Pokemon: Hoenn; City Life50 (Fortree); Actual Starter: Eevee (Shiny50); Freerunning; Swarmed+100 (100)

Priority: Physical Fitness100; Survival Training100; Master Ball*3100; HM Collection50; Rebreather50; Psionics300; Savant600; Blend In300; Egg Move4 (Flail, Wish, Stored Power, Synchronoise)200; Combat Training100; Aura600; Champ In The Making300 (2800)


-Day 2801-

The next day thankfully passed without much incident. Most of it was spent lazing around the house, first figuring out how to prepare a decent-sized meal for Lugia and eventually admitting defeat with more berries, then explaining various aspects of both our Secret Treehouse and our Berry Farm to Lugia while she was still in her 'ball (note to self: look into how Pokemon can sense outside their Pokeballs when you Discover Mechanic and/or Technician), and finally landing on my plans for the rest of the year: helping her both master her known Moves and teaching her all the TM's I'd built up over our travels, and possibly finding out whether or not there were any additional Moves she could be taught through Tutoring (but showing up to a random Move Tutor with a Lugia would be attention-grabbing, to say the least).

She wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of fighting other Pokemon, but as I'd pointed out, there was plenty of deserted land in Orre we could use where she could practice without having to fight other Pokemon. Refining her instincts and mindset wouldn't be possible this way, but if she had an ingrained understanding of the type table and a hundred Moves in her arsenal, she would be vastly safer from any other would-be kidnappers. Ultimately, the whole idea came about because of her admitting that she didn't feel safe anymore, and this was the least-painful method of broadening her horizons. At the very least, memorising the thousand-or-so known non-Legendary Pokemon and having an answer for almost all of them would do wonders for her bruised ego and crippled self-esteem.

Or at least fix the slight stutter that kept slipping into even her thoughtspeech. Thing is, it would be adorable… if I hadn't had an inkling of what kind of trauma led to her developing the stutter. Couldn't really find it in me to tease her about it when that's the only thing that keeps popping into my head whenever I hear it. Fuckin' yikes.

[But they've been sealed away for centuries. You don't know that they still want to be trapped in there.] She pressed on.

The day after though, I'd run into a slight snag in giving out all of the information I had… maybe a little too early, but I did promise transparency, and when else would I tell her?

"Neither do you, and again: I don't know how to bring them out, or whether they want to be awakened, and I'd rather let sleeping Legendary Dragon-types lie." I countered.

Namely, she was fine with the same 'metaknowledge' explanation I'd given Evan, right up until I mentioned that Zekrom and Reshiram were currently sealed inside their respective Stones, and not only did I have their respective Stones on me (which she could apparently sense them through), I knew that someone in Unova could release them. I wasn't even sure if there was an angle from which I could approach this topic without reminding her of her primary reason for wanting to do something about this. Namely, leaving a Pokemon trapped in a tiny prison with no way to interact with the outside world was 'too soon' for her to let it go unchallenged… Even if it was voluntary? Would that point change her mind?

[But you said there's someone who can. Shouldn't you at least give him a chance to-?]

"Lugia." I cut that off immediately. "That 'someone' is a boy who's been raised his whole life by a monster, to assist him as some sort of messianic puppet he can use to rule Unova, if not the entire country or even the world. I do not want to risk summoning a Legendary, only for it to latch onto him as their 'rightful Trainer' and attack us. Let alone two of them, one of which has a Type advantage against you. Whether the boy has a good heart or not, he's still emotionally-compromised and has no reason not to believe in Team Plasma's modus operandi. Or at least not yet, and I can't even try to change that until I meet him, and given how secluded the rest of Team Plasma's keeping him, the only time I'm likely to find him is at the beginning of next year, when they probably kick off their plan, and until they do the point is moot, because I don't know where he is."

[] Her sullen frustration leaked through pretty clearly, but what was I supposed to do? Put us at risk? [And when you find him? Are you going to commit to freeing them?]

"Are you going to commit to becoming strong enough to defeat Reshiram in single combat?" That brought her up short. "If Marshadow's with us, maybe he can handle Zekrom. I don't know how strong they are in comparison, but let's say for a moment that he can handle Zekrom, and that you can handle Reshiram. N still has a full team of highly-trained Pokemon and so does Ghetsis, to say nothing of the rest of Team Plasma and their 'Seven Sages', whom Evan would probably have to fight through to keep both of you fresh for the bigger threats. Even if I get ahold of the IPF for reinforcements, I have no idea where Plasma's based right now, or how I could justify starting another police raid. And at the end of the day, even if everything else lined up, I need to be ready for the worst case scenario before I even consider committing. Preparation is what made the difference in saving you, and I am not running headlong into danger for a potentially-backfiring cause. First, I would need you to be strong, confident in yourself, and confident in them at least being beatable."

And that was where that conversation ended. Lugia hadn't mentioned anything since, but after taking a few days to handle her duty and check up on Orre's Legendary Birds, she'd returned with purpose and thrown herself into practicing her Moves out in the Orre deserts. She'd even tried a few spars with Evan, and didn't always 'win' due to her larger body making her a bigger target despite being roughly as fast as Evan (and as she quickly realised, simply levitating Evan off the ground and overwhelming her telekinesis with her own, didn't stop her from attacking with Dazzling Gleam/Synchronoise/Signal Beam/Hyper Voice/etc), but they were both visibly improving over the seven months between then and now: Lugia was quickly getting the hang of fighting and keeping track of opponents, even those significantly smaller than her; while Evan had almost-completely gotten over her reticence to 'fight' a Legendary, breaking through her instinctual barriers.

Evan had still improved in terms of skill and raw power of course, even with years of previous training she'd never fought a Legendary before, but Lugia's growth was much more significant. Probably due to her 'relatively' low level of combat experience, if that had transferred over from Gale of Darkness (roughly Level 50 at capture, if I recall correctly). From her now-defunct Shadow Moveset, she'd 'inherited' Psycho Boost (normally exclusive to Deoxys), Feather Dance, Hurricane (which I thought was a Gen 5 event-exclusive Move…?) and-…well, the last new thing she pulled out was an accident, and I'm pretty sure it didn't correspond to a known Move, so out of respect for her I'd dropped the matter (I'd also dropped a great deal of Yen, converted into American Dollars, into a lot of comfort Ice Cream to help both my frazzled Pokemon put that particular session out of their minds).

Other than that, not much had happened outside my typical everyday schedule: check and replant the Berry Farm, find a new TM for Lugia to practice, and keep pushing my Aura and Psionics to new heights. Or at least try to, I didn't know exactly what my limitations were on either front, but I was actually catching up to Evan in terms of pure power. Not having a humanoid of my own rough height and physical capability to spar with, meant that I wasn't really progressing my combat skill, but it's not like I had much to worry about… for the time being, anyway. My biggest contribution in a fight here would be giving orders or stripping Pokeballs off criminals with my mind. Thankfully, not much direct combat this Jump.

And then, after what felt like an eternity, my next planned 'Discovery' rolled around.

At this point, there were only three Perks I had much interest left in: Mechanic and Technician, because I still had a passion for electronics, especially with Pokeballs and the PC system in this setting; and Champ In The Making, because something that helps me train others is hugely important in this world and quite a few others. Other Perks like Ranger were just filler at this point, since I could Discover Perks in future Jumps that did the same thing on a much better scale, and the Items… well, Echorecorder looked somewhat original, but I might be able to create something identical to it with the former two Perks, and nothing else really jumped out at me as interesting enough to warrant spending precious Points on it.

The question now is which three-hundred Point Perk I should take. Technician was discounted, so I could take that three weeks into the start of next year, but it wasn't as prioritised without Mechanic, and frankly, Mechanic didn't sound as impressive or as immediately-useful as Champ In The Making. As much as I'd rather have another year-or-so in-Jump to play around with the 'machine improvement' capabilities of Mechanic, what needed improvement the most was my chances of success and survival, which meant Champ In The Making. Even if it wasn't 'necessary' per se, I'm sure Lugia and Marshadow would appreciate a more efficient training schedule… assuming I could get in touch with Marshadow, anyway.

As with the other knowledge-based Perks, there was no immediate sense of difference or physical change accompanying my Discovery, but when we went to our temporary training grounds an hour later, my new ability immediately started offering suggestions for use of psychic powers: active telekinetic shields, hardening sand for increased traction in desert terrain, levitation and/or improvement of pre-existing flight capability… there were a lot of options, enough that I simply told them both that I'd spend the day typing up ideas on my Pokegear, and thoughtspeaking important points out loud as they came into my head while they sparred, itself a good way to train multitasking and communication under pressure. Kinda wish Marshadow was here to benefit from this, but I'm confident he's trained all his life in his own time and is probably at least as good as these two will be by the time Plasma start their shit.

At least, I hope he is. With my shiny new Perk, Reshiram and even a surprise Genesect will probably be well within Lugia and Evan's respective abilities in another hundred days, and I plan on giving a fair judgement to Lugia as to whether or not she had improved 'enough'. That leads into Step 2, which is arguably more crucial: finding out if Marshadow's willing and confident enough to fight a Zekrom, because if N only counts as the 'chosen one' for a single member of the two, it will almost certainly be Zekrom and I really don't want Lugia's first fight with a Legendary to be against a Legendary with a Type advantage. That's just begging for another relapse…


-Day 2929-

As I'm sure you can guess, the next hundred and fourteen days were a flurry of activity, new ideas constantly popping into my head for learning new skills and improving old ones. I'd even picked up a few new tricks myself: while I hadn't had any luck with 'Pulse' Moves, despite them using the same kanji as Aura Sphere, I had taken inspiration from Super Smash Brothers and figured out how to use not just chargeable Aura Sphere, but also Aura-based variants of Force Palm, Extreme Speed and even Double Team, though the latter was basically just using an Aura-based mirage to make someone miss me by a small margin, and counterattacking them while they were overextended and their guard was down, rather than teleporting behind someone and flykicking them in the ass like in the Games. Also, even with my superhuman physique, using Extreme Speed to tackle someone like a speeding bullet still hurt, even if I used my hands for the propulsion and went for a flying stomp. On the other hand, I was also nailing down the Custom variants from SSB4 in my free time.

My psychic abilities were also expanded to some extent, though they were still all 'nonstandard' Moves that I could've figured out myself sooner or later: I already knew how to project a beam/wall of psychic force (Psybeam, Barrier), but now I could also create solid planes of force with different levels of interaction (Reflect, Light Screen), and create an active telekinetic shield over my skin (Magic Coat). I'd put some effort into creating pockets of compressed air or psychic energy too (Future Sight, Psyshock), but I was still a ways off from that level of force, even though I could now lift a moderately-sized car with my TK. On the other hand, I'd created two entirely-original 'Moves' of my own: Blackout, by creating an opaque semispherical force field over a large area and either leaving a 'tube' in the middle to light up my target, or using my 'echolocation' to track them without needing to see. Kinda depended on whether or not I had a non-psychic who couldn't see in pitch-blackness, but I was just as good at 'feeling out' my surroundings as I was visually processing them. The other, Solar Flare, involved force fields that could 'lens' sunlight into blinding beams and leave an enemy unable to see from the other side of the 'spectrum', but it was finicky.

In other words, I had both offensive, defensive and movement options. Well, one movement option, I was getting pretty close to flight through telekinesis, but it was not easy and not particularly enjoyable yet (too much focus required, terrifyingly so), so the most I could do was hover a short distance above the ground, like half-assing an Agility. For now.

Evan and Lugia, however, were on divergent paths. Evan's current focus was on internalising her Psychic-typed specialty and learning or straight-up recreating all of the Psychic-typed Moves I could find. The aforementioned Agility was available to Jolteon, so logically the Psychic-typed Espeon should be able to learn it too, the same way she'd picked up Gravity despite it technically being a Move that she should not be able to learn, the same way Mirror Coat was supposed to be exclusive to Glaceon. Then came less-obvious Moves like Barrier, Cosmic Power, Meditate, Hypnosis, Heal Block, Miracle Eye, Extrasensory, Psychic Terrain, Ally Switch, and so on. By the time I was done, she would know every Psychic-typed Move in the world, and hopefully both of my Original Moves on top of that, even if the former wouldn't be all that useful for her compared to the latter.

Lugia, on the other hand, was dipping into the cause behind her little 'outburst' and while still being taught Amnesia, I was also teaching her Nasty Plot to encourage two separate trains of thought while in combat: one dedicated to focused fighting, and another to firing out the raw unrestrained power she'd shown off as Shadow Lugia. She'd even been able to recreate the attack she'd almost used against Evan with some consistency, though she needed a certain amount of stress to find or 'slip into' the right mindset for it.

I had a feeling it wouldn't be all that hard to reach that stage if she had to fight Reshiram, even before the fight began. But either way, we'd need reinforcements for Zekrom.

Thus, we all found ourselves excused on the last day of my 'yearly family fortnightly meet-up' on account of having a no-more-dangerous-than-usual criminal organisation to assist the police in breaking up, and wanting to not have issues with the time difference. Of course, first we'd be going to Mount Tensei (which I'd had the foresight to scope out in the two weeks before the meet-up) to fetch Marshadow, but my parents seem to have accepted that I was my own person by now and that if I'd been safe all the other times I'd gotten caught up in criminal activity, even the Team Rocket incident, then it's not like I wouldn't be safe with a Lugia at my side (which had led to awkward explanations and even more awkward introductions, but I'd promised her that she'd be treated like family, so it was only right she get to meet and greet the rest of mine).

While flying there on Lugia's back took a lot longer than simply Teleporting, I wanted Evan to conserve her strength for the cross-continental Teleport to Unova, so it was early-ish morning when we got there, just like the day Lugia was purified. Mount Tensei, I couldn't say I recognised it because I'd never seen the new movie continuity, but it was certainly bigger than I'd expected. Mostly-hollow and packed with fully-Evolved Wild Pokemon of well-above-average strength, I couldn't say it was much different from Mount Silver, but being similar to Mount Silver is hardly a bad thing for an aspiring Trainer. It just didn't mean all that much to a five-time Champion like myself. Especially since I didn't need to go through any of the stroppy bastards when Lugia could just fly us to the peak.

Finding Marshadow and confirming that he was ready and willing, Evan promptly dumped us in our rented penthouse in Castelia City and immediately curled up in a chair facing the sunset, her solar-powered biology surprisingly good at adapting to time zones on the other side of the planet. She probably just didn't want to play another round of 'whose line is it anyway', where I had to translate everything if she wanted to know what we were saying. Not sharing a common language really sucks sometimes. Thankfully, she wasn't crucial to explain what was going to happen over the next day-or-two, not that it had ever taken more than a single day for me to wrap up a criminal investigation/organisation, but at least we had a fancy penthouse for a week (at great cost mind you, but when else was I going to spend my converted Yen, and on what?), with enough room for Lugia to curl up in outside her Pokeball, and a large enough roof access 'hatch' for her to come and go, without needing to be returned on one side of the opening and sent back out through the other.

Now came the uncertain part: as I'd mentioned to Lugia earlier, my offering N either one of the Stones, let alone both of them, relied on whether or not Marshadow was willing to help deal with Zekrom. Even if only one or somehow neither made their respective appearance, I wasn't going to risk a battle like that without at least one-on-one odds. Having to go through the meat of my previous conversation with Lugia wasn't exactly thrilling, but I wanted everyone on the same page for an undertaking like this.

And when we finished making our points, our answer was something I did not expect from the Ghost-type I'd come to associate with laconic certainty.

"I don't know." He admitted, quietly thinking it over. "I've never fought another Legendary before, especially not a third of Unova's patron Legendary."

I chose to question his statement while Lugia was still processing that, before she could blurt something out without thinking. "You're not refusing, but you need more information before you decide. What else do you want to know about what's going to happen?"

"For starters, will they want to fight?" He pointed out. "They might not be willing to fight us, or might only be willing to fight each other. What makes you so sure they'll attack us unprovoked?"

Thankfully, something I'd already considered and then dismissed with good reason. "I have no idea how violent they'll be right after being freed, but given how dangerous they are and their deliberately-contrary natures, it seems only reasonable to prepare for a full-on fight regardless. I'm not going into this unless I'm confident we can at least hold them off and escape, at the absolute minimum."

"And there's no way to know for sure, because of how long ago they were sealed and the nature of the sealing itself." He mused. "Maybe they'll come out disoriented and weak or maybe they won't want to fight at all, but you're right: we have to assume they'll be combat-ready and willing to throw the first stone. Lugia, you're the driving force behind this plan. You obviously must be confident in your strength and skill, but are you absolutely certain you can handle Reshiram, one of the Tao Trio?"

[I've done almost nothing but train with these two for the last eleven months.] She returned his gaze resolutely. [I know over a hundred different Moves, I have plenty of sparring experience, and I can recite the Type Table and the weaknesses of the first six hundred and forty-nine Pokemon recorded in the Pokedex off by heart. I can't be absolutely sure I can win, but I'm as ready as I'll ever be, and I have to at least try and free them, even if I have to fight one of them right afterwards.]

He didn't seem to know how to respond, but her conviction definitely seemed to strike a chord with him. "…alright. Worst case scenario?" He turned back to me.

"The International Police Force refuse to assist us, so we have to go through the rank-and-file slowly. Once we get to N, he somehow manages to awaken not only Zekrom but also Reshiram, and they don't immediately start fighting each other. You and Lugia handle them while Evan handles his team, or I strip him of his Pokeballs and return them myself. Then Ghetsis shows up with his team, an unlikely Genesect and a much-more unlikely Kyurem." I rattled off. "As far as I'm aware, they have no headquarters as of yet, and I seriously doubt N qualifies as 'truthful' given how much ignorance he lives in, or that Ghetsis has somehow managed to get his hands on Kyurem this early, so the plan is that only once we've backed them into a corner and defeated all of the Grunts' Pokemon (and the cops arrest them), will I take the Stones to N and N alone and wait to see happens."

"And they can't do anything without the Stones? You don't expect them to be a threat, or for them to have any surprises like this Kyurem or Genesect?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Evan's a five-time solo Elite Four Champion, and Lugia's a Legendary with a year of consistent training." I snorted. "I seriously doubt they have anything on either of their levels, except for the hardcore believers. If they did, either they wouldn't be wasting their time working for a Team, or they're one of the few-and-far-between fanatics."

That seemed to shock him a little. "Wait. Other Regions have Badges. How many do you have?"

"Before Lugia, thirty-nine." I recounted. "All eight from Unova and all eight from the four Japanese Regions, with the exception of the Mossdeep Gym because they have a mandatory Double Battle policy and Lugia's the first Pokemon I've ever caught. I still defeated all of the Elite Four members and the standing Champion of each Region before then, but I had to do Unova first to get the credibility to go through Japan's members individually, and even then I had to make requests and rely on convenient timings, but I'm still counting it. They let you heal between battles normally, fighting them one after another on different days is no different except in the paperwork and me missing a single badge. Which I'm not anymore, just so we're clear, Tate and Liza couldn't really complain when I showed up with a Lugia."

[They even let Evan fight their whole team of six by herself, as long as I was there to be sent out and stand still.] Lugia shook her head. [Strangest fight I've ever spectated.]

"Well, she did insist on finishing her solo streak, and you didn't really want to fight yourself, so it all worked out." I shrugged, still slightly uncomfortable with Lugia deferring to me as the 'main' speaker so blatantly. "Point is, this isn't our first rodeo. Against Cipher, I only really involved myself at the very beginning and let the rest of the shitshow unfold without me. Hoenn and Sinnoh were both day-long excursions, but I mostly just tipped off the police force at the right time to screw over the villains, and left them to earn their paychecks. Johto was a shitshow, but it was basically just twelve Pokemon in a row, followed by half-a-dozen Voltorb I shoved out a window and Giovanni's team of six. I had to sneak Evan a few Sitrus Berries, enough to heal her to full, but even if she'd been knocked out I could've repeated my earlier feat and shoved them out the windows instead. The fines cost me enough to replace them to begin with, I'd rather not have a criminal record with murder-in-self-defense on it, but despite my panic at the time I was never in any real danger in hindsight. In any case, I'd like to take this short-lived campaign a little slower, and give N time to come around to our way of thinking, though it largely depends on how quickly events progress."

It took him almost minute to process that. "…okay." He finally nodded. "That's really impressive. Like, maybe even Legendary-impressive. Has she ever won a spar against Lugia?"

"I don't really record 'wins' and 'losses' because the goal is friendly competition, and I don't want to breed resentment even if vitriol is an excellent training aid, but I don't think I can say she's ever clearly 'beaten' Lugia in a spar. She's certainly had a clear advantage by the end of a few, but the thing about Psychic-types is that a good portion of the fighting is done with telekinetic struggles that are difficult to quantify. I'd say they're roughly on par with each other, but Lugia only has a year of dedicated training to her eight, so I don't know how they'd stack up against… well, I don't know if Legendaries have an explicit hierarchy, and even if they did I don't know where Zekrom and Reshiram would reside on it." I thought a little deeper into it. "I don't know the relative strength of the original Unovan Dragon or how much of that was put into the Tao Trio, though I believe that the majority remains with Kyurem. I don't know how much training either one had before they were both sealed away centuries ago, if they even had any after 'splitting', and I don't know how being sealed away for centuries might have affected them. To the best of my knowledge, both Evan and Lugia should at least be an even matchup… excepting Type mismatches, hence why I'd like you to take Zekrom and leave Reshiram to Lugia and Evan as backup, if circumstances conspire against us to suck a degree. Hell, I don't even know where you stack up, though given that you've presumably trained in martial arts your whole life, you're probably the strongest Pokemon here."

"Maybe." He shrugged… humbly or unconcerned? "I'm confident I could defeat Unova's Zekrom by myself, though I'd appreciate it if you had a Z-Ring so I could lead off with Soul-Stealing Seven Star Strike."

"Luckily, Alola's marketplace's were home to all sorts of interesting knickknacks while I was there, and I acquired a Z-Power Ring as soon as I saw one." Never used it before, but it's not like it made my bag much heavier up until now, and it could (and seemingly would) be useful enough to justify it someday. "Might take an hour or two to get down the movements, and I don't know if there are any other special requirements to using Z-Moves, but I've certainly got plenty of 'energy' by any measurable metric."

"Then we should be fine." He nodded. "What kind of plan or schedule do you have for this undertaking?"

"First is Accumula Town, where we should be able to meet and greet N for the first time. Then the Dreamyard west of Striaton City, where we'll need to stomp a pair of Grunts into the ground for abusing the local Munna, 'cause I'm not planning on letting them try to flee to Wellspring Cave, though we may have to go and clear that out anyway. Then things get a bit less reliable." Because people aren't NPC's and are capable of changing their minds and discussing sensitive topics. "If N chooses to join us for a short period of time, we can make this whole thing a lot quicker. If he doesn't, we'll likely run into him a few times as we cross the Unova region. It all depends on how steadfast his own opinions and plans are. But either way, I know where we'll most likely run into him and his Grunts, all the way to the end of their currently-impractical plan."

"Is this quest going to involve being held in a Pokeball for long periods of time?" He bluntly addressed the elephant(/Copperajah) in the room.

"Depends on whether or not you're okay with that." I shrugged right back at him. "If that's going to be a problem, then no. Ideally I'd like to not make a huge scene wherever we go, and Lugia's already agreed to conceal herself if it'll avoid unnecessary exposure, but that's not really a problem for a Ghost-type like yourself. If you're okay with it, fine. If you're not, you'll just have to join up with us if we're going to Teleport or Fly somewhere, and you'll have to follow us on foot without attracting too much attention, which should be simple enough. I'd like you to at least give it a go, but I leave the decision to you. I'm not going to force you to stay in your Master Ball any more than I'd force Lugia to stay in hers."

"And you don't feel like he's pressuring you to stay in your 'ball for long periods of time?" He asked Lugia, who shook her head. "Then I guess I'm in."

"Anything else you want to ask before I order us some dinner?"

"…don't think I've ever been offered human food. Any recommendations?"

The rest of our evening crawled late into the night, due to our lack of tiredness, as I explained the utility of radio and television to Marshadow (as I'd had to for Lugia, recent technologies didn't always click with them) and splurged on a variety of high-quality room service, finding out along the way that Marshadow likes pineapple and anchovies on pizza but couldn't stand the idea of eating Wishiwashi, and Lugia prefers battered Feebas to crumbed Magikarp. Still can't believe my local counterpart was so sheltered that they barely knew that normal animals existed in this world and that there also existed dedicated farms for them, the same way there existed both 'Berries' and normal fruits and vegetables. Kinda makes me a lot less comfortable about there being domesticated Pokemon farms that include butchery, but I do understand that they eat each other in the wild in this world, so I guess there's only so much I can be weirded out by the menu having Miltank steaks next to prime beef ribs.

At least I still have my Teriyaki Chicken. Don't think I could stomach the 'Curried Combusken', though.


AN: Yes, I'm well aware this is technically the next day, but it also technically only took two weeks instead of three. Chalk it up to stress and outside commitments. And yes, this might be a recurring theme in the near future, I'm not sure at what time my online education will be commencing and I never bothered making a backlog. But I doubt the world will end if one singular fanfiction gets less updates for six to twelve weeks. I might even be able to make back up the week I missed here in the near future, but we'll see.

Also, that paragraph at the bottom is kind of a retcon, because I assumed 'normal' animals showing up in Pokemon media were limited to the Anime, but didn't double-check until just before I published this chapter. I don't think I ever specified that they didn't exist despite mentioning the existence of Pokemon Farms in Chapter 1 (see: Johto's Miltank ranch), but given how Pokemon-centric Japan is and the fact that non-essential NPC text and Pokedex entries tend to be treated as soft canon, it's easy to let things slip by you sometimes. In fact, it seems that there are no animals in the Anime (barring animation mishaps), but there could justifiably be animals in the Game continuities, so fuck me, am I right?