The rest of the ride on the St. Anne was kind of boring and predictable to me, with the exception of myself - and apparently Melissa and Michael - getting ambushed by random members of the Elite Four, with the exception of Agatha, who was 'holding down the base'.
They would randomly show up and watch any kind of non-secret training you were doing. They seemed to have my schedule. It was kind of creepy. When I wanted to do basic physical training or work on a concept in the notes - one of them would show up at some point in it for ten or so minutes. Only Karen really offered any pointers beyond the basic comments from Bruno about how it was a good routine but uninspired, and Lance's noises of annoyance at not pushing for elemental domain control now.
Karen, meanwhile, would actually ask me why I was doing what I was doing, so I told her about my idea to gain actual complete mastery over internal energy before moving on. She agreed, very pleased, that it was the best move. It made learning the next step easier. She told me at my current rate, I'd be at the level where not moving on would be wasting my time - even without complete 100% mastery - in about two months. She noted that the speed was impressive, but it was because the bodies had been advanced to the level where the energy stores in the body were catching up, and the control was being developed as they grew, which was good. Still, for pokemon who needed to evolve still, it would be best to evolve them before learning about elemental domains.
This was pointed at my still first-stage Pokemon, and I agreed. I would just use them in the Pokemon Center as opening battlers until they evolved, and in a three on three my other team mates could secure the win, I'm relatively confident.
Still, internal elemental control was progressing at what Karen called "impressive speed for someone making the steps for the first time, but hardly acceptable for a seasoned master". She was most impressed by my insights and what she didn't have to tell me because I already grasped it.
Like how learning and mastering a move was different, how you could fight in different styles and how you could grade mastery. It was like Legends Arceus in that way. You could be fast and more frail or you could be slower and bulkier. It was hard - though not impossible with the use of moves or abilities - to be both.
Still it was best to pick one and just over-index in that.
But, in the end, I won the second tournament and was handed a voucher for my choice of starter pokemon from any region. Up to three.
Easily worth $50k. Then I was given an additional $10k, another ribbon, some TMs and notes on which starters would be best for my team.
Karen's notes included the Sinnoh Variant of some starters. "Almost extinct, ask for a Hisuian Oshawott ' was her note, followed by a pile of notes on how to train it.
Like, really? The starters I want all fit my style pretty cleanly. I would be able to train them and go through the region - or maybe some other region - with my 'baby' pokemon and a couple of my core team for security. Literally two of them. I will not be doing a second ten-badge region. Thanks. My pokemon can go to Oaks Ranch and practice feeling and manipulating the natural aura of the world which they share types with.
So, before I left the ship in the morning after the final battle, I put in my order.
Treecko, Hisuian Oshawott and Mudkip.
They match how I like to battle - offensive monsters in the first two and a really good brawler in the third. There is minimal overlap with Azumarill, so it works well.
I stepped off the boat and found Karen waiting in her normal outfit, and when she laid eyes on me, she smiled and popped off the wall. "Time to get you some new clothes. This is a good place for it because they have a lot of the finest silk for high-class stuff, along with the best classy and tough wilderness clothes. I hope you're ready." She cackles gleefully, and I roll my eyes.
"I get most guys hate shopping, but I don't mind it really. I agree I need to look the part of an elite trainer. So, let's get to it." I say, and we wander into the crowds with her.
"We'll see! I find it hard to believe you won't be tired when we finish this." Karen comments, before pointing to the side at a shop. "That is one of the stores which does custom order stuff. If we can't find what we need, we'll go there later." She tells me, as we walk on. The building is a small house, with a classical sign out front of a spool of thread with a needle, bracketed by the words "Janet's Tailoring"
"Alright. Want to tell me what you decided on for the outfit?" I ask, and she hums thoughtfully before offering a nod.
"Something simple but tough looking, with some highlights. My outfit, for example, is a 'ripped crop top' and jeans with a special order belt. The belt is designed to bring it together subtly. I'm going to do something similar for you. The leather jacket, a simple black sweater and undershirt, and jeans tied together with special jewelry and accessories. The belt, watch and boots will be important. The pants will be dark cargo brown to match the jacket and your hair, while the travel version will be actual leather. The dress version will be what amounts to a suit, but with a leather jacket instead of a blazer." She trails, then gives me a look. "Could the beanie be a cowboy hat for the formal version? You can take it off then and it looks fine outdoors. If not, then there'll be no headwear in the formal version." She tells me, and I nod.
"That's fine. I probably need different kinds of leather jackets for different times. I feel like this is too much dark type energy, though. More color would be good. Could I do a warm color pallet instead? Red and brown, with black belt and black and red beanie?" I ask, and she hums thoughtfully, before shrugging.
"That works. I think you will need more versions for that, though. A blue, red, green, black and grey set for various occasions. Some graphic tees can also be worked in for a casual look if you're agreeable. Just jeans, a graphic tee and hoodie with a graphic on the back. A few different types which you can mix and match for variability. Add in a few variations for the cowboy hat and beanie and no hat at all, then we have to find shoes, boots and dress shoes to go with each level of sophistication. It works." She responds. I just give her a smile and a nod.
"That all works for me." I tell her, and the second the words leave my mouth, she takes a sharp left and walks into what looks like a generic clothing shop.
"Great!" She chirps. "We'll get the casual stuff here. They have quality stuff which isn't tacky. Pick three Pokemon, preferably things you think will be aces on most teams or with you everywhere you go."
"Charizard, Dragonite and my Ninetails." I respond instantly. She nods, and walks in a dead line towards the mens section, before pulling out some pants in various styles. Boot cuts, normal cuts, skinny jeans and then she goes over to the shirts and pulls out some shirts I think look okay, looks at the pants, put them back, and then does this three or four times before she comes across a black Charizard Graphic tee which has it wrapping around the shirt, growling as flame curls in its teeth, and nods, tossing it on the pile and moving on.
I look over some Dragonite shirts with her, before we agree they don't fit my theme. Then we find a shirt with a pair of glowing icy blue eyes with faint white fluffs tacked in implying nine tails on a greyish purple shirt. It has little white marks like wind or cloud stylistic patterns across the whole thing. The graphic is on the back while the front has the words "Beware the Ghost". She tosses that one on, and then casually snaps up a cowboy hat and black beanie with a red pokeball symbol, and hands me the clothes.
"Change" She orders, before walking off to find more.
She never even asked about my size, but I find that what she picked me fits almost perfectly, aside from the waist which is a little loose. Still, that had always been an issue.
She comes back after a few minutes with normal tennis shoes and has me try those with the normal jeans, and we leave the store with three sets of pants, a cowboy hat and a beanie, along with six different shirts, and many copies of the basic black, red and blue shirts. She convinced me after a good bit of debate to get a pink Chansey themed shirt. She said it looked good on me and was almost a statement piece which would make people underestimate me, but also in time become one of the scariest things I could wear.
Her advice was to use my best team when I wore that shirt. I rolled my eyes but accepted the advice, and the shirt. I never have to wear it, but having it if I want a day of hard battles will be good.
Then she took me to a tailor, explaining this was an old fashioned place where they will measure everything and make the clothes for a proper suit over a few days, designed to work with my leather jacket.
We left that place an hour later, and then went to a proper leather shop, where they had everything from jackets to pants to socks to chaps. We got three jackets, three pairs of pants and a few belts and hats. Then she dragged me back to the tailors to show them the new jackets and make sure they made one set of clothes for each jacket, while three would be made for my 'normal jacket.'
"Why did we do the leather after the suits?" I asked when we left. She just growled.
"It's more effective." She eventually said. "The undershirts, which they make first, are not affected by what jacket you wear. But the rest is. While they started the under shirts, I got the rest of the outfits to show them. Also, we needed to go to the leather shop, and the other shop was in the other direction. We were going to pass them back from the leather shop no matter what. Minimal time lost this way." She says, before pointing ahead.
It's a silk shop which sells everything anyone could need, according to the sign. She gives me a pat and leaves me to shop for myself while she goes and shops for herself.
I get some ties, underwear, and a few other miscellaneous things, like undershirts. By the time I finish, Karen is standing off to the side with her own rather large bag. I just glance at it before shrugging. We set out, and not ten minutes later are at a linen shop which specializes in making beanies, socks, gloves, and other partial body covers.
I get a few different beanies, socks, and elbow and knee braces. She then takes me to a specialist outdoorsman shop which has outdoorsman clothing. So I got gloves, rainproof and stylish! overcoats, a full on rain cloak, waterproof socks, different types of boots and even waterproof shoes. Then she drags me off to a store across town, which is another tailoring shop, except instead of suits and dress clothes, they make special order pokeball holders. She orders herself a new version of her belt, with more slots for balls, and then orders me a few special belts with slots for balls, with dangling bits on the side to clip even more on if needed.
Eventually, we leave there and she takes me to a general goods store where I get a needle, thread, leather polish and specialty cleaning supplies for everything I got today.
And it had been a day. I'd left the boat at 10:30am, and I'd finished shopping at close to 6:00pm.
We settled into a booth in a restaurant for dinner, and she smirked at me, doing the Karen Classic of tossing the bulk of her hair with her left hand as she gave me a smirk on the right side of her mouth.
"Enjoy that?" She asks smugly.
"It was nice. I got to get a feel for your fashion sense, I figured out how to get you to leave me alone, and I got my shopping done for my clothes for at least this year. I may need more next year if I grow any bigger. Never know until it's been a few months and you've grown not at all." I comment, and she gives me a glower of annoyance.
"How to get me to leave you alone?" She asks huffily.
"Yea. I tried to play annoyed, or tied, or unwilling to go on and you enjoyed that. But when I was having an obvious good time and we went somewhere for you to get stuff, you left me right alone." I say, giving her a smirk. "If I was acting I could have bolted." I continue, smirking, growing. "In fact-"
"Yea, I get it." She cuts me off with a huff. "You figured out the game. I knew you weren't really that upset about shopping, but wasn't it annoying a little bit?"
"Some parts were. I still think that the Serperior hoodie was a good option." I tell her, and she just huffs.
"It totally doesn't fit with any of the outfits. We'd have to design like three whole outfits around it, and we already ran out of time without doing that. You need green outfits, yes, but we can work on that later. You have a good set of basics, and by the time you leave the city, you'll be ready for all occasions!" She cheers.
"The basics is over thirty different unique outfits which I can mix and match to create potentially hundreds of decent outfits." I deadpan, and she smiles.
"If its less than one hundred outfits, you're slacking. I have over one hundred dresses for various occasions and levels of formality, and the shoes, hats, handbags, jewelry and bangles to go with each. Then I have a few dozen sets of jeans, shirts, and so forth for mixing and matching. So yea, I have potentially more outfits in my closet than I could wear. You barely have enough to cover you for any given situation. We'll make it so you have at least five options for whatever you need before I'm done with you." She says, and then gives a smile as the waiter drops off the food. "But I'll wait for a bit. I do have some work today, and while the Elite had today 'off' so to speak, tomorrow we have to do the paperwork and registration for a lot of stuff going on. It'll be annoying, and when that's done there'll probably be something which needs doing. So give it a month or two. I'll track you down and fix this horribly incomplete wardrobe." She says with the most comforting voice I've heard from her all day.
I just take a bite out of my food with a smirk, before swallowing and gesturing. "Are you going to eat, or..?" and so, it is silent for a few minutes, while we eat.
Tomorrow is going to be my Pokemon's day off, the training, looking around in the Safari Zone for the Pokemon I need, and then training some more, then Koga. The three of us on the ship agreed - we'd wait two weeks before challenging him in order.
I'd be going first. Two weeks was plenty of time to refine my skills some more.
*** Scene Change ***
As it turns out, refining your Pokemon's capabilities beyond internal energy control and pure physical might is much more difficult than the first two. Ninetails and Garchomp, having a natural advantage with physical elements and natural abilities to control them, were having a moderately easier time with getting started, which also sped up their internal energy control training.
Which meant they were quickly passing Dragonite in training, or would be, if he didn't see them coming and push himself twice as hard as before to keep up with their effort. Meanwhile, the rest of my Pokemon other than Charizard focused fully on mastering their internal energy.
Charizard had apparently figured out and mastered it fully within the time we were on the St. Anne. He proved it by whipping out something I can only describe as Blast Burn, which had turned a large section of the mountain we had been training on to molten lava, erasing all traces of training - with the exception of the new complete lack of anything on the section but volcanic rock.
Then, he'd taken to just sitting next to pools of lava, and trying to figure out how to control it as Garchomp did sand and stone. If he figured it out, then that'd be great.
The issue was, how do you explain the feeling of energy outside of your body to someone else, and how to control it, if you yourself have no idea on either aspect? I don't know. Ninetails and Garchomp do offer tips when they're taking breaks, but I don't really have a comprehension of what they're saying. I can't work on the problem because I don't have a Psychic to translate for me.
So, I decide to head into the Safari Zone at the end of the third day of training, and hunt down some Psychic or another with Growlithe. I ask at the Center if they have any records of Abra or Ralts scent for Growlithe to track, and they have neither. But they do give me general directions towards where the Psychic types nest.
So, I head out and spend a day trudging through the swampy land with Growlithe, looking for some Psychic to join the team. It takes the better part of four hours, but I do end up acquiring an Abra and to my surprise a Ralts had been practically handed to me by a big Gallade who looked very old and battle scarred. He just looked me over, gave a nod, and pushed them towards me, before teleporting away.
I'll take it, I guess?
The Abra had been much more normal. I just gave it some food when I found one, and told it I was looking for a Psychic or two to join me. I'm trying to be the best, yada yada. I showed him my badges from this season, and mentioned Growlithe was one of my newest pokemon.
He'd seemed incredulous when I told him I'd been training Growlithe for only a few weeks. Growlithe had proudly agreed, and then a conversation ensued and Abra had, in the end, captured himself.
Professor Oak, by the time I was back at the Center, was ready to swap out members of my team. I was taking all six of my new friends, and trading them for Charizard, Pidgeot, Dragonite, Scizor, Garchomp and Growlithe. Because, explicitly, Growlithe was training under Charizard to improve his control of Fire Energy, while the rest were refining control or working on expanding to external energy.
This left me with my Water Types, Grass Types, and three Psychic Types and Ninetails. I kept Ninetails because she can help them with Fairy type moves and other special attacks.
Chansey always stays for physical training.
So, I began training my team up with the older members of my team mentoring the younger while Chansey helped grind them into the dirt with her Gravity and Help Pulse.
By the end of the week and a half of training? I had a Frrothorn, Serperior, Kommo-o, Dewott, Grovyle, Marshtomp, pair of Kirlia and Kadabra. The male Kirlia opted to stay with me when I swapped the teams back. I'd sent Serperior back with the others to oversee their training, and spend the final day with my team, to catch up. Kirlia, who I'd taken to calling Prince and the female Princess for ease of interaction,
Psychic types did make training vastly easier. Prince could set up a sort of telepathic relay where everyone could talk with each other mind to mind. I'm certain Princess could, too, and Kadabra was probably the best at it, but also was the most directly combative of the three, not caring overmuch for the technique beyond the control it allowed him to gain by mastering it.
Prince, however, was a socialite.
'Teacher-Conqueror' He began as we started the last day of training. 'Your Charizard has relayed that he has had some measure of success with his control of Lava, which has made Garchomp silent for some time, as he can no longer bully Charizard with rocks. The others have all had some measure of success as well. Dragonite and Pidgeot are naturally working together to push the limits of air manipulation. The others have begun to make incremental attempts, but are struggling to make real progress. I find your Ninetails growth - with your insights which the others lacked - to be most spectacular.' Prince finishes the report.
"Thanks, Prince. Now that I know what they're feeling and how it feels to reach out and control the element in question for Ninetails, it was easier for me to detect the energy, probably because I don't always feel things like she does. I suspect it will be similar for the others. So I think I'll spend the day meditating. If you could create mental links between me and the others when they work on energy manipulation so I can get a feel for what they detect?" I ask. It's true, Ninetails had almost detected heat and cold like visible things. She could pull and push the cold around as she wished for a massive range, miles, which made sense. Control on the outside was very weak while on the inside it was very tight. What she does is pull all the cold for miles in, and then control it around her to make snowstorms. Outside her control range the temperature rises a degree or three, and inside it plummets.
So I'd come to understand how that worked, I'd asked why she didn't do the same thing with Ice, basically. If she can pull cold in or push it out, why not focus on the heat and cold in the ice, purging heat and then making a line of cold air to propel the ice through. Basically making it so cold, the air is almost literally solid, while pushing the heat generated behind the shard of ice to move it faster?
When I'd explained it with mental thoughts and images, using concepts of physics and thermodynamics which she had no real knowledge of, but intuitively grasped when I explained them, her control had taken a notable uptick in speed. It was still slow, but it was faster than anyone else's apparently.
So, I'd spend the day focusing on the energy flows and how they warped, reacted and moved with the world around them. See if I could explain the physical laws which govern the thing they're interacting with. Like, for Garchomp.
I had to explain how Fault lines worked, which required an explanation of the makeup of the world. How the Lithosphere interacts with things. What an actual earthquake was. I'd even explained some of the Myths of Groudon and how it likely interacted with what we knew of this. I explained, after that, how other aspects of the world interacted with the ground. The wind created sandstorms with loose particulate which was made by a very dry area corroding over time. Which required explaining what corrosion was, and how it worked. All of this to explain the idea of what I thought would be the best way to control the ground typing Garchomp had.
He had some innate talent with it - shown by his ability to feel and manipulate it naturally. Because it turns out Ground Type could partially be called the Gravity Type.
Because that's how Garchomp flies. He manipulates his personal gravitational field. Earthquake to him was just a pulse of Gravitational power, bound to a certain range to conserve power, to bounce within itself and destroy anything on the ground. But he also had the ability to feel and sense things in the ground, like the particulate making up most material, with the exception of ferromagnetic metal, apparently.
He used this to determine where prey was naturally and could also use this sense to control minor things, like how sand moved around him. To hide him better in sandstorms, for example.
So I focused on how all of the physical aspects - and some of the mythical aspects - worked. Then I had him try to shape a single grain of sand. First into a sphere, then a spike, then a star, then more complex shapes.
Then I had him do the same with a pebble. Then a rock. I told him to keep going up from there to larger pieces of earth. I gave the impression controlling all of the earth he could feel beneath his feet - around half a mile radius around himself - as the height of his power for Earth control.
Draconic energy was just insane, and I promised to look into it, since I couldn't find any scientific equivalents other than some psychological concepts. Which wouldn't help, probably.
The rest of the team went on like this, explaining the physics behind the element, explaining why things worked that way, and how they could start on manipulating the energy in more effective ways. I even gave the Flying Types the task of cutting a leaf in half cleanly with no jagged edges with nothing but the natural worlds wind.
Hijacking Naruto, maybe. But the look of sheer determination when they realized it was possible with raw air manipulation was very pleasing for me to witness. Air pressure can be very good at cutting if it's thin enough.
And I know they can make it that thin, because it is literally the concept behind Vacuum Wave, Air Slash, Air Cutter, etc.
Water, Grass, Steel, Fighting, these were all easy to explain for me. I'd known a lot more about how hydrophysics worked than the others, but I did understand plants and how they worked and how you could manipulate them. Steel type was a matter of explaining how Steel was made, what its properties were and methods people had found for doing all kinds of things with Steel. I focused on Magnetism, and stressed how to feel if things were close to the elastic limit.
Fighting was intensely easy. I rattled off some Dragon Ball Z training methods and explained Ki. Ki was literally fighting type energy. It was blatantly obvious to me, after feeling and understanding how it worked for a fraction of a second. I also gave some Naruto examples in case it was more Chakra than Ki, but really, it comes down to the same thing.
You practice kata and try to refine them. You do silly workouts and the more powerful that internal energy gets the more you can distort the world around you with the raw power of it.
Like literally, Kommo-o had so much 'energy' you could literally feel him at his will when he was fighting. Like an oppressive blanket. I remembered how in Super, Goku at full power could have blown up a universe, I think it was a Universe, when he pushed his full power out. Because he had so much power the universe wouldn't have been able to handle it if the gods hadn't just done whatever.