(A/N) Hey all, time for another update for Chasing Shadows, and our penultimate introductory chapter, bringing Malcom Verthandern to your attention. Written by the sensational Warg, you'll be seeing a lot more of this character, so I hope the chapter meets your expectations! The last of our opening chapters will come next week, so stay tuned!

Enjoy!

Chapter Six – Status Effect

Malcolm Verthandern

Written by WargishBoromirFan

"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." – Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Disappointment was a status effect.

Timbivale's elite trainers worked long and hard to immunize themselves, first from their own pokémon's toxins, then finding the best cures for sleeping draughts and burning chemicals and paralyzing agents and anything else that might keep their pokémon from top form. The clan masters were rumoured to even have a goodly resistance to psychic attacks, taking arms against the weaknesses of their native poison types and following the examples of the not uncommon bug types by honing their own minds to weapons sharp as their blades.

Mal had been through the usual gamut of poison immunization; every kid growing up in a house filled with arbok, ekans, and seviper was regularly given small doses of antivenin simply as a precaution. The snakes themselves weren't too terrible, but he'd never been fond of small, sharp objects entering his skin, whether those were needles or fangs. The other cups he'd been made to drink to increase his tolerance to the native wildlife hadn't done much to win Mal over, either: now greater and greater dashes of poison powder mixed in with his dinner until he was sick, now healing potions that burned almost as much going down as they did coming back up as he recovered from the preliminary training a Timbivale pokémon master was supposed to absorb well before ever thinking about getting his own starter.

Kids in other towns, he'd heard, only had to worry about passing a written test, but merely memorizing weaknesses had never been enough for his town elders when those weaknesses might be removed from the picture. Even if they threatened to remove him with these passive defences.

And that was leaving out the physical end of training. Timbivale did not just produce poisonous pokémon; each pokémon and trainer sent out from the forested city was meant to be a master of stealth, deception, and attacking from the shadows. Mal was too weak, frequently too ill, and always too undisciplined to be much at attacking from anywhere, and about the only thing he was good at deceiving his sensei about was where he'd next go to hide while shirking training.

The first step was getting out of the house, which wasn't too hard when one spent as much time in the Pokécenter as with the snake species that his parents bred at home. As long as there was the impression of movement, the people around could make all the assumptions they liked as to whether that movement was towards the gym with the other trainees, back home for a forgotten bit of equipment, to the center to recover from yet another mishap, or out to the wilds where he'd be free to run from nothing but untamed pokémon. Or his masters, if his teacher got tired of waiting for his arrival at the gym.

It wasn't that he particularly liked the deep caves just east of the village with their swarms of zubats overhead and geodudes lurking under one's feet or the forest surrounding it with beedrill and combee hives, but when he got bitten or hit or stung out there, no one told Mal that it was for his own good. If he didn't bother them so well that the wild pokémon didn't even notice him, they didn't bother him. Typically. There had been an incident with a foongus when he was eleven, which made his father insist that Mal needed to focus more on his training so that the boy could start his pokémon team of ninja with himself.

Mal figured he was. He was just starting off by learning how to become immune to disappointment.

He would never likely gain much skill in poison-craft, and he was liable to die before he showed any promise as a fighter. But if he could find a way to avoid his trainers and his parents, he couldn't see their expressions of disgust and resignation, and wouldn't feel how hard he'd failed. If he could run fast and quietly and far enough, eventually he'd be able to settle down as a master of not caring whether or not he became the warning to future generations instead of a proper pokémon ninja master.

Someday, maybe he'd make it all the way across the mountains to the big city, where trainers could concentrate on pokémon that couldn't slowly kill one with a touch. For the time being, Mal scouted the conifer forest east of Timbivale and its cavernous passageways hidden within the fallen pine needles, the first leg of the journey, and tried to see if he might find anything that would get him a little closer to that dream, whether it be a starting pokémon besides an ekans or bug-type, or just a quick, peaceful nap in a tree. He had mostly been counting on the latter the day he finally did make more headway than climbing a spruce and gazing out at the forest below, eyes peeled for potential dangers, but when the trainer was ready, as his masters had been fond of saying, the starter would appear. Even if he hadn't truly felt ready so much as just seeking a way out of trouble when he'd first spotted her.

His chosen starter was not an approved species, but she'd been easy enough to bribe with treats and affection, hardly needing the pokéball he'd claimed - all right, stolen from his parents' supply of unused carved balls, but he'd passed the online test even if he wasn't officially registered at the Timbivale gym and wouldn't be until he could counter a poison sting from a spinarak instead of barely dodging it and running for the hills - just to show his father that positive attention could work wonders. Winning the turtwig's trust hadn't been a fast thing, but he'd had time.

The first berries had been dropped by mistake; he stumbled into a spearow nest halfway up a branch and hadn't taken the time to secure the rest of his intended lunch once he'd thrown enough in his panicked scrabble up the branches to convince the angered birds that he wasn't worth the trouble. Why he'd gone further up the tree when attacked by a flyer he could only blame upon instinct honed from the long reach of a venusaur's vine whips, but the turtwig had seemed much smaller than Tanaka-sensei's favourite pet for retrieving Mal from the treetops - small, cute, and harmless as she munched her way through the scattered fruit. Mal dropped her a little more.

He knew what it was like, feeling hungry.

It was nice, sitting in a tree, dropping berries and slices of fruit closer and closer to the base of the trunk and watching her lumber up. Much nicer to see her finally look up and connect him with the food, round yellow eyes going wide with something like awe, rather than seeing his one of his sensei stalk silently up to the base of the old spruce and look up as if they'd known he was there the whole time and just hadn't wanted to acknowledge it because the humans of his village associated him with laziness and the sweating sickness.

Maybe that was why he didn't immediately go for the dangerously thin branches above him when the young turtwig stood on her hind legs, tried to balance her upper body against the trunk, and promptly ended up on her back, kicking her legs impotently. She twisted her oversized head one way and then the other, but appeared to be unable to flip herself over without risking the seedling on the crown of her skull.

Mal climbed down. The turtwig was a lot bigger when he got closer to the ground than he'd first expected, well up to his gangly knees, but her kicks slowed as he approached her. He pulled out the pokeball merely to make it easier to right her, keeping his voice very quiet in case anything that wanted to eat more than sliced fruit came out of the trees.

Pear, named for her favourite treat, had followed him home from the forests and proven that her shell was hard enough to resist most of the stingers and fangs that struck them in returning. Her leaves drooped from bug stings, both wild and far more cultured than Mal had ever been considered, but she bristled back just enough to run into the hollow of Mal's legs and spit a flimsily-thin Razor Leaf up at the spearow that had not quite forgiven Mal's inadvertent trespass, the wild yanma that buzzed a bit too low and close to her fruit source, and Hiro Tanaka's own rather unamused venusaur when Mal's triumphant return home faltered before he'd made it all the way to the gym. None of her attacks had done that much damage, but here was something that was willing to stand between his back and trouble, some one that might not be able to drive away danger, but was at least willing to try to protect him.

That had to be worth more than yet another lesson he'd been planning on shirking anyway, right?

Mal had thought so, upon first opening her pokéball and whimpering something that sounded more like "Please don't kill me" than any specific command that might increase the turtwig's effectiveness against the thick-beaked bird diving for his head. Once she'd emerged, Pear had withdrawn to bump against his legs, expecting another berry, but when the spearow descended upon flapping wings, she'd spit the sharpest-edged leaves that she was capable of producing. She was too young for the Razor Leaf to actually do any damage, even to something that wasn't all but immune to grass-type moves, but she was trying, withdrawing into her shell as it pecked at her and then tackling it to the ground before it could fly back up out of range.

Mal pulled his own head up out of his arms at the solid "thunk!" of the bird hitting the dirt beneath them. Slowly, he stood from cowering between the defending turtwig and the nearest tree. The spearow didn't get back up again, though he could have sworn he saw a wing twitch.

Pear pranced around him, though, and he offered her a whole handful of fruit slices. Her shell was firm but slightly damp when he laid a shaking hand on her back, working up the nerve to pat her before they walked away from the tree. His eyes kept wandering back to the downed spearow.

He had to register her at the Pokécenter. Tournaments or not, official trainer or not, nobody was going to take away his first method of defence that did not end up hurting him in the process or potentially running into even more trouble. Mal decided that she would probably be happier out of her ball as they walked home; Pear was certainly making no attempt to leave his side. He tightened his grip on her shell as she turned her head near the edge of the forest, but it was only to shoo away a clear-winged pokémon that buzzed too low, not turn back and run into the trees.

Mal was rather surprised that he hadn't heard the yanma first. Normally he was on high alert for wild potential attackers, but he'd been so focused on whether or not Pear would turn and run that she'd noticed the insectile interloper before he had. With most others, that would mean a stinging reminder to stay on guard at best, a gruelling training session that would make him wish that the unseen attacker had killed him at worst, but with Pear there... The yanma was gone almost before he'd registered it. Mal liked the feeling.

He liked seeing Tanaka-sensei waiting outside the gym a little less, venusaur at his side, his other pokemon doubtlessly hidden in plain sight or awaiting release at his belt, but Mal didn't necessarily have to register his new capture – his new companion – at the gym. A Pokécenter would be able to get her all checked out, make sure her soil balance was all right and her leaves weren't left drooping, and maybe get them both a good solid meal while he filled out the paperwork to send off to Calanque City or somewhere else where training wasn't limited to those who would risk nearly killing themselves to perfect the art.

"What is that, child?" Tanaka didn't bother pointing or putting out a hand to stop Mal's progress, though the old man's mouth did narrow with distaste.

"I went and caught my own pokémon," Mal said. It was easier to stand straight and puff out his admittedly skinny chest with his turtwig at his side. "I know you and Dad say I'm not ready yet, but Pear thinks I do just fine, don't you?" She turned into his hand, eyeing the venusaur sideways, as if considering her odds should it attack. The older pokémon was much bigger than her, after all.

"You caught a grass type, perhaps the weakest thing in the forest. Every native-bred pokémon in town has a clear advantage over it, as do half the wild types in the forest. It will struggle to defeat even other grass species." Tanaka's venusaur rumbled as if in agreement, and Pear spat leaves and defiance.

"She's at least really good against most of the things you'd stumble over in the caves," Mal insisted, though he hadn't tested that yet. He just had to make sure that she didn't test Tanaka's statement just yet, not until he had her registered and no one could try to take her away for starting a fight with an older, stronger, fully evolved seed pokémon. Sure, the upper echelons of ninja clan masters could probably use whichever pokémon they wanted in an in-town match, off the register or not, but if Mal was going to appeal to regional laws to get his license, he and Pear would both have to follow them for battles, too. Besides, he'd seen the wrong end of that vine whip too many times to want Pear to have to face it. "And she's not afraid at all." Her leaves were less than perfect razors, but she stood firm between him and the venusaur she'd identified as a potential threat.

"No, she isn't, is she?" Hiro Tanaka withdrew his pokémon, if only for the moment. Mal still didn't doubt that he had others in the shadows. "This turtwig will make a poor starter, but perhaps she will teach you something. Such as the art of coming to class." The old master tossed the pokéball in his hand a few inches upwards, not looking as it spun back down to his palm. Mal knew a distraction technique when he saw it, but the spinning red and white ball was hypnotizing in its arch, straight up and down, up and down... The moment Mal lost his concentration on Tanaka-sensei's off hand, he knew he'd be lost. The moment he was certain that the attack would come from the right, Tanaka-sensei's daughter Kezia- an older, better student by so far above his skill level that comparing her to Mal would be an insult - would attack from behind him. Trying to watch both sides made him feel wall-eyed.

Mal ended up filling out his paperwork while flat on his back, moaning around a bruised rib, but Pear enjoyed the attention from the Pokécenter staff, especially once the nurse on duty had offered her a bite to eat. Mal was almost offended by how quickly his turtwig had gone from eyeing Nurse Kim like she was going to lay Mal out, as the gym leader had done, to eating out of her hand, but he couldn't stay too mad at the healer for very long.

Nurse Kim was the one who insured that he was connected to the world outside the insular village, providing the young trainee with something resembling hope for a future as well as physical care and an internet connection. Most of the clan masters, including Mal's father, disapproved of the public internet and phone access the Pokécenter provided, but Nurse Kim was one of the few outsiders that had been accepted by the Timbivale families, and her free wifi was chalked up to batty but well-meaning outsider ways. His father only tolerated Mal spending so much time around the Pokécenter because the boy was always getting ill, but Mal suspected he was a little bit in love with the stories Nurse Kim told him of a home beyond Timbivale and its poisonous standards and secrets. Calanque City was going to be wonderful, at least in his dreams.

Mal might still run when he got there, - Nurse Kim couldn't have come to their little remote village purely out of the goodness of her heart, even if she was a nice person - but he liked the idea of running towards something instead of away from it all.

Besides, she and her staff really were spoiling his newly registered starter, so it was no wonder that Pear liked her, too. They even had fresh pears, one of which his turtwig deposited on Mal's chest. It stung like a grenade, but it was only a little slobbered on. He scratched behind her sapling, glad to see her leaves beginning to perk up.