"pokemon speech", thoughts, "normal speech"
Chapter 5: Forest Training and New Friends
Ash was staring at a Caterpie, a pokeball in his hand. He was about to make his first ever capture and his heart pounded with anticipation. The Caterpie on the other hand was sitting there, waiting. It had been waiting for a trainer to try and catch it, wanting to get stronger and not have to worry about being eaten all the time. It didn't even plan on fighting the ball-like device that captured pokemon.
Suddenly, Ash called out, "Caterpie, your mine!" He threw the pokeball as he said this, his weeks practicing on aiming a pokeball making sure he hit the Caterpie straight on the head. The pokeball opened and sucked the Caterpie in it in a flash of red light. The button in the center glowed red as the ball wiggled once, twice, thrice, before the characteristic ding of a successful capture sounded as the ball stopped moving.
"YES! I did it!" Ash yelled out as he jogged over to the pokeball to pick it up. He was ecstatic as he held it in his hand and danced around, dragging Misty with him. Tom and Harry just looked on with amusement at the spectacle, a hint of pride in their eyes. Pikachu watched his human until he got dizzy from the circles the boy made and fell over.
Eventually Misty freed herself from Ash's grasp and Ash just cooed at his new pokemon inside the pokeball. Tom and Harry just shared looks as Misty said, "I guess it takes a worm to love a worm."
Ash replied in an un-amused fashion, "Very funny." He went over to his Pikachu and showed him the pokeball, saying that he and Pikachu will get a bunch of others as new friends, before saying to the pokeball, "Caterpie, you're sticking with us." Misty expressed her distaste for that, and faint horror.
Seeing Ash's initial celebration was done, Tom made his way over and said, "Well, now you have a new team member, and it needs to be trained. In fact," he paused to look slyly at the pokeball in Ash's hand, "your Caterpie is an interesting and quite useful catch, seeing as the first gym of the Indigo League is the Pewter Gym, which is a Rock type gym."
"What do you mean Tom? Aren't Bug types weak to Rock?" Ash questioned, very confused and interested in Tom's usually brilliant yet condescending ideas. Tom replied, "That is true, but you also have to take into account Caterpie's fully evolved form, which is Butterfree, can learn Confusion, a Psychic type move. It is a move that will help you, seeing as Pikachu is an Electric type and the Gym Leader of Pewter will probably use dual typed Rock/Ground pokemon, as that is the most common kind of Rock type in Kanto. Not to mention Caterpie evolve very quickly, and learn a few battle winning status moves as well." Ash's eyes widened at that. Misty was surprised enough at Tom's knowledge of Pewter Gym to get out of her frightened stupor, at least for a moment.
"Now, why don't you call out your Caterpie so that we can find out more about it," Tom said with a small, evil looking smirk while glancing at Misty, who suddenly remembered where she was and what Ash had. Ash, acting oblivious to Tom's antics, did as requested and in a flash of white light, his new Caterpie stood in front of him.
"Hey Caterpie, I want to introduce you to Tom and his Fletchling, Harry. Also, my Pikachu, who is your team mate too," Ash said while indicating the mentioned. Tom crouched down and ignored the antics of Misty as she cried out in fright and ran, only a quirk of his lips upward indicating his enjoyment of Misty's fear. He looked at the Bug type and asked, "Why don't you scan this one with your Pokedex Ash, it will help you find out what moves it knows and a few other things." Looking at Ash as Harry fluttered down to land on his shoulder, he saw, with the corner of his eye, Misty cowering behind a tree at the far side of the clearing and the smirk appeared again.
Ash just shook his head at Tom and took out his pokedex. After the thing spouted off the description of Caterpie and identifying it as male, it said, "This Caterpie knows the moves String Shot and Tackle." Ash crouched down and extended his arm to Caterpie, saying, "Climb onto my shoulder Caterpie, we'll get Tom to tell us some tips on training you, and you and Pikachu can get stronger. Maybe we'll get another new friend while we travel through the forest."
Later that day, the group stumbled upon a large clearing and decided to stay there for a few days and train their pokemon. They established camp, Harry went off to create sound traps that would warn the group of something approaching them, and Tom and Ash went to one side of the clearing to begin training Ash's pokemon. They started off by getting Caterpie a way to travel fast and actually move around for when he evolved, and told the small Bug type to use String Shot to zip from one spot to another. After Caterpie was sent to work on that, Pikachu became the focus. Tom and Ash had talked about the various moves that Pikachu could benefit from learning in order to be able to fight Rock types as they walked through the forest, and it was eventually decided on that Pikachu would learn Iron Tail. Ash set his starter to smack something hard to harden his tail in preparation of learning the move.
By this time Harry had returned from his self appointed task and let Tom know he was back. Both of them decided not to get left behind in training, had left Ash to his mentorship duties, and went to another side of the clearing to get in some of their own brand of training. This training consisted of Harry starting to learn Steel Wing, a move he would normally learn as a Talonflame or when he had gotten much stronger, and Flail, the next move his species learned naturally and the move that Fletchling learn just before evolving. Their rationale behind learning the Steel type move was that just because they couldn't compete in the Indigo League didn't mean they couldn't prepare as if they would. This training for Steel Wing consisted of Harry hardening his wings and hitting them against something hard. Flail training consisted of Harry flying towards a target and start to smack it with his wings,beak, and feet. The way this was done had Harry thinking about combining the move with Peck and Steel Wing, once he learned it, to make it more powerful and devastating.
While the boys were doing this, Misty was watching them and thinking about how different Tom seemed when he was training with his pokemon. The pokemon, Harry, was something she had never seen before either. She had never even heard of Fletchling before she had met the boys. She honestly didn't even know what to think about Tom and Ash's relationship, or even what to think about Tom himself. She could admit to being intimidated by the older boy, especially after his reaction back in the Viridian Pokemon Center to her yelling at Ash for her bike and the little bit of information Ash had revealed about him, but he also was the one that pulled her away from that flock of vicious Spearow. The boys also let her tag along with them on their journey. Letting out a sigh, Misty turned to the small pond that was in the clearing they were in and followed her fellow travelers' example in training their pokemon. She did want to be a Water type pokemon master and that type of thing doesn't come without work after all.
A week passed like that, with each night being spent on getting to know each other and Ash, Tom, and Misty letting their pokemon get to know each other. By the third day, a few things happened. By that point, Harry had figured out how to do Steel Wing and Flail and was working on how to combine them, thinking that he would have to figure out names for his combination moves. Pikachu had asked for some advice from him thanks to Steel Wing and Iron Tail being so similar, and he had finished learning his assigned move as well. Caterpie was able to go very fast with his String Shot, and had managed to combine Tackle with it. In fact, the most significant thing that happened had happened when Caterpie was showing his success to Ash.
A Pigeotto had been flying over the clearing and had spotted Caterpie, and it had decided that Caterpie would be its meal. The Pidgeotto was also a challenge seeker, it had noticed that there were trainers around but had decided to get Caterpie anyway. It swooped in and dove at Caterpie with a Quick Attack. Caterpie only avoided injury thanks to the fact that he had seen the Pidgeotto's shadow. Ash had been shocked, but immediately ordered Caterpie to do a Zip Tackle, as he had called the combo, on the bird pokemon. He called out to Caterpie, "Aim for its wings!"
Caterpie shot the string of sticky silk at the Pidgeotto's right wing, hurling himself from the ground and slamming into the bird pokemon's wing as it failed to avoid the String Shot. The hit sent both pokemon tumbling to the ground. Pidgeotto was dazed a bit, from both not expecting its prey to fight back like that and the fact that the ground was hard. Ash didn't let the pokemon get over its dazed state and ordered, " Use Zip Tackle again Caterpie, and aim for its chest." Caterpie complied, and soon the Pidgeotto was slammed in the chest by him. The hit, however damaging it was, shook the Pidgeotto into focus. It shook itself and launched itself into a Quick Attack that hit Caterpie hard, sending the small Bug type flying. Pressing its advantage, the Pidgeotto used Gust to make Caterpie fly into a tree.
When Caterpie landed on the ground, he was heavily damaged, and Ash was concerned. He pulled out Caterpie's pokeball, intent on returning the Bug type and having Pikachu take over, when a remarkable thing happened. Caterpie summoned his determination and lifted his head to glare defiantly at the Pidgeotto. Crying out "Your not going to beat me!" Caterpie started to glow with a brilliant and blinding white light, making everyone shield their eyes. When the light faded a few heartbeats later, everyone looked back and saw a green crescent shaped pokemon where Caterpie once stood. Ash put away the pokeball in his hand and whipped out his Pokedex. Pointing it at his newly changed pokemon, it identified the pokemon as Metapod, Caterpie's evolved form, and that he now knew Harden. Metapod then shot a String Shot at Pidgeotto, going into a Zip Tackle with a certain sheen to his shell indicating that he was combining Harden with the move. Metapod slammed heavily into Pidgeotto, sending the bird pokemon through the air only to hit the ground hard. Pidgeotto struggled to get up, but Metapod hit it again with his new combo move, causing the Pidgeotto to go flying again before hitting a tree at the edge of the clearing and land in a heap, almost unconscious and not making any movements.
Ash saw the opportunity, and liking the Pidgeotto's daring, grabbed an empty pokeball from his bag, maximized it, and threw it at the downed Pidgeotto. Hitting the pokemon, the pokeball sucked it inside in a red light. Falling to the ground, the pokeball rocked one, two, three times before a ding resounded throughout the clearing. Ash gave a loud cheer, Pikachu and Metapod chiming in. Harry, Tom, and Misty looked on with surprise, but Tom and Harry were very proud of Ash and the newly evolved Metapod. After the celebrations calmed down, the group settled back into the training routine. Ash scanned his new Pidgeotto and found out it was female. He then healed up his Pidgeotto and Metapod with the supplies Tom had made him bring, and then got down to training them both.
At the end of the week, Ash's Metapod was close to evolving again and his Pigeotto had gotten along well enough with Metapod and Pikachu, despite the original reason for Pigeotto joining them. Pidgeotto even started to learn Steel Wing from watching Harry practice the move after she was filled in by Pikachu why the group was in the clearing in the first place. The group was finally ready to get out of the forest.
A/N: Thank you all for waiting so patiently (even if I don't know if you've been patient or not). To the one who gave a negative review, thank you for the expression of your opinion, but explain why you think the way you do. Explanations are what I want from my reviewers so that I know what works and what doesn't, it will make my writing better.
Now, hopefully as things progress I can make the differences in Tom's and Ash's battle styles clear. I even hope to make Misty a more prominent trainer than what we see in the anime. I mean, we don't exactly see her do much in the way of training her pokemon and catching more to add to her team, and she's the girl that ran off from home to become a water pokemon master, is highly competitive, and already has an evolved pokemon on her team when she's introduced. She's even strong enough to act as a Gym Leader. It doesn't make sense to me why she would just hang around and do pretty much nothing when faced with most dangerous situations or not train when given the chance to. Maybe someone could write something that explains why she would act like that given the character that we see.
This chapter is unfortunately a filler, despite the action in it and the wait. Hopefully things will be quicker to write. This chapter was a pain.