Episode 21: To catch a fire type
On their way to Fallarbor Town, where Brittany and JJ would compete in their third Pokémon Contest, the group found themselves walking through the fiery path. Like the name implies, the fiery path is, well, hot. As one of the tunnels on the eastern end of Mt. Chimney, it is a relatively short journey, but nonetheless a difficult one, as the temperature is far higher than anyone in the group was used to. Unfortunately, it was the quickest path to Fallarbor Town.
"Niko, I'm hot…" Jake complained moments after entering the tunnel.
"I know, I know. It's not gonna be easy, that's for sure. But it'll be quick, I promise!" Niko reassured his younger brother, who had mudkip out to occasionally spray water gun into his face. Brittany did the same with wartortle.
To brave the heat, the group all changed into shorts and sleeveless, thin shirts. Brittany tied her hair back, and JJ tried putting on a sweatband, only to realize it wasn't helping as much as he thought. Niko, who strongly disliked hot weather, kept wiping sweat off of his forehead, and occasionally itching his hair, which was not reacting well to the heat either.
It seemed like an eternity before they saw the end of the path, but once they did, the four trainers—plus the two water types—made a run for it down the tunnel. They were about to make it when Jake tripped over what looked like a rock. As he screamed and tumbled to the floor, Niko immediately halted himself and turned around to help his brother. When he attempted to do so, he noticed that Jake didn't trip over a rock—he tripped over a pokémon.
"What the-?" Niko wondered as he helped Jake up. He didn't have to wonder for too long, though—the "rock" slowly rose from the ground to reveal a familiar yellow and orange pokémon. "Is that a…numel?" Niko asked. He didn't get much of an answer, as the numel scowled at Niko and began to charge for it, causing the older brother to drag the younger one to the end of the tunnel, where JJ and Brittany were waiting.
"Run! Run!" Niko shouted, throwing his free hand in the air as he dragged Jake through the fiery path. The other two trainers noticed the raging numel charging at them and immediately ran through the tunnel's exit and into a small field on the mountainside. As they stopped to catch their breath, they saw Niko and Jake still running, with the two-foot tall fire type racing after them.
"Should we help?" Brittany asked.
"Let's try and distract it. Can wartortle fight it?"
"Sure can," Brittany exclaimed. "Wartortle, use water gun!"
The turtle pokémon tried spraying water at the numel, but due to the long exposure to the heat inside fiery path, it only sprayed out steam from its mouth, much to Brittany and JJ's dismay. They saw that Niko had pushed Jake aside and taken ownership of angering numel, and was still running somehow. They then noticed Jake and mudkip trying to calm it down, but the result was very much the same—mudkip couldn't use water gun either.
JJ then thought of something, snapping his fingers as he did so. "Niko! I uh have an idea!"
"What is it?" Niko shouted as he continued running through the field.
"Throw at pokéball at it! It might slow it down, especially if you catch it!" JJ explained. Niko, desperate for any solution to this mess, went with the idea. He reached into his bag for a pokéball, which significantly slowed him down. Just as numel was about to collide with Niko, the latter turned around and threw a pokéball at the pokémon's head. Numel turned bright red as it went into the pokéball. Niko doubled over, gasping for air as he watched the pokéball vibrate several times. It hardly occurred to him that he might own this rather angry pokémon.
And, as it turned out, he would own it. The pokéball stopped moving with a clicking noise, indicating it was now Niko's to train.
"Wow, uh…thanks, JJ, for the idea," Niko said as he got down to grab the pokéball, falling over onto the grass from exhaustion. As he sat there he looked at it for a moment. "Honestly, I'm kind of scared to send it out."
"Well, you could just leave it here, y'know," JJ suggested, eliciting a light gasp from Brittany and a confused look from Niko.
"I won't do that, JJ. It's mine now. Plus, I've never trained a fire type before. How bad could it be?"
"Not hard at all. Fay, Brittany, and I all have one. Fay had two even! Clearly it isn't difficult," JJ said, sitting in the field next to his friend. "And if you have any problems, you can just release it, right?"
"JJ…" Niko said, shaking his head. "I can't just get rid of my pokémon. That doesn't seem right."
"You're right…I don't know, I just don't feel too comfortable with that thing around us…"
"But you suggested that I catch it!" Niko exclaimed, looking incredulously at JJ.
"I know, but you still have the option to just leave it there!" JJ protested.
"Okay!" Brittany said, sitting in between the two. "Stop it, both of you. Niko's keeping it but, if it turns out to be too much trouble and breaks our things—or worse, one of us—then Niko will release it. Got it?" JJ and Niko both nodded, quickly pleasing the brunette. "Good. Now, let's get going. Fallarbor Town isn't going to be waiting for us if we don't hurry it up!"
The group continued walking until they found a small pond to rest at. While they were cleaning up, Niko summoned his team to introduce them to numel.
"Everyone, this is numel. I just caught it while it was chasing after—ow!" Niko shouted as he felt his right arm burning. Numel used ember on him! Niko ran towards the pond and got down onto his knees to quickly throw water on it. It wasn't until a panicking mudkip sprayed Niko's arm from top to bottom that the brown-haired trainer began to feel a little better.
"Niko, are you okay?" Brittany asked as she got down on her knees to observe her friend's burn. "Ouch…how'd this happen?"
"Numel burnt me…" Niko said, dropping his head in shame.
"You might need to get rid of it, Niko," Brittany suggested as she took care of his burn. Niko shook his head in disagreement.
"No, I'm keeping it. I'll try to deal with it."
"But what if numel burns you again, or worse…?" Brittany continued, still urging Niko to reconsider.
"I'm keeping it. That's final," He looked up at his pokémon. All of them were keeping their distance from their new teammate, who was resting in the shade under a tree, seemingly without a care in the world.
The group stayed at the pond for the rest of the day. From a distance Niko watched his pokémon work on some new moves. Taillow was trying to learn double team, which shouldn't be too hard, since it was certainly fast enough to create an illusion of itself. Nonetheless, it had difficulty multiplying itself more than once, but Niko kept at it, trying to recall how yanma had known it. Treecko was working on improving its bullet seed by using it on a tree. It was trying to work on its release and speed of the individual seeds. Aron was working on strengthening its mud slap so that it would cover more ground. The next gym was fire type, and Niko knew aron would be his ace in that particular battle, so both agreed that working on mud slap was the right way to go. Lastly, electrike was trying to learn an electric move. Niko wanted to help it learn shock wave, just like Wattson's magneton had learned. However, as this particular move was complicated to learn, Niko settled for trying to teach it thundershock. As it was practicing, it was only able to produce single sparks, not a flowing stream of electricity that characterized thundershock.
Numel, meanwhile, continued to sleep, clearly not caring about the world around it. Niko, wary of trying to talk to it, simply let it sleep through the day and into the night, only bothering it to bring it food. Numel hardly looked at its trainer as it ate the food before going back to sleep.
"Niko, are you going to do something about the numel?" Brittany asked, looking across their campsite to the small mound of pokémon that was the numb pokémon.
"I really don't know what to do. It clearly doesn't want to be with me, but I want to believe in it," Niko said, exhaustion in his voice. "Speaking of which, I should at least see what the pokédex has to say about it," He said as he flipped open his pokémon encyclopedia:
"Numel, the numb pokémon. Fire and ground type. A numel stores boiling magma in the hump on its back. It is a hardy pokémon that can transport a 220-pound load. It has served humans at work since long ago."
"Interesting. I wonder what moves it can learn…" Niko said, scrolling through the entry with his free left hand. "So, this particular one seems to know tackle, growl, ember, and magnitude…what's magnitude?"
"It's kind of like earthquake!" Jake explained, much to Niko's surprise. "Only weaker. The power of magnitude is always random. Sometimes, it can be really weak, like only a small shake in the ground. At its best, it's actually stronger than earthquake!"
"Huh…where'd you learn that?"
"School. I read the textbook," Jake answered proudly, eliciting a facepalm from his older brother, who clearly hadn't.
"Well, alright. I'm gonna head off to bed now, and try to feel a little better about all of this," Niko said as he got up and walked over to his sleeping bag, returning numel as he did so.
Author's note: Yeah, short episode, I know. There wasn't much else to include besides Niko catching numel and realizing the difficulties that he might face ahead with it. I plan to expand more on this in the next episode and more ones after. Let's just say Niko won't have an easy time training his first ever fire type.