Chapter 2: Preparation

Some days I really just wanted to learn and explore this entire crazy, beautiful, dangerous planet.

The day Estella evolved into a marowak was definitely one of those days.

I had been training hard since passing my Advanced Exams, and the teachers definitely had not been going easy on me.

First of all if I graduated the same year I passed the Advanced Exams they didn't get another year of tuition out of my parents.

Secondly, if I did graduate early by defeating them but biffed it in the conference then it looked really really bad on the school. So, if I did graduate early they needed me to be top form.

Which was fine, I was no stranger to hard work in either life.

But my graduation advisor, Mr Pringle, and yes he did look weirdly like the snack can guy, been assigning me some pretty crazy training exercise gauntlets versus many of the school's general training pokemon.

Knowing my team was mostly ground-types he'd sent me out to the pond to get absolutely hammered by the poliwhirl and seadra living in it, demanding my pokemon withstand the assault for ten-minutes each by only using their defensive moves and not dodging.

It was on minute eight, when I was sure Estella was about to faint when a Bubblebeam made it through her spinning Thick Club that she evolved.

Suddenly twirling the club with new vigor she passed with flying colors.

I quickly scooped two of her favorite flavor of pokeblocks out of my bag and walked over to give her a hug and a treat.

"That was amazing girl! I am so proud of you!" The bone keeper pokemon let out a pleased noise in the back of her throat as she stood up straight and accepted the treats.

My goal was to get all my pokemon to at least their second stages before finishing my staff challenges, so this was a great step in that direction.

After the conference I planned to travel to the four winds collecting pokemon to create a solid final team for myself, but for now I was restricted to Kanto and Johto pokemon, and getting lucky with Brinker last year on vacation.

I returned Estella for some rest, she'd been my last pokemon to go through the exercise, and Cleo came over and let out a pleased chuff.

"It's very exciting, Cleo!" I replied back, "Now we just need...well the two hardest will be Brinker and Alberich," I sighed, "An Ice Stone will be hard to get and it's just really difficult to get a rhyhorn to evolve."

Sitting down with a sigh I released my quagsire, Huck, to play in the pond with the other water-types.

Cleo, thorns retracted thankfully, gently bumped her shoulder into mine as she tended to do when I was stressing out about things.

I scratched her in her favorite spot behind the ears, "I know girl, I might be aiming too high in wanting Alberich to evolve in time for the conference. Especially when I need to focus on finding that stone and getting Alexei to evolve, he'll need to be a proper piloswine to keep up with anything after the qualifiers, his movement is just far too limited as a swinub."

I retracted my hand to rub my face, "Should I take dad up on his offer of the fossil pokemon?" I questioned Cleo, "What I really want is an aerodactyl, but the most he's offering is an omanyte or a kabuto, I'm not sure I could train them up in time and I am not sure even if he came through with an aerodactyl I could get one to listen to me in time!"

The problem with aerodactyl, that they could tell from the two they had revived at this point, was that it was a surly and vicious pokemon that only respected the utmost of strength.

And that was why the only properly tamed one of those two was owned by Elite Four Lance. Though from the rumors that was soon to be Champion Lance. The previous champion had stepped down a few years back and the Kanto Elite Four had been both taking challengers as well as doing matches against each other to see if any of them could defeat the entire rest of the Elite Four.

Lance was consistently unable to beat Lorelei, Lorelei couldn't beat Bruno, and Agatha was so close to retiring she wasn't really trying but Bruno could still never best her (or admittedly anyone except Lorelai, Lance tended to trash him four out of five matches).

Watching those exhibition matches were jaw droppers let me tell you. Just last month had been the third Bruno versus Agatha rematch and her second to last pokemon, one of her two gengar, had been forced to pull a Destiny Bond to defeat Bruno's hitmonchan after it had surprised her by having learned Bullet Punch in the interim time between their last match and had used the move to block every single Sludge Bomb and Toxic tossed his way.

But Lance had apparently finally gotten his gyarados to figure out both Thunder Wave and Dragon Dance, as he had demonstrated in a challenge by one of last year's top eight trainers from the conference who had finally worked the courage up for an Elite Four challenge.

It might finally be what Lance needed to punch through Lorelei's lapras.

But regardless, I needed to focus on my team, I currently owned seven pokemon.

Cleo, my loyal starter, was not going to be evolving into a nidoqueen any time soon, as I was not Ash Ketchum I didn't think I'd be finding a Moon Stone quickly and regardless she needed a lot more growth before she evolved as nidoqueen was a plateauing evolution as some referred to evolutions that limited overall growth potential in return for a giant boost in intitial power. These evolutions are really only ones you want to go through with once you've gotten every last drop you can out of the previous stage.

My second pokemon ever, Estella, the recently evolved marowak, had been found when I joined my dad on a fossil hunt, a poor orphan of marowak poachers like so many of her species over the centuries. Her potential was now very important to explore, as with her ability Rock Head the only naturally learned move to take advantage of it was Double Edge, a long ways off, so she'd need lots of special attention in developing her moveset from here. Marowak were not naturally flexible fighters from a type coverage perspective. And then I had a moment of realization, she was not an Alolan Marowak, which meant no Flare Blitz...which meant...I quickly pulled out a slightly outdated pokedex, I wasn't a personal trainer of Professor Oak so my 'dex was a year behind the ones he gave out.

"Well...shit..." I bit out. The only other recoil move that a normal Kantonian marowak got was Submission. For some strange reason no one had ever managed to teach a marowak Head Smash or Head Charge, and though I was going to double check once I got back to my computer in my dorm, I was fairly sure a bunch of people had probably tried.

Well, I really only wanted those moves as finishers anyways, I supposed. Estella was a quicker fighter than the kind of bruiser that relied on those kinds of moves anyways. So scribbling in my notebook I quickly wrote 'Submission' and 'Thunder or Fire Punch' on her planning page.

"Right, minor hiccup, next up..." I turned to the page of my third pokemon, Alberich the rhyhorn.

He was an interesting case as I may very well end up at the conference before he became a rhydon. They evolved at very high levels in the game and I had confirmed that while levels were in this world considered the same kind of unreliable science as IQs were on Earth the idea that rhyhorn generally took a while to evolve was consistent with that.

He also had Rock Head, so the goal was to get him to learn Take Down by the time the conference came around. Which would mean he'd hopefully know Drill Run by that point as well. I scratched at the light scruff on my chin, honestly anything interesting technical machine or training-wise for him needed to wait until evolution and access to bipedalism. Maybe Payback for a mix of coverage and a surprise against agile opponents.

Flipping the page again I landed on Huck, my dopey quagsire currently playing in the pond.

Other than maybe perfecting Dig there wasn't much he needed. A quagsire's natural attacking moves were generally decent, he'd just learned Aqua Tail, and Yawn was ridiculous combined with his defensive abilities.

I simply circled my previous note about Dig a few more times.

I was able to skip Alexei's page, as I'd just been discussing evolving the stubborn swinub with Cleo, though I did chuckle at an old note bemoaning my party's need for more special attackers instead of physical ones.

It was true, but unless I wanted to branch really far from my comfort zone of the "earthen elements" as I called the rock, ground, and steel-typings I felt most in tune with, my options were limited until I left Kanto. Well, I could always go with a magneton, I thought to myself grimacing. I had loved magneton and magnezone in the video games, but I had actually met one in this life at the Silph Co building a few times and...they were extremely creepy and off-putting in person.

Needless to say a claydol was high on the 'acquire on world tour' list. Honestly unless I got really specific with hunting down fossils it looked like my special attackers list would be limited to Cleo, the future claydol, and Huck once I got my hands on a bunch of technical machines.

Because my next page had Brinker, also a physical attacker, and the final page had my problem child.

Artagnan, a scyther I had caught on a family funded Safari Zone trip for my birthday this year was another physical attacker.

And a huge pain in my ass. He refused to cooperate, always thinking his natural instincts were better than my own learned and practiced tactics.

As I learned his full capabilities he had occasionally been correct on that matter, none of my other pokemon were exceptionally swift in the way he was. Even Estella was more of a quick counterattacker than a speed demon the way Artagnan was.

But eventually I'd clocked his capabilities and regardless of losing to Cleo and even Alberich and Brinker the majority of our sparring matches he refused to try and learn from me. Once he learned Agility he seemed to think that the only strategy he needed functionally boiled down to 'gotta go fast' and trying to anime swordsman slash all opponents. Needless to say without some technical machine or move tutoring to back his attacks up with more than Slash and Fury Cutter it was rather embarrassing against rock and steel types. Which again, I specialized in.

It would be a pain to get a Metal Coat admittedly, but I desperately wanted a scizor. So I was going to spend the next six months or so banging my head against this brick wall if I had to.

I continued scribbling plans and notes into my journal, even ignoring Cleo getting up and roaming around a bit until I heard a loud throat clearing behind me.

I craned my neck back until I saw who it was, "What do you want, Thomas?"

The kid just screamed anime background character with his almost-a-bowl-cut-but-kinda-shaggy brown hair and dumb polo shirts.

And he was obsessed with psychic pokemon as being the "strongest type" but could only seem to get his hands on pokemon that were secondarily psychic at best. He had a starmie, an eggsecute, a psyduck, and a lickitung he had somehow managed to teach Curse and Amnesia to along with the normally learned Disable as a part of his 'psychic-ish' obsession.

"Just making sure you're ready to get trounced at the tournament with us and the Ninja Academy kids next month after I pick up some wicked powerful pokemon at the SS Anne's launch party!"

My blood ran cold. I had just had final confirmation that I was definitely in the anime-world. Not a video game world with some anime bits to fill it in. Not the comics (which thank...Arceus I suppose, that would have killed me before now). But the anime or at least mostly the anime.

And back in my room was an envelope from my parents I had recieved a week before Ash's arrival.

With a ticket to an SS Anne cruise.

"Yes, now fuck off so I can finish my training!" I growled out as I popped to my feet.

Now I had to prepare for the real Team Rocket.

Notes:

Isaac's Pokemon:

Nidorina- Cleo

Marowak- Estella

Rhyhorn- Alberich

Quagsire- Huckleberry

Swinub- Alexei

Alolan Sandshrew- Brinker

Scyther- Artagnan