- Vespikiln Revisited -

The next day started with an appointment with a custom trainer supply store Alexa's father had chosen for her new bag. Supposedly the rather fancy looking extreme condition storage system was rated for use by Legendary pokemon in general, which sounded like it wasn't the kind of thing you could actually test, but Alexa couldn't be certain of that anymore after their encounter with the Unown.

"I'm planning on picking up some supplies of my own today," William said as he met them outside of the shop. "Do you want to come with me so we can coordinate, or should we both keep supplies separated for now?"

"We have a list of things we need to restock on too," Charizard said while Alexa took their new fire and toxin proofed bag and tested it against her Mephagic form now that they had finished with her Lobasalt shape. "But our funds are a bit tighter than we like. We can manage on our own, but it might be best if you don't plan on our supplies for help."

"We're going to get ours when I finish up with some Vespikiln clothes," Alexa admitted and started to rub the bag on her slimy back and through her flowing hair. "Those are the last set I'll really need. Apparently my Lobasalt stuff is fine with shards of rock too."

"And the more dangerous toxins aren't supposed to be any worse than your 'normal' ones, at least when it comes to cleaning off," Charizard joked with a huff of purple fumes from his current Poison/Flying type. "So we hopefully just need to clean the pack before we get stuff out of it. How is it looking so far?"

Alexa took the still empty bag and held it in front of her. The toxins from her body were slowly dripping off much more easily than her old tent had handled the stuff, but another issue occurred to her. "One of us is going to have to turn back to clean it off." She could technically use Water Gun on the more than waterproof bag, but hers was still a touch toxic.

"Just try, we're going to go over the entire thing inside and out before we put anything in," her Starter suggested. "I want to know if it really is properly waterproof. Especially if you decide to go underwater as a Lobasalt."

"True underwater capable bags aren't really worth the cost," William advised quickly. "You need to make an air bubble to open them without ruining stuff anyway, and it is generally a bad idea to travel fully underwater without that. For one thing I do not like wet fur, so if you travel that way it won't be with me."

"That is a solvable issue," Alexa said jokingly. "You can probably take the Water type fairly well, and that comes with fur or scales that work great with water."

"Probably a bit much of a joke for now, Alexa," Charizard cautioned her as she saw William pale notably. "I think your Water type is affecting you."

"Sorry," she apologized and then spat some water onto the bag. The toxin flowed off of it with that prompting, which was a good sign. "I guess I've gotten too used to this now."

"It's okay. Aquatic illusions can partially handle it, and I guess those can't be too far from what you do," William nervously reassured her as Charizard used Contagion Cure to return to his base types.

"Looks like it does clean how it is supposed to," Charizard said as he opened the bag carefully and inspected it more. "We should have Kingler clean it up the rest of the way before we transfer everything. I can easily handle hot water, but I'd like to know how well cold cleans it for general use."

"So when are you changing into the 'Vespikiln' form again?" William questioned as Alexa turned herself back and took the new bag from Charizard. "You said it lasts three days?"

"It does, which makes the latest thing my dad asked me to do kind of awkward for everyone in this city," she admitted with a glance over at the Gym. "Falkner wants to try it since it has wings, and I'm the only person around with any Chitin Powder."

Charizard flapped his wings with an amused growl that clearly said Falkner would love that a bit too much given his prior comments on the matter. "I think I have gotten that impression, Charizard," William sighed and turned to look at the Gym too. "That's going to happen before you get clothes isn't it?"

"I want to show him the change first, as a sort of last attempt to stop this other than working out a new form to test for him first," Alexa explained without any hope for the possibility. "He really wants to try being a Flying type himself, and that is the closest human form I currently know about."

Nurse Joy and Leader Falkner were already at the field where they had planned on doing this when Alexa and William arrived. "You seriously cannot wait for the planned downtime next week?" the Joy questioned Falkner. "I'm sure that Assistant Larch can just sell you some of the powder, and she could just demonstrate herself."

"I want to know if it works or not, and she is the only person I've been able to contact who actually wants to be a Vespikiln again that has used the powder before," Falkner answered, and then waved at Alexa and William. "Although that is partially because the ones who wanted to use it went into the wild and are really hard to contact."

"Wait, you aren't thinking about running the Gym as a Vespikiln are you?" Alexa had to question. "I had more than a week to get used to the difference between a human's defensive energy and a pokemon's before my Gym battle with you, and I still probably can't handle a super effective move being used around me yet."

"I know it took me a while to handle Fairy type moves, and Bug types weren't much better," William agreed. "Fighting was alright, those don't usually hit trainers."

"There, two trainers who agree with me on that," Nurse Joy stated bluntly, and Alexa remembered that this Joy had been a Mephagic before. "It takes time for most pokemon to be able to handle a Gym battle, and you probably will not be an exception."

"If downtime is really needed I can pull the start of it back a couple of days," Falkner tried to argue. "We haven't announced next week's yet, and the news just got out about Sprout Tower. I've had six trainers who called ahead about matches tell me they went through Dark Pass instead already, and I haven't re-filled those slots yet. It is just as easy to fit them in where I would have ended the downtime as it is for the next three days, and I've already done the three I have for today." Nurse Joy did not look happy with that idea, but nodded at it given three wasn't that many for a single day. With how well established Falkner was he probably could manage six or more each day this early in the League, although later on when higher Badge numbers were involved it would slow down as each fight got more intense. The fewer people that made it to those later stages made up for the reduced match count.

"Okay, so if we're doing this I am going to go first," Alexa said with a glance at the Gym Leader. "Mostly because you missed what a Vespikiln actually looks like, but also because I'm a little afraid you're just going to fly off and I'm the only one around with a Vespikiln trainer card to explain things."

"Fair," Falkner jokingly replied and nodded at her, and Alexa decided that meant it was bad enough that she would need her full team for this. Charizard first, who looked between her and Falkner before taking the new bag just to be safe, and then he sighed as she quickly let out the rest and grabbed a small jar of Chitin Powder. They had decided not to use vials for relatively quick use given the three day length, and there was no chance of Alexa risking a change of her own to fill the fragile spheres.

Once the powder was sprinkled over her Alexa felt her arms split into a second pair, her wings and abdomen grow, and as the rest of her body shifted she attempted to have her heat generation increase more slowly that the previous time. The still present burst of heat at the end of the change told her that she didn't quite succeed, but it felt closer to a smooth rise and this was only her first try. Before she did anything else Alexa found that she had to check her Fly HM pattern. A small amount of her now altered energy entered it as it always did, but unlike every time before the energy was properly converted by passing through her wings into Flying type energy, and then the now processed energy proceeded to fill out the functional parts of the pattern that made flying easier and helped keep a passenger safe.

"Good news, I can use Fly like this," she said mostly to her team. "Wow, being able to use that actually feels really good."

"Well, that sounds like an argument why we shouldn't use TMs," Kingler unhappily noted. "If it is that bad when they don't work, I'm not sure the easy moves are worth it."

"Okay, I might end up continuing to look for another option later on," Falkner said jokingly to attract her attention. "That one is a bit more buggy than I realized."

Alexa could not exactly glare at him for that, her eyes weren't made for that, but the rest of her team did manage to get the point across. "So, does that mean you aren't going to try? Because I still have to get some new clothes for this form," she dryly informed the Gym Leader.

"I've waited too long since finding out this was a thing for the first one being a Bug type to make me back out," Falkner replied, possibly a bit apologetically. "So, is it just getting sprinkled for this stuff? No hour long prep time for this one?"

Alexa nodded at that, and turned to look at Nurse Joy. "Does the rest of his Gym know how much a Vespikiln sheds? Because it is a lot, and I don't want to shut down the local Gym because it got turned into a hive of bee pokemon," she questioned as Charizard prepared the Pokedex to scan this possible change.

"How bad are we talking about?" Joy asked with a cautious look. "It wasn't that bad to clean up the scanner."

"William, translate for Kingler. She was able to help with the cleanup without getting changed," Charizard requested. "You've done it before, Alexa has not," her Starter explained when the other trainer gave him a look. "My parents looked into a proper translator, it isn't something you just do."

"Also I don't trust Alexa to translate that part properly," Kingler agreed quickly.

"Yeah, she's probably right about that. I was too busy trying to not make it worse," Alexa also had to agree. Then she noticed that the two humans had not followed the conversation. "We're getting someone to translate for Kingler, she did a lot of our cleanup because it doesn't work on her."

"On that front we do have a good number of local Bug types who have agreed to help with that," Joy complained more than explained. "What is the rest?"

Kingler did most of the explanation, and somehow that turned into a lesson in how to translate for a pokemon. Charizard was honestly right about it being harder to do than even Alexa had expected. There were several times that William had flinched badly at her attempts to keep up with Kingler, apparently some things couldn't be summarized the way she wanted to offhand. Then there were the small things Kingler did as a Kingler that Alexa could even understand as a human, which meant she forgot to translate them as much as they apparently needed to be.

"I'm not happy to say this, but we can handle that easily enough," Joy sighed, while Falkner just looked smug. "It honestly sounds a bit easier than the Toxin Contagion cleanup we've done before. That required a bit of effort to keep me from changing a third time, so we prepared for that scenario."

"Well, that is a concern that our team has not been as careful about," Bellossom said darkly to everyone who could understand pokemon. "With how all of us are becoming Poison types all the time now."

With that covered they had officially ran out of distractions to put it off, so Falkner got his attempt to use Chitin Powder. It quickly reacted with the Gym Leader, and he changed in about the same way Alexa had moments before, arms splitting before their eyes, skin hardened into fuzzy chitin, a large abdomen growing out the base of what once had been a spine. Although there were three obvious differences this time. The first being that he was more of a plain yellow color than fiery orange, the second was that he had dark blue bands that matched his former hair, and the most obvious was that his wings grew notably larger in proportion than hers with clear improved strength.

"Oh. That's what it looks like," Alexa said a bit uneasily at the sight of another human's change. It wasn't quite as comfortable to look at to her, to watch how familiar human shapes were converted into a pokemon's form was a bit more unusual at this point that having her human form be the one converted.

"Um, wasn't I supposed to have some fire?" Falkner then asked with an uneasy buzz. "Because I'm a bit more worried about the Fire types over there than I expected."

Alexa's Pokedex chimed in with an audible 'Bug/Flying type' at Charizard's prompting. "Yeah, I was wondering if it was going to work like that," her Starter commented on the result. "I think human-humans with types keep them as a secondary. Like with that Dark type during the Gym battle."

Falkner turned to Nurse Joy to see her reaction to that statement, and Alexa smothered a laugh at the sight of someone else not realizing the pokemon they just understood had not been speaking to the humans present. "Nurse Joy, is Falkner a natural Flying type?" Alexa asked to get the question part of it across, although William grumbled about it still being a poor way to handle translation.

Only, she might have gotten it entirely wrong because Nurse Joy did not seem to understand the question. "Did you go to a Pokemon Center to get a scan for that?" the older woman asked half sarcastically. "I barely know that I'm actually not-typed, and that's only because of the scans from my time as a Mephagic."

"You know, I think I forgot that dad used us to help calibrate his type scanners," Alexa had to admit. She personally had an unusually non-typed energy makeup. "But Charizard has suggested that a human with one might alter the result of a transformation that is still compatible."

"Um, humans can have the Flying type?" Falkner questioned cautiously. He hovered backwards a bit clearly did not want to get closer to Alexa or Charizard. "That is a real thing, not just a rumor?"

"Humans can have any type," Alexa answered slowly, unaware that it was new knowledge to the Gym Leader. "Um. Okay, so when we say that humans are 'typeless' it means we don't act like a pokemon or human that does have a type. Everything and everyone has typed energy, but we have different kinds of it in us. Most pokemon have one or two types with a lot of energy, but humans, um." She had to pause to consider how best to explain it. "Okay, so your typed energy is like a bag of different colored marbles. For pokemon they have a lot of one or two colors of marbles, and if you have a lot of marbles of one type you can use moves of that type really easily. So they have a natural selection pressure to keep a lot of just one or two kinds of marbles." Alexa sort of wished she was a Lobasalt, she might have been able to make some examples then. "Most humans can't use moves, so there isn't any pressure to have any specific kind of marbles. So most humans have a mixture of a lot of types that mostly cancel each other out."

"Pokemon have more than just their main typed energy as well," Joy added. "Mostly the Normal type, but there are a number of rare cases where diseases that typically afflict pokemon of one type are transmitted to a pokemon that has a lot of that type, but not enough for it to be expressed. Cases of third or even rarer fourth expressed types are typically temporary energy imbalances, but there have been individual pokemon who have three naturally."

"My mix is 45% Fire, 35% Flying, 10% Water, and the remaining 10% a bunch of others if anyone was curious," Charizard agreed with the nurse with a smug smile. "Found that out because I caught a Water type illness as a mander, and Alexa's dad checked for it specifically to keep her aware of the risk of those. That's why I'm curious if he was Flying type more than others, because we've already seen a Dark typed Human throw off one of these."

"Nurse Joy, is there a way to understand pokemon as a human? Because that Charizard is better spoken than some of my students," Falkner commented, possibly in an attempt to cut down on the parts that confused him.

"Translators are expensive and this one nearly had a Trainer Card of his own," Joy dryly replied.

"Please don't just say that, I don't exactly want that advertised," Alexa's Starter complained, and Alexa did her best to translate that important point.

Charizard had to admit that two Vespikiln shopping for clothes caused less problems than just one Mephagic or Lobasalt. Although there were some new issues from one of them being the local Gym Leader, who Charizard was fairly sure the city would need to send pokemon to find before the next three days were done. He planned on trying to warn Falkner's pokemon to keep an eye on their trainer, but admittedly Alexa wasn't entirely typical on how much she listened to her pokemon.

"So," William said to them in a way that the humans wouldn't understand. "What happens to your energy when you use those things to change types?"

"There are a few ways," Alexa started to explain in a buzz that also wasn't human. "To continue the earlier analogy with the marbles, you can temporarily convert some of the energy of one or more types to another like if you painted over the marbles with a different color."

"The paint wearing off would be the equivalent of the change wearing off," Charizard added with a smile at his trainer for keeping things between pokemon successfully. "That could also be replacing a current type or by mostly just changing the unfocused parts to the new type."

"Wait, we can just talk like pokemon like this?" Falkner questioned, and the Gym Leader did not pull off the trick and attracted the attention of the employees away from the sort of vest things they were currently attempting.

"You can practice that later," William sighed. "So, would a permanent type conversion be completely changed into the other color?"

"For that specific one yes," Alexa happily noted. "Although the other ones get a bit more complicated to use the analogy for. Another option would be something that gives a lot of a given type for a time period. That is like dumping some marbles of the new color into the bag." She paused for a moment. "Bellossom's doesn't even really work with the analogy. Capacitance gives the ability to build up Electric typed energy with electricity, and the pokemon turns back if they use all of the energy up before it fully becomes a part of them."

"So, we think we have something for the two of you," one of the employees said to them as if they had not been talking, which clearly shook Falkner from how badly he flinched at the interruption, but Charizard was happy to see Alexa just roll with. "It should work with both of your wing styles." The garment was most of the front of a vest, with the back replaced with a number of straps that would likely work around a Vespikiln's wings. "Although we usually sell these to more typical Bug types. Leader Falkner's typings won't be much of an issue, but the basic ones aren't as fireproof as a Fire type would need."

"That should be fine, I'm just happy to have something," Alexa agreed easily.

"Although we might need to test if that is human compatible," Charizard noted with a careful inspection of the garment. It looked to him like it could fit on Alexa's human body, which could cause problems with the transformation back.

William quickly passed along that warning to the employees, which made Charizard smile. It had taken direct exposure to how little Alexa needed a translation for some pokemon words to get the Dark typed trainer to understand that Alexa was not going to be a good translator herself.