Special thanks to the folks on pa-atreon for making this possible. Now without further ado let's get into it.

A few miles away from Celadon city, I decided to make camp for the day and meet my new teammates while there was still light out. The first one I sent out was the one the pokedex could recognize. My instincts told me this was the one that was intended to be given out to the winner of the tournament. Simply because Silph would never just give out a pokemon not on the pokedex.

I took a deep breath and opened the pokeball. I watched the fairy type appear in the clearing with a cartwheel. My entire team seemed to ooh and aah at the fairy type, and that encouraged her (it was definitely a she) to give us a small show. Backflips, cartwheels and frontflips were all on the menu.

When she finished and landed with flair, I was the first to break out into applause. That was actually impressive. Considering how large she was, it was lovely to see. "Hey, I'm Donnell Oak. I'm going to be your trainer,ok? We'll travel across the region, and see all kinds of interesting places and battle all kinds of interesting people. Are you in?" I asked while kneeling in front of her and stretching my hand for a shake.

She seemed a bit unsure at the battling part and then turned to look around at the rest of the team before ignoring my hand entirely and barrelling into my chest with a hug. I hugged her back and enjoyed the feel-good hormones only a hug could bring. I simply sat on the floor with her and enjoyed the moment.

I introduced her to the rest of the team and started the process of finding her a name. Luckily, she took no time in adopting Tsunade as her own name. I loved the choice and I just felt like it fit her. It fit what I intended her to do on the team, at least.

She was going to be filling two roles. She would be the team healer and the resident dragon killer. It was obvious to me that one of those roles would be more in agreement with her nature than the other. All that would be up for discussion later though. I passed her over to Ino who she started chatting with and took a deep breath before reaching for the second pokeball.

I could take some time to read the emails the scientists had given on the pokemon itself but I didn't want exposure to anything that might bias me from giving the pokemon a completely fair assessment. I knew it would be powerful, that much was obvious. I also knew it wouldn't be dangerous, not to me at least. There's no way Silph would have given me the pokeball without a warning if it was actually dangerous to me.

Another deep breath later and a pokemon I'd never even considered seeing formed out of the red light of the pokeball I just opened. It didn't take me a second to identify the dragon type as what it was- Jangmo-o. The first stage evolution to a fucking pseudo-legendary.

I could barely resist the urge to pump my fists in the air in triumph. Take that, Lance. A dragon/fighting type. 'He'd never even see this coming', I thought with a smile of excitement.

I looked at the pokemon that was just laying still on the ground and began to make my approach. It turned to me languidly and stayed in its position.

"Hey, I'm Donnell Oak. I'm going to be your trainer from now on, ok? We'll get to travel around the region to all the interesting places and battle all the interesting pokemon out there. Are you interested?" The dragon type just gave me a long look before nodding and returning to it's position on the floor.

While the introduction wasn't the best I could have hoped for, it wasn't hostile. We would make progress. I tried to talk about choosing a name for it, but it had already fallen asleep.

We decided to follow its lead and went to bed a few minutes later.

The journey to Viridian was loads more entertaining than the journey to Celadon had been. With two new additions to the team, training sessions had expanded once again. I took charge of training both Tsunade and Kakashi personally. While the Jangmo-o was more likely than not to fall asleep u; at random times during the day, he was also ridiculously quick to figure out new moves or new tactics.

While he was still in his first evolutionary stage, he was still an impressive specimen of the dragon type. In the month since we embarked on our trek, he'd seen the most growth out of all my pokemon. It had taken me an embarrassingly long period of time to figure out a way to get him to train without falling asleep- battles. Of course battles were the answer. The scientists had kept him cooped up, performing all kinds of tests on him, it wasn't surprising that he got bored so easily. Battles were able to excite him and stoke his growth.

I couldn't have him battling any of the older members of the team because most of them were powerful enough to kill the young dragon without even intending to. Luckily, he came along with his own training partner, Tsunade. She was a fairy type so it helped that I could start harnessing her potential by having her battle against the type of pokemon I would eventually be needing her to deal with almost exclusively.

Battling against his weakness was also useful in preventing the Jangmo-o from getting a big head or developing too much of the pride that dragons were known for. He lost all the time, but both he and Tsunade learned a lot and grew even stronger together.

The rest of my team has also been continuing their training. Broly's grasp of extreme speed had become more than just a fledgling understanding. He could use the move for even longer and achieve even higher speeds than he'd been able to at the tournament. Ino was focusing on her fairy type moves for the time-being. She was learning the moves and teaching them to Tsunade as she learned. Both Kisame and Igneel were focusing on their nascent dragon typings. Moves like dragon dance, rage and breath were already second nature to them. I would soon have them start up on learning draco meteor, the most powerful of the dragon type moves.

Hashirama focused on his ghost typing. I had him practice moves like curse and destiny bond to make him an even more tactically viable option. Snorlax was doing his own thing most of the time. When he bothered to train, he was learning more elemental attacks to add to his already devastating repertoire. We needed him to have more options at the mid and long range.

As we got closer to mount moon, Tsunade became more and more excited. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this is where she'd been taken from. There was, after all, only one known group of the Cleffa line in the entirety of Kanto. Known to me, that is. The general public had no idea where to even find one and it was possible for there to be other habitats not known to me but Tsunade's excitement as we approached told me this is where she'd been taken from.

We'd done a good job of avoiding towns or even avoiding anything that would make us stop for longer than a few hours. However, I couldn't just resist her desire to visit her home. I wasn't scared that she'd abandon us either way.

We made our way into the mountain, and with Tsunade by my side, it was ridiculously easy to find the cleffa grove this time. We had to do a lot of walking and I'd been forced to return my entire team except Broly who was insistent on remaining out of his ball. Tsunade was in her element, being back in the mountain. She jumped and twirled from wall to wall. Moving like a child that had just returned to the playground after a week of being away.

I tried doing my best to get her to be more careful, but I wasn't surprised when one of her jumps led her to landing in the middle of a Rhydon herd. When one of them moved towards her aggressively, Broly appeared between them in seconds. I looked around and realized the real reason why Broly was intent on staying out of his ball.

We had experience with this herd. One of the leaders had shown Broly a world of hurt and my pokemon seemed intent on paying it back as he brandished his axe hands threateningly. I sighed as I watched what was about to happen. Broly didn't feel much need to show his pride, but no one could ever mistake that for a lack of it.

He could be just as prideful as Igneel was, but was more capable of stepping beyond it and seeinf reason. That wouldn't be happening today though. These pokemon had spat on his pride and he would be having his vengeance eone way or another.

I called Tsunade back to me and settled to watch the impromptu beat down that was about to happen. Broly gave the gathered pokemon a look and raised his axes in a come hither motion. The Rhydon took his challenge and the first one rushed at him with a spinning drill.

Broly locked down his stance and caught the thing as it rushed. He strained for a bit and threw it over his head. I could only applaud at that. Broly had grown stronger, and this would give me the opportunity to truly appreciate that strength.

The rest of the herd were quick to understand that Broly was an opponent beyond their ability to handle individually so they rushed at him as one and prepared to gang up on him with superior numbers.

It only took a few hits for me to conclude that even that tactic would be insufficient. Broly dodged around all their attacks with ease, and whenever one of them overextended itself, he was there with a stone axe to take it down. The battle was long and drawn out.

I thanked whatever gods exist in this universe that none of them decided to try using long range moves. Perhaps they all instinctively understood that collapsing the cavern would be in nobody's best interest. Just to be safe though, I sent Ino out of her ball.

No need risking my life on the chance that wild pokemon would understand not to risk their own. Broly kept cutting through them like a sickle through wheat.

Eventually, one of them got tired of the beatdown and charged up a hyper beam to fire at Broly. He was able to dodge it with ease but it crashed into the ceiling and sent the cavern falling apart around us. I only sighed in irritation as Ino grabbed on to my shoulder and teleported me out of the mountain before any of the rocks above me could start their own collapse.

"Fuck. Now we have to find Broly in there" I growled. "Thank you" I said to Ino for her timely intervention. I walked in with both pokemon by my sides. This time, Tsunade was less intent on jumping around every corner after what had happened and was just clinging to my shoulder in a subdued manner. I still marvelled at her species' ability to change their weight and manipulate their forms so easily. I could barely even feel her on my shoulder and she was about a third of my height.

We found Broly halfway on our journey to the grove. He was markedly more subdued and I couldn't even bring myself to scold him. I just patted him on the shoulder and allowed him join us on our travel.

This time, we made our way to the Cleffa grove without any unnecessary interruptions. When we got there, it was clear we were expected. Tsunade wasted no time in jumping into the fray of happy Clefairy. Her previous acrobatics didn't hold a candle to the display she -put up with other members of her species.

I signalled Broly and Ino to avoid interrupting and we just stood there, watching the family reunion. It took what felt like hours for the celebrations to come to a calm. In that time, several cleffa had come and poked at me like I was a toy they couldn't understand. Whenever I moved to try playing with them, they took off. It took me a stupid amount of time to realise they just wanted to play a game of tag.

So after chasing around shapeshifting fairies, I had little energy to get going. I wouldn't have even wanted to leave the grove if I had the energy. Tsunade was staying for tonight, to do the moon dance with her family for what might as well be the last time. I'd try my hardest to prevent that but the future was unclear. It had taken Ino's translation for me to figure that part out though.

I stood at the very edges of the grove and watched starstruck as the Clefairy jumped in concert. They were having a lot of fun and I could only smile at the beauty of the dance. It was no organised thing, but it was no less beautiful for that.

Eventually, the dance built up to the crescendo I could feel approaching. The moon stone glowed at the centre of the grove. I wondered whick one of them would be evolving today, but I had no need to ask. Tsunade walked forward, pushed by her peers. She looked hesitant and even turned back for my approval. I nodded at her so quickly that if this weren't an anime world, I would have dislocated something.

Her gait became resolute after she secured my approval. I watched with what I knew was pride as she touched her hand to the moon stone. The evolution material grew even brighter as her evolution began.

Three days. That's how long we'd ended up spending in the mountain. After Tsunade's evolution, she still wasn't completely comfortable with leaving her family behind so quickly. She stayed and played with the rest of the grove for another day before she was finally ready to leave.

With her knowledge of the mountain, we were able to take the most direct path out and could arrive at Pewter after only two more days of walking. From this point, we were pretty much already at Viridian. We'd have to pass through the Viridian forest to get there and I had nothing but bad memories of the place.

I would have been perfectly okay with just flying over the forrest on Igneel's back since he'd gotten more that stable enough to carry me on his flights. The only problem with that was Broly. We both understood each other in a way that went beyond words, and as we got closer and closer to the forest, it became more clear that he was interested in stopping by to see what remained of his swarm.

Not out of any sense of family or kinship, though. He wanted to see them because he was spoiling for a fight. The reason I'd been able to find him separate from the other Scythers was because he'd been kicked out of the group. Whenever a Scyther challenged the head Scyther for leadership and lost, banishment was their only fate.

He wasn't interested in heading the swarm or anything like that, no. What he wanted was to redeem himself. If the Rhydon back in the mountain had spat on his pride, then his former family had all but crushed it. He wasn't going to let that slide now that he had the means to prove himself to them. If it was just about that, then I'd have had no trouble refusing his request. The only problem was that it wasn't just about that. He wanted to fight them to also prove to himself that he'd gotten better. Stronger, since he joined me.

We passed through Pewter without giving a second look at anything around us. This town had nothing I wanted and I saw no point in dallying about.

XXXX

Finding the Scyther herd was the most difficult part of our mission. The last time Broly had been with the herd was over a year ago, and with a species that could fly, a year was a very long time. There was no easy way to trace them through the forest, and Broly had been forced to accept my terms.

If we couldn't find the swarm after three days of searching, we'd leave the forest and try to find them at a later date. The problem with that was the fact that we didn't know when that date would be.

To make our search easier, I had Ino teleporting around and Hashirama trying to use the trees in the forest to sense for the swarm. Broly and I searched on foot.

Two days into our search, and I was just about ready to call it quits. We went to bed that night with the knowledge that if we didn't find them tomorrow, then the search was over and done with.

Of course, it just had to be this moment that things went to shit. The alarm system that Silph gave me was screaming bloody murder and that's the first thing I heard on waking up. For the first few seconds, I was confused as to what was going on and when I stopped being confused, I became irritated.

A beedrill swarm was dancing around the camp. Dozens of them. If not for the reinforced tent, I would have already been poisoned. I released Broly from his pokeball and gave him his orders. Instead of waiting for me to open the tent, my enthusiastic starter flew right through it to engage our attackers.

My next action was to release Igneel from his ball. He hadn't gotten much combat in the past few weeks, so this would be a nice change of pace for the battle hungry pokemon.

Kisame was sent out of her ball when I noticed that Igneel seemed o care less about collateral damage than usual and was already in the process of starting a forest fire. My seasnake doused the flames and used her ice beams to snipe off any Beedrill that wandered too close to us.

It took us the better part of thirty minutes to disable the entire swarm and I even had to pack up my camp and move to a different location. While the attack hadn't harmed any of us, it had caused enough alarm that none of the pokemon I'd sent out were even willing to go back into their balls for the rest of the night.

Xxxxx

We walked into Viridian with our heads held high. While we hadn't been able to find the Scythers, we still had hopes that we'd find them the next time. Broly was looking forward to it and I shared his enthusiasm.

Watching Broly fight a strong enough Scyther would surely be interesting to see. The city welcomed us with open arms and I wasted no time in heading to the Silph medical station to get a checkup and heal the little scrapes my team had gotten in the last month and a bit.

They had these buildings in every major city in the rejion and were almost exclusively for treating pokemon owned by Silph-sponsored trainers. It really shocked me how much resources a company like Silph could essentially toss down the drain in the faint hopes that they get something in return. I mean they have to be making some sort of profit from their sponsorship program because I doubted they'd be continuing it if they didn't make any profit from it but it was difficult to tell how they made this money, or even how much it was.

After dropping off my pokemon for healing, I started making my way to the nearest hotel before I remembered whose city this was. I walked right back to the medical station and sat down to watch as they healed everyone of my pokemon and gave them the standard checkups.

While I doubted Giovanni would be trying anything this soon, I wouldn't bet my family on it. I'd considered simply going to the league with the knowledge that he was behind Team Rocket but it was difficult to even know who to trust in the organisation itself. Not to mention the fact that I'd have to offer some evidence to convince them to believe me. Evidence I didn't have.

If I was even more of an idiot than I already am, I might have even attempted to start an investigation of my own to get some evidence of his guilt. The knowledge that a single admin of the organisation had possessed two pseudo-legendaries had discouraged me very quickly. It didn't matter that the psuedos were weak for their species, what mattered was I had no idea how many admins the organisation had at their disposal.

I'd captured two of them during the attack on the tournament, but there were apparently three others at the attack that had attacked some trainers before leaving. Silph had told me I was the only one in position to make it to the finals of the tournament that didn't have a pokemon stolen or killed in the conflict. I guess that's another reason the tournament couldn't continue, and I was declared the winner by default.

The Admins were dangerous. The two I'd defeated had been flukes, abberations. That didn't even mention Giovanni himself. The strongest gym leader in all of Indigo by most estimations. Even Claire of Blackthorne and Pryce of Mahogany were considered inferior to him. My team wasn't ready for that kind of combat yet, so I'd keep my head down while in the city and leave to return another day. When I was much stronger. Strong enough to take on Lance.

The hotel I ended up staying in was called the Golden Tulip. The most luxurious hotel in all Indigo, the pamphlet had read. I didn't care much about that. The room was large enough to have my entire team out ofm their balls and that was sufficient for me. The spa didn't hurt either. While staying in the wilds was stupidly easy thanks to this world's technology, let no one convince you it was comfortable. My knots had knots after a month without the comforts of modern civilization.

Xxxxx

Giovanni's gym challenge had changed in the last six months. Where he formerly only took eight badge challengers, he now took on anyone with over five badges. Was it suspicious as fuck? Yes. But there weren't any articles about people disappearing in his gym or anything like that.

Besides, I had more insurance than most people. I'd left my pokedex turned on since I entered the city. If I went missing, Giovanni would have a champion level professor on his tail. I hated relying on the old man's protection, as implicit as it was in the case, but I had to be pragmatic. My team was rare and powerful. A combination that pretty much assured me that the rockets would be after me eventually.

My challenge was set for thirty minutes from now, so I just sat in my chair and waited for my turn to be called in. Unlike the other gym leaders, Giovanni didn't broadcast his battles. Not to the league, and not even in his own gym. The television at the reception was showing a generic news station instead of the battle going on within the building.

Speaking of the building, it was a gym like any other. It was more well kept and sophisticated than the others but still not too out of place when compared to the rest of the Kanto gyms.

My nerves began to gnaw at me when I only had ten minutes to the battle. I'd never felt this nervous before a battle since my first gym battle at Pewter. I looked down at my hand in shock. It was shaking. My whole body was shaking. There was something wrong here.

I wasn't even allowed to dwell on these feelings for too long because I was called in for my battle. I gave a strained smile to the receptionist as she wished me luck and I passed right by the trainer that just came out of battle. She had a shocked look on her face and was staring at the pokeball clenched in her hands like she couldn't believe what was going on. As I tried to ask what happened, she just straightened up and left the gym like nothing happened. Freaky.

I walked into the bright arena. There were no observers, of course. There wasn't even a referee. "Welcome to the Viridian city gym, Mr. Oak. I understand this is your seventh badge challenge. This will be a six-on-one battle in your favour. I will be using an interesting pokemon I captured recently so bring on your strongest." Ok. This sounded sus as fuck. Six-on-one? On a pokemon he captured recently? This was insane to be frank.

I nodded at his terms because what else could I do. I prepared myself for a unique ground type, so imagine my shock when a pokemon with a very distinct cat-like appearance appeared on the field without even the flash that normally accompanied teleportation. It stood straight and stared right at me with glowing blue eyes. Mewtwo? What the fuck?

A/N; Lovely chapter, eh? Thanks for reading. We're halfway through with chapter 35 on the pa-atreon page. Feel free to join me there if you can. Same username as up here. The link's on my profile.