Or in which Amber begins her training.
About ten minutes after the Hoopa had left, Adam came back in, immediately followed by Harmony. "Well. I'm not so sure about this, but Adam says you need to stay somewhere, so he's volunteered," said Harmony.
Amber raised her eyebrows. "That's incredibly generous of you. May I ask why?"
"Enough rope. That, and the fact that just because I'm a Dark-type trainer doesn't make me evil. I am a Gym Leader, after all."
Amber looked at all three of the Deltas, gauging their reactions. Squirtle nodded slowly, still watching Adam, while Charmander was much more effusive in her approval. Bulbasaur was the last to respond to Amber's nonverbal question, scrutinizing Adam with a careful eye before nodding herself. "In that case, we'd love to take you up on your offer."
"Alright, in that case I'll go with Hoopa to dust off my spare room back in Gaea Town and be back within a few hours." The man retreated from the room. "Until then," he said, swinging the door closed behind him and Harmony as they left.
Adam, Dark-type Gym Leader and Hoopa's trainer. Why did that ring bells for Amber? For that matter, how had she known he was Augur of Torren? There was something very off about the whole affair, but when she tried to remember, she couldn't quite reach the memories she knew she had, ones that would explain a great deal,
"Amber? Are you okay?" asked Squirtle, frowning. "You've been like that for twenty minutes."
Amber shook herself, then sighed. "Yeah, yeah. 'M fine, just… thinking."
"Always a dangerous thing, that," smirked Bulbasaur.
Amber huffed out a laugh out her nose. "No argument here, Bulbasaur. No argument here."
The next week saw Amber and the deltas settling into Adam's quarters in the gym and also the Torren region.
Harmony had been over a few times to see how Amber was coming along, but other than bafflement as to why her body had healed from the injuries stemming from the arrival in Torren while her leg remained twisted, she hadn't interacted with Amber much.
Besides Adam, his Pokémon, and the Deltas, Amber didn't have much interpersonal interaction, nor much of anything to do.
That was, until today.
Amber looked up sharply at a knocking at the door, already on edge. "Amber? It's Adam. There's someone I invited over that you should meet. I'll be out front, talking with her."
The woman in question looked over at Bulbasaur, who shrugged. Then, she went to the door, Deltas trooping after her like Ducklett following their parent.
In the front room stood a brown-haired woman in a black crop top with six Poké Balls at her belt, with pink-and-gold ducklike Pokémon behind her, engaged in conversation with Adam. The Pokémon was the first to notice Amber, but Adam and the woman he was talking with turned to her shortly after.
"Ah, Amber. This is Diana, she's the Selene City Gym Leader, and one of her two specialties is the Psychic type. Diana, this is Amber. She's the Psychic I mentioned."
"It's nice to meet you, Amber. This is Cresselia," Diana said, gesturing to the pure Psychic-type, dream-bringing Legendary hovering behind her.
Amber raised an eyebrow, internally noting how she really had to figure out why she kept having these flashes of insight.
"Nice to meet you too. These are Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle."
"I've heard you have some degree of psychic potential. Is that so?" Seeing the younger woman's nod, Diana continued. "I have some experience helping train Psychic talents, and I'd be willing to help you."
"Just me? Or can Bulbasaur and Charmander get in on the training too?" asked Amber.
Diana frowned, confused. "But… Bulbasaur and Charmander aren't Psychic types."
"Normally, no. But there's a bit of an exception in this case. Bulbasaur's Psychic/Fairy and Charmander's Ghost/Dragon, and Ghost and Psychic are pretty similar in terms of application, from what these two tell me."
"The hatchling has a point," said Cresselia, under her breath.
"Thanks for agreeing," replied Amber, just as surreptitiously.
"Wait, what? You can understand Pokémon?" Both Diana and Cresselia were shocked, although Amber was more able to notice the former's surprise over the latter's.
"No, I'm just really good at guessing," deadpanned Amber. "Yeah, I can understand Pokémon."
"That's… well, that's a sign of a very strong Psychic talent. I only have minor empathy and a little bit of telekinesis, but I think I can still help you and Bulbasaur train," said Diana. "Plus I've got some Ghost types that can help your Charmander. What do you think about that?"
"I think," said Amber, slowly, "that I would be Very Much On Board with that."
"How the hell did you capitalize spoken words?!" Adam was confused.
"A magician never reveals her secrets. Either that or the Author did it for me, you decide."
Diana led Amber out into one of the side training rooms in the Gym, Bulbasaur trooping after them. Once the door irised closed after them, Diana spoke. "Alright, so tell me how far you've gotten so far in terms of Psychic power."
"Uhh, besides the whole 'understanding Pokémon' bit? I've got a little bit of telekinesis. Oh, and also in extremis I managed to support my own weight on my bad leg." Amber was tapping her thumb against her staff nervously.
Bulbasaur piped up, pushing out the thought of the words she meant into the minds of the room's occupants. I've managed psychometry, thought-speech, and fine-scale telekinesis, so far.
"Alright. In that case… How about Bulbasaur, you work with Cresselia a little bit while Gardevoir and I help Amber with her telekinesis?" Seeing the three other beings in the room nod, Diana took a Poké Ball from her belt and opened it, releasing a Gardevoir. "Alright, Amber, why don't you try and demonstrate telekinesis by picking this-" here, she put a small metal cube on the floor. "-up to about waist level."
"Will do." Amber put out one hand, widening her stance slightly and angling her staff to balance, then focused.
The block spun wildly off the floor, bucking Amber's grip and shooting off, and only a timely deflection from Gardevoir prevented her trainer from a black eye.
"Okay, I think I know what caused that." Diana took the block from Gardevoir's mental grip. "You're mapping too much onto your physical body."
"Wait, what?"
"You're focusing too much on treating it like another arm, that since you're not operating on the same physical scale as your telekinetic talent trying to use it like your own body is going to have all kinds of unbalanced forces and send it all out of wack," explained Diana.
"Yeah, that makes sense. So how do I use telekinesis instead of using my body as a model for how it'll work?"
Diana frowned, clearly trying to figure out how to word things. Fortunately, she wasn't the only one with experience with telekinesis helping Amber.
"You have to visualize what you want to happen. If you want to exert a force on something, imagine pushing on the object. If you want an object to move, see it moving in your mind. If you want to treat down as up and up as down, visualize that," said Gardevoir.
"Hmmm…" Amber closed her eyes, then focused on warping the fabric of reality. Gradually, she felt something tugging her forwards.
"Gravity differentials? Interesting. I've always been told that that's one of the most complicated ideas to visualize. Well, for Pokémon that aren't naturally connected to gravity, like Gardevoir here," said Diana.
"That's… not like Psychic gravity, it feels like I'm standing on an incline," frowned Gardevoir. "How did you do that?"
Amber let her focus lapse, leaning against her staff. "Well, I figured that that gravity is mostly just curved space-time, and I can already visualize that. So I just put another curve into the fabric of space-time and decided that actually existed."
"Wait, you're using the spacetime folding method? Most of the time we just borrow a trick from the Ghost type and cut ourselves off from gravity to inflict it on others." Gardevoir frowned, trying to understand how Amber was manipulating gravity so well.
"Well, that but also 'Screw Gravity' and-" she quoted, just before she started floating up, then wriggled around in a manner that she would later describe as "super embarrassing". "-the enemy's gate is down," she finished, landing hard on the ceiling and almost falling before she could get her staff in position to properly counterbalance her weight.
"What. The. Fuck."
"It's… just about exactly what it looks like. Up is down is up," she said, pushing off the ceiling into a spin that led to her nearly faceplanting if not for landing braced on her forearms, albeit slower than would ordinarily be expected.
Amber pushed off the floor hard, rising to an upright position and settling back to the ground gently. Then, seeing how everyone was staring at her in wide-eyed wonderment, blinked. "Was it something I said?
So, that was a thing.
Honestly, I didn't come into this expecting to walk out with Amber being a great gravimancer, but hey, if it works it works.
Uploads might get pushed back, two lab classes at once aren't exactly great for free time.
Still looking for a new beta.
Say hi on tumblr: lucifra-writes
Have a nice day.