~Joan~
When I entered my home after a long day of post-mission-paperwork, the last thing I expected to see was David, holding the smallest Gastly I'd ever seen within glowing hands, telling it. "Say daddy. Not mommy, daddy. Come on, you can do it!" While Zubat and Weedle were watching, clearly amused.
After closing my eyes for five seconds, pinching myself and opening them again, the scene in front of me had not changed, except for David, who noticed me and was looking at me wide-eyed. "Ehm... It isn't what it looks like?"
Droll, really. "I'm not even sure what I'm looking at, to be honest." I suddenly felt more tired than just a minute ago. Acting on that, I threw myself into the Upholstered Armchair of Absolute Comfort as I named it, that luckily stood perfectly across the sofa they commandeered.
"Why don't you start at the beginning." And he did. He had a good grip on his emotions, but the loathing he felt for the previous owner of the house shone through a couple of times.
Honestly, I couldn't fault him for that. After reporting this to Thomas, I was going to request to hunt that bastard down myself. But David came first. "You are a reckless idiot and a walking headache."
I told him this with a lot of not so hidden fondness in my voice, when he told me his way of feeding the happy little ghost. Honestly, this was as reckless as it gets.
If the newborn had went on a feeding frenzy because of nearly starving, he might have actually died. I couldn't help but admire the way he put the life of a pokémon on the same level as a human's, his own even, even if it was a dangerous and dumb move.
He looked at me, confused. "You are the only person I know, who can insult me in a way, that makes it sound like praise." I smiled at him indulgently. "That's because it was both, an admonishment to stop doing stupid crap as well as praise for doing the right thing, thoughtless and idiotic as it was."
He grumbled a bit while continuing to play with Gastly, who seemed to radiate joy at the attention he was receiving. I could see a hint of red on David's cheeks and ears, though, so he wasn't entirely unaffected by the praise. Fufufu, was he really trying to emulate Thomas and become a Tsundere?
Back to the reason I felt I had to praise his attitude. A lot of trainers, even some of the really good ones, saw pokémon more as tools than thinking, feeling beings. Abuse may be at an all-time low but those, who saw pokémon as nothing but tools...
I didn't finish those thoughts with a conscious effort as I directed my attention at the family in front of me, because that's what they are, family.
For someone, who experienced as much suffering as this little fellow right after birth, he looked remarkably at home within the hands of David, smiling up at him in a surprisingly non-creepy way. I had no idea they could actually smile in a non-creepy way, a true revelation.
He was also kind of... Sparking? From time to time. When asked, David answered me this. "Oh, he learned aura from feeding, now he's trying to get a good grip on it. He can already transmit emotions pretty well and he's growing more proficient every time."
The pride he had in his voice, when talking about a pokémon he only just met... Well, he did basically adopt him, so it was kinda understandable.
I wasn't even going to comment on the impossibility that was learning aura from feeding, nope, that's a headache I wanted to avoid. ...This was going to be a trend, wasn't it? "If only he would stop calling me mama..."
Oh, I can have some fun with that. "Well, if you think about it, you feed him from your body. You also risked your personal safety to nourish him and you got extremely angry at his behalf. You are kinda behaving like a Mama Ursaring and he seems to pick that up instinctively, which explains his fixation." I finished the summarisation of what I had gathered from their behaviour with a mischievous smirk.
He paled at that. What I didn't expect was the groan and sigh afterwards, since they sounded resigned. True to fashion, his reaction just didn't fit with a boy of the age of 10.
"Fine, I'll be your mama, little one." Gastly lit up as if he understood. Glancing at the glowing hands, those might have been a reason for that. Aura is extremely good at transmitting intentions and emotions, after all.
Weedle decided to pipe up while this heartwarming scene was happening. She decided, that announcing herself, scaling David until reaching his shoulder and seriously stating her species name to Gastly a couple of times might just be the way to go.
The ghost listened seriously, as Weedle continued it's 'lecture' under David's indulgent and soft gaze. He also had a gentle smile on his face, that did fit him quite well.
Pokémon had an innate understanding of their own language, and they inherited basic memories from their parents. Speech and some species information was always part of the package.
Sometimes, there will be moves, that are usually not learned, or at least later in life. Those, we trainers called Egg Moves. The stronger the parents, the more information will be given, usually, which gives those young'uns from powerful parents a decent headstart into life.
A soft smile appeared on my lips as I watched him interact with his team. He may be a smartass, a walking headache and a conundrum or three, but scenes like this made up for everything...
"...and this over there is Aunty Joan, she's getting a bit old, so she might be promoted to 'Grand Aunty' soon."
...At least it's Aunty instead of Grandma, so I guessed his survival instincts were still somewhat intact I take back all the praise, though. He's a little shit.
~David~
Being a mother was a hard job, but being the mother of a pokémon was probably harder and easier at the same time.
[Gastly
Bond status:
Parental
Age:
12 days
Stage:
Baby
Gender:
Male
Ability:
Levitate (Locked)
Potential:
Light Blue - Green - Deep Blue
Aberrations:
Aura Affinity
Minor Type Affinity: Fighting
Attacks:
Lick, Confuse Ray, Clear Smog, Reflect Type]
Yep, to raise a ghosts potential, you only need to nearly let it starve to death as a newborn and then feed it potent aura... This information will never leave my mouth, ever.
My poor dear had to starve for nearly two weeks. It's a wonder, that he didn't die or break, really. Our bond settled on parental after I accepted the mother role.
I tried to tell him he had parents, and that I'd try my best to help him locate them, but he remained stubborn as a Tauros.
I then tried to convince him, that I'd take the father role then, but he didn't budge and kept sending me aura with the intent, that I was his mother.
Well, there were worse things, that could have happened. His ability could have been locked permanently, for example.
Luckily, that didn't happen, as after learning how to direct aura semi-consciously, he repeated the same feat with his recovering ghost type energy. It was still a wobbly and precarious thing, but he managed to levitate and stay in the air for a while.
As for his aberrations, he should have developed the aura affinity, since there was nearly zero energy left in his body when I started feeding him pure aura.
The fighting type affinity may have been innate or it might have developed with the aura affinity, no idea really. Two Egg Moves usually meant, that the parents had to be pretty strong.
They were even exceedingly useful. Clear Smog had the ability to slowly siphon away boost effects and corrode the opponent. What made it extremely useful was the fact, that it could be deployed within other smog, gas and fume type attacks like Poison Gas or Haze.
Reflect Type was a situational thing, but could a gamechanger if properly used. The Gastly line had a broad movepool with some devestating attacks for a lot of types, even including psychic and fairy.
That's not even counting the possibly negated weaknesses and the fact, that I may be able to get the little boy to cram all kinds of pokémon and their typings, so that he may decide for himself if he wanted to secretly reflect their type.
With aura at a high enough level, he may just be able to perceive his opponent's typing anyways. And so, after collecting the book list from Joan, who had forgotten to hand it to me, I started to learn again, with copious amounts of interactions with my two babies and their Big Sis.
Two weeks were spent in relative silence as I prioritised increasing Zubat's strength while also starting to lightly train Weedle and Gastly with little games, that earned them snacks, pats and caresses.
They took to it well, and it increased their health as well, since movement and using some of their energy was actually a good thing in the baby stage.
The reason why it was frowned upon to train with your pokémon at the baby-stage was, because a lot of trainers didn't quite get, that they had the equivalent of a toddler on their hands.
The best way to properly introduce knowledge and movement to a toddler is through games, that are fun and interesting for them and maybe have some little rewards at the end. Same with pokémon.
Don't overdo it, just ease them into it. Once they reach the Rookie stage, you'll be able to properly start training them with a little headstart.
Zubat also got some training menus to increase her physical fitness, that I trusted her to finish after supervising her the first couple of times to make sure she actually did the exercises correctly, while we started her Move Training together.
She was quick on the uptake and if she didn't understand something, I tried to send her my my impressions of the move with aura. Communicating with aura was getting easier, too.
She had gotten down Bite pretty quickly, since she already had an example with Poison Fang. She also spent an inordinately large amount of time close to dark types and was thus intimately familiar with their energy.
Additionally, she managed to learn Gust without any input, which made me believe, that it may have been an incomplete Egg Move, that took her a while to piece together.
After learning those moves, we concentrated on mastering what we had, especially Poison Fang, Venom Drench, Supersonic and Bite. On a side note, her Mean Look may just be the cutest mean thing I've ever seen.
As for myself, I finally managed to fill some gaps in my knowledge, starting with the stages for pokémon and trainers.
(A little info dump, I'll try to make it as engaging as possible)
Baby
Rookie
Regular
Advanced
Elite
Veteran
Ace
Authority
Champion
Master
Guardian
I had guessed most of this already. Not quite with the correct names, but I came close. The one big surprise was, that in between Champion and Guardian, there was actually another stage called Master.
Guardians are broken as heck. I really hope I'll not meet one for a long long time... I just flagged myself, didn't I?
Moving on...
Civilian
Rookie
Regular
Advanced
Elite
Veteran
Ace
Eminent Authority/Authority
Champion
Master
Beyond
Those were the trainer stages. Official ranks go up to Master. Beyonders are, well, beyond all that. They were usually bonded to a Guardian level entity, which increased their life spans.
The only reason, why I managed to collect that last piece of information was the authority of being Thomas's protegé, which he made official around a week ago.
Eminent Authority, or just Authority, was the stage most elite four ranked at. Champions were monsters in their own right. To reach the champion stage, you had to defeat four Eminent Authorities consecutively within an official occasion.
That's all. You don't have to have a Champion-ranked pokémon as long as you manage this feat.
The only one, who was documented to have managed that, was Mustard. A monster, that guy. A tactical genius, who not only managed to reach the champion stage as one of the youngest ever, but also did it by taking down the Galar region's reigning champion without a champion-rank pokémon to call his own after going through his elite four like they were butter.
I knew the name from my past life, but the timeline was a mess and only a few things stayed close to the same if I compared this world to my last world's media. It was frustrating and exhilerating at the same time, as I couldn't rely on any past information really, but there were so many new things to learn.
Move Mastery was another thing I'd read up on. Most trainers limited themselves to either speed or intensity of the attacks.
There were creative minds out there though, so there was information on combining, layering, splitting, typechanging and all kinds of other things pertaining moves.
Of course there wasn't any information on how to do it, only that it's possible, but that was enough for me.
Weedle, even though she's younger, entered the Rookie Stage a week ago, while Gastly will probably stay at the baby stage for quite some time.
The reason for that was twofold.
First: She's a high potential bug type. Those grow at an exceptional speed.
And second: Gastly's growth was heavily stunted from being starved for almost two weeks right after birth. This, in addition to the ghost type's fairly slow growth rate, meant, that it would take a while until he fully recovered.
I confirmed with Thomas, who only threw me an exasperated glance when I showed Gastly to him, that he would make a full recovery.
Back to Weedle. She watched Zubat perform Bite and Poison Fang, and learned Bug Bite by observation. Seeing this, I asked for some help from Morpeko and after getting Joan's ok, he showed Weedle some electric type attacks.
I even temporarily got turned into an aura-using conductor by letting a weakened electric type current and some energy flow from Morpeko through me to Weedle to make her more familiar with the feeling.
Looking as if I tried to bath with a toaster bore fruits, though, as Weedle learned to convert her energy to the electric type and combining it with String Shot.
This showed up on her Status Screen as Electroweb (Initial). A definite success and it gave us a way to deal with flying types.
I also finally came around to read through the conditions for activating her Ancient Aberration, since I forgot because of all the happenings in the first days.
- Reach purple or better potential with the final Evolution.
- Reach high grade poison potency before initiating the final Evolution.
- Break through to the advanced stage before triggering the final Evolution.
It was honestly easier than I expected. I had to read up on poison potency and it's grades. Turns out, mono poison types started out with middle grade while dualtypes usually had low grade poison innately.
This was the case without aberrations of any kind, and it's another thing, that could be influenced positively and negatively through them.
In Weedle's case, her potency was low grade, which made increasing it to high grade a bit more challenging, but there were multiple ways to do so.
The easiest and most expensive way was using a 'Technical Machine' to teach her Toxin. Contrary to the games, where she would have been one of the few pokémon to not be able to learn this move, all poison types were legible to learn it.
This was also the least recommended way, though, as it would limit her poison's potency growth in the long run if she learned the move too early.
Harder but more rewarding was using materials of poison type pokémon as well as natural treasures and even synthetic poisons. Absorbing those slowly would help her poison take on new properties, which might even lead to positive feedback if the different poisons interacted in a synergetic way.
Letting her absorb an Antidote was also recommended to me if she had a high level of control over her energy.
This remedy was a mix of many things, including some poisons and venoms, that helped cancelling out more than 80% of all common poisons.
If her energy control was good enough, and she had enough Antidote to work with, chances are, that she'll be able to isolate and absorb all those poisons and venoms, which would be a massive boon.
That'll be for later though, since she's not even close to reaching a satisfying level on that front. The best time to train this would be in her second evolutionary stage, Kakuna.
Going over everything, that happened over the past two weeks was a great way to calm my nerves before striking out on my own for the first time.
That's right, I had taken my first mission and it should be an easy one. But with what tended to happen around me, nothing ever was as it seemed.
So I'll go out as prepared as possible with copious amounts of cash for emergencies. Every league trainer received 2 uniforms of his size, a standard-sized spacial backpack and a survival kit that you'd be able to have restocked once a month or after a mission of at least a week in length.
I opted for weatherproof boots after talking with both, Joan and Thomas, about it. Joan helped me choose them. At 4k Poké, they were on the expensive side of things as far as shoes were concerned, but as long as I didn't ruin them, they'd last me years, especially, since they used a technology, that was close to the one used in the backpacks and pokéballs, specialised for still growing children.
Realising, that I was delaying my departure out of nervousity, I took my first step and thought to myself. What's the worst that could happen?