- The Media Impact -

There was a knock on the door as Alexa prepared for what would either be a fairly simple or really complicated day. Today was their last in Goldenrod, and the only thing left was to help Whitney with Mundane Clay and to pick up their new gloves. "Hello?" she questioned as she opened the door. "Oh, Miss Glamur, good to see you. Is something wrong?"

The illusioned manager looked vaguely concerned, but seemed happier to see they had mostly packed up. "Your Gym match just made the news, a bit late if things were typical, but that is because an analyst just went over your 'unique' techniques in detail with a new view on them."

"So we might want to be discreet when we leave?" William questioned from where he had just finished packing.

"I would personally recommend using human forms that could not be easily recognized as you," Miss Glamur agreed, and then in an instant appeared to be someone else. "I am personally going to be 'on vacation' for a few days until this cools down. If we happen to see each other again call this form 'Mira'."

"Please let me know if she doesn't actually look like 'Mira'," William requested as the door closed. "I think she forgot I can't see her illusion. Are you going to go for Vespikiln to be able to pull that suggestion off? I've got an alternate if we really want to go for that."

"I can feel the crowd outside," Alexa admitted, with a look down at her four feet. The vibrations where a big reason she thought today would be complicated. "I was going to go Mephagic later, but I might try it now. We've avoided layering Contagions, but if I really-"

"I can go Water/Steel and make one while we get to the Gym," Charizard cut her off. "I'd rather go with being a mute human than risk something you've been avoiding." There was a slight splash as he went from Fire/Water to pure Water in order to make that change.

"That is probably a better idea, I really don't want to find out there is a problem with two adjacent layers that have the same reversal method," Alexa clarified due to the concerned look William was giving them. "It should only remove one at a time, but I haven't gone over the extra data my dad sent me with that new sensor. He just started more work on Contagion Cure for this project, it was a low priority." She made a bit. "I'm still going to go with Mephagic though."

"Do you already have a human form you know you can make?" William questioned her Starter instead.

"My parents already asked me to try during our phone call," Charizard answered. "I'll look a bit like my human brother, but that look is probably not widely known yet. We'd need to somehow let Whitney know we are doing it, but it is a better plan than getting there late."

Alexa had listened to the discussion outside through her mundane pokeball's sensors. The crowd immediately outside was mostly interested in pokemon who were also trainers. They wanted to see talking pokemon more than anything, and the discussion of the actual Gym battles didn't really start to happen until they were most of the way to the Gym itself. Which she could not really follow because she could not really see outside of the ball, and the sensors of the mundane pokeball were much worse than what she had on her custom ball.

"Alright, come this way," someone said to Charizard, and Alexa hoped they were in the Gym. She wondered if she needed to work on how to tell what was happening outside of a pokeball while in one.

"Okay, I can tell you're Charizard, but only because I've looked up your family, and you really look like your brother right now," Alexa heard Whitney complain. "Not that I don't get the reasoning, but we should move out of sight before someone else who knows that sees you."

There was a bit more walking before the sound quieted down with a shut door, and then Charizard let her out. Her Starter still looked like vaguely familiar in his chosen human shape, although Alexa didn't think that she had really met his human brother yet. William was also in his alternate shape, which was generic to the point where Alexa was fairly sure she had seen three people with the same face, if not the same haircut. "Did you just pick the most common human face for that one?" she asked as the idea occurred to her.

"Hearing that out loud makes me wonder how much how common it is comes from how humans work, and how much is from disguised Zoroark," William complained, and then went back to his more typical human form. One which looked like his parents to a degree similar to Charizard's current disguise for presumably similar reasons. "I think I'm done with being openly pokemon for this city."

"A fair response, although I do hope you get a chance to go over the analysis that started today's crowd before you head out," Whitney said critically. "Between you there were six pokemon nobody recognized without going over your other Gyms so far, and one that wasn't really helped by that." Alexa took a moment to go over everybody, and flinched as she realized she was being counted.

"If we can get our hands on a copy without issues," Charizard pointed out as he expanded back into his base shape for the Water/Steel form he was using. "I overheard that the print copies are sold out, and even if we have two Pokedex between us digital copies usually miss some of the graphs. I know it was a mess last year that led to a week of us trying to get one for a match we did well in. There was a nice picture of Kingler they left out of the digital version."

"I might need to look that one up," Whitney replied easily, despite the fact that Charizard did not have his translator out. "I can get copies, but if you want to wait for that maybe we should go over the details together. I don't think I can overstate how much you both caught attention with your matches. I'm not a Gym Leader that gets ignored most of the time, and you both went with the League plan to show you off and then some."

"I'd say that sounds a bit extreme, but Charizard just walked through a crowd as a human," William pointed out. "We have to admit we aren't a typical set of teams at this point. When the Zoroark is the normal trainer you might need to pay more attention to what people say about you."

"You are the normal one," Whitney specified and led them over to a monitor. "I only have the digital copy that apparently might be missing pictures, but that should be enough for this." A few pages of text appear on the screen. "Oh, okay I'm going to just say what I saw on my print copy because this is missing all of the images. William, you had four pages, and the first two were just for going over Shanker and your Flaaffy each." It was clearly much more dense without the images given there was a breakpoint early on in the first page.

Alexa leaned in to look over the text on the monitor with a ribbit. "Are Dark Stones really that rare?" she asked about the first paragraph of the Shanker part. "They spent this entire paragraph just saying that they actually exist."

"The author is local, and unless you are specifically ordering them from a mining company you won't just find one," Whitney answered. "Not to mention that Scyther aren't common enough to have people look up obscure evolutions to think to buy one for them. I'd not even known what a Shanker was before she was out and fighting, which meant I sent out my first bad match up. I didn't realize that the Bug type could be the one replaced, so I thought a Flying type would work out."

"I might be too used to odd pokemon types to tell what is odd," Alexa admitted nervously. "I've seen evolution stones for every type and quite a few things that aren't types. Actually, I can remember seeing a few odd type combinations last League."

"A few, but I doubt they were as strange as what we are doing now," Charizard said and pointed at the next section. "They seem to have gone into speculation about... 'Flaaffma'? I suppose that works. But they've gone off on a tangent here about possible origins that they could have just asked about to learn this was wrong."

"The more important part there is the typing. Alexa's Bellossom is the only other mix of Fire and Electric a people can find for this League," Whitney clarified. "I know of a handful of other pokemon with that pair of types, but they are from distant regions or are unusual alternate forms. It didn't take much for them to be able to work out you got help from Alexa there, and with the rest of it I suspect you are going to get challenged by anyone who sees you that wants to be Champion this League."

"What," William said as he paled. "How?" Alexa was rather impressed that he had the illusion pale like that.

"The rest of the analysis was more on your past Leagues than your other pokemon, mostly because those two were on your first team," the Gym Leader explained. "You made the top 16 last year, and now you have access to some interesting new pokemon."

"Which describes my entire team," Alexa admitted. "How does my team look in the article?"

"One page for each of your battles, and another for you and your other pokemon," Whitney said and switched the displayed article. "I mentioned that they talked about your Bellossom's fight against Falkner, that is the only reason they even believed that she was one. They just plain didn't think Rhydon was a Rhydon, and they called Heracross 'the unknown Flying/Fighting type'."

"Okay, now I'm even more upset with how I didn't get a chance. I missed out on being doubted as a Char," Charizard commented with a laugh, but then looked serious. "Heracross isn't going to be happy with that. He's been happy with that form, but he's still a Heracross."

"Yeah, I'm definitely going to need any copy of this to look over if they did that," Alexa agreed uneasily as she inspected it quickly. There was a lot of speculation on how much she could alter types, and even a small section on how plausible it would be for her to get authorized to use that as a Gym Leader specialty. This author seemed to think it was fairly likely, which was a lot more confidence than Alexa had with the idea in practice.

"If you really want to be a Gym Leader it is going to get complicated," Whitney said as the current Leader noticed where Alexa's eyes were focused. "With how many challenges a Gym gets you can't run one on your own and with just your personal team. I'm a major Gym so I have over a dozen staff under me, and a couple hundred pokemon."

"I take it a lot of that staff is to keep the pokemon up to speed?" William questioned while Alexa tried to work out how to ask to keep up her own illusion that she was interested in the job.

"The hard part is first through third Badge pokemon. You need a lot of them, and because you need them to not be too strong you usually can't have any stay at the level they start by the end," Whitney agreed. "The good news there is you end up with a good amount of fourth and fifth Badge pokemon by the time you get challengers for that. Quite a few will end up handed out as Starters the next year. Seventh and eighth Badge pokemon are where you actually spend your own training time, and usually get help from whatever personal team you keep for dealing with local problems."

"I really hope my mom was joking about becoming a Charizard Gym Leader," Charizard said a bit uneasily himself at that news.

"As in a Charizard that is a Gym Leader, or a Gym Leader for Chars?" Alexa asked carefully.

"Yes," he 'answered' with a large smile. "I really hope my bio-mom was just joking about how many kids she has."

"There probably aren't enough Char in Kanto for a Gym like that," Whitney giggled. "Mostly because I think everyone would try and get a Badge from it. Maybe we should move onto why I asked you here." The Gym Leader quickly removed a pair of small data storage cards from a small locker that turned out to be next to the monitor. Apparently full of the small chips for just this purpose. "Here are digital copies until you can get the print version."

"Do you have the time to be a pokemon for a week?" Alexa asked as they changed topic.

"Honestly? It would not be the first time I had to be a pokemon and a Gym Leader at the same time," Whitney replied with a cringe. "Last time was an artifact of sorts. Three days before I was back to normal, but I was in the middle of the League's start, and even that wasn't the first time. It is a risk of being a long term Gym Leader in an important place, so you are at least already prepared for that one."

"Then we should get started with... me turning back so I don't find out what a Normal typed Mephagic is for the next week," Alexa admitted as she realized it. "Because I know what it does to someone it doesn't work on, and know how to apply it. We want to be sure before you try it on other, um, before you try it on pokemon."

"Strangely enough this is the first time someone slipped up to almost say 'other pokemon' when they were talking to me," Whitney said with amusement. "Alright, let's see if I end up anything."

Whitney did not change with the Mundane Clay, which she was surprised to find was a disappointment. Being a pokemon that was notably human would have been an interesting change. "Thank you," she said to the three pokemon-trainers as Charizard got ready to return his trainer and took on the same human form he had arrived in again. "I'm sure that Arcanine agrees."

"It is an interesting difference," the changed to Normal type dog pokemon said, his words clarified by the small translator that would need a recharge soon. His fluffy fur was now just a uniform tan color, and notably tougher from what Whitney could tell. "And a chance at some interesting matches."

"Well then I hope this works out for you," Alexa, now back to her frog form, said cheerfully. The Legendary pokemon pretending to want to be a Gym Leader had been much happier after getting a chance to show off the details.

"Good luck on your League," Whitney said as the Mephagic disappeared into the plain pokeball, and the Zoroark led the way out. The Gym Leader then led Arcanine back towards the room where the other pokemon who would be trying the Normal type were waiting. "Alright, everyone ready to show my seventh and eighth Badge challengers a fight?" she asked the small collection in the room.

"Of course," Hydreigon hissed in three voices.

"Sounds like a fun time," Tyranitar rumbled with a Dark smile.

"Confirmed, alternate combat mode acceptable," Metagross intoned.

"I'm up for a shot at being a Gym pokemon for something that isn't Fire types only," the local Legendary Entei agreed easily.

"Wonderful, it should be quite the event," Whitney said with a wide smile.