I don't own Worm or Pokémon

2-2 – Evolve


WEDNESDAY


"Let's start our training off easy," Lisa instructed as Taylor looked on curiously. The thinker had decided that the best place to train was the same place Taylor had started training, an abandoned part of the docks, one far enough away from any ABB influence to be dangerous. "Danny and I set up five planks with red tops, like this." She stepped aside to reveal what looked like a giant matchstick. "You have to find all of them and destroy them... each with a different move."

'That seems almost too easy...' Taylor mumbled to herself.

"Well, this is just a preliminary test," Lisa explained. "This will help us get a good feel for what we should do in the future."

Danny nodded. "We may not have the resources of the PRT, but that doesn't mean we can't make do."

'Gotcha.' Taylor looked around, hoping to catch sight of one of the giant matchsticks. 'So is there a time limit or something?'

Lisa grinned. It wasn't a nice grin, it was more of a 'you done got fooled' grin. "Not yet, but you might want to start taking them out."

Oh crud, she had already started timing her. She immediately zoomed up to get a better view.

There, a flash of red, not ten meters from Lisa and Danny, hidden behind a piece of wreckage. And she had apparently a new ability, as well. The training was already working! Without hesitation, Taylor zoomed toward the plank.

She was zooming a bit too fast, as it turned out. As she dove, wings seemed to spread out behind her. She managed to realize how fast she was going, but she was too close to stop, instead ramming into the plank, shattering it into pieces.

Ow.

Note to self, don't use that move unless absolutely necessary...

"You okay, Taylor?"

Right, of course Dad would be worried. 'Yeah, I'm fine, Dad! I'm just a bit scratched up. I'll be more careful from here on out!'

She rose into the air again, found another plank near some foliage, and this time simply teleported to it. 'Let's see, Ember won't do with all the plants, I'm probably going to want to save confusion for later, and V-wave is right out. That leaves...'

She grinned and backed up a bit, before hitting the ground and flying back up with the press of her feet. Once she had reached the apex of her jump, she loosened her psychic powers and let gravity take its course, only slightly altering the path to make sure that she hit the plank at an angle.

The plank, as predicted, snapped in half from the force of the Bounce, sending the top half skidding into the bushes. Taylor turned around and gave Lisa and Danny a thumbs up.

She was glad she did, since she wouldn't have seen the third plank. It was cleverly hidden, laying on its side with the red part just barely visible from under a pile of rubble. She teleported to it and applied a simple ember, burning through it.

The fourth plank was rather easy in comparison, sticking out in the open. A simple Confusion split it in half.

Then she started looking for the fifth plank.

Which she was pretty sure was invisible, because she had searched for twenty minutes straight without finding so much as a splinter, aside from the victim of her first assault upon painted carpentry.

Eventually, she groaned and teleported back to Lisa and Danny. 'Alright, I give up, where did...'

Taylor's eye twitched.

She had been such an idiot.

Right there in front of her, in between the howling Lisa and her chuckling father was the fifth plank.

The same one that the two had used as an example as to what the planks looked like.

Literally the first plank she had seen in the training session.

'You two might want to move aside, I'm about to commit plankicide.'

The two wisely moved out of Taylor's way.

Taylor was, at this point, less than happy.

Scratch that, she was furious. Not at Lisa or her Father, but at herself and that goshdarn plank that had the audacity to hide from her in plain sight.

She decided to show no fudging mercy.

She punched the plank.

Now, if this had come from most human, or even a few Pokémon, the plank would barely have moved. A strong human, along with many Pokémon, would have been able to snap it in half. Some parahumans, maybe an extremely well trained powerless human, or a great number of Pokémon could have easily sent the top half of the plank flying somewhere between a few feet and a few yards.

Taylor's Mega Punch sent the bottom half into the ground so fast it created a cloud of sand, not unlike Sand Attack (Thank goodness Taylor had just gotten Keen Eye), while the top half was sent so far into the air that Taylor couldn't even see it anymore.

"Well that just happened..." Danny muttered. "Where do you think it'll land?"

"Probably around the Boardwalk." Lisa gave an impish grin. "And chances are, somebody's going to get an unpleasant surprise.

After a few moments of silence, Taylor spoke up. 'You wanna call it a day? I'm a bit tired out from everything.'

"I think that's a good idea." Danny looked deep in thought. "You're going to have to avoid overlooking the obvious, as well as learning some less destructive moves, but we can work on that some other day."

"Yeah, plus we have to work on your defenses." Lisa grinned slyly. "I mean, unless you want to either make your battles completely one-sided and boring, or you obviously not treating them seriously, and nobody would want to watch something like that."

'We are learning defensive techniques tomorrow!' Taylor cheered, not minding that Lisa had basically just played her. She did have a point, after all.


Amy sighed. She had hoped that a quick nap might get rid of the headache, since apparently suffering a dizzy spell after healing a patient was very bad, and as a result she couldn't help heal anyone until the ache had subsided.

The nap hadn't helped much.

Victoria had suggested that they go out to the Boardwalk, which probably wasn't a good idea, but Amy just wasn't in the mood to say 'no'.

And, in a way, it was working. Despite logic insisting that the loud noises and crowds would cause her headache to worsen, it was actually subsiding a bit more.

"Incoming!"

Amy instinctively looked up to see something flying towards the crowd.

At her. As if it was guided by some invisible hand.

She found that she couldn't even move. Her legs just weren't responding to her commands.

"Amy!" Victoria, thank God, moved Amy out of the way before the object hit, shattering into tiny brown and occasionally red splinters.

Ah, hello headache, my old friend. How have you been?


THURSDAY


Dodge up.

Taylor managed to zoom up as a rock flung by where she had been. Grumbling, she set up another Reflect, deflecting another rock. 'Do you two really have to attack from two angles like this?' She complained, dodging a stick thrown from her left.

"We wouldn't have had to up the ante if you haven't learned that Reflect move," Lisa countered. "Really, Taylor, you only have yourself to blame."

'Sure I do.' Taylor lazily dodged a pair of rocks. 'Come on, Lisa, I'm sure you can do better than that.'

Lisa fumed at this, rather out of character for her. "Alright, that's how we're going to play, then?"

Taylor paled. Of course, of all the times to learn Taunt... 'Dad, you might want to get out of the way.'

A sedimentary storm surmised the sixty seconds since. With that aggregate assault came a plethora of moves to survive whether they were meant to deflect the stones (Double Kick, Triple Kick, Bullet Punch) or just to survive the hits that made it through (Harden and Aqua Ring), there was some benefit to the onslaught Taylor had inadvertently wrought.

Well, that and Lisa actually apologizing, something Taylor never thought she'd see.

That night, they decided to watch some old Earth Aleph movies, complete with Lisa providing snarky and often hilarious commentary.

"I mean, seriously!" She groaned. "Of all the stupid, 'we need drama' coincidences, they have to use the old 'overhear the wrong part of a conversation' cliché? It's ridiculous, not to mention dumb!"

'Come to think of it, you'd think that he'd heard more of the conversation, given how many holes that alleged building has.' Taylor giggled. 'It must really suck, having some grand creator entity deciding to make your life hell simply because you need drama.'

Danny nodded. "It's a good thing that we don't live in a world like that, then."


Amy rubbed her head. The plank had been one thing, but the moment that she had exited Arcadia late after a detention for dozing off in class (Stupid headache keeping her up at night), a rock had landed in front of her.

This would have been odd on its own, but unfortunately, the rock decided to bring its friends and family along and, of course, Arcadia's doors had locked themselves from the outside world the moment they had closed.

In other words, Amy had spent a whole minute or so running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to avoid getting beaned by a boulder.

Then just to add insult to injury, Carol had been far more concerned about her getting detention than almost getting her head caved in.

Amy curled up in her bed. "I'm not going to cry," She whispered to herself as her forehead pulsed lightly with pain. "I've been through worse than this. I can live."

She decided to ignore the sweat that was dripping onto her sheets. Because it had to be sweat, nothing else made sense, because it couldn't be tears because she wasn't crying.


FRIDAY


"GO FASTER, YOU MAGGOT! I'VE SEEN GRANDMAS FLY FASTER THAN YOU!"

Lisa gaped at Danny. She knew that the slim man could be scary, but not this scary.

How exactly could he be this scary?

Is imitating drill instructor.

Dock Workers Union contains good number of veterans.

Learned how to act like a drill instructor from colleague.

Asked colleague how to act like a drill instructor.

"Wow..." she muttered. Danny was taking Taylor's training seriously.

Taylor, thankfully, was taking this in good stride, keeping up with Danny's commands and orders.

"EMBER, RAPIDFIRE!"

Taylor stopped in place, letting loose stream after stream of fiery sparks. Then a much bigger spark was ejected from her mouth, bursting into even smaller sparks.

Well, that was the third new move, after that sudden snowfall and the rapidfire punches. Danny was actually pretty good at this, even if he was doing it completely wrong.

"CONFUSION ON THAT SCRAP METAL!" Danny shouted, pointing at an inch-thick slab of metal that had to weigh some two hundred pounds at least. "THROW IT AS HARD AS YOU CAN!"

Taylor obliged, flinging the scrap metal into the bay. There was no danger to the action, since nobody was really in the bay anymore.

After learning a few new moves that Taylor identified as Thundershock and Absorb, the group decided to call it a successful day of training.

Well, for Taylor at least.

Danny apparently decided torture was his new calling in life, given how he forced Lisa into suffering through her own training session from hell.


Amy was certain, now, that something was up. The board at the Boardwalk could have been considered bad luck. The stones at school? If you squinted really hard, it started to look like a freak coincidence.

However, a piece of flying scrap metal almost hitting her and Victoria as they were taking a nice, 'relaxing' flight over the bay?

It was official, someone was out to get her, likely both a thinker and a brute given both the accuracy of the attacks and the sheer distance the objects must have traveled.

She desperately wanted to believe that the reason Carol had grounded her was to make sure she was safe. But she couldn't get rid of that nagging voice telling her that, no, it was probably to make sure that Victoria was kept out of the line of fire.

Was a bit of actual concern for her well-being too much to ask for?


Keen Eye, Brave Bird, Mega Punch, Reflect, Double Kick, Triple Kick, Bullet Punch, Harden, Aqua Ring, Powder Snow, Comet Punch, Flame Burst, Thundershock, Absorb.

Phew. Lotta new moves.

Anyway, I've got an Incredibles one-shot up if you're interested, and for those of you who think Taylor's a Mary Sue? Don't worry, I'm planning on fixing that, either later on in Evolve or in the eventual rewrite.

Anyway, See you lot around!

Edit: I don't hate Amy. I love her. She's a great character. It's just in this fic, well, she's going to end up with a lot of Murkrow perching near her house.