Larvitar doesn't learn naturally. He certainly wouldn’t have come upon them without any of his knowledge, but it also wasn’t particularly hard, considering he had had an image of them in his mind already.
Tapping on her phone screen, Valeire commented, “I also wrote Stealth Rock in here. Most Rock-Types learn it, so I don’t see why you couldn’t. Other than that…” She tapped her chin in thought, “Hmm…Tyranitar also learn Dark Pulse, do you think you could?”
Larry wasn’t sure if Larvitar could learn it, but he nodded back anyway. If he couldn’t learn it now, then he could do so later at least. Suddenly, Larry remembered something. As someone who was a competitive Pokemon fan in his last life, there was one move he shouldn’t forget about, ‘Ooh~, the ultimate setup move! I don’t know if I can learn it, but we should at least consider it.’
Poking the back of her phone, Larry managed to bring his trainer back from her thoughts, “Oh, sorry. What is it?” ‘Time for another round of charades to get this across…I cannot wait to be able to write…’ He began by pointing at her phone screen, exactly at the list of moves, and then back at himself, “You…want toooo…learn a specific move?”
Nodding, Larry quickly continued. He twirled around on one leg like a ballerina, and Valerie gave her first guess, “Dance?” Larry nodded hastily before continuing. He channeled all his inner charade powers, flapping his arm around on his tippy-toes as he reenacted a landing, then after landing, he got on all fours and screeched into the sky with a loud, “Taaar!”
Next, he breathed out heavily onto the courtyard ground, shooting out imaginary flames at the town he’d just created in his mind. Valerie guessed once again, “Uhm? Bird?” He quickly shook his head, still in the same pose, “No? Err, Dragon?”
“Yes! You got it!” Larry agreed as he jumped up, “Dragon Dance! Hell yeah!”
“Dance and…Dragon.” Valerie was already tapping on her phone in disbelief, “Dragon Dance? You’re sure? No way, can Larvitar really learn Dragon-Type Attacks?”
“I’ll have to go look into this, ok?” She spoke unsurely, “Why don’t you go train for now?” Larry nodded back to that, more than happy to learn Rock Polish for now.
“Do you need to see a video of-” Before she could finish, Larry held up a hand, he already knew what Rock Polish entailed, “Oh, ok then. Good luck! I’ll look this up!”
…
Sybil had tapped out early, her progress with Night Shade unfortunately stagnating at the glowing red eyes stage, she couldn’t quite find the activation point for the supposed laser by the time she was exhausted. She was grumbling to herself while sitting next to Valerie, who was reading the Psychic-Type book to her while they both watched Larry train, “The flow was correct, but I am still unsure of the release. If it is similar to Confuse Ray, then…”
Larry himself had made short work of Rock Polish, learning the move in the matter of a few hours. It wasn’t a complicated thing to learn at all, he simply enhanced his skin with Rock-TE so it was harder and then enhanced his hands as well, scratching at himself until a thin outer layer of skin was gone. Finally, he released the Rock-TE and voilà, he was noticeably lighter!
Since his rocky skin made up most of his supposed hundred-fifty-pound weight, even just a slight decrease made for a real increase in agility, ‘Although I’m still not sure if what I’m scratching off is actually rock, or some kind of rocky skin. Larvitar live underground normally, but are they made of rock?’
Unfortunately for Larry, you can only scratch at your skin so much before it becomes irritated, so by the third attempt at improving the time the move took, he tapped out. With Sybil and Valerie focused on their learning material, Larry took the time to get started on Crunch. Bite had been one of his most effective moves, so the idea of an upgraded version was very nice indeed. It was stronger, and on top of that, it also lowered the enemy's defenses with its vicious nature.
…
His efforts weren’t rewarded, though, as nothing he tried had worked the way he wanted. He knew the move also had to work similarly to Bite, but no matter what he did, it always came out as a Bite. It had become evening by now, and Larry was already exhausted, but he still lunged forward into another attack in anger, ‘C’mon! WORK!’
‘Why the hell won’t this work?!’ Larry complained as another set of Dark-TE jaws dematerialized. It had been another Bite, ‘I gotta be doing something wrong, right?’
Valerie called out to him from the sidelines, “Larry! Come back over here! You still have some language studies to get to!”
After clambering up on the little bench with Valerie's help, she put a hand on his head, “Congratulations on getting to grips with Rock Polish so quickly.”
“I could totally get Crunch down too…” Larry defended, still slightly irritated, but Valerie's petting was getting him to calm down.
“Don’t worry too much about it, we have more than enough time to learn.” She explained as she turned to her other team member, “Sybil is still getting the hang of things, too, right?”
“Admittedly, it has turned out more laborious than I first expected.” She agreed, “Yet, the insight I received into Psychic-Types is fascinating. Observe.”
Sybil flashed pink and was on the other side of the bench in an instant, returning to her previous spot just as quickly.
“Oh! You already got better at teleporting?!” Valerie clapped her hands together at the achievement, “That’s amazing, Sybil!” The bird bowed to her trainer's praise.
“Correcting my application of Psychic Type-Energy allowed me to speed up my Teleportation by a huge margin!” She spoke with clear excitement in her voice, before returning to the same flat tone, “I am excited for what this promises for my other Psychic-Type Moves.”
“That's cool, Sybil.” Larry smiled at his teammate, “Congrats on the improvements. What about your future sight?”
Sybil looked apprehensive to answer at the mention of future sight, but continued, “It will improve, logically.”
Valerie cut in between them excitedly, “So Larry, I actually had to make a call to Professor Oak to confirm it, but it turns out that Larvitar can learn Dragon Dance!”
He pumped his fist, “Hell yeah! Dragon Dance, here I come!”
“It's a move usually inherited, but also able to be learned via TM. Gotta say, I’m quite surprised you’re able to learn a Dragon-Type Move.”
Larry flexed his biceps jokingly, “What don’t I look strong?”
Valerie giggled at the sight, understanding what Larry was trying to say, “Hahah! No-no. You’re strong!”
Suddenly her phone rang, “Oh crap, it's Mom!”
Picking up the call, Larry could already hear the woman on the other side of the call, “Valerie, it's already eight PM, it's gonna get dark soon! Please get ready to come home, Gustav still has some leftovers from dinner for you.”
“Sorry, I totally forgot to check the time. I’ll get going! Yeah, love you. Bye!” Valerie rose with a sigh, “Let’s get going, guys. We’ll have your writing lessons at home, Larry.”
