~David~
[Appraisal is now available.]
Huh. I didn't use the system all that much except for initial judging. And that too, only after bonding a bit with them.
I didn't like to reduce a pokémon to their potential, it felt like a demeaning thing to do and I found having a real connection to, and understanding of your pokémon to be more important.
Potential could be increased through effort and ressources, but if the affinity with a pokémon wasn't good, they may rebel or even attack their trainers later on.
Oftentimes, communication was the problem, as was the case with many failing relationships.
I would probably use it more actively later on in the acquisition of funds and materials, similarly to other aura users. Psychic, bug and grass energy users were somewhat able to estimate potential too with enough experience. I would inform the pokémon I'd caught of my plans before or after catching them, though.
If they didn't agree after I explained, I'd release them after feeding them as an excuse for the trouble, if I didn't manage to inform them beforehand. That was the middle way I'd thought of, that wouldn't make it seem as if I was enslaving sentient and oftentimes sapient creatures to my will.
It might seem foolish to some, but that was something I wasn't going to compromise on. I had an aura bond with every single pokémon, that decided to follow me. I knew the depth of emotion they were able to experience first hand.
Pulling my thoughts away from that rabbit hole, I turned them to Appraisal again. This could help greatly. It gave more details about the items origin, which while interesting, wasn't all that useful most of the time.
What would make this probably my most used function within the system, except for the shop since I often used it for daily necessities as they were cheaper and better quality than the ones in the market, was the detailed analysis of use for individual pokémon.
It sounded complicated, but basically, it told me how to get the most out of my item for every pokémon bonded to me. The methods might change depending on the pokémon, same with efficiency.
For example: Gastly had a body, that was mostly a mix of gaseous and spectral. Physical items had less use for him and oftentimes needed a special preparation to be properly used at all.
Weedle and Zubat on the other hand could use physical items just fine most of the time. But both of them could use items more efficiently in specific ways, which was what this aspect of the system provided. It took into account everything, that the system knew about my pokémon and devised the best possible way to use the item.
Let's take Seviper's Poison Gland as an example. Had I not gotten this Appraisal function, I'd have simply given it to Weedle so that she may absorb it directly.
The most efficient way to use it was a bath with multiple different herbs and berries, very specific temperature requirements and intervals of completely submerging and letting the body take a breather.
This would happen over the span of a week with increasing doses of the poison within the water and longer times to stay submerged. All of this should happen within half an hour of finishing physical training.
The most important thing? It had to happen after her evolution, since as a Kakuna, she would have a body, that was better suitable to absorb the poison and make it her own, increasing the chance of her Poison Potency advancing to mid-grade drastically. It even calculated chance of success, which was 87% in this case.
If I used it in tandem with the Toxic Ball of Corrosion, chances for the upgrade would increase to 92% with 61% chance to gain corrosive properties. There was also a 2% chance for "non-calculable results".
All those numbers increased by another 3% if I actively participated by pumping my aura into the bath while she was submerged. I was officially considered as an item by the system. Or at least my aura was an ingredient.
I would have wasted so many items without this. As for why it appeared now instead of when I got the Evolution stones, I could only guess. The most likely reason was, that they were useless to my pokémon, hence they didn't trigger the update.
There was one strange thing, though. After leaving the league center, still deep in thought, and returning home, i decided to test some things. I looked at the efficiency and success chances for all kinds of combinations with the items at hand.
And everything pertaining Zubat had at least 10% chance for a "non-calculable result". I wasn't quite sure if that was a bad thing or a good one, but after releasing her and explaining my thoughts, she just screeched reassuringly and expressed her complete trust in me.
Honestly, I must have been a saint in the life before my last one, because while I wasn't a bad person, I sure as heck didn't rack up enough karma to deserve a family like that.
I definitely didn't want to unpreparedly storm ahead with this, though, so I benched it until I had more materials to test some more.
Taking our thoughts off the heavy things, we went to the backyard to play a bit. All my pokémon were young ones, so they needed a fair bit of downtime to recharge.
Of course, we played games, that could actually be seen as move training but as long as they had fun and didn't overtax themselves, it was fine and even a good thing.
At the end of our little game of tag, Weedle had a better grasp on hitting moving targets with her String Shot, while even being able to pull herself along with the move.
While at this time, that way of using the move was still largely uncontrolled, it opened up situational threedimensional combat way earlier than expected.
While Weedle learned how to hit better, Zubat learned how to dodge more effectively, needing less movement and energy to do so. There was also a minor success with a move we didn't even train yet. It showed up as (initial): Wing Attack.
That happened, when Weedle shot String Shot twice in quick succession, accidentially zoning her. Startled and with no way to dodge, she infused flying type energy into her wings to beat the attack back.
While she lost that round due to the rules, she was elated to learn a new move, and showed off her creativity by using the infusion part of the move for short speed bursts and unexpected turns, which made her way more unpredictable.
This earned her the next two rounds, until Weedle learned to replicate her quick fire String Shot. She had a decent eye for positioning too, since she anticipated several maneuvers of Zubat.
In the end, they tied, since Gastly was more an obstacle than a participant. He liked to pop out of any shadows on the playing ground to spook them and started pouting once it stopped working, searching for comfort in my embrace.
He made a short reappearance in the second half of the game, trying to blind Zubat with sparkling aura, that he might actually be able to develop into the move Flash, but, well, Zubat had no eyes...
So back to pouting it was. It was all in good fun, though, and playing around like this brought us all closer together.
To celebrate a great day with a fantastic family, I decided to splurge a bit and bought premium ingredients to cook up a small feast. Joan liked to eat, so I'd thought it would be a nice little thank you.
I wasn't the best cook around but I was better than average. I also enjoyed doing it, which made infusing aura into the task easier.
Joan rose like a Sableye when smelling the appetising aromas escaping the kitchen. When I heard her sit down behind my back, I placed the coffee I made earlier in front of her and told her. "Should be done in around 15 minutes."
She gave a probably affirmative groan and went back to waking up properly, aided by the coffee, that was discovered by use of her nose as she sniffed out the coffeine in a way that reminded me of Zeus.
Consuming the not quite scalding hot beverage in record time, she looked marginally more awake. That changed once the food was placed in front of her.
No soup, since I knew that she didn't enjoy it. Instead we started with the main dish. A hearty steak, with hers being just on the cusp of medium rare, since she liked it a bit bloody, accompanied by potato mash with big mushroom shavings and garnished with caramelised onions and baby carrots.
I had prepared food for my pokémon too, of course. Zubat was sitting on my leg with access to the arm I wasn't using to eat, while Gastly was placed on my lap, slowly 'slurping' on my aura. Weedle, the only one with a 'normal' diet, was eating from a fairly big bowl placed on the kitchen table.
The smell seemed to finally shake Joan awake completely as she looked at the food, entranced for a moment, before diving in with relish. And once she was done, I had the dessert already in my hands. A true classic: Apple pie with Vanilluxe ice cream.
After enjoying the positively scrumptious meal, we basked a bit in the afterglow of consuming great food, before Joan asked. "And to what do I owe this pleasure?"
I turned my head lazily with a slight, relaxed smile on my face and told her "Just because~." To which she snorted with amusement but didn't follow up.
"You know, now that I've eaten, I could go to sleep again." Joan mused with an index finger on her chin while looking upwards at something only she could perceive.
I smiled slightly and shook my head. "Thomas might just make this a home visit scenario if you do that." She shivered. "Please don't joke about something like that." I turned to her completely while tilting my head slightly, looking at her innocently. "I wasn't joking, though?"
A sigh escaped her. "He'd actually do it, huh..." She shook her head and heaved herself up. "Thanks for the fantastic meal, kiddo. I'm sure you said or did something that'll make my time at the league center harder than it had to be, so might as well get it out of the way."
She climbed the stairs beside the kitchen after opening a door, that I'd never opened before... I didn't even know there were stairs here. Gastly, who had suddenly jumped into my shadow, came floating down the stairs in the dark with glowing eyes. "Gaaaa..." He intoned in a presumably creepy way, but I just found it to be cute.
I grabbed and cuddled him to my chest while he pouted at the lack of reaction but enjoyed the cuddles nonetheless. Even though it had some hiccups, all in all it was a good day.
The next few weeks went by in a similar manner with training, playing and missions in between. We stretched our missions a bit to battle some wild pokémon, that I paid with some berries for their time. I even went back to the Phanpy herd for some sparring matches in exchange for food.
Soon I was a trainer for a whole two months. I settled in my room, making myself comfortable and took stock of my team and how we developed up until now.
Zubat advanced into the late regular stage and might break through to the advanced one at any moment. She would be able to evolve with breaking through to the next stage, but decided, that she wanted to put off evolving for a while and concentrate on mastering her movepool.
Speaking off. Her stunts while playing paid off big time. She actually learned Acrobatics by continuously infusing flying type energy into parts of her body to make impossible turns.
She also quickly picked up Confuse Ray because of her familiarity with ghost type energy and Quick Guard to protect herself from faster pokémon. The last one wasn't quite the same as within the games.
Basically it was a cheap and quick but way less durable version of Protect, that used fighting type energy instead of neutral energy.
We managed to increase her potential to Deep Green with the fresh corpse of an elite stage Golbat, that we managed to get for cheap. 12k to be exact. Corpses were less desirable than natural treasures, infused items or specific bodyparts since it was always a mess working with them.
This made them cheaper and, if you don't mind the extra work, a real bargain. That's only the case in the lower tiers of course as the stronger one grew, the more sparse ressources got.
The potential increase had a chance of 98% if used in tandem with the Gunk Rock, Gastly's and my energy, so we decided to do it. It felt kinda like a necromantic ritual and it made Gastly really happy to be part of it if his giggling and creepy laughing was anything to go by. A real mood setter, my brave little ghost.
After advancing in both, potential and stage, she wanted a name to call her own, so we brainstormed for a while, and decided on Carmilla or Millie for short.
I couldn't help but feel proud of her achievements as I looked up her status screen.
[Zubat (Carmilla)
Bond status:
Deep
Age:
4 months
Stage:
Late Regular
Gender:
Female
Ability:
Inner Focus, Infiltrator (dormant)
Potential:
Deep Green
Aberrations:
Minor bonus typing: Ghost
Attacks:
Supersonic, Astonish, Mean Look, Poison Fang, Venom Drench, Bite, Gust, Wing Attack, Acrobatics, Quick Guard, Confuse Ray]
The others made large strides too. Weedle, for example, expanded on her movepool in a decidedly strange way.
Cuddling and nuzzling up to me was second nature to her by now. So she decided to combine that nuzzling with electric type energy and developed the move Nuzzle.
... That one really came out of the left field. She didn't really learn any other attacks, but she did increase her proficiency with the ones she had. By now, she was able to send five strings with a single use of String Shot.
She also learned to hide preloaded Poison Stings within the strings, which was a nasty combo. Especially if she transformed them into Electrowebs by channeling electric type energy through them after connecting.
Strength wise she caught up with Zubat. This wasn't really a talent thing, though. Bug types grew way faster than others in the early stages and slowed down significantly later on.
It was one of the reasons bug types had a bit of a bad rep with experienced trainers, but honestly, every pokémon could be cultivated into a monster with enough effort.
It just took way longer if the circumstances weren't ideal. Cutting off that tangent, I concentrated on Weedle's status screen.
[Weedle
Bond status:
Deep
Age:
2 months
Stage:
Late Regular
Gender:
Female
Ability:
Run Away
Potential:
Light Purple
Aberrations:
Colour aberration (Shiny, active), Ancient aberration (dormant)
Attacks:
Poison Sting, String Shot, Bug Bite, Electric Web, Nuzzle]
Not much change, but that was ok. I didn't rush her and I knew, we'd have our work cut out for us if we wanted to awaken that ancient aberration. It'll take a while.
And now to the baby of the group, who wasn't really a baby anymore. He advanced to late rookie stage with measured grace...
Minutes after advancing into the rookie stage, he managed to miscalculate his speed while laughing carelessly and face planted into a wall before he could make himself intangible.
His pouty face and tearfilled eyes made me want to spoil him the whole day. Which I did while lecturing him about always being careful.
His movepool deepened too, as he learned Spite and Night Shade instinctively, while managing to grasp Hex during the 'necromantic ritual'. I had no idea why.
While he technically was the weakest of the bunch, he also had the best method of avoidance. He made shadow walking into an art form. From what I researched, this was a skill that usually needed some preparation to align the ghost type with the shadow dimension.
Well, he didn't. He was always aligned and could slip in as long as there was a shadow to do so. He himself threw no shadow, which was strange, as I didn't find a reason for that, so I'd have to research it later again when I had higher clearance.
His status screen changed a fair bit.
[Gastly
Bond status:
Parental
Age:
3 months
Stage:
Late Rookie
Gender:
Male
Ability:
Levitate
Potential:
Deep Blue
Aberrations:
Aura Affinity, Minor Type Affinity: Fighting
Attacks:
Lick, Confuse Ray, Clear Smog, Reflect Type, Spite, Night Shade, Hex (Initial)]
Ghosts had a fairly slow growth rate. Not as slow as dragons or some rock and steel types, but still pretty slow. Reaching the late rookie stage in only two months after a severe case of malnutrition was already extremely quick.
Next, I turned my thoughts to myself. The rank up to the regular stage went by silently with an easy theoretical test and a Nurse Joy telling me that my pokémon were darlings and so easy to work with.
I also asked for some training from Magearna in aura things. Thomas agreed as long as she wanted to. I turned out to be rank 2 already, since I was able to project my aura outwards.
She also told me, that I seemed to be heavily leaning towards protection, healing and detection with my aura's properties. This would make my offensive aura nearly useless, but I was okay with that.
Healing with my own life force, being able to protect myself and others from stray attacks and being able to detect hidden foes, potential and loads of other things, was already more than I ever expected to be able to do by myself.
Of course, I also did some missions to counter my costs. Our meals and even the food for my pokémon was paid mostly from Joan's pockets. Household Money, she called it. The second time she handed me a large amount of money, we had a strangely emotional conversation...
Flashback
She had a teasing smirk on her lips as she handed over the money. "You know, you would make a great househusband sometime later in life."
I looked at her with a deadpan. "And you would be a pretty bad housewife, honestly. Your money management skills are nonexistent, your cooking is something even my pokémon think is dangerous, since it sometimes fights them for territory. And you are kind of a slob."
As I turned around, ignoring her fake shocked face, I whispered to myself. "And yet I love you, Big Sis."
I underestimated her sense of hearing, though, as she started teasing me, much to my mortification. "Aww, that's sweet. Isn't that the first time you said that out loud? Well, somewhat loudly at least."
I had turned around with a red face and impassive face, frozen in that state from embarrassment overload. Then I saw, that she wasn't quite as untouched by the unintentionally uttered statement, as she pretended to be. One could even find a slight blush on her cheeks. That strangely calmed me down.
"I am an orphan." I started, not letting my nerves get the better of me, except for a slight shaking of my hands. "I never knew the meaning of family, and frankly, I had a hard time understanding why I should care."
My hand made it's way through my hair in a nervous habit, not at all ceasing it's trembling. "Then along came you. You know of my main problem with connecting to people. The same thing happened with you. Stronger than ever before, actually."
It was the first time I told her that explicitly. Gathering my thoughts with a somewhat shaky breath, I made my way to the couch, that seemed to be the place, where most of our emotional moments reached their conclusion.
She followed and sat down in the armchair across me, staying silent to let me gather myself, for which I was thankful.
"You know, I had no idea why I felt this way. Only after the instant connection with Millie did I connect the dots somewhat." I leaned back. This conversation, or rather confession, was draining me more than I liked to admit.
"When you suddenly offered me a place in your home... Me, an unknown orphan, a strange little guy, whom you only met that day. I decided to take a leap. To trust my, what I correctly assumed, aura."
I tried to convey just how much that all meant to me with my eyes as I stared into hers. "We bonded, grew closer way too quickly. But I didn't even realise how far the walls I'd built up had crumbled until I felt that warmth, that came with caring deeply for someone, for you."
I wasn't quite done yet, so I soldiered on before she could interrupt. "From then on I struggled. I didn't know how to deal with worrying about your safety when you were gone. I had the urge to care for you but didn't know how. I just didn't know how to cope with the situation, so I pushed it away. Not anymore though."
I squared my shoulders and pushed out all the emotion I could. "You are my sister. Blood doesn't mean anything to me. In my opinion, family is about choices. I chose to let you into my life as you did with me and yours. We and our pokémon, we are a family by choice, and I couldn't be happier about the choices we made." I felt completely and utterly drained as I let myself sink back into the couch.
I half expected her to throw me out, rejecting everything I said. I knew it was illogical, I knew she saw me as her little brother. But fear did strange things with the mind, and I went into this, monologue? as unprepared as I ever was for an emotional conversation.
The warmth of an embrace and some wetness at the top of my head pulled me out of my spiralling thoughts. The shakily whispered "I feel the same way..." went a long way to reassure and relax me.
Which, in combination with the emotional drain and the safety of her embrace, led to me dozing off.
Flashback end
I felt lighter after that, emotional bagage always had a heavy weight, that will only truly be apparent once you loose it.
Carmilla, perhaps feeling my inner turmoil, landed on my shoulder and nestled against me. Next came Weedle, who swung herself in my face with a String Shot, fastened to the ceiling.
Her embarrassed wiggling told me that this probably didn't quite go as planned. Before she could use her ability to Run Away, I started caressing her and she, like always, melted into my embrace.
Feeling a nudge from below, I opened my arms slightly, just for Gastly to slip into my hug with a big smile, nuzzling closer to Weedle, with whom he liked to cuddle too.
Before slipping into the realm of dreams, my last thought was one of absolute contentedness. I felt well and truly blessed.