Chapter 14 – The Long Haul
The Second Shiny
Once Meowth had Picked Up enough Oran, Ex trained his team for most of the rest of the morning in preparation for the Rest Stop.
(# Cut Content: Training for Trainers)
In the meantime, Brain had become bored with merely memorizing numbers and battle statistics, which it could now Analyze instantly. So it did internet research in between battles, to get a better understanding of this new world. Yesterday's 'Revive Ivy' and 'Rare Candy' articles, it had thought, would be one-offs. But after so many instances of instantly looking up answers to any inquiries it imagined – and actually finding those answers – it now regarded web-surfing as the normal thing to do during downtime, not outlier behavior.
An online article simply titled Pokédex Entries currently captivated Brain's attention, though finding this little gem had taken far more work than simply typing those two words into the search engine.
"-misleading, but not pointless. Beyond providing a sense of history, they just might make for an interesting challenge to prospective pokéscientists. Due to the pseudo-scientific nature of the original entries, any Trainer capable of noticing inconsistencies within them would make a promising candidate for lab assistant, researcher, Scientist, or even Pokémon Professor. I propose-"
"Meowth!" came an excited voice from the Tall Grass, pulling Ex's eyes away from the Pokédex and wrenching Brain's attention away from the article.
"What is it?" Ex asked in human language. The question was simple, not needing pokéspeech for Meowth to understand.
Meowth wasn't Holding a Pickup Item, but then, the Pickup Party wasn't ongoing at the moment. The Meowth did still have his Oran Berry, which was the confusing part. Brain had told Ex's team not to return unless they ate their Oran Berry for a Flawless Victory and needed a new one. But this Meowth obviously hasn't eaten its Oran Berry yet and doesn't need a new one. The Meowth stood before Ex, not training, not doing Pickup, looking excited.
Meowth rapidly said, "Meowth Meowth Meowth!"
Ex looked at Amber. He didn't even need to ask.
Amber sighed. "Stinky said-" her voice changed slightly "-'Trainer, I fought Shiny Pidgey!'"
So THAT'S what this is about, Brain thought.
"Ah," Ex smiled.
"Prime said the same thing yesterday," Amber observed thoughtfully, "but you never explained. What's a Shiny Pidgey?"
"A Pidgey with different coloration than usual," Brain automatically answered. "All pokémon have two color pallets: a normal one and a Shiny one. Shiny pokémon are many orders of magnitude rarer than normal pokémon, so finding and Capturing them isn't easy."
Amber tilted her head. "That's it? Just a different color?"
"That's not just it," his brain denied instantly.
Armed with new knowledge from the web, it explained what it now knew of Shiny pokémon in a lecturing tone.
"Shiny pokémon taste bad – the strange color is a warning to predators. They can also exert some amount of control over their own Shininess – whether it's bright and sparkly or dim and muted."
Which was an interesting iota of intrigue it had investigated on the internet-
(Query:Time1|Query:Time2|Operation:SubtractionT1T2|Retrieval:57:53.324)
-about an hour ago.
The 'Shiny Sparkle Reflex' was recorded fact, studied by multiple pokéscientists, with video evidence supporting it. Although ultimately not much research had been done once 'The Two Purposes of Shininess' had been discovered.
"Shiny predator pokémon," Brain continued in its lecturing tone, "can make their colors dim and muted to help with camouflage. Shiny prey pokémon can make themselves bright and sparkly to warn carnivores of their taste. They can't do it often – maybe twice or thrice a day – but that's all they need to survive most attacks. Or perpetrate one."
"What if a Shiny pokémon gets attacked more than twice a day?"
Brain used Ex's body to shrug. "They almost never get attacked in the first place, but if it did happen, I guess they'd just-"
"-use their normal abilities to flee," Ex said, cutting off his brain from saying "die."
"The important thing is," Brain continued, completely unfazed by the interruption, "a Shiny pokémon will always make itself bright and sparkly whenever it feels threatened."
The ability made sense from an evolutionary perspective. Not an Evolutionary perspective, mind, but an evolutionary perspective, with a lower case 'e'. (The Darwinian kind.) Survival of the fittest, and all that.
But there was a major problem with that possibility.
A few problems, actually.
First and foremost, that kind of evolution simply might not exist here, so there might be a different explanation behind the 'Shiny Reflex', like intelligent design. It was a tempting thought, given that there was a 'God' (i.e. Arceus) that could have brought all species into being as they currently are. But tempting as it was to think that way, the fact that children could still inherit traits from their parents (Gary looked like Oak, if you knew what to look for) suggested that evolution with a lower case 'e' was still going on, at least for humans. Inherited traits on a micro scale suggested inherited traits on a macro scale. And if evolution was going on for humans, it might be going on for pokémon as well, especially since pokémon did inherit things from their parents, even in the games (3 IVs, Nature from a parent Holding an Everstone, 5 IVs instead of 3 if a parent is Holding a Destiny Knot, species of the mother, Egg Moves, etc.).
The second problem, even if evolution existed here, was that Shininess might be the result of pure randomness, not parentage. If that were the case, Shininess wouldn't be affected by evolution any more than extremely rare birth defects are affected by evolution. If it was a genetic anomoly, it couldn't be eliminated by survival of the fittest because it wasn't inherited in the first place. It wouldn't be passed down, it would simply pop up from time to time. In the games, Shininess is determined by random numbers you cannot directly control, can only indirectly influence through odds-affecting methods. Shininess is not determined by a parent pokémon being Shiny. You can't get Shiny offspring by breeding two Shiny parents together.
But you could increase the odds by a factor of five if you bred two parents from different nationalities together. Named after the one who discovered it, the "Matsuda Method" was programmed by Game Freak to incentivize customers to trade cross-continent. But lore-wise, it opened up a can of evolutionary Wormadam because now you have Shininess being affected by parentage.
If Shininess is heritable, or at least influenced by heritage, that means it's influenced by evolution – by "survival of the fittest". Under that framework, one might think that Shiny predators wouldn't make good ambushers, and Shiny prey wouldn't make a good escapees or hiders, and both would die long before getting the chance to reproduce, and thus Shininess wouldn't be passed to the next generation. Ever.
Given that Shiny pokémon stand out like glitter, they needed some way to survive long enough to breed for the theory of evolution to allow for their existence. Because Shiny values, or whatever they're called here – the Shiny gene? – hadn't been eliminated by reproductive pressures, if indeed that's what hadn't happened.
That's where the control over their own Shininess comes in, coupled with a bad taste. The control helps predators, and the bad taste helps prey. Whether the 'Terrible Taste' and 'Sparkle Reflex' came from evolutionary pressures, or from Arceus taking pity on the poor Shiny pokémon and giving them a way to survive, Brain didn't know. A world that simultaneously had a literal God ruling over it and something called "Evolution" wasn't easy to examine scientifically. Well, not when you asked fundamental questions about nature. The surface mechanics were easier to examine, but Brain still didn't have any answers to the deeper details.
"How rare are Shiny pokémon?" Amber asked.
That, not being a deeper question, didn't require a deep answer.
This time, however, Ex took control of his own voice to say, "Either a one in four-thousand, ninety-six chance or a one in eight-thousand, ninety-two chance." Ex had hunted enough Shinies to know those numbers even without Brain's help.
"A one in four-thousand... what?" Amber asked.
"Nevermind."
Two Shiny pokémon in two days, Ex thought. Did we get lucky or unlucky?
After a total of 326 Wild battles across our entire team? thought Brain. Lucky for sure.
But only ONE battle was against a Shiny, not TWO, Ex thought. Yesterday, Prime said he spotted the Shiny Pidgey in the air. He didn't FIGHT it, he SAW it.
Your point?
Realism, Ex reminded Brain. Meowth and Charmander have SEEN more Wild pokémon than they've actually BATTLED. Which means the amount of Wild pokémon 'encounters' we've had is higher than three hundred and twenty-six. And come to think of it, this Shiny Pidgey might be the SAME one from yesterday, since it could have been flying in THIS direction.
Still lucky, Brain thought. Unless 'realism' is affecting the odds more than I assume. Actually, I haven't done the math yet, so I don't even KNOW what I assume. I hate how realism can mess with the numbers.
Getting back to the here and now, Ex turned to Stinky, who was still standing at attention.
"Did the Pidgey sparkle?" he asked, using human speech to ask the simple question.
"Me Meowth."
"Amber?"
"'It sparkled.'"
Ex grinned in anticipation. "Perfect."
In the games, Shiny pokémon sparkle when you encounter them because Game Freak programmed that quirk into their code, probably to make them stand out more to players. Here, Shiny pokémon sparkle when you encounter them because they feel threatened and are instinctively trying to warn the bigger predator away. That would make Shiny pokémon much easier to notice and much easier for Meowth – the pokémon literally famous for liking shiny things – to hunt.
"Did you battle it?" Ex asked.
Stinky nodded excitedly. "Me!"
"Did you Faint it?"
Stinky's excitement drained away, as if Strength Sapped by Shiinotic.
"Owth."
Ex looked at the despondent Meowth for three seconds.
"Hold that thought," he said, tabbing out of the article on Pokédex entries.
He opened 'Records', clicked 'Wild Battles', and found Stinky's most recent battle.
Meowth used Bite!
Pidgey fled.
Ex sighed.
Just to be sure, Ex viewed the battle through Stinky's eyes.
Stinky caught sight of the pretty Pidgey pecking at the dirt. He stalked on the ground, careful not to make a sound. When he was close enough, he pounced through the rough. He saw a bright surge of sparkles just as he used Bite, closing his eyes briefly – first at the brightness, then at the taste – then watched helplessly as the bird flew away.
Ex looked up from the screen to Stinky, who seemed deeply depressed at the moment.
"Don't worry about it," Ex said in a voice that he tried to make as relieving as possible. He didn't want to discourage Shiny Hunting, after all, and criticism at this point would do exactly that. "You did the best you could."
And he wasn't even lying. Stinky had done well to attempt to Flinch it, but sometimes the odds just weren't in your favor. Prime was the only Meowth to reach level 9 so far, so the only Pidgey-ready 'Inky' was Blinky with his Hidden Power Electric. Besides, there would be plenty more opportunities to Capture a Shiny Pidgey or three, so Ex wasn't all that bothered by it.
"In fact, because you realized on your own that you still could've won if you got lucky, here's two... Aspear Berries, your favorite."
The Meowth happily ate the treats.
Switching to pokéspeech, Ex said, "Human huMan man Human human hume human man, hume human. (If you can Faint a Shiny next time and bring it back, you'll get more.)"
In the games, if you Fainted a pokémon, that was it. The encounter ended and you lost your chance to Capture them.
But here, Ex wouldn't be losing his chance to Capture them even with the order he just gave because Fainted pokémon didn't magically disappear. In fact, Ex might even be able to Capture Fainted pokémon outright, like they did in the anime. If not, Ex could simply feed them a Revive to wake them up and then Capture them.
"Hume hume human human hugh human hugh hume Human man, (And don't forget to keep an eye out for green Rattata,)" Brain added. "Hume human man hume. (And other rare things.)"
"Meowth!" Stinky said confidently, Picking Up his Oran and returning to the Tall Grass.
When all was said and done, Brain tabbed back to the article it had been reading.
Professorial Pokédex
The strange Pokédex entries from earlier, it seemed, were not an inside joke.
There had turned out to be another explanation, one which Ex's brain hadn't considered because it had trouble continuing to think about a problem whenever it felt like it already knew the answer. The hardest time to think outside-the-box is when the box has already been neatly filled in with a wrong answer, especially when there are no hints leading to the actual answer, and the wrong answer seems right.
Officially speaking, Pokédex entries fall into three categories: fact, fiction, and debatable.
The factual entries are just what they sound like: facts. Observations of reality. No guesswork, no hypotheses, no interpretations. Just hard truths backed up by solid evidence.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the fictional entries were the original 'facts' about pokémon, also known as 'myths'. They often tried to explain observations, rather than convey them.
For example, Charmander's tail went out when it died, so the earliest humans thought 'the tail fire must equal life', and the earliest Scientists wrote Pokédex entries to reflect that conventional wisdom. Only relatively recently did they realize that fanning, feeding, and fueling the flame would NOT help a wounded Charmander in the slightest. Charmander's life produced the fire, not the other way around. If you couldn't heal the life, you couldn't save the flame.
It also worked in reverse: if a Charmander was lively and strong, trying to douse the flame wouldn't do much to hurt it. So long as it wasn't on the verge of death, a Charmander could be fully submerged in water without much worry. It wouldn't like it, but it needed some way to clean itself, not to mention some way of surviving Water attacks, or resisting random rainstorms. The flame on its tail might be replaced with steam, but it would still exist. It would still be there in some symbolic sense.
Charmander's tail, and many other myths like it, were only slowly debunked over time. It had taken a while for the scientists of this world to fix them all – or almost all of them, at any rate – and it was now a big deal whenever Scientists used the third, 'debatable' classification to correct modern Pokédex entries...
Modern entries which Ex wouldn't be able to access until he turned eighteen, or until Professor Oak updated his Pokédex.
That was the important part of all this.
The old entries are a test that Professors give to young Trainers, and if you can't pass it, you can't get the real entries.
Any Trainers that notice misinformation in the interesting but ultimately incorrect entries of old are added to an index of aspiring investigators of science. A Trainer's Pokédex won't be updated to the modern entries until they bring it up with their Professors, and Pokémon Professors don't tell Trainers about the ruse because that would ruin the test. In fact, the Professors do everything in their power to keep it a secret.
But his brain turned out to be very, very good at surfing the web and Furreting out information. It was like his brain had finally come home – like it was born for interfacing and interacting with technology. It was a 'pokémon computer', after all. But even then, figuring out the truth hadn't been easy. It had still taken a good dose of searching and a great deal of sifting through obscure articles to stumble upon the correct one: Pokédex Entries, by Professor Pine.
Most articles about Pokédex entries had been 'hidden' from public search engines, including this one, but they were still available if you knew where to look. They had been 'hidden', but not completely hidden, presumably under the reasoning that any Trainer who could find them on their own deserved to be added to the list of prospective pokéscientists anyway.
Ex's brain hadn't tested this presumption yet. It wanted to test it by honestly describing what it learned about the test to Professor Oak... but it was also tempted to pretend like it 'happened across' a fictional entry and was now 'curious' why that entry had been wrong – even though it knew the answer full well in advance – just so it could 'pass' the test the normal way. The best way to cheat on a question is to know the answer in advance, while the best way to excel on a question is to study the material so that... you know all the possible answers in advance. Or you know how to find the answers. The line between cheating and excellence could be blurry sometimes.
Ex told his brain that, regardless of what they ultimately decided to do, it would have to wait until he could type with both his hands. Ex also asked his brain if it had learned any important lessons from this, because he had something he wanted to say.
His brain said it still needed to work on thinking outside the confines of its foreknowledge.
Ex mentally shook his head. Good, but not good enough.
His fingers scrolled and his eyes focused on a single sentence of the article.
"As better knowledge was obtained and/or bad 'knowledge' was flushed out, the Pokédex began looking less like an absurd collection of curious incredulities and more like an actual encyclopedia of pokémon."
He gave his brain a moment to think about that, then described what he thought the lesson should be.
Those absurd entries came from ignorance and accepted scientific consensus – consensus that was wrong as recently as 85 years ago, and is STILL being proven wrong with the 'debatable' classification. Ridiculous Pokédex entries are still being found and challenged to this day, but they were only ever ridiculous in the first place because of 'conventional wisdom'. Your problem isn't exactly that you need to think outside the box, it's that you need to be more fundamentally skeptical of established 'knowledge', even from scientific papers. Don't forget, it's conventional wisdom which constrains your thoughts to the box in the first place.
His brain, after thinking about it, thought that Ex was taking skepticism far too far, into the realm of impracticality. Questioning all scientific papers all the time wasn't really sensible, especially if nothing seemed wrong with them in the first place.
Automatically doubting non-scientific papers made more sense, it thought, and Ex eventually conceded the point, but he still insisted that his brain should be more suspicious of its foreknowledge.
For example...
The Long Haul: Walking Willfully
The traveler's guide from Viridian – which claimed Route 1's travel time was three days, and which he should have thought to question as it hadn't even been a scientific paper, just a pamphlet for tourists – had probably been meant for adults or teenagers.
Not ten-year-olds.
Earlier, Amber said Rest Stops were "the half-way points of Routes".
With little legs and small strides, it had taken almost exactly forty-eight hours to get to this point, meaning Route One would take almost exactly forty-eight more hours after the Rest Stop, meaning the overall travel time would be four days, not three. And if they spend more than an hour at the Rest Stop, as Ex planned, then it'll probably be closer to fifty-four hours, with them arriving at Viridian in the evening.
Route One was turning out to be much, much longer than Ex had envisioned when setting out. In the games, Route One took maybe four minutes to cross if you got unlucky with Wild encounters. Here, it took four days, regardless of luck.
Ex groaned when he realized all this. Sure, another day meant more training and more Items, but it also meant more waiting before getting to the good stuff.
His brain, his fun-house reflection, grinned when it realized all this. Sure, another day meant waiting before getting to the good stuff, but it also meant more training and more Items!
Easy for YOU to think, Ex thought. YOU aren't the one walking.
But I AM the one strategizing, it thought. And my strategies say more time to prepare is better, especially this early on. The Rest Stop of Route 1 will be a brilliant place for battling, and the rest of Route 1 will be a good place for grinding. And Shiny Hunting.
Tell that to my poor legs.
His brain, in an annoyed tone, thought, If you didn't mind spending whole WEEKS hunting for a single Shiny pokémon back in the other world, you shouldn't mind walking for a few DAYS in this one. Not to mention our pokémon have to walk AND fight, and they have even SMALLER legs than YOU do. They have it MUCH worse, and you don't see THEM complaining.
He wished he could deny it, but Ex had to admit his brain had a point.
Wait a minute, he thought. Was that emotional manipulation just now?
No, his brain thought. It was an observation of inconsistency. Pointing out hypocrisy should be fair game, even if it makes YOU feel emotional.
Ex sighed. This was going to be a harder rule to enforce than he thought.
Still...
His brain wasn't wrong...
Just like with training pokémon...
If he couldn't enjoy himself along the way, he might as well give up now.
Besides, his brain added, if walking is REALLY that bad, just Capture a Growlithe, Evolve it into Arcanine, and ride around on it like in Let's Go.
No, Ex thought. If my pokémon can battle, I can walk.
He sucked up his stomach and clenched his fists. The attitude wouldn't last long, he knew. He'd go back to his slumped, staring-at-his-Pokédex position soon enough, but he would remember the moral going forward.
He was in this for the long haul, and he would see it through.
The Short Haul: Vaulting Viridian
On that note, he asked his brain if they were ready for the Rest Stop.
Is a Charmander orange?
Unless it's Shiny, Ex thought. You can't know until you see it.
Exactly.
Huh?
We're probably ready, his brain thought, unless the Rest Stop Trainers are REALLY powerful relative to Route 1. We can't know until we see it.
Ah.
His brain tabbed out of Pokémon League Gyms: Official Rules and opened up the summary pages of his team.
You can check for yourself if you REALLY want to see how ready we are. And keep in mind how far you're NORMALLY supposed to be after only traveling halfway through Route 1.
Ex blinked at the screen, as if seeing the summary pages for the first time, even though he'd seen them many times recently. In front of his eyes was a team whose average level was 10, with six pokémon on that team.
After only two days of training.
While still on Route One.
Definitely ready for the Rest Stop, he thought. In fact, forget the Rest Stop, we might even be ready to challenge a GYM. I don't care WHAT Amber says about Giovanni being harsh, we have to have SOME chance at winning.
His brain had done a bit of research on that front as well, just to confirm Amber's claims.
If this world is like Origins, where Gym Leaders are expected to lose to Trainers of all skill levels so long as the Trainer is good enough to win, even "beginners" like him, then there had to be rules which helped new Trainers have a fair fight, like level restrictions on Gym Leader pokémon. The first episode of Origins implied that Gym Leaders only use two pokémon against Trainers with zero Badges, but the official website had done more than imply it.
It stated outright the number of pokémon you should expect to face depending on your current Badge count:
0 Badge: 2 pokémon
1-2 Badges: 3 pokémon
3-4 Badges: 4 pokémon
5-7 Badges: 5 pokémon
8 (or more) Badges: 6 pokémon
The website also mentioned a few interesting rules which Gym Leaders had to follow, including these three:
"The Gym Leader must send out the first pokémon, allowing the challenger to decide which pokémon they'd like to use in response."
"All Gym battles with Trainers younger than 15 follow one-way 'Shift' style in favor of the challenger."
"If the challenger is younger than 15, the Gym Leader is not allowed to swap out pokémon in the middle of battle unless the challenger does so first (not including swaps after Fainting)."
That last rule made Ex pause. He looked at his Pokédex thoughtfully.
I wonder...
What? asked his brain.
See what you can find on Giovanni's typical Gym team.
After a minute of searching, his brain discovered that Gym battles were streamed live to the pokéweb. Immediately after that, his brain discovered that the Viridian Gym live feed was currently blank. But Ex wasn't looking to watch live battles, so with a modified query in the search engine, his brain found the answer to Ex's request.
Giovanni is known as "Kanto's Strongest Gym Leader". He also has a reputation for being "unbeatable". He uses a level 70 Persian against all challengers, regardless of skill level, and a level 80 Nidoqueen against anybody that Faints Persian. Only a few Trainers in recent years had gotten past Nidoqueen, only to face a level 90 Onyx. All the Trainers to get that far had at least seven Badges, so he had technically only used two pokémon against everyone else.
Giovanni was abiding by the established limitations placed on Gym leaders, Ex supposed, but how THAT was meant to be overcome by new Trainers, Ex had no idea.
And then, he did have an idea.
And then he grinned.
And he felt like laughing.
And he rubbed his hands together.
For he had just realized that there was a way to beat Giovanni at his current power level, though it would require a good amount of preparation and a great deal of... well, not luck, exactly, but something like it.
If he wanted to defeat the two-pokémon team of Persian and Nidoqueen, both of which were way above his current level, he would need to resort to cheesy strategies.
But there was a certain problem with that cheese, delicious though it was: if the opponent was aware of it, then it probably wouldn't work. It's like the four-move checkmate in chess: easy to pull off against the ignorant and unskilled, impossible to pull off against the aware and adroit... though there are some circumstances where even the aware can't counter the cheese Ex had in mind, which is where the analogy breaks down. At Ex's directing, his brain searched the web, but it couldn't find any evidence that these strategies had been used or discovered in the past. The key words 'fear' and 'Rattata' didn't turn up anything of note, though he did get a few basic results from 'stall'.
When Ex was satisfied with the lack of search results, he moved on to the second thing his strategy would require besides his opponent's ignorance. Now that he had almost an entire team that knew Fake Out, all he needed were two standard TMs, a few Heart Scales, and two of a somewhat standard Item – or one of that Item and a pokémon with Sturdy. If he could get those, he would be able to beat Giovanni even if the man used two max-level pokémon, and there would be nothing the Gym Leader could do about it.
Well, actually, there would be plenty of things Giovanni could do about it. But the question was, would he?
Ex crossed his fingers, hoping this would work.
His brain tried to point out that the Viridian Gym would be closed like in the games, but it hadn't gotten this information from the web – Viridian's wasn't the only Gym whose livestream was down – so Ex had reminded it of 'realism'. The Gym might merely have restricted hours of operation. A business didn't shut down just because the CEO was away doing secret, nefarious things, and Giovanni would need to have actually engaged in battles to build his reputation as a harsh Leader in the first place.
If the Gym was closed, so be it.
But if it wasn't...
Chapter done, cut content below.
# Interlude: Training for Trainers
Amber, ever the Ranger, explained that the two of them were on the 'easiest' path of Route 1. There were multiple paths of differing difficulties, apparently, all converging on the Rest Stop.
Other than the path they were currently treading, the only one that "new Trainers" like them might take was known to have Mankey, Spearow, Diglett, Sandshrew, Poliwag (or other Water Pokémon from the streams), and various Bug Types. Plus Pidgey and Rattata, of course. Ex's brain had quietly remarked that all of these were in the pokémon anime's first episode, on the anime's Route 1, with the exception of the Bug Types. But those you could get in the Gen IV remake of Kanto by using Headbutt on the trees that bordered the Route's boundaries... though Amber hadn't mentioned any Johto Bug Types, just Caterpie and Weedle, so maybe you could only get Kanto bugs by Headbutting the trees.
Then again, Route 1 of Origins did have a Caterpie in the Tall Grass... whatever.
Furthermore, Amber had claimed that Trainers their age or older would each have a Starter. The level range would probably be anywhere from 5 to 10 for the Starters and 4 to 9 for everything else, unless a Trainer was really dedicated to a single pokémon. Youngsters, for example, didn't have Starters, so there might be someone with a high level Rattata, or something.
One of Route 1's trails went as high as having level 50 pokémon (like the Gen II and IV versions of the Kanto region, thought his brain), but not many Trainers went there, and new Trainers definitely didn't go there, so they only had to worry about the lower level ranges. Older Trainers, Amber had also said, typically only spent one day at Rest Stops when they were traveling Routes. By mounting a big pokémon that knows Agility, Fly, Teleport, or some other movement Move, Ace Trainers can reach the Rest Stop at the end of their first day, then the next city at the end of their second, thereby finishing most Routes in two days flat. Training (which in this context probably meant Experience grinding) could be done more quickly in cities, so that was where the experienced Trainers who already had teams spent most of their time. Therefore, Ex shouldn't have to worry about encountering any Ace Trainers, even those that stuck around Route 1's most dangerous path, because they wouldn't return to the Rest Stop until nightfall.
Amber estimated that there might be as few as five Trainers at the Rest Stop, or there might be as many as fifty.
His brain, after considering this new information, advised Ex to get his team to as high a level as possible while preventing them from dropping lower than 5 PP per attacking Move. Then, on second thought, it had advised to only do that for Charmander and Blinky.
Charmander, thanks to Ember and Hidden Power, could handle any Grass, Fire, or Ground Types, while Blinky could handle any Water or Flying Types. The Ground Types Amber had mentioned (Diglett and Sandshrew) shouldn't know Ground Moves at low levels, so Charmander should be safe. And if any Trainers had Fighting or Bug Types, then Winky could join the fray. Winky should be able to handle Mankey so long as it only knew Low Kick and didn't out-Speed him (i.e. level 9, maybe level 10 at most, depending on IVs and Nature).
His brain wanted to learn more about the 'Type Disadvantage Variable Boost' it had read about last night – which hasn't been explored by the pokéscientific community to its satisfaction – and this was "step 1".
It discovered that morning that it had been right to assume that multiple disadvantages, like a Charizard facing a Rock type, made the multiplier more massive, but Scientists didn't know much beyond that, nor did they know the exact numbers. These battles would help it "lay the groundwork" for the underlying theory.
The rest of his team would be Picking Up all the Trainer debris that likely littered the area, and so would Blinky and Winky when they weren't battling. Maybe the other Meowth would get a few battles too, if a Trainer had a pokémon that was weak to their Hidden Power Typing, or just weak in general.
When the morning's training was halfway over and he was halfway to the Rest Stop from where they'd started that morning, his "inky" Meowth had all reached level 9 and learned Fake Out.
Ex briefly micromanaged them one at a time, making sure they didn't waste the valuable move on any level 2 enemies.
The fully, perfectly, 100% optimal thing to do would have been to micromanage his team during every battle by making them run away from all level 2 encounters. Level 2 pokémon were no longer providing good Experience thanks to the Scaled Experience system, but Ex couldn't figure out how to prevent team members from battling them, except the one he personally directed (i.e. Charmander). He couldn't simply instruct his Meowth to "run away from level 2 pokémon" because they couldn't see their enemy's level in advance. Ex couldn't even tell an enemy's level just by looking with his eyes.
Only his Pokédex could "see" an enemy's level, and its camera had to have line-of-sight to make the determination. If it didn't have line-of-sight – which was the case for most of his team's battles save Charmander's – the Pokédex couldn't determine enemy level- well, not right away, anyway. For battles that happened where he couldn't see, enemy level only appeared in the Pokédex after the battle had already started, after PP had already been used and after the point where running away might have been the optimal thing to do. Ex could do this too – inferring enemy level from the amount of damage they could deal and how much they could take before Fainting, or how much Experience they provided – but he could only do it after a battle had started.
The only thing that could be used before battle to gauge a pokémon's level was their size – pokémon get slightly bigger every time they level up here – which is possibly how the Pokédex determines levels so reliably. But the difference in size between a level 2 Rattata and a level 3 or 4 Rattata couldn't be seen with the naked eye.
Long story short, his training wasn't as optimal as it could have been.
Still close to optimal, though.
And for Charmander, it was as optimal as he could reasonably get it.
But even if the Experience gains weren't perfectly optimal, Ex made sure the strategies were perfectly optimal, which is why he made absolutely sure to teach his Meowth how to use Fake Out properly. He also made sure they fought only Pidgey when using it – he and Amber had an idea planned for lunch, one which required Pidgey as well as Rattata.
With Fake Out making those battles effective one-shots, his Meowth didn't need Oran, so that segment of training went quickly even though they were bringing back bodies.
When each Meowth got to 5 Fake Out PP, he set them off to train on their own again. He would give them leave to use Fake Out with discretion after dinner, but for now he instructed them not to use it unless they encountered a Shiny Pokémon or an emergency.
Even though his brain wanted to get down to 5 PP across the board, they only had enough time and Oran to get down to 5 Bites, 5 HPs, and 5 Fake Outs (and 5 Embers for Charmander). Scratch just had too much PP to exhaust before lunch.
This had all resulted in a level 12 Charmander who had just crossed the threshold in her last battle, a level 10 Prime who was a third of the way to the next level, three level 9 'inky's who were all on the cusp of leveling up again, and a level 10 Blinky whom he had directly ordered through a few more battles, just so it would cross the level threshold before reaching the stop.
At low levels, a single level could make a massive difference.
His training had eaten up thirty Oran Berries, which brought him down to single digits again. But they were still about an hour away from the Rest Stop, so he got his Pickup Party going with the same instructions from early in the morning - Pickup Oran Berries exclusively (plus rare Items and Shinies). He would be needing Oran for the Rest Stop battles – for Flawless Victories, mostly, or even just for winning if the Trainers there were strong.