Alexa was honestly a bit nervous now that she had seen William vanish into a pokeball in the middle of Maizie's workshop. It honestly made her realize that she was thinking of the Zoroark a bit differently than any of the other pokemon she now commonly interacted with. She was able to realize fully that this was a person going into a tiny sphere. That she was planning on putting herself into a tiny sphere.
However, Alexa had in fact used a Tumblestone before herself. It had taken both seeing one again and William's reaction to the pokeball to remind her of her mother's 'lucky stone' that could always be found if used to mark the location of something. The sense of 'that is mine' was something that had been unique, and while it sounded like this was stronger it was another thing she was already familiar with. Tumblestones weren't common enough in Kanto to get her own easily, and she had forgotten by the time of her journey to try and get one, but this was a clear reminder.
"Second thoughts?" Maizie questioned with an uneasy look at the scanner, which reminded Alexa that the crafter probably realized Alexa was a Legendary now. "I know I'm interested in making one that works on me without needing to be a pokemon at the time, but that doesn't mean everyone is as open to the option."
"I'm torn," Alexa admitted, and William seemed to snap out of his minor daze. "On one hand it is really useful and I do like the idea of having one, but on the other that looks a lot more intimidating when another trainer does it." She fingered Charizard's ball. "I might want my Starter out when I go in. He technically has a trainer card, but he definitely doesn't want a team so please don't register me to him."
"You have a third pokemon-trainer with you?" Maizie questioned. "Why didn't you mention that before?"
"Because Charizard didn't want to be a trainer, it is kind of personal," Alexa said and nodded because it did mean she knew one technical trainer with a pokeball before. "I can ask again if he wants a different ball, but he didn't say anything when I mentioned doing this to him."
Maizie seemed a little unhappy with that, but still brushed it off to go grab something from one of the more cluttered tables. "Well, then we can check out something I haven't been able to experiment with as much as I'd like as we work on yours," the crafter said and pulled out a small stand with a crystal sphere mounted to it and little clamps to hold pokeball parts over the sphere. "This is my homemade conversion tester. The crystal here glows when it takes in energy, but it doesn't actually store the energy very well at all. It works as a way to judge how easily a given set of parts would work to catch a pokemon, but what makes it special is that it shows off the difference between humans and pokemon when it comes to pokeballs." Maizie set it down next to the pad where William's ball had just been. "I've been able to try it with high end stuff and loose energy humans, and once even on a human turned into a pokemon. The difference is pretty big there, so we should be able to see how you work compared to humans and pokemon."
Alexa frowned, and then touched the orb directly. It lit up brightly in a pure white color. "Where did you find this crystal?" she asked carefully. "And did it used to glow in different colors?"
"It usually glows in different colors," Maizie said a touch nervously. "I've never seen white before, even with my calibration equipment."
Alexa nodded a bit nervously and shifted her hand to the piece of Apricorn currently mounted to the tester. The glow vanished as she removed her hand, and then returned very dimly as she touched the wood. "My mom has a few strange things she picked up while on her journeys. One is her 'hand light crystal', which looks a lot like this and she said would glow different colors depending on her mood before she married my dad," Alexa explained and examined the glow.
"Okay, that is typical for humans, and nowhere near bright enough for a normal pokeball to have any hope of converting you," Maizie explained. "You need either looser energy or a very good attunement to use anything currently being made while you are human."
"How good can an attunement get?" William questioned and Alexa let him replace her hand with his claw to compare. The sphere lit up in an unnerving black glow just a bit dimmer than when Alexa had touched it directly.
Maizie didn't say anything for a long moment. "A Legendary pokemon with a custom made pokeball could get attuned enough that even in an energy restricted human form the ball will still work," the crafter said in a rush, as if they would be able to brush past the information if it was said fast enough.
"Any Legendary?" Alexa managed to ask calmly. Even though Maizie was clearly trying to be considerate the discovery still felt uncomfortable. This was the first human other than her family to know, and the fact that Maizie had instantly known to keep quiet about it only said it was important.
"The custom made part is more important," Maizie said a bit more easily, but with a cringe that soon vanished. "It is part of how high end magic stuff needs a lot of connections in order to work."
"Metaphysical weight. You are talking about how really advanced magical items basically need to be made for someone important specifically to be guaranteed to work," William said with realization. "That isn't universal, if you get enough metaphysical weight you can have it work for anyone, but at that point you are probably using stuff you got from Legendary pokemon or an item that is really old. Being specifically for a metaphysically important person just makes it easier to make new things that already work that well, or for really extreme cases alter normal stuff to be like that."
"That's the word, 'metaphysical', I always forget it," Maizie said with a somewhat uneasy nod. "It is how important everything is with magic stuff. I should be able to stack things for you, but." Maizie sighed. "Okay, are you a Legendary? I'd rather not ask, that isn't something to bug pokemon about, but for this it is sort of important."
Alexa took a deep breath. "I am some kind of Legendary pokemon, at least as far as the Unown and Raikou have said," she admitted. "We don't know exactly how important of one yet, but I do apparently count."
"That is at minimum good enough to stack things so it should still work when you're human," Maizie said calmly. "Do you want your Charizard out now, or later when the ball is done?"
"I'm pretty sure they can't be worse than some Fire types we've had back here," Slowking grumbled, but with a bit of unease.
"Well, he's not a Fire type at the moment, but that's good to know for when I'll be one," Alexa replied and let out her currently Bug/Water typed Starter. Maizie and Slowking simply stared at the lobster-like form of Charizard for a long moment. "None of my pokemon are currently in their original form if that affects things." Charizard clicked out a chuckle at that statement.
"You needed to check if you were a Legendary?" Slowking asked slowly and uneasily. "You've done that to the iconic Fire type, and you needed to check if you're a Legendary?"
Charizard replied in a tone that was somewhat insulting, which meant he was probably saying that he was partly responsible for the shape.
"I'm going to ask him to see what the tester makes of him," Maizie declared blankly. "I have so many questions on how that impacts things."
"I think Mareep is going to need that more than Charizard," William noted, although Charizard cut him off with some clicks.
"Charizard says that he's fine with that," Slowking translated for Maizie. "Over there, the sphere with a shell part on it." Charizard set one of his closed claws against the wood, and the sphere lit up in a swirl of pale green and deep blue as bright as William's black glow.
"So still pokemon loose, but with completely different types," Maizie said thoughtfully. "I think that a typical type focused ball wouldn't be too comfortable with this much change. I have some other kinds that work better on other pokemon that can shift their types, but admittedly those pokemon tend to have a default they go back to when they get returned."
"Because they are using an unstable base type to shift to others," Alexa added with a thought to some of the things her father had gone over. "Pokemon like Kecleon who shift based on the energy from a move they have used on them or use themselves." Charizard clicked a bit afterwards as well, and Alexa hoped she could change soon to understand him properly.
"Okay, so you both have a lot more of the technical details of those parts than I do," Maizie said a bit jokingly.
"You missed the lobster pokemon adding his own bit," Slowking said with a confused look. "Is he a Legendary too?"
Alexa looked at Charizard with a bit of confusion. "I don't think so," she said with considerable concern about the idea. "Can I change to one of my forms now? It is kind of awkward now to miss the pokemon side of conversations."
"The Bug typed one lasts days right? Because I do want to test if the ball still works when you're human," Maizie said with a frown. "The others don't last that long, right?"
"I can change myself back from the other two," Alexa confirmed, and got out one of her vials of Magma Contagion. "Is Fire/Rock fine?" Maizie and Slowking both nodded, so she let the liquid she now thought of as feeling cool touch her skin. Then as she expanded outward into a Lobasalt she quickly adjusted her position to not knock over or burn anything. "... okay, is that jar there the 'All-Type powder'?" she had to ask about one that felt off from all of the others. As if it was very unstable and far too much mixed together at once, but strangely kind of nice seeming. The other powders gave her various feelings that partially told her what they might be, at least with the context from Maizie's explanations.
"Okay, I will admit that is a bigger change than I really expected," Maizie said but not with the typical confusion or concern. The older girl actually sounded a bit excited. "But you don't seem to be hot enough to damage anything. Try the tester first, and then I want to see how the scanner reads you now."
Alexa deliberately remade one of her claws into a three 'fingered' hand shape before resting it on the wood, careful to keep her temperature low to not burn it. The sphere lit up as brightly as it had for the other pokemon, but instead of the swirl of colors that Alexa had expected it had the same white glow, now with two smaller red and grey lights that danced across the surface. Alexa flinched back as she saw that, extinguishing the light, and then slowly set her hand back down. "Oh, that kind of says everything doesn't it," she mumbled at how the unique display basically confirmed she was a noteworthy Legendary.
"Slowking, get the special shells I tried for All-Type balls before," Maizie said with a bit of wonder. "You are staying with a core of neutral typed energy, at least from what that's showing, so it looks like that is actually going to be great for you."
"What went wrong with them before?" Charizard questioned with a tone that said he had been listening to most of the conversation so far despite being in his pokeball. Alexa considered how that worked as Slowking translated the question, because she was about to get a pokeball herself and the limits of that were going to be important.
"Well, the thing is that a type that doesn't match the pokemon feels sort of bad. So the attempts that actually worked ended up being a lot of sort of bad feelings with only a few good ones," Maizie explained as she sorted through a pile of the little cage-like reinforcement parts. "I tried to cut down on that with other parts to make things better, a high quality green Apricorn shell and an aluminum reinforcement. I can't recall the exact details of the way aluminum helps with stabilizing types off the top of my head, it isn't the best otherwise, but without one it did tend to cause stress on the entire system."
"We switched to brown," Slowking said quickly. "Green broke in half when we tried it."
Maizie looked a bit pale at that reminder. "Ah, right I forgot that it only seemed to work with the Apricorns from the home region of the Creator of the universe," the crafter said with a fragile smile. "The one other pokemon that I know about who can claim to have all types."
"Less comparisons between me and Arceus please," Alexa requested, hopefully in a way humans could understand. "So, scanner next and then my other quick form?" she quickly asked to hopefully distract from that line of thought.
"Now I kind of wish I'd had you try the third one last time you were here," Maizie lamented but moved over to the scanner holding a shiny silvery colored pair of cage-like constructs. Alexa carefully set her currently single hand onto the scanner, once again careful to keep from getting too hot. "Ok, it is giving me... equal amounts of Fire and Rock, followed by equal amounts of everything else. I'm guessing that's just how you work." The crafter looked over her body. "How good are you at holding a temperature like that?"
"Holding a temperature is easy, knowing what temperature to hold is the harder part," Alexa admitted. For Vespikiln it was currently the opposite, as her Bug/Fire form could tell the temperature easily but could not hold one at all, but Lobasalt could manage to hold temperatures very well. Actually if there was a stone to melt she could sense the correct temperature, but this didn't seem like a situation where a volcanic heat was wanted.
"That's better than half the Fire types I have back here," Maizie said and nodded at her. "So let's see the other one. It is easy to go back and forth, right? We might be able to use both of them."
"It is," Alexa agreed and used some Contagion Cure to go back to being human, which drew more stares from the crafter and Slowking. She didn't pause and simply got out some Toxin Contagion and became a Mephagic. "This one is at least a known pokemon instead of a new one." Alexa tried to brush her toxic 'hair' away a bit self conscious about being seen change so closely.
"Mephagic are humans?" Maizie asked a touch unhappily. "Right, tester and scanner please. I can actually compare your results to other one's I've seen this time."
"Mephagic are Legendary pokemon," Charizard noted. "You've had Legendary pokemon here before?" Alexa frowned deeply, now able to do that again due to her actual mouth in this form, as she moved over to the device. The idea that a Mephagic had hidden, or possibly been unaware of, their human nature was somewhat troubling.
"Raikou was in last year to get an Electric type ball for one," Maizie noted after Slowking translated again. "That was a lot more notable than a giant frog that I didn't even hear speak, and it isn't exactly that odd to go for a custom pokeball if you managed to catch a Legendary."
"So, you didn't know what Toxin Contagion could do to humans?" Alexa questioned and set her hand onto the wooden shell on top of the tester again. This time it was bright white with purple and sea-blue smaller colored lights.
"The only thing that stuff does is poison me," Maizie replied. "Actually there are a few things where people have warned me about touching that haven't done anything odd to me, like how Mundane Clay can sometimes do stuff to humans too. My supplier asked what I thought of weasels when I first got some."
"I don't turn into that one," Alexa admitted and moved over to the scanner now. "Is it Poison, Water, and then equal of all the others too?"
"Yep. Alright, I think it should be safe to try this with maximum involvement from you. So if you can provide some water in this form we can get started," Maizie confirmed quickly. "It is starting to get a bit late, but we should have time to finish today."
Charizard laughed at that clear avoidance of any heavy topics, and Alexa gladly used a provided jar to get the water Maizie was going to use with a less type focused clay and the pre-mixed All-Type crystal combination. Then Slowking got a basket of Pecha berries to deal with the slight toxin that lingered in the water. Followed by Alexa ended up changed back into a Lobasalt again and sat with a claw inside the little kiln that William had fired earlier. It was sort of boring, and a lot different from trying to use her heat in battle, but at the same time it was basically the same as what she needed to train in order to be in forms like Vespikiln that let out heat more easily.
"I hope this doesn't take too long, Rhydon hoped to see how he was going to turn back later," Charizard pointed out after quite a while. "Not to mention I don't think these two would appreciate me shedding my skin in here."
"I almost regret saying this, but Maizie would definitely be interested in the shed shell of whatever you are right now," Slowking complained. "A mixture of Bug and Water types that is based on a Charizard? We will find something to do with it."
"I'm going to buy that off you," Maizie declared immediately. "Whatever you are talking about, I will buy it. Shells of various kinds, shed skins, fur, all of those things can have an impact, and I need to test them out to see what kind of impact they have. Heck, I kind of want to ask for some of that lava stuff you used to get this shape, or any others I don't already have."
"Are you willing to come with us before you get some of that? Because if one of them does work on you then I'd like to know," Alexa carefully admitted, and deliberately kept her heat stable despite the concern that statement created. "Mostly so you don't end up stuck with one where I can help get you back to normal."
"Slowking, think of the fuel savings," Maizie said with a look at Alexa that was closer to what Falkner had given when he had seen Vespikiln.
"I'm going to end up Fire typed if you don't," the Water/Psychic grumbled in a way that Maizie didn't respond to, and it sounded more pokemon speech.
Charizard spent the rest of the time until the ceramic was done clicking with laughter, and Alexa was a bit tired of holding the temperature by the time it finished. Maizie looked over the result for quite a bit before the older girl assembled the special pieces. "What do you want for paint?" Maizie questioned as the plain brown ball was completed. "This is one of a kind, that mix is really unstable, and I am never going to use Mephagic water for another one with it because of how that would normally shift things off. Unless Arceus comes here for one I probably am going to have the rest of that jar forever."
"Please don't let Arceus stop by," Slowking requested a bit desperately.
"White," Alexa said slowly and thoughtfully. "With two black rings." It was part random off the top of her head, part something that wouldn't be mistaken for another type symbol, and partially the color markings for a pokemon currently registered as typeless.
"I'm putting little type symbols in the rings, nine each in white," Maizie declared. "That way it doesn't look too much like a suppressor ball." Alexa flinched at the reminder of those high end police pokeballs used to handle violent wild pokemon.
"What form are you getting caught in?" Charizard questioned.
"Lobasalt, I want to catch the first one," Alexa answered instantly.
"Okay, that is actually a great reason," William agreed, and Maizie laughed as she set down the painted ball.
"Can you try it as a human first, just so I know?" Maizie asked. "Even with the extra attempts to attune it shouldn't work."
Alexa splashed herself with Contagion Cure, then gave the ball a firm rap, and then didn't bother waiting for a response to go back to being a Lobasalt with more Magma Contagion. "Can I get caught the way I want to now?" she asked jokingly. Maizie laughed and nodded in reply, so Alexa rapped the ball again.
This time Alexa felt herself start falling, the space around her seeming more a comfortable temperature, until she found herself caught up in what seemed to be a net. With discussion from Charizard in mind she didn't try to resist, although it did feel like she could break out. The key part seemed to be to not resist the slight pull on her energy that followed, and then the overall feeling shifted from being like a net to being better than the best hammock she had ever been in. It honestly felt too good to attempt to open the latch just yet.
Although only a moment later she found herself spilled out of the pokeball. Charizard gave her a concerned look as she stabilized herself, Maizie was a bit pale, and William looked worried as well. Her Starter pointed her towards where she could feel her ball. The pokeball's color had shifted from a plain spotty white to a pure clean white, the black bands had become golden, and all of the type symbols now had appropriate colors. The Fire and Rock symbols were notably glowing.
"Oh," Alexa said and went to pick it up. "I was avoiding gold." Somehow that was less important than the fact it was glowing with her current types. It was small in her rocky hand.
"For the record, this has happened before," Maizie said in a blank tone. "Once, with a Mew, who was just as upset that the paint changed. Also that probably isn't just paint or normal wood anymore. I really hate to ask this, but are you willing to try being returned as a human?"
Alexa didn't trust herself enough to speak, but did gather a bit of Contagion Cure in her claw and splashed herself again. She could still feel the ball as a human, but also was able to watch as the two lit types dimmed to what she could now see was a faint glow that matched all the others. With a sigh she handed the ball to Charizard, who somewhat awkwardly gripped it in his three part claw.
With another sense of falling she was back in the energy hammock, although this time it felt a bit more awkward. The closest she could compare was as if her arms were too short to reach something as easily, or if she was farther from the edges of the ball. It was only moments later that she spilled out again.
"I don't think I can get that level of attunement for myself," Maizie said slowly, as Charizard handed the ball back. "But hopefully it is useful enough to make up for how obvious it ended up. Sorry."
"It's fine," Alexa admitted and clipped the ball to her belt. "I think I like it," she added without it entirely being a lie. She just needed more time to think about it, but the solid 'hers' feeling did make it more appealing.