Heather

  RAT-PATA-PAT-PAT - PAT-PAT!

  Rapping her knuckles on the backalley door in a rhythmic motion, Heather looked around herself anxiously. She knew she shouldn’t be here, but the same thing brought her back, as it always did: money.

  A sigh escaped her, and she fought to keep a groan inside her, ‘This is the worst fucking thing I could do…This is so fucking stupid, but it's gonna have to be this.’

  Opening a little slit on the front of the door, a male voice spoke from beyond, “To infect the world with devastation.”

  “To blight all people in every nation,” Heather responded in a quiet whisper.

  “To denounce the goodness of truth and love.”

  Turning her head away shyly, she rolled her eyes at the sheer theater of her former employer's passwords, “To extend our wrath to the stars above.”

  “Alright, you pass,” The voice on the other side spoke, “Give me a second.”

  The grunt closed the door's peephole before finally opening up and leading her inside, “Come in. Now, where are you from?”

  Now it was time to enact the difficult part of her plan. If her research proved correct, then Team Rocket was still in the dark about what exactly went down in Viridian City. They knew as much as the public and Giovanni, which wasn’t much in the big picture. This is where her plan started.

  “I’m from Viridian,” She explained in a hushed tone, brushing at her hair with a free hand, “I managed to make my way here after we got raided.”

  “Seriously?” The grunt's eyes were on her now as they stepped down the stairs into the basement, “Well, I’ll be damned. We thought nobody made it out of Viridian.”

  “Yeah, I got lucky.” Heather was sweating bullets, but this was her chance, “I managed to sneak out when they were running through the halls, arresting people.”

  “Arceus…” The grunt seemed to drink up her story, looking her up and down once again, “You’re one lucky gal then, nobody else seems to have made it out, at least according to our reports.”

  “I didn’t contact anyone in case they were tracking my phone, so I left it in Viridian City.” With the grunt hooked around her finger, she made her move by putting some emotion into her voice, “It was really terrible…”

  “Y-Yeah, it was.” The man averted his eyes, instead hoping to continue his trek down into their hideout.

  “What about here?” Heather knew that with a weak girl on the verge of tears, the man would be way more loose-lipped, “Any action around Pewter City?”

  “Nothing yet,” The grunt confirmed, averting his eyes as Heather unbottended a single button on her work blouse, “It's quiet, oddly so. So we’ve been staking out so far, but the boss’s got some ideas for the future.”

  “Like what?” She pressed, ‘I got lucky, this guy is a sucker!’

  “Well…” He opened the door at the bottom of the staircase, “Let’s talk this over with the others first…”

  ‘Ah, fuck…’ Heather thought to herself, ‘Let's give it a try.’

  “Sure thing.” She smiled at him. Confidence was everything with these stupid grunts after all.

  …

  Valerie

  “So…what?” Matt was kind of surprised by Valerie’s Gym Challenge, “You just, uh, wait seven days?”

  “I guess so.” She shrugged, snuggling Larry in her lap a bit closer, “He probably just needed some time to prepare.”

  The day had come to an end, and it was now the evening, so the trio had reconvened into their rooms in the Pokemon Center to discuss their plans in Pewter City now that they were here, “What about your video editing?”

  “Already scheduled for upload,” He assured her, “Just…I should’ve probably asked before, but, uh, Stella, are you ok with being in the video?”

  “A video?” She looked unsure, Dusty crawling along her shoulder as the two girls sat in one of the two beds in the room, “I’m not sure…”

  “J-Just in the background, don’t worry.” Matt assured her, “I, uhm…I won’t force you to participate in the video. Otherwise, it’d be a lot of work hiding you.”

  “Now that just sounds like you’re guilt tripping her into appearing in it,” Valerie argued before taking one of Stellas hand, “Don’t worry, Stella. Matt knows his way around a computer, he could edit you out if he wanted.”

  “If it's just in the background, that's ok…” Stella relented, “I just don’t want to make a bad impression…”

  “Don’t worry Stella, you’re plenty cute just existing!” Valerie hugged her close.

  “Ah, don’t worry. You’re just in the background of a few clips.” Matt assured her.

  “So, getting back on topic.” Valerie brought the conversation back to the actual topic, “What’s your guys' plan for our stay in Pewter City?”

  “Mori and I participate in the Contest in four days!” Stella called out happily, “We’ll need a place to prepare our routine in the meantime. What about you, Valerie?”

  “Well, I have about seven days to prepare for my Gym Battle, so I’ll be training Sybil and Larry here.” She caressed his horn, “If I had to guess, Larry is also about to evolve soon, so we’ve got that to look forward to. Maybe we’ll need to prepare for it as well.” She turned to Matt, “What about you?”

  “Uhm…Good question.” He shifted in his seat awkwardly, “I-I guess we could go and try and train up Patrat a bit, I think he still wants to get stronger, right?”

  The Normal-Type nodded vigorously, pointing between himself and Larry, “I wanna! I wanna! I’ll get Larry to train me!”

  “Sure! I can do that!” Larry agreed easily enough, “We were already training, you know? Just make sure it doesn’t affect my normal training time.”

  “You bet it! I’ll get even stronger!” He agreed happily. It seemed Patrat at least had kept the motivation to keep improving himself.

  “It seems he’s alright with it, so I don’t mind.” Valerie also accepted the agreement, “I don’t think the training courts behind the Gym will be the best place to train for us. How about we go back to that spot behind the Stone Store? I think we won’t have many prying eyes back there.”

  “S-Sound good.” Matt nodded.

  Stella was also ok with the idea, “Ok!”

  “I still want to teach Larry a Fighting-Type move to surprise the Gym, and we also still need to work on Sybil’s Teleportation. Since she’s still so freshly evolved, getting the hang of her new form might also be useful…” Something suddenly came to Valerie's mind again, “Oh, wait! We’ve also got those TMs we still have to teach Sybil, Larry, and Mori.” She turned to Stella, “Did you buy yours intending to use it in the contest?”

  “Obviously.” Stella answered, “Aerial Ace is gonna come in useful.”

  “I can already think of some way to use it.” Valerie nodded, “Doing some fancy aerobatics in the air with your Pokemon or making it dodge things in the air.” She continued, “You could make Mori cut things in the air using its sharp wings or something similar.”

  The group's contestant was looking at her funny now. “...What?”

  “Oh, I had other plans, but I’m so gonna do that! Thanks for the tip.” She got scarily close to her face, enthusiasm clear on her face,

  “N-No worries, Stella.” Valerie tried to defuse the situation, but Stella was unperturbed.

  “You wanna try and compete as well? It's obvious you have some great ideas, I think you could place well!”

  “No thanks.” His trainer disagreed immediately, holding a hand up in front of her friend's face, “I have a Gym Battle to prepare for, I can’t be splitting myself up like that. I have no idea what Flint has in store for us. Besides, I’ve never even watched a Contest properly.”

  “Boo…” She pouted, “You’ll come cheer for me though, right?”

  “Of course, I’m not that busy. I want to cheer on a friend of mine!”

  “Yaaay!” Stella was once again happy, hugging herself close to Valerie.

  ‘I think I’d be smart to find a way for myself to keep being able to talk…’ Larry worried to himself, ‘I won’t be able to use Valerie’s phone when I evolve, and that’ll be a real downside when I wanna communicate with anyone who isn’t a Pokemon…’

  ‘But how would I even go about it?’ He wondered, ‘I mean its not like I can talk telepathically- Wait…’

  A memory he didn’t really like came back to mind, his freakout in Mt. Silver when he’d thought is mom had died, how Valerie had said she’d found him by feeling for his emotions and what Maxie had explained about the phenomenon on their flight back, ‘Sybil won’t be able to work as a Telephatic Translator, so I guess my bond with Valerie will need to jump in…But how will I even train that? Every time it happened so far has been by chance and while we said we were going to try and play around with it, we never even got that far…’

  ‘I guess I’ll bring it up tomorrow…’

  …

  “Alright, guys. Let’s get started!” Valerie clapped her hands as everyone dispersed into their own little spaces in the forested area behind Pewter City. It wasn’t as forested as Viridan City's outskirts and much more mountainous and rocky, with Mt. Moon in clear sight to the east behind them.

  Both Matt and Stella made their own spaces a little further away to train their own things, and the group would simply reconvene in the evening or when they were done with training, “First things first, Technical Machine Time!”

  Valerie spread out the colorful plastic cases of the various TMs in her palm like a fan, pink, brown, and pink respectively, before stacking them back on top of each other, “Ok, let's start with Earthquake.”

  With the satisfying crunch of a clear plastic case, the box for Earthquake snaps open and reveals a shiny, brown disk inside, the other side holding a small booklet, “Let’s see here…”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Picking the booklet out of the case, she looked through the instructions, muttering the instructions to herself, “Place Pokemon inside its Pokeball, press the Technical Machine on top of the button of Pokeball. The button of the Pokeball will glow green twice to confirm placement…Hmm, I see…Finally, press the button two times to confirm Technical Machine usage.”

  She sped up her whispered reading at the end, “DonotremoveTechnicalMachinewhileactiveunderanycircumstances.RemovalofTechnicalMachinemayleadtomemoryloss,braindamage,personalitydestruction- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I won’t. Let’s try it out!”

  “Can I hear those again?” Larry asked in a worried tone.

  “It’ll be alright, don’t worry.” Valerie assured him with a pat on the back, “Let’s get you inside your Pokeball and try the TM, ok?”

  “I guess…” Giving the button on his ball a tentative tap made Larry disappear into his Pokeball. The same beautiful alpine landscape appears as usual, before shortly disappearing into the dreary bright whiteness of the Pokeballs interior, same as when he’d just been caught.

  He tried to press against the inside of the Pokeball to see the outside, but the function didn’t seem to work anymore. In the same moment, the whiteness of his surroundings suddenly changed to a drab brown before his consciousness seemed to be taken hold of by something outside of his control, ‘Whaaaa…’

  “AARGH!” In a split second, it felt like thousands of tiny needles were wriggling their way into his head with great gusto, and Larry fought with himself not to lose consciousness entirely. He fell to his knees as he held his head in his arms, breathing heavily, “Fuuh! Fuuh!”

  Larry felt the needles wriggle deeper into the recesses of his brain, dropping some sort of information inside. It felt gross, absolutely disgusting. First came the memory of a rocky highland, with a stony landscape as far as the eye could see. Next came the memory of the usage of the attack, about how the Pokemon’s four feet impacted the ground harshly, pressing large swaths of Ground-TE into the soil below it until the ground literally began to shake and quiver with the sheer amount of energy infused into it. It all hurt so terribly much, Larry couldn’t even feel himself anymore.

  Finally, the Pokemon began stomping its feet violently, pressing explosive punches of Ground-TE into the earth, which felt like a fist striking a bowl of liquid. The earth tried to express itself outwards in waves, but was unable to, instead forcing the ground to break open and shake violently at its creases, as large swaths of Ground-TE began to radiate outwards to any enemy in its immediate vicinity.

  The memory didn’t stop there, immediately afterwards came the memory of the aftermath, the craggled and destroyed landscape left behind in the attack's wake. It wasn’t a pretty sight and would obviously pose issues for the continuation of the fight, this wasn’t an attack to be trifled with.

  Finally, the drab brown disappeared, and the tendrils also wriggled themselves free from Larry’s skull. He shivered as the last dredges of them seemingly popped out of his head, he felt very wrong suddenly. Before he could even try to compose himself, though, he was released from his Pokeball once again, appearing in front of a chipper Valerie.

  “Did it work?” When she saw Larry appear lying motionless in a heap on the ground, teary-eyed, and the remnants of slobber on his chin, her tune changed, “Larry?! What happened?!”

  Fighting to get his feet back under himself, Larry could only state the obvious, “That! sucked!”

  …

  Whatever had just happened, it wasn’t life-threatening, luckily. As Larry composed himself and Valerie freaked out, he couldn’t help but assume that this wasn’t normal, ‘FUCK THAT HURT! No way all of that happens every time a Pokemon uses a TM!’

  ‘Why’d it hurt so goddamn much?! It was like thousands of tiny creatures were all stabbing into my brain at once while I saw those Pokemon's memories of how to use their moves…What Pokemon was that? That was a Rhyhorn, right?’

  Valerie had obviously worried for him, holding him in her arms as best as she could manage with his weight, “Are you alright?! D-Did I do something wrong?!” She scrambled over towards the paper manual, looking over the warning sections once again, “I-I don’t think I did anything wrong…It all happened as expected…I think…”

  Once the TM Learning experience ended, so did the pain. It was a surreal experience overall, but Larry was sure of one thing, “I’m not doing another Technical Machine! Absolutely no way I’m doing that again!”

  “Surely it couldn’t have been that disastrous an experience,” Sybil argued, standing behind him protectively, “Are you sure no errors were made in the application of the Technical Machine?”

  Larry turned to his teammate, an accusatory arm pointed at him, “You can’t see the future and tell me you didn’t expect anything like this to happen! I feel betrayed!”

  Sybil almost felt insulted, her brow creasing, “The future is a fickle thing, I have told you so multiple times. I would obviously warn my friends of truly dangerous future events.” She turned quite shy at the end, “For various reasons, this seems to be especially the case for you…”

  The accusatory tone dropped, and Larry couldn’t find it in himself to complain to a teammate and friend about a phenomenon he didn’t even truly understand himself, “Yeah, I get it, sorry…That just hurt real bad…I’m still all hyped up from it…”

  His teammate didn’t seem happy dropping the topic, though, “Perhaps there is some…personal component…which interfered in the process?”

  ‘Personal?’ Larry wondered, ‘What’s she trying to say?’

  Before he could answer, Valerie spoke back up again, “Sorry again…but I gotta know…Did you actually learn the move?”

  Thinking it over in his mind, Larry thought about the application of the energies, the Ground-TE, and how to apply it to the ground to cause an Earthquake and nodded confidently, “I think I got it.”

  “Do you feel good enough to give it a try?” Valerie tried unsurely.

  Getting back up onto his feet, Larry tests himself with stretching for a moment, ‘Weird…A moment ago, I felt absolutely terrible, like I was about to die. Now suddenly I feel perfectly fine again…’

  Once again, Larry nodded, “I feel ok. Let’s give it a try!”

  “Ok…” His trainer didn’t seem sure, “Just make sure to stop if you’re not feeling well…I’ll take you to the Pokemon Center later anyway, just to be sure.”

  “Sure thing!” Taking a few steps away from Valerie and positioning himself a safe distance from anything that could be destroyed, Larry finally gave the knowledge in his mind a try.

  ‘Alright…Let’s give this a try…’ So he began channeling the Ground-TE around his body, ‘...The unyielding energies of the earth, the stability to remain for millions of years, ever-changing, unstoppable, and indiscriminate…’

  His core went into overdrive, producing a copious amount of Ground-TE, all of which channeled into the Ground below him, he felt a pool of Ground-TE slowly fill up the soil below him. In real time, it happened in less than a few seconds, but the mental concentration was clearly far higher than for any of his previous Ground-TE Moves, ‘No, this is probably the most I've ever had to focus.’

  Then, finally he coaxed the rest of the Ground-TE into his feet and began to stomp violently, empowering his feet all the while.

  STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

  His feet slammed into the ground, creating divots where his feet impacted. The Ground-TE transferred into the ground in real waves, he felt it. With every stomp, the waves grew, ebbing outwards from him into giant waves as he began to see the ground bulge upwards before slowly cracking into large divots.

  “You’re doing it!” Valerie cried out from a distance away, and Larry could see his success now, too. Gazing around himself as he continued to stomp, he saw more and more crevices begin to open up. He could feel it now too, there was a steady radiation of Ground-TE around the region. Since Larry was still empowered by his own Ground-TE, the surrounding energies were also all his own Type-Energy, it didn’t seem to hurt him, surprisingly.

  Finally, Larry stopped stomping, feeling slightly winded, “Huff…Huff…Wow, that’s a real workout, huh?” Since the move required continuous amounts of Type-Energy, even during his movements, it had eaten up quite a lot of his reserves, ‘Whew…So that’s why it only has so few PP in the games…’

  Valerie was already approaching him, stepping cautiously over the various cuts and crevices in the earth, “That was amazing, Larry! That Technical Machine is a real game-changer, isn’t it?”

  “Quite the impressive display,” Sybil supplied from Valerie's side. She gazed over the affected area, “It seems Earthquake has a far larger range than your previous Ground-Type moves, does it not?”

  “It’s the best Ground-Type Move for obvious reasons!”

  …

  Next up it was Sybils turn, but Valerie was still queasy, “I don’t know…you guys think somethings wrong with the TMs? I don’t want to give you the same experience Larry had.”

  Sybil gave a huffed response, “Hmph! I doubt that was normal.”

  “Me too…” Valerie nodded tensly, “But what if it happens again?”

  “I can assure you it won’t. Otherwise, I would’ve seen it happen,” The Psychic.Type explained, “I was supposed to experience it after all.”

  “I didn’t quite catch the end on that one…” His trainer answered unsurely, scratching her cheek, “Alright…Let’s just give it another try…”

  Finally, Sybil was allowed to press the button on the front of her Pokeball and disappeared in the a red flash. Larry held Valerie's phone in his arms, having asked her beforehand if he could write something out for her. In front of him, Valerie pressed the plastic disc on top of the button of her Pokeball and waited patiently for the button to blink the green light of confirmation, “Next, I just press the button two times…Just like last time….”

  Larry couldn’t help but eye his trainer as the TM activated, it spun to life on top of the Pokeball, reaching dizzying speed before it just as suddenly stopped once again. Valerie picked the disc off the Pokeball and placed it back into the disc's case with a simple snap, “Ok…”

  ‘That was it? I thought it took like a minute or so with how much it hurt, that was barely ten seconds!’

  She released the bird, who appeared standing as still and blank-eyed as ever. The mood was anxious as Valerie asked the important question, “So? Did it go well?”

  Sybil, for her quirked her head to the side, “That was it?”

  “You didn’t even notice anything?!” Larry cried out between tapping in characters on her phone, “That hurt so badly I thought I would die!”

  “Nothing hurting?” Valerie double-checked with the bird, walking in a circle around her to make sure, “No issues?”

  “None.” She nodded, now less sure of her own words with how much everyone else seemed to worry, “I did say I thought a personal component might be the cause for Larry's case…”

  “Again with that…” Larry muttered annoyedly until it suddenly clicked, ‘Wait! Is Sybil talking about…my reincarnation?’

  A shiver ran down his spine as he stared at the bird, who was assuring their trainer with nods of her well-being.

  ‘Maybe…could it be the reason why it hurt so bad?’ Larry theorized, ‘...Because I’m not 100% Pokemon?’

  Larry wasn’t going to say he had any idea of what he was talking about, even with Sybils Psychic Knowledge, he doubted the Flying-Type did much either, but she did seem to think in the right direction, ‘It could definitely be…’

  ‘In a world where Pokemon can conjure things out of practically nothing, I wouldn’t find it absolutely crazy that souls and the like actually exist. Hell, Ghost-Type exist, isn’t that basically confirmation?’ That just left more questions from the past and for the future, ‘How the hell did I get here anyway…And into a Larvitar Egg of all things…Damn, does this mean it will hurt just as badly with other TMs? Does that mean TMs work by attaching to the soul or the brain? Do I still have a human brain or just a human soul?’

  Shaking his head, Larry dropped the thought, ‘I won’t be able to get to the bottom of any of this anyway, let’s just drop it…I should be happy that the Technichal Machine didn’t kill me outright, that would’ve been a gruesome end…’

  “No idea why it happened, sorry…” Larry called out to Sybil. Maybe he’d come clean one day, but it probably wouldn’t be today.

  Sybil raised her wings as her eyes began to glow with a blue-tinted light. She projected a giant, rectangular, glittering shield of energy outward, which she seemed to be able to move freely. Floating the shield around herself, Sybil took a good, hard look at it while Valerie cheered, “You got it, Sybil! You got it! And it didn’t even hurt, did it?”

  “Naturally…” Sybil replied, dematerializing the shield and turning to Valerie, “What about the Technical Record?”

  “You want to learn Psychic right now?” Valerie guessed correctly, eliciting a nod from Sybil. She seemed more confident now, but still had her concerns, “I guess we can try it…Just make sure you tell me if something feels off, ok?”

  “Logically…” She nodded, “I need to keep being strong.”

  “Alright, let’s try this next, then.” She recalled Sybil once again, opening the next plastic case as Larry continued writing his little text on her phone. Turning to him, Valerie pressed the button on the front of the Pokeball once again, “Larry, are you gonna be done on my phone soon? I wanna look up some stuff about the new moves.”

  “A few more letters…” Larry answered, quickening his pace.

  “Alright…Just make sure-”

  SNAP! The disk on top of her Pokeball shattered into a thousand brittle pieces, falling to her feet into a fine dust.

  “W-What?! I-I think that’s ok, right?” Once again, Sybil was released in a flash of light and unfurled her wings. “You alright, Sybil?”

  …

  Sybil, unsurprisingly, was completely and utterly alright. It just confirmed Larry's little pet theory about his entire being, ‘I’m probably a bit of a weirdo, aren’t I?’

  Showing off his brand new move, Sybil lifts a boulder sitting around in the near vicinity with her mind. It forces the rock to orbit its body, acting as both a defensive prop and an offensive one if thrown.

  "Wow, that's really convenient!" Valerie followed the giant rock as it orbited around the bird, "That'll be really useful when you can't predict an enemy's movements before hitting them with a Future Sight, huh?"

  "Indeed." She bowed.

  After Sybil showed off her brand new move, Valerie turned her attention to Larry, “Now, finally. What did you write to me?”

  Pressing the button of the Text-To-Speech Program, Larry knew that if he wanted to continue communicating into the future, this was his only way.

  Their bond as Pokemon and Trainer, “I want to learn more about our empathetic bond. Maxie said trainer and Pokemon can understand each other through it, and since I won’t be able to write anymore once I turn into a Pupitar, I think it is the best option with which I’ll continue being able to communicate with you.”