Chapter 89, everybody! In which we finally wrap back around to Fuchsia to head for Cinnabar. We'll pretend it didn't take a year and a half to do so.
Okay real talk this chapter kept giving me grief because I'd pick at the battle and end up working on something else—finally just went you know what, noodle incident and that's what got the chapter finished. Also Klendaniel is an OC, for those of you who recall his last mention.
And now for reviews: thanks to BlastShooter87, Northstar Pokeshipper (I thought so! Wasn't sure), LongNightDragon, Dragonkeeper10, Speed Reader, talesfanjmf, griffin blackwood, Cyan Quartz, Reader, Anonymous Person, and AverageHiveMind for the reviews! Also, AverageHiveMind, the end of your review made me cackle. Yes, can you feel it?
Pokémon © Game Freak; Nintendo
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It took several days' worth of travel, at one point taking a route that had been paved over sometime in the past but was now mostly potholes, but eventually Fuchsia City showed up on the horizon again.
"Oh thank you," Misty gusted. "Civilization and running water how I've missed thee!"
"We'll head to the Pokémon Center first and get everyone healed up and then…you know what let's try calling the gym first maybe we can skip the death traps this time," Brock said.
"But the death traps are the best part!" Ash protested.
"Ash we nearly died," Misty pointed out. "Multiple times."
"But we didn't."
"Someone please tell me when self-preservation kicks in on boys."
"Never," Darkrai told her. "Sorry, but it's a permanent fixture."
"Dangit."
"Some of us get self-preservation," Brock told her. "The tradeoff is getting gray hairs from people who lack it."
"And on that happy note: he's running off again," Darkrai pointed out.
"Oi no Ash get back here—"
The gym did have a phone number, as it turned out, which saw Janine and her Venonat waiting for them outside the entrance.
"Good to see you guys again," she greeted, pushing off the wall. "How's everything?"
"Misty caught a Muk," Ash reported.
"Misty regrets this," Misty said. "I don't suppose we could talk your dad into trading, could we?"
"It depends," Janine said. "Dad's currently in his training phase and it usually takes him a while to cycle back around to trading. But hey! If you guys have Poison types, we could help with that!"
"Learning how to take care of a certain type of Pokémon is never a bad idea," Brock said. "If you're willing."
"Great! You brought your bags right? No staying at the Center for you you're bunking with us—come on!"
"But the entrance is right there," Ash said, pointing.
"Yeah, the challenger's entrance," Janine said. "You really think we drag our groceries through that?"
"Until right this second, yeah."
Janine considered this. "Well, Dad does but he's the hardcore ninja of the family, so…."
"Ven," her Venonat said.
"It's okay though, the side door is all secret and hidden so it's still suitably ninja-like," she announced, tapping on a wood panel before pushing it in. "Okay hurry up it's on a timer."
They filed in, following her down a thin hall that eventually opened up into a nice kitchen were Koga was sitting with another ninja, this one a woman.
"Oh hey!" Koga greeted, noticing them. "Janine said you called—this is my sister Aya, you didn't get to meet her last time."
"Which one of you beaned my big brother with a mallet?" Aya asked; stood when Misty raised her hand. "Then I for one have to shake your hand because I've been wanting to do that for years."
"Excuse you."
Pleasantries were exchanged, and then everyone was seated for lunch.
"Aya just got back from Hoenn," Koga explained. "They've got a good sampling of Poison Pokémon there—I'm hoping she brought back a few?"
"He just got done picking my brain on the ninja schools there, now he moves on to his other fixation," Aya told them.
"There's ninja schools in Hoenn?" Ash asked.
"Oh yeah—you ever visit, you'd better be real suspicious of the trees."
"Back to the Pokémon you caught," Koga prompted. "Come on, it's not like you went to Unova, there's a lot less red tape involved with Hoenn."
"Spoken like a guy who hasn't had to go through customs in years. Klendaniel says hi, by the way."
"My old foe," Koga intoned, squinting into the middle distance.
"That name sounds familiar," Misty said to Brock.
"Lt. Surge mentioned him too," Brock told her. "Big name in the inter-regional war."
"But I did get a few Pokémon," Aya said, releasing them.
"Wait wait I know that one!" Ash exclaimed, pointing at the coiled snake with a blade for a tail. "Seviper, right?"
"Yup! And the little round thing next to him is Gulpin," Aya said, petting the two Pokémon. "Yes I made sure to catch a few for you too," she said to Koga.
"Excellent," Koga said, eyeing the Seviper. "Oh I bet you've got some good combo potential."
"I thought you had to use native Pokémon for battles," Misty said.
"We do for official gym battles—sometimes I do tournaments or have to fill in for the Elite Four, so I want to have a wider team selection for those times. Plus I am allowed to train Pokémon for fun, you know."
"That's always a good reason," Brock agreed. "But as to why we're here."
"Let me guess, you're going to try for Blaine anyway so you're taking the ferry from here."
"Ick," Ash noised. "Can't we Surf from here?"
"Well you could but considering what a haul it'd be, most people opt for the ferry."
"What's with that attitude anyway?" Aya asked. "Don't like boats?"
"Well we were on the S.S. Anne," Misty said.
"Ah."
"But in addition to that," Brock said. "We've recently found ourselves in ownership of a Muk—Misty is for trading it, I said something about training it, and I think Ash just likes having it around."
"It's beaten everything it's gone up against except us," Ash pointed out. "It's like a gloopy Frenzy."
Koga immediately perked up at that. "That's the bug I was telling you about Aya you need to see this Paras."
"Actually Frenzy evolved, so he's a Parasect now."
"Even better."
Aya had concerns and was willing to voice them.
"That bug is not normal," she said flatly, as Frenzy trundled back from the large hole in the back of the house, as well as the several trees out back he had flattened.
"Yeah," Ash agreed, rocking on his heels a little. "We're not sure if this is an improvement or not—"
"Definitely not," Misty said.
"But he still kinda acts the same."
"Oh yes, this is beautiful," Koga said, getting down on his hands and knees to peer at Frenzy under his mushroom. "If he ever does a breeding, you let me know, all right?"
"Please never let him breed," Misty said. "One is enough."
"Which reminds me, you said you had a Muk like this?"
Muk was puddling next to Frenzy in short order.
"So usually they have a much stronger smell," Koga observed.
"Erika's perfume works really well on Muk," Misty said.
"Really?"
"If you use the whole bottle, yeah."
"I take back everything I said about her," Koga said to Janine. "Now…what's with the glitter?"
"It was in a contest about a week ago, the glitter was a suggestion by someone we knew."
"Ah," Koga noised, watching the two Pokémon. "Well to start with, I have news: that's actually pretty normal behavior for an idle Muk. Be careful about letting them get affectionate, by the way, they can be huggers."
"Ew," Misty muttered.
"Wait until you see it battle though," Ash said.
"Oh yes Muk in a battle is a thing of beauty!" Koga gushed. "Since they're basically sentient goop they have no skeleton to get in the way—they'll slip around most physical attacks and tank most elemental ones. Only thing that really slows them down is Ground and Psychic moves."
"So that explains a lot," Misty mused. "Someone tried using Water Gun on it and it just absorbed it and spat it back out."
"Oh we've got to test this—actually wait, you both have Poison Pokémon, correct?" he asked, indicating Brock and Ash.
"Technically we've all got at least two," Brock said, pondering. "I've got Bulbasaur and Zubat; Ash has a Nidorino, Haunter and Venonat; and Misty has Tentacool, Oddish and Muk."
"Excellent—why don't you three stick around for a week or so? We'll cover how to train your Poison types."
Ash raised his hand. "Does this involve the hand-touch thing?"
"It depends on the Pokémon, I don't recommend the Toothless touch with a Muk, for example."
"He tried," Aya said. "It was messy."
"Again, Muk are huggers."
"Muhhh," Muk noised.
Ash and Misty had to retrieve their extra Poison Pokémon from storage, but the next week was spent training said Pokémon up and covering how best to take care of them. What best to include in their diet was mostly Brock's wheelhouse, and as it turned out it varied depending on just how poisonous a Pokémon could reasonably be expected to be.
"The Muk line is like the Trubbish line," Koga explained. "You could let it loose in a junkyard and tell it to eat up and it'd be thrilled to death. Those with Poison as their secondary typing, however, much prefer natural ways to build it up. Bulbasaur and Oddish eating toxic plants, for example."
"So that explains why Muk keeps eating the feed bowl," Ash said.
"Yeah, that was getting annoying," Misty said.
There were also a few lessons on ninjutsu, which was less successful. Koga agreed that it was a bit more labor-intensive and wouldn't be mastered in a week.
"Also I have opinions on teaching kids to throw sharp objects," Brock said.
"Responsibly," Koga argued.
"So how do I hold one of these?" Ash asked, gingerly holding a throwing star.
"Preferably not like that."
But eventually, at the end of the week, Koga proposed that they battle.
"Are you familiar with triple battles?" he asked.
"Uhhh yeah I did one in Stone Town," Ash said.
"Great! So that's you three against us three, we can only use Poison types, whoever has Pokémon standing at the end wins. Actually I suppose I could award the Soul Badge if you do win, since you'd be beating a gym leader," he mused.
"I already have one," Ash said.
"And Misty technically already beat you once already," Janine teased.
"Well beat me this time without the mallet and I'll give you one," Koga said. "So we'll each use three Pokémon since the most Poison types you have individually is three—we need a referee."
Ash almost recommended Darkrai, cut himself off before he could—wasn't sure how three ninjas would react to him, even with him lurking around in the shadows—blinked when something else ambled into the room. "Uh, what—"
"This is Alfie, he's a Slowking," Aya explained. "Psychic type makes for a good ref, right?"
"I've not seen a Slowking that looks like that," Brock said.
"That's because Alfie is a Galarian Slowking—he's Poison/Psychic instead of Water/Psychic," Koga explained. "Got him on my last trip there—need to go back, come to think of it, I've been hoping to secure a Toxel."
"That's cool though," Ash observed, trying to scan the Slowking with his Pokédex—wasn't surprised when it came up empty. "Yeah, that works."
"Good—now let's get started."
The Slowking's shell helmet started glowing faintly as everyone assumed their positions. "This will be a three on three triple battle. Will we be allowing the challengers to make substitutions?" he asked, turning towards the ninja.
"Let's go with yes," Aya said. "Since we're going the proper gym battle route."
"Fine. Begin."
The starting lineup had Zubat, Venonat and Oddish versus a Venonat, Weezing, and…Seviper.
"I thought you had to use native Pokémon," Ash said.
"We've been training together for a week and it's Poison," Aya countered. "You'll figure it out."
Okay, fair enough—besides, they had other things to worry about, like Koga's Weezing taking the opportunity to belch out poisonous gas. They had seen James do this with Koffing enough times to know what was coming.
"Zubat, use Gust to blow that gas away!" Brock ordered.
"Tackle and then Confusion when you get close!" Ash told Venonat.
"Sweet Scent and Stun Spore once Zubat's done, okay?" Misty said to Oddish.
Aya and Seviper didn't give them much chance to counter, already surging over, bladed tail glowing—Venonat leaped up, bouncing off its head—got hit by the other Venonat using Zen Headbutt, who then got hit by Zubat using Wing Attack, who got hit by Weezing using Sludge—
After three rounds of such action, Ash had to say that while this triple battle went better than the one in Stone Town, that also wasn't a very high bar to clear and gave him some insight as to why the battle mode hadn't really caught on outside of Unova.
"The important thing is that this was a learning experience for all of us," Koga announced.
"And that buildings can be repaired and eyebrows will grow back eventually," Aya said.
"That too. Anyway, for you two, since Ash already has one of these."
"Nice," Misty said, grinning as she accepted the Soul Badge. Pinned it to her suspenders under a Cascade Badge. "So technically this makes me a two-badge Gym Leader."
"Don't push it," Koga said, pointing at her.
The three ninjas saw them off at the ferry the next morning, Ash eyeing the ship warily.
"If you're insistent on giving this a try, there's two things you need to remember about Blaine," Koga told them. "One: as the Fire gym leader, he'll prefer a locale that best benefits his Pokémon. Two: he likes riddles."
"Three, he went off the grid and did a pretty good job of it," Janine said. "Is he even on Cinnabar anymore?"
"He was the last time I saw him," Koga said, pose pensive. "But granted this was a couple of years ago now."
"It's not that big of an island," Aya pointed out. "If you don't find him in a couple of weeks, give it up as a bad job and try one of the smaller gyms."
"We'll definitely find him though," Ash said. "Like you said, there's only so many places he can be on an island."
"If he's still on the island," Janine pointed out.
"I'm choosing to think positive."
"That's the spirit," Koga said. "Now you need to get on that ship before it leaves without you."
"You're sure we can't Surf there."
"Come on, Ash," Brock said, towing him and Misty on board. "You've got to face your fears eventually."
"I wouldn't say I'm afraid of boats," Ash said. "It's just that I don't trust them to not sink."
"Yeah that's a problem," Misty agreed.
"Good luck!" Koga called.
"You'll need it!" Janine added.