Vermilion City Gym (Part 1)
The first thing I did was to message Bill and Alan. I set a schedule to drop off the machine with Alan, to be delivered to Bill for research. He came on the restaurant bike to meet me on Route 6. He actually gave me some take-out food, too.
"Thought it would be suspicious if I didn't actually have food, so…"
"Are you kidding? Thanks so much, I love your dad's grilled chicken."
It was good to have friends in this strange afterlife. In my previous life, my friends- My friends- Uh, wait. What were my best friends' names? I tried to recall this but it didn't come back to me. Strange. I remembered my life, the hospitals, but I couldn't recall the names and faces of some of my friends.
Dropping off the machine, I went over to Vermilion City Gym and signed up for the first of 3 coach battles.
The young junior coach used Voltorb, Magnemite, Voltorb, in that order. In their evolved forms, Charmeleon and Ivysaur were able to defeat the first two without any trouble. Charmeleon kicked up the dirt from the arena into Voltorb's direction, who blindly used an electric move into the dust. Charmeleon had already moved sideways, attacking from Voltorb's flank. In the second evolutionary form, Charmeleon had a powerful Ember attack, throwing a powerful and accurate fireball into Voltorb, and then following up with sharp claws once he closed the distance. It was a move we practiced.
I matched Ivysaur vs. Magnemite, who was floating in the air. Magnemite tried to use an electric move, but Ivysaur hid behind a small hill of dirt protruding in the arena. From behind here, Ivysaur was safe from electric moves, but could not see Magnemite. This is why hand signals exist: I used secret codes to direct Ivysaur's vines to whip the floating opponent.
"Go around it, Magnemite! Get vision of Ivysaur!" the coach shouted, but I told Ivysaur to always have the cover between him and the flying fridge magnet. The sheer physical power of the enhanced vine attacks was too much.
For the last Voltorb, I used Graveler. I just wanted to see what the electric moves would do to him, and the match was a joke. Graveler felt nothing. NOTHING. Graveler was basically able to toy with Voltorb like a ball, holding him, juggling with him, kicking, bowling, until even he got bored himself and looked back at me with a face.
"Alright, alright, just end it," I eventually said. Graveler jumped up in the air and spiked Voltorb down into the ground and the match was over.
One thing that I noticed about the Vermilion City Gym was that there weren't a lot of spectators. I think it had something to do with the unwelcoming attitude of the gym leader.
I checked my messages before the 2nd coach battle, and saw a message from Bill.
"Received package. Analyzing now."
The 2nd coach was in a sailor's uniform. He was probably one of Lt. Surge's contacts on S. S. Anne.
He had two Pikachus. They were physically bigger than mine, but their electric powers were not even half as powerful.
I wanted to talk to Bill about the machine so I finished the battle quickly with Graveler and Charmeleon.
I scheduled my last coach battle for later in the evening and went out to call Bill.
"As you suspected, it is designed to be equipped on a Pokemon," Bill explained. "It's an exoskeleton suit. The metal is rare, but not impossible to find. It's definitely expensive."
"What do you suppose it does?" I asked.
"I opened it up and found a single needle. Bright yellow. It's very pointy."
"You mean like… a sewing needle?"
"Nono," Bill said. "It's big. As long as my forearm. It not only conducts electricity efficiently, but is able to store it and amplify electric output. Testing it almost caused a black out in my lab!"
No wonder it was a special delivery for Lt. Surge. Who knows what this asshole was planning to do with an electric power magnifier.
"I'm sorry, further analysis is needed," Bill said. "One thing is for sure, though. Only a powerful Magneton or Electabuzz could output enough electrical power to kill a person or a Pokemon with a single attack. With this machine, however, a smaller electric Pokemon could theoretically do fatal damage. I'm not talking about momentary paralysis. I'm talking about cardiac arrest. Or electrical power generating enough thermal energy to cook a person alive. It's very, very dangerous. It's a very good thing that this yellow needle is extremely rare, something I haven't seen in person before. And it's an even better thing that you took it out of the wrong hands."
I thought about asking Bill to send the machine back to me so I can use it, but then had a different thought.
"Any chance you can reverse engineer the machine?"
"Perhaps," Bill said. "What's on your mind?"
So I told him my idea.
"Interesting, interesting…" He said some technical mumbo jumbo to himself and said he'll try.
The last coach battle was against a strong Pikachu, more advanced in power and strategy than those of the 2nd coach.
The Pikachu lasted a whole minute against Charmeleon, being driven into the corner and then getting cut up by sharpest claws in the city.
I got the schedule for the Gym Leader battle and was walking back into the city when I saw Lt. Surge coming quickly towards the gym. He hadn't seen me yet, so I quickly hid behind a bush. The 2nd coach, the sailor, came out of the gym and they met right in front of me. I thought I had been found, but they started speaking in whispers right there, within my earshot.
"What the hell," Lt. Surge said to his subordinate. "I told you I wanted no distractions this week. The device is missing and the damn ship is behind schedule."
He must've been talking about me. I had defeated all the coaches and therefore the Gym Leader battle was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Even though he was freelancing for Team Rocket, Lt. Surge was still obligated to fulfill his gym duties.
"S-sorry, lieutenant," the sailor said. "It was this punk. He was good. Really, REALLY good."
"Urgh, what am I paying you incompetent fools for?!"
Surge muttered angry words and went inside.
It was a nice feeling to piss baddies off.
The next day, I brought out my entire team and went to Route 6. I found a quiet, secluded spot with trees, grass, and a shallow section of the pond. My idea was to train my best Pokemon the most, obviously, but also to train my other Pokemon to be at least above average. There were a few reasons behind this:
First, even though you can only use up to 6 Pokemon in official battles, you can use any number of Pokemon however you want in the real, dangerous world.
Second, some Pokemon had special utility value. Think about surfing, diving, flying, gathering wood, scouting, sentry duty, and countless other things that I needed in the wild.
Third, the better relationship and bond you had with Pokemon, the better the coordination between my commands and their ability to execute them. I needed all my Pokemon being able to follow my commands to the letter.
Fourth, a lot of the trainers and wild Pokemon were really weak now, given the fact that my best team was too strong. I needed my other Pokemon to be effective sparring partners for this A-team. This was also beneficial for my weaker guys, because they were going against the best.
Lastly, I DID want to complete the Pokedex because, well, why not? And Pokemon didn't evolve without being pushed to their physical and mental limits. They simply needed to battle.
Naturally, to prove my last point, many of my Pokemon evolved: Pidgey to Pidgeotto, Nidorans into Nidorina and Nidorino, Oddish into Gloom, Bellsprout to Weepinbell, and Paras into Parasect.
Not all of them are what you'd use in a Pokemon game, sure, but they were all precious to me in this world.
"I noticed a lot of recent additions to your Pokedex," Prof. Oak messaged me. "It speaks a lot about your Pokemon knowledge and skills as a trainer. Well done!"
Of course, I had to think about the upcoming Gym Leader battle. The biggest thing was having my Pokemon try to dodge electric moves. So I Pikachu try to hit my main fighters, with or without cover. It got to a point where they were getting used to the "channeling" that was required for Pikachu to release an electric. There was always a wind-up to the attack, a timing that telegraphed the move.
Another thing we did was to have my Pokemon just try to tank electric moves, to get used to it and not panic when they DID get hit. Each Pokemon found a way to mitigate the damage. For example, by planting your feet in a particular way, or to get hit on your tail, as opposed to your head, etc.
And the last thing we worked on was to amplify Pikachu's damage by having us stand in the water, knee deep, and getting shocked in it. It got real because we were talking about potentially fatal damage. I told Pikachu to try to use 10% power, and then we worked our way up from there. It was painful, sure, but it was worth it, for the training. It got to a point where even Wartortle could take a hit in water without being paralyzed or being knocked out.
After the training, I took my guys to the local Pokemart and I fed them a lot of protein-based Pokemon food. I wanted them to get big and strong. I couldn't wait to get to Celadon City Department Store to get the luxurious stuff. I had the money for it.
After a huge nap we went out again to Route 6 to resume our electricity resistance training. It was OHM-azing. Haha.