Disclaimer: The same shit that I always say in the beginning of every chapter. Me no Own Pokémon.
Chapter 14: No Primape, No bananas.
Route 7 between Celadon and Saffron was the same as Route 8 as far as the diversity of wild Pokémon was concerned. In fact, both of these routes were originally the same until Saffron was built smack dab right in the middle of the region. The only difference between the two was the large number of Mankeys and Primeape that lived here. Also, as this part was much farther away from the river, it was exceptionally drier and had the feel of a desert with a large expanse of short grass between two trees. If we went north towards the mountain, then a forest starts to appear and the woods near the mountain was as dense as the ones i Route 8.
Since this was a grassland, most of the rare Pokémon like Growlithe were not found unless one went on an active search for them. They opted to stay close to the forest which was at least a kilometre north from the main road. I had no use of training in this part as the exp gain was too insignificant for me to even try.
However, our progress through was considerably slow as I challenged every trainer that I came across so that I could stack upon cash. Winning against Sabrina debited my account by 4000 bucks and these trainer battles were a great source of income too. By the time we reached the quarter way mark, I already won seven battles. The trainers here were considerably strong with a team of Pokémon that averaged around level 30-35, but compared to my team, they were fodders at best. Anyways, money is money and making easy money was always fun.
The place that we decided to camp for the day was the same place that we found my Primeape in my previous life. However, there was no sign of him and all the Mankeys present here made a beeline for the forest as soon as they saw my team. Everyone was released from their Pokeball and me and Brock soon went to work on dinner. It was already night by the time we finished making dinner but the Pokémon were the ones who built the camp. This made our work much easier. Since Mankey was not here, there wasn't much for me to do in this Route. But I wanted to get started on the TM training soon and the trade evolution also needed to be done.
While I was lying in the bed after dinner, I reminisced about the time when Primape was returned to me. It was right after the Kalos League when Anthony called and asked me to take back the figting Pokémon as he had already won all possible titles in the P1 circuit. However, the happiness of the return of an old partner didn't last for long. Even if we count the P1 championship match, Primape and I was only friends for day before we went our separate ways. This showed when he started to disobey me in trainer battles, doing as he pleased on most occasions. I was no longer a greenhorn and as such, ego clashes were inevitable and soon enough, I released him from my ownership. He was a high levelled Pokémon for sure but after I released him, I never met him again.
In all honesty, Primape was not the kind of Pokémon that I excelled at in training.As such, I never intended to capture him again. If he could find a better trainer, that would be nice. I shut out al these negative thoughts and soon went to sleep.
Morning was a rush with us preparing breakfast in haste to head out for Celadon. After careful consultations with Brock, it was decided that the best option was to head to Celadon City and training could be done nearby the city as it was risky to train in such a hostile place far away from the city. We started travelling by 8 in the morning and I battled all the trainers that I came across. I had a lot of purchases to make in the next city and given the fact that he went out of his way to fight some trainers, Brock was of similar mind. Celadon City had the largest mall in all of Kanto and was the only place where you could buy evolutionary stones. I had no particular need for those as of now, so I wasn't planning on buying them. But, I needed to buy the TMs, so I needed that cash.
It took us more than ten hours to reach Celadon due to having battled our way here. I now had more than enough money to buy the TMs here. It was already night by the time we reached here, so we booked a room in the Pokémon Centre. After eating dinner from one of the restaurants nearby, we went to sleep soon after.
Celadon city, although not as large as Saffron, was the entertainment hub of Kanto. There were a large number of leisure facilities available here that were specifically targeting the richer folks. This was also the only place in the entire region which legalised gambling and so, a large number of Casinos were present here. I never gambled in my life, but I heard from the past Brock that it was fun when done in moderation. Right now, I had no interest in gambling but that may change in the future.
There were a large number of film studios here as well which produced a large number of movies in an year. Although the first big time actress that I was ever acquainted with was Diantha who coincidentally, was also the champion of Sinnoh, but there was such actresses in all regions. Kanto's most successful actress as of the moment was a lady named Lyra who I never met before. This information was new to me as I never bothered with it in my previous life. This info was provided to me by a lady that I met when I was going towards the TM store of the city. Although Celadon Mall was big, TMs still had a separate store for them. It was located in the south-eastern corner of the city away from the main streets. The building itself was easy to identify due to its distinct green colouring.
"Welcome. How can I help you sir?" The saleslady greeted me.
"I would like to buy all of the available TMs in this store." I replied.
"All of them? Wait! BY any chance, are you Mr Ash Ketchum?" The lady asked.
"Yes. But how do you know that?" I was curious.
"My sister who works in the Saffron branch called yesterday and told me about a customer who bought the entire set that she sold. To think that you would buy even more! Customer, you do understand that there is no guarantee that your Pokémon can learn these moves right?" She said.
"Actually, I am more than willing to take that risk. Now please sell all of the ones here." I said.
"Very well. Thank you for your patronage." She said as she handed over the discs after taking the payment.
After buying the TMs, I decided to go to the outskirts of the city near Route 16. I had no plan on battle training, but I wanted to start training the TMs. Before starting the training, I decided to complete something that was pending for now.
'Hey system'
'Yes host?'
'I want you to evolve Kadabra and Haunter'
'As the Host's wish
Initialising Local Link...
Matching Pokémon found in Party...
Do you wish to evolve them?
Yes No'
'Yes'
'Command Received...
Starting up the evolution mechanics...
Simulating trade mechanics...
Progress 5%...20%...40%...70%...100%...
Evolution process completed...
Cooldown till next use: 90 days.'
After the plethora of system messages finished showing, I released all of my Pokémon from their balls and lo and behold, a fully grown Alakazam and Gengar was standing where Kadabra and Haunter should have been. Dexter was quick in giving information.
"Alakazam, the Psi Pokémon.
Alakazam's brain continually grows, infinitely multiplying brain cells. This amazing brain gives this Pokémon an astoundingly high IQ of 5000. It has a thorough memory of everything that has occurred in this world.
This Alakazam is a Male and has the ability Magic Guard.
This Alakazam is currently level 45 and knows the moves Teleprt, Thunder Punch, Confusion, Disable, Psybeam, Reflect, Recover, Future Sight, Role Play, Psychic and Trick."
"Gengar, the Shadow Pokémon.
Sometimes, on a dark night, your shadow thrown by a streetlight will suddenly and startlingly overtake you. It is a Gengar running past you, pretending to be your shadow.
This Gengar is a Female and has the ability Cursed Body.
This Gengar is currently level 45 and knows the moves Hypnosis, Lick, Dream Eater, Spite, Curse, Night Shade, Confuse Ray, Shadow Punch, Destiny Bond and Shadow Ball."
Gengar's Pokedex entry was one of the most controversial entry in the region. Gengar, while being notorious pranksters, were extremely harmless unless their natural habitat was threatened. Hence, the dex entry for them were revised multiple times before the current entry was accepted.
Anyways, after they got used to their new bodies, it was time to get start using the TMs.
Venusaur
Out of the first 32 TMs that I owned, Venusaur could learn 11 of them. Solar Beam was something that he learned naturally, so I decided to go with a move that couldn't be learned normally by him.
Toxic, as the name suggested was a move that poisoned the target with an extremely fast acting venom which did increasing damage every turn. In long drawn out battles, Toxic could end up eating away the entire HP of the opponent even if they used moves like Recovery. It was the perfect move for Venusaur who was a tanker under normal battles. The deciding factor was that it could be used against virtually all kinds of Pokémon irrespective of their types.
Learning Toxic was easier said than done as it was a move that had no particularly efficient method of practising. As Venusaur knew Poison Powder, it was start. The theory behind perfecting it was condense the poison in his body until it seems to be polluting the very air that we breathed. However, pulling this off was really hard given how much Venusaur struggled with it. The poison generating glands in his flower were put on overdrive as they struggled to produce the toxin that was required.
It took a lot of tries before Venusaur got it right enough for Dexter to register it as learned. However, a lot of practise was needed before he could actually pull this move off in a fight. The things that needed work was the speed at which he could gather the Poison, the amount produced and the speed at which he could attack using it.
It would take at least a week before the move was finally stable for battle.
Charizard
For Charizard, who was extremely reliant on special attacks, I decided to go with a physical attack this time around. TM 26 which was Earthquake, was the perfect attack for him right now. This would help him to hold his ground against Rock types which was one of his major weakness.
Earthquake, as the name implied was an attack that worked by causing a violet tremor in the ground. The attack was useless against flying Pokémon, but was nonetheless one of the strongest ground type moves in all the six regions. Learning Earthquake was equally troublesome as Toxic, but Charizard's extra weight helped in the training even if only for a little bit. The training was done by repeatedly jumping on the ground while pumping energy from the body into it.
The difference between an Earthquake attack and a regular hop lied in the energy pumped into the ground while doing it. Almost all attacks relied on a Pokémon's life energy or aura, to happen. This energy has different forms which are generally defined as Pokémon type. This energy can change forms outside of the core which is why most Pokémon are capable of using multiple types of attacks. Some types like Poison are extremely stagnant which makes it near impossible for Poison type attacks to be learned by unrelated types. Dragon types as well as Normal types were able to reshape their energy types to match a multitude of different types.
One of the funniest part of this was Charizard was not considered a Dragon Type despite looking the part due to the lack of Draconic energy in his core. This was corrected by using a Charizardite X but otherwise, he was a Flying Fire type. But, among all the non draconic Pokémon, Charizard has the ability to learn the most number of Dragon type moves which showed how close to a Dragon he was.
Anyways, Earthquake's power depended on the amount of energy that was pumped into the attack. The difference between Earthquake and Magnitude, which was a watered down version of it was that a Pokémon who mastered Magnitude will still be unable to release a specific amount of energy but Earthquake took a constant amount of it for creating a powerful attack. As a Pokémon levels up, the amount of power behind every attacks rise significantly. This was due to the increase of energy in their core due to levelling up.
Charizard's Earthquake training went quite smoothly for the day and by the time the training period ended, the attack had enough power behind it for Dexter to recognise it as an attack. But although the attack was powerful enough for a regular sized Charizard, it was nowhere near as powerful enough for him. But rushing things were never going to work so all I needed to do was to make him practise the attack for a week straight without fail for him to finally master it.
Blastoise
Out of the 32 TMs that I owned, Blastoise was able to learn 20 of them which meant that he was going to have his work cut out for him. The move that I wanted to teach today was Ice Beam. Ice Beam, although weaker than Blizzard, was a perfect move for lower levelled battle as compared to Blizzard which took a lot of energy to pull off. Ice Beams could also be used in quick succession unlike Blizzard which took a lot of effort. The Ice type moves ensured that Blastoise wouldn't be completely defenceless against a Grass type.
Getting the attack to work was a lot easier for Blastoise than it was for the others. Since Ice in essence was just frozen water, all it took him was to reduce the temperature of the water type energy inside him before condensing it and firing it off as a beam. The attack was registered by Dexter in record time, but the power and aim was completely off. If he tried to condense too much energy, then he ended up blowing it and was unable to aim where he wanted to attack.
The first thing that we did after learning the attack was to get the aim right. This was made easier by the target practise sessions that he already had before. But the power behind the attack was weak which needed a lot of practise before it could be completed safely. As it was now, the Ice Beam was weak enough to not even damage the wings of random Pidgeottos flying around.
Pidgeot
There was hardly any good move that Pidgeot could learn with the TMs that I owned there were attack type moves like Take Down and Double Edge that I could have taught her, but those were good enough for now. The Recoil damage from those moves were harmful for the Pokémon in the long run and was better to be taught once the Pokémon passed the minimum threshold of Level 70.
In the end, I decided to go with Double Team which created Illusionary copies of the Pokemo which confused the opponent. The thing with Double Team was that the larger the Pokémon, the lesser the number of copies. Small Pokémon like Pikachu could make more than a couple dozen copies, but larger Pokémon like Pidgeot may not be able to create more than three or four. However, if a Pokémon could reach sufficient proficiency over the attack, then it could theoretically use more copies than what it uses normally.
As it was not an attacking type move, teaching Double Team was fundamentally different from teaching other moves. Pidgeot, with her superior speed stats was able to pull of three clones from the get go, but the problem was the clones themselves. Each and every single one of them was highly inanimate and was unmoving for the most part. The tricky part of the move was that Pidgeot had to control all of these clones and perfect them to be flawless in the battlefield. This was the equivalent of telling a human that suddenly grew a tail to control it. If Pidgeot could master the move, then she could actually link her vision to those of the cones, which would quadruple her battlefield presence if utilised correctly.
However, there were no shortcuts for mastering this move so all she could do was to slowly ease herself onto utilising the move perfectly. By the time training was over, Pidgeot was able to move the illusion albeit slowly and with trouble. But I give her two weeks before she is able to use it in battle.
Alakazam
Alakazam was a special case as far as TMs were concerned. His natural memory and IQ was so high that he was able to use any TM move that he learned with practised perfection, which made him a walking cheat code as far as TM training was concerned. Even the necessary amount of power behind an attack was done with practised perfection. He was one of the only Pokémon that could pull this off.
The problem however, was the fact that there weren't many special attacks in the TMs that I owned, most of them being pure physical attacks. Alakazams had little to no strength when it came to physical attacks and teaching them such moves were a waste of time as they rarely if ever, were forced to use them. In the end, I ended up teaching him Toxic, Hyper Beam and Double Team all of which were mastered with perfection. I also ended up teaching him Dig which was for escape purpose than as an attack.
Gengar
Gengar had a lot of work cut for him as there were a lot of moves that he could learn from the available TMs. I was torn between Thunderbolt and Psychic, but ended up choosing Thunderbolt as Psychic was better to be learned from Alakazam. Tutor Moves were easier to learn than TM moves and as such, I wanted to teach Shadow Ball to Alakazam as well.
Learning Thunderbolt was not really hard as Gengar had more than enough practise as a Gastly on changing his energy type. However, the power behind it was not really worthy of being called a Thunderbolt. It was more of a small line of electricity at most. But, the training hours ended up helping him to strengthen the move by a lot. By the time we called it quits, the attack was around the same strength as a Thundershock from an average Pikachu which was a good start.
The day soon came to a close with me being able to successfully start the TM training. Tomorrow was supposed to be the gym battle, which I was not really excited for. Erika, was pathetically weak when compared to Sabrina as she was supposed to be the fourth gym. But a gym battle is a gym battle and I needed to make sure that all the stops are pulled before the battle started. I met up with Brock who somehow got his hand on a Metal Coat, which was instrumental evolving Onix in the future. We soon had dinner before going to sleep.
Ash' team
Charizard
Level 50 [stats is 32% more compared to a fully maxed out Pokémon of same level]
Moves: Slash, Growl, Rock Slide, Bite, Ember, Metal Claw, Smokescreen, Scary Face, Flamethrower, Wing Attack and Earthquake.
Pidgeot
Level 45
Moves: Tackle, Sand Attack, Gust, Steel Wing, Quick Attack, Whirlwind, Wing Attack, Feather Dance and Double Team.
Alakazam
Level 45
Moves: Teleport, Thunder Punch, Confusion, Disable, Psybeam, Reflect, Recover, Future Sight,Role Play, Psychic, Trick, Toxic, Hyper Beam, Dig and Double Team.
Venusaur
Level 45
Moves: Growl, Tackle, Vine Whip, Leech Seed, Poison Powder, Sleep Powder, Petal Dance, Razor Leaf, Sweet Scent, Growth and Toxic.
Blastoise
Level 45
Moves: Tackle, Tail Whip, Bubble, Withdraw, Water Gun, Mirror Coat, Bite, Rapid Spin, Protect, Rain Dance and Ice Beam.
Gengar
Level 45
Moves: Hypnosis, Lick, Dream Eater, Spite, Curse, Night Shade, Confuse Ray, Shadow Punch, Destiny Bond, Shadow Ball and Thunderbolt.
Recommendations
Magnetite
Deino x3
Riolu x3
Mareep
Zorua x2
Shinx
Bagon x3
Aegislash
Beldum
Sylveon
And That's it for today. I think there was some problem with the site which meant that I didn't even receive any review for the last chapter. So I want ya'll to give me some love. Remember, this is the last chapter before the recommendations is closed. Since you guys missed last chapter, then maybe you should review twice. _
Anyways, thanks for reading this and do keep telling me how good the chapter was. Stay tuned for Professor Mewtwo and the rest of the gang.
Oh and before I forget, the pairing is undecided for now and will not be added until much later in the story. Obviously, there will be pairings but I need time before I am comfortable with writing romance. Also, There's a slight mistake in the calculation of TMs. There are actually on 63 TM moves in Kanto which means the TM distribution will be 16-16-16-15.
I will be adding another chapter just to give the information on the TMs after this, so just go check it out if you guys want to.
Stay safe and Review more.