Where normalcy is shattered, for good.
Over the next few months, Amber managed to greatly increase her aptitude with gravitational control, to the point where she no longer technically needed the staff since she could just airwalk (what she had read somewhere as a description of walking but a few inches above the ground.
Eventually, Adam caved. "So, kiddo, why do you keep using the staff?"
"Besides the whole 'speak softly and carry a big stick' thing?" Seeing Adam's confusion, she waved him off. "It's a thing back home. Anyways, it's to get people to underestimate me, as well as the whole 'don't trip and break my arm again' bit, with a dash of comfort object." She snorted. "Glad I figured out Recover after that particular spill."
She was referring to an incident that had occurred last week, where she had tried walking under lowered gravity without the staff. It had worked well-she had been slowly building up the strength in her bad leg, so instead of purely unresponsive, it was just extremely weak.
Of course, the downside of that approach was that it required constant focus, which became abundantly obvious when Squirtle had startled her, sending her pitching forward. By instinct, she put out one hand to stop her fall.
She remembered her mistake too late, when her arm broke.
Fortunately, she had already been trying to work on Recover at the time, and the unscheduled practice she had gotten was just the thing she needed to get it working.
Adam nodded, the flash of motion dragging her back to the present. "Understandable, kid. Just so long as you make sure that you can get around."
"No worries on that front," she drawled. "Hey, you mind if I sit in on your training with Squirtle today?"
"Sure thing, kid. I mean, once you end up on your journey with Squirtle, you'll be taking over her training anyways, so you should probably be an active part going forwards."
"Fair enough." Amber flicked her wrist, a focused eddy of gravity sending Squirtle's Poké Ball spinning forward to release the diminutive Dark-type.
"Before we start, I have one question for you, Amber."
"Shoot," replied the blue-haired Psychic, settling down to watch Adam's training.
"Why do you not use telekinesis?" Seeing Amber's frown, he continued hastily. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just curious, since you use gravimancy for most things."
"Oh, that." Amber relaxed. "Uh, honestly? I'm still having a weird mapping issue with that. Like, every time I try to use telekinesis, I'm using the model of a hand to base the forces off of, but that just leads to super unbalanced forces because of the difference between bone and muscle and psionic power. I'll figure it out eventually, but for now it's just easier and more efficient to use gravity."
Adam nodded, satisfied. "So long as you're still working on it."
"Oh, she is. Trust me," said Squirtle, pushing enough Aura into the words that Adam could understand them.
"Alright then. Since Amber's sitting in for the first time, this is going to be a more theory-forward lesson. So, Squirtle, remind us what the base nature of the Dark type is."
"It's the concept of underhanded tactics, right?" asked the diminutive turtle.
"Nnnot entirely. It's more than just that. It's more like using every resource at your disposal-and even some that aren't at your disposal-to win," he corrected.
"Oh, like Foul Play and Power Trip?" asked Amber.
Adam made a finger gun at her. "That's the right idea. There's also things like Punishment, Fling, and Throat Chop. Basically, the Dark type is based around fighting unfair."
"If you're fighting fair, you're doing it wrong," Amber quoted, as if by rote. Then, she frowned. She really needed to understand where this weird knowledge ex nihilo was coming from.
"That's… actually an excellent line. I might steal that. Anyways, the Dark type is more a mindset than a fighting style. You have to be willing to throw away a lot of the normal rules of combat in order to properly use most of these moves. There are a few that that doesn't apply to, like Night Slash or Bite, but on the whole you have to psych yourself into the proper way of thinking. Some people can do this well enough to no-sell Psychic mind powers, but not the other effects, not the way a good Dark-type Pokémon could do it, but that's mostly because it's not just a passing mindset but part of what they are, so they're really good at squirming out of telekinetic attacks."
"Hmm." Amber frowned. "Alright, I'll have to keep an eye on that."
A few weeks later, Amber had finally managed to convince Adam to let her out on the town. "I may be an introvert," she had said, "but even I need to get out and stretch my legs."
"Well… as long as you hold on to your Rotomphone and keep the three Deltas, you should be okay." And so, having agreed to Adam's conditions, Amber had been left to wander Gaea Town, her Pokémon trooping after her like ducklings.
"What's a duckling?" asked Bulbasaur, confused at the thought that had flitted through Amber's mind.
"It's, like…" Amber frowned, trying to remember a line she had heard at some point. "Ah, right. It's like a boring Ducklett that can't talk."
"Hmm." Bulbasaur frowned, then continued. "So what are we doing today out in the city?"
"Honestly?" Amber shrugged, spinning a circle while walking to face all three Deltas for a moment, then returning to facing forward. "No idea. I just figured we could walk around the town, see what's what."
"That's… shouldn't we have asked for advice from Adam about what's going on in town?" asked Squirtle.
"You know, that probably would have been a good idea." Amber continued walking. "I'll get advice next time."
After another few minutes of walking through the town, they came across a man sitting on a bench holding a sign:
I am the Human Calculator, smartest human alive.
Test my skill!
"This looks interesting," said Amber. Seating herself opposite the man, cracking her knuckles. "Test your skill how?"
"I can perform any calculation you might want me to," came the answer.
"Hmmmmm…" Amber frowned. "Alright then. What happens when x=1 for the derivative of the arc-cosecant of x plus the natural log of x?"
"What are you saying?" asked Charmander, confused.
"It's a math thing. I'm asking about the slope of a function, essentially."
Error: Divide by zero.
Rebooting…
Amber flinched as reality flickered around her and the message plastered to her eyeballs vanished. "What the hell?"
"Ah, nice try, kid!" said the Human Calculator. "You tricked me into dividing by zero. Clever, hiding it inside a derivative."
"Is… is that what happened?"
"Yup. Good going, but that kind of thing is against the spirit of the competition. Have a nice day!" The edges of his outline flickered, as if in an old computer glitch, and then he vanished.
Amber frowned. She knew that had to be relevant somehow, but how it was exactly was locked behind the same wall that hid why she understood so much about the world.
"Hey, Amber?" After Amber turned to her, Bulbasaur continued. "Why haven't you tried to use Recover to try and get back your memories?"
After a moment of thought, Amber replied: "Well, I'm not actually sure if I can. I'm still figuring out what it does, and I'm not willing to use it that way yet just in case it breaks something else."
"That's probably fair."
After another moment of rest, Amber pushed herself back to her feet, then nodded. "A little bit more, then I think we should head back to the gym. Any objections?" Seeing the three Deltas shake their heads, Amber clomped off.
Making her way around town, Amber stopped a moment at the outdoor market near Route 17, looking at the Plates being sold with an appraising eye, but then moving on.
On the way back to the Gym, Amber frowned. There was an odd feeling tickling the back of her neck, and she could hear the crackling of fire behind her.
Wait. Fire?
She whirled, seeing a white-haired woman flanked by a Spiritomb flashing oddly at her and also a Houndoom, building a Fire Blast in its mouth. Behind her was another man, but Amber was too busy slamming a wedge of psionic force into the Fire Blast, splitting it to miss both her and the Deltas.
She may not have been great with fine applications of telekinesis, but she could manage larger effects.
"What the fuck are you doing?" she snapped out, even as she prepared for combat.
"Nothing personal, kid," the woman replied. "We just need you to get to Adam."
Amber's mind surged into overtime even as she slammed gravity forwards, sending the man and the woman flying backwards.
Unfortunately, the Spiritomb and Houndoom weren't effected, and the flashing lights suddenly made sense to Amber as she succumbed to the Hypnosis.
Her last thoughts were Well, fuck.
She came to being held by a Hydreigon, looking straight at Adam.
"As you can see, she's very much alive. For now. Will you endanger her for your own continued freedom, or will you hand over the crystal to us?" asked the woman, hand extended.
Amber cursed herself for not spending more time on non-Psychic moves-she had known that being connected to the Augur painted a target on her back for the cults, and she had read enough about the Darkrai cult to know that they were a threat.
A snippet of a thought ran through her head as she hung there, suspended in the Dark/Dragon's arms- "a horrible aura imbued with dark thoughts".
Collecting her rage, fear, and spite in one hand much like she would a ball of force, she slammed it back into the levitating Dragon, making it flinch back and drop her, where she landed gently thanks to her gravimancy since her staff was missing.
The Deltas and their Pokéballs weren't at her belt, but she still turned, slamming two punches into the Dark/Dragon and then leaping into a spinning variant of High Jump Kick thanks to gravimancy.
While she was facing that way, she saw Adam's Greninja, flinging Water Shurikens at an Arcanine, and then continued turning, spiking the gravity to fall much faster onto the Hydreigon.
She landed awkwardly, having to cut the gravity hastily to not collapse again, which let the Hydreigon recover enough to lash out at her, slamming her back into the wall.
"Enough!" snapped a male voice, halting the Hydreigon as it loomed forwards.
"Adam, this is enough. Hand over the crystal and she doesn't have to get hurt." The man extended his hand.
"Why, Jaern? Why are you doing this?"
"For the betterment of the region." The man that Amber now recognized as one of East's friends sighed. "Look, Adam. I respect you immensely, but you're just not doing enough for the region. Just give me the crystal and no one else has to get hurt."
"Do you swear?"
"You have my word."
Adam slumped, but pulled a deep green crystal out of his back pocket and offered it to Jaern.
"Fuck you!" snapped Amber, yanking the crystal over to her before it could fall into Jaern's hands.
"Dark Pulse!" called a female voice, and the Hydreigon obliged, launching a wave of black malevolence at Amber.
The last thoughts in her head this time were Not again.
Yay cliffhanger-ish!
So for the math thing, the derivative of arc-cosecant ends up as |x|-1(x2-1)-½, which ends up with 1/0. I don't plan to give her Missingno now, I just needed something for them to do in town real quick and this worked.
I know it might look like it, S1 isn't over. I'm planning to go at least until the Trainer's School bit before ending S1. The title is because we're finally hitting canon (that is, Insurgence Canon).
I haven't gotten the chance to actually play insurgence, since I'm on a Mac and I got my computer after they dropped support for Wine, so I'll be relying on let's plays and the wiki for canon where I decide not to diverge.
As before, I'm still in the market for a Beta reader, but it's not a huge deal.
Read and Review, please!