- Ghost Type -
Suicune got back before the local Gym Leader arrived, but just barely. As a result Morty arrived in time to see her passing the box with the new, and unfortunately uncharged, translator to Ash Ketchum.
"Okay, so just to be clear, was anyone here not a Legendary pokemon before this morning?" the only human present at the moment asked with a look between Suicune's volcanic uncle, Champion Ketchum the temporary Shamouti guardian, Alexa Larch the Lobasalt, and Alexa's various teammates.
Ash raised a wing, while Alexa's group looked nervous. "I think I'm the only one who was just changed," the younger Lugia chirped.
"Someone tell whoever that is that they aren't speaking in a way humans understand," Morty sighed. "I don't suppose there is an Electric type on hand who knows how to safely charge that one quickly?"
"That's Ash Ketchum," Alexa pointed out, which might honestly have been needed, while Pikachu took care of that request. Suicune tended to warn people when he was around too, although that was partly for the joke that she should be rarer to meet than a Champion.
"I'm telling Lily that her not being around didn't stop it," Morty said to Lugia. "Do you need help turning him back? I'm sure I can get her here." Suicune laughed at the face her uncle made at the idea.
"How quickly can you get her here? Because we will want her assistance, even if it is unfortunately the case that we can't fix it until my grandfather gets back," Lugia said, and the way he said it was a bad sign. Suicune knew that Lugia was close enough to Morty to be a bit more casual normally, so 'grandfather' instead of 'gramps' meant this was even more serious than she expected. "Ash will be in charge of Shamouti while I cover the Fire island for grandfather. I've already been lucky that the trainer he suggested to help was already here."
Suicune looked over to Alexa and realized that was going to be the official story they gave to the public. Morty was probably going to hear the truth, or at least the detail that Alexa was also Legendary, but starting out with the official story sounded good to her. "She is quite capable of interesting results," she agreed aloud to remind him of her own recent and notable change.
Morty did not look convinced at all. In fact he very clearly Looked at Alexa, and then at Lugia, and then at Ash. "She hasn't even been in town a day and you already look like a flying volcano," the Gym Leader declared. "Maybe the rest of the region hasn't heard of the pokemon she keeps turning into, but I'm used to Legends from working with Ghost types." Suicune flinched at the emphasis on the word 'Legends', and she wasn't alone in that. "To be able to become a Mephagic alone is a big deal, being stuck as a Spectslurry for a while is notable, but making an entire new one isn't minor Legendary stuff like those."
"As long as you don't fight us like we're powerhouse Legendaries I can handle this," Alexa's Charizard said. "After all, this one is something I developed myself."
"Wait, you what?" Ash's Charizard questioned with the same wide eyes that other Char had kept directing at the Legendary example of the species. "Lugia's a volcano right now!"
"Not helping," Charles, as Alexa's was apparently named said with a motion to his ear. Suicune looked over at the Gym Leader discreetly and noticed an ear piece of some kind hidden just under his hair. "I think we can probably hold off on getting the new translator working for a bit longer."
"It is an old one, not that great," Morty specified. "I'd really appreciate getting that new model working. I probably need to help Champion Ash with the paperwork for this. The Legendary identification forms can be delayed, your other matches might have done that even, but I doubt the details of this can wait."
"No, they probably can't," Alexa agreed a bit sadly. "I want it kept quiet until after the tournament," the Lobasalt requested, and Suicune was a bit nervous about that. It was one thing for a trainer turned pokemon to ask that, and another for a known to be strong Legendary to do so.
Morty just nodded. "That is plan A," he said. "Everyone gets a first League after this sort of change. Champion Ketchum got his after the Shamouti incident, Ho-Oh had his three years-"
"Wait, I haven't told them about that one yet!" Ho-Oh cut them all off. "They don't even know I worked out how to look human yet!"
"That's why dad took over for you again three years ago?" Lugia asked, and the heavy mood seemed to break. "What happened to your team?"
"Ah, well, you know 'Hou' who has the upper apartment just down the street from the gate?" Ho-Oh inquired uneasily.
"The weekend night guard?" Suicune had to ask her father with disbelief at the implication. "You gave your team to a weekend night guard for the pokemon center?" She checked with the rest of the room to make sure that was as crazy as it sounded, but that didn't seem to quite fit the looks Ho-Oh was getting.
"... the donation box has been a bit short the past few years and I needed more spending money," her father said after a moment of not answering her. "It is just for the weekends."
"So, you haven't told anyone you were Hou then," Morty smugly noted, and then for the first time looked surprised. "Wait, you're still being Hou? You can't be making that much."
"Better question, Soot, does your pokemon team know you are Ho-Oh?" Lugia asked more harshly, and Suicune decided she wanted to be on Alexa's side of this situation. "I think I'd like to meet them later today actually."
"So, your dad likes to keep secrets?" Alexa questioned quietly once Suicune was closer, as Ho-Oh and Lugia got into an argument.
"Don't tell him, but I already knew about what caused the tower fire," Suicune admitted in a sly whisper. Raikou had been rather quick to apologize afterwards, even though Suicune and Entei had both been just as eager to evolve to their chosen forms as soon as possible. "I've been waiting for one of them to slip up about it for decades. Now, the trainer thing is news, and I don't know how to take that one yet."
"A pokemon team is more like friends than kids most of the time," Alexa informed her, which did fit with Suicune's other League experience. "My question is if he let them know he could understand them."
"He couldn't actually," Morty sighed. "I think he used-" The Gym Leader cut himself off with a look at the argument. "Right, is using a method that goes a bit farther than that. Which means that this argument might be a bit tricky because Ho-Oh might actually not know if his team knows."
"That sounds more like father," Suicune admitted with a sigh.
Alexa sighed as it became clear that this wasn't a short argument. "Is this really normal?" she asked Ash Ketchum instead of Suicune.
"Usually I don't see the bad arguments myself, only hear about them afterward," the young Lugia admitted. "Although I also hear the ones that get this bad."
"This is why I've found recorded accounts of dozens of old jokes about how the tower burned down from one of these arguments," Morty sighed as well. "The really early ones call it out as a 'failing of the younger Legendary birds', but those are pretty rare."
Alexa did not comment on her new knowledge of the truth. She could not when she was finally admitting that she was a Legendary pokemon to the League. It wasn't the kind of thing she thought you told regular humans, even Gym Leaders.
"Are we done with the Legendary pokemon yet?" William asked dully. "Because I'm a bit tired, and we still need to do a lot of stuff because of all this. I don't even know when we will get to signing up for Gym matches."
"We probably should take care of some things first," Champion Ketchum said with a look at Leader Morty. "Like how we are going to keep quiet about things that everyone doesn't need to know until the end of the League."
"I hate to point it out, but a Legendary trying a League is less approachable than a trainer that manages what she does," Morty argued fairly validly. "In fact I mostly worked it out with Alexa because too many trainers have been approaching me to hear what I thought of a trainer doing this sort of thing."
"I'm a Professor's daughter who is working with stuff in his field," Alexa countered. "I can much more easily talk about that than being a Legendary pokemon, and unless there are a lot more cases where I'm doing something my dad can't it should be the same."
"In fact I am specifically going to travel with Alexa to teach her what she needs to be able to be a Legendary," Suicune added, and that was a Double Edge. "So if you could hold off until the League is over that would be very helpful." On one hand that did help Alexa in the short term, but on the other she now had to learn by that point.
"Alright, I think I might need to explain a bit more why plan A probably needs a plan B," Morty said sadly. "Perhaps covering the Ghost type will help explain things."
Alexa shifted uneasily at that, she lifted and lowered each of her four legs. "I already have a good idea what Ghost types are like," she admitted slowly.
"But I don't think you have much context on what Ghost types are, and why it is notable for that particular type to be changed into," Morty said seriously. "Ghosts are spirits and those who are touched heavily by them. The dead returned without being reborn, old things that have gained a life of their own, rumors and stories that literally take a life of their own, those who travel from worlds outside of this one, and those who have close connection to such things." He counted out on the fingers of a hand.
"Yes? It is a bit of a sticky type too," Alexa said with a bit of confusion. "The energies involved tend to cling to affected pokemon. Most of the options I've seen have at least a bit of a chance for long term or permanent outcomes." She considered it a bit more. "Also a number of them aren't entirely safe to use. Like one that technically just makes you leave your body for a bit."
"Why did you need to ask about the Lavender Town stuff if you know about that kind of thing?" Pikachu questioned.
"Because I wanted to know if you'd really done something like that," Alexa admitted. "I have been Ghost typed myself recently, and I will admit I am trying to learn more details there."
"Ghost types are also 'contagious' to a degree," Morty specified but now looked a bit more unsure about his point. "Either for short periods of unusual states, long term exposure problems, or... well, the fast way to make more Ghosts. Spectslurry are unusual in they can quickly make pokemon into living items, but don't usually go so far as that last option."
"I'm not certain that is better," Suicune noted unhappily. "Considering the resulting pot cannot move."
"Not to mention that the worst part is when you become Ghost typed and hurt others by just existing," Alexa's Starter pointed out strongly. "Fire/Ghosts in general have those problems."
"Ash, can I go back to my pokeball now?" Ash's Charizard requested uncomfortably at that point. "Because this Legendary encounter has already been a bit stranger than I want to deal with."
Alexa blinked and looked at her Charizard who also seemed to have realized what the other Charizard had just said. She simply looked at him for a bit as she tried to process the apparent fact that she was Ash Ketchum's latest Legendary pokemon encounter gone strange.
"Oh," she said aloud. "I'm the Legendary making a problem." It had not felt like that at the time. It had seemed like she was just interacting with other pokemon, or caught up in an other Legendary pokemon's actions, but with that simple request it became clearer to her that it was her presence and ability that had set all of this off.
"That's the real reason for this paperwork, isn't it?" her Charizard asked dully. "To know who to worry about for this kind of thing."
"Pass along that Alexa's dad is probably the one they'll have to ask to fix anything we do," Kingler requested. "Also how does it work for an entire team?"
"Well, six new Legendary pokemon in one year is probably going to be a record," Morty responded to that. "I've brought the identification forms. Usually we don't have the Legendary pokemon that has been identified help with them, but this is something of a unique case."
"My default form is human, and I don't think we want to put me down as just one of the others," Alexa admitted, and noticed that Ash's Charizard was still out and that the Champion looked a bit uncomfortable.
"No, I can already tell that wouldn't be appropriate. We will possibly have to just list something like 'human shapechanger'," Morty agreed. "But if your father can reverse most of what you cause then saying it is because of his work might hold for the rest of the League."
Alexa nodded, and then they moved to another floor to actually do that. Suicune assured them that her father and uncle would be at it a while. William returned his Starter, and they quietly left the two Legendary birds at it.
William wasn't going to leave Alexa alone with this, but he was going to try and stick with Champion Ketchum's Charizard. Partly because it looked like that pokemon needed some help, but also because the Charizard seemed the most aware of what William's life had become.
"So, how bad is this one for you so far?" he asked as Alexa's entire team started to try and work out what to put for answers to a questionnaire they weren't really supposed to be the ones to answer.
"Ash is a Legendary pokemon," the Champion's Charizard answered, but that honestly doesn't tell William anything. William gave a look towards Alexa in a temporary Mephagic form, and that seemed to get that point across. "Okay, right, you're used to my trainer's TV thing. Don't know its name, not interested in that stuff, only know about it because of The Dangerous Ash we met who is from it. Anyway, my Ash usually only needs to deal with human stuff, and Legendary pokemon being messed with. This is the first time there hasn't been any humans, and Ash is a pokemon now."
"We're the strangest?" William has to hiss out at that.
"What, no. No the strangest is still the first big one, when I got a new sister in the weirdest way," the Charizard quickly countered. "Your the most serious, there's a difference. This time it is something that Ash has to deal with, and you are with some really scary pokemon."
"They aren't that bad," William argued, more because he'd gotten used to them than anything. He did end up melted earlier, so he doesn't really have a followup argument to add.
"The other Char thought about how to become a Venustoise," the more famous Char argued, and really there wasn't a way around that one even if William hadn't known more details on how possible it was. "They talked about it like it might work, not just a joke."
"Okay, they are possibly that bad, but I admittedly thought it was a Professor thing instead of a Legendary thing beforehand," the Zoroark finally admitted.
"Oak's that bad too," Ash's Charizard said in response to that with a look like the two were the same thing.
Alexa walked into the Pokemon Center tiredly. It had been a day, and she honestly wasn't sure how to handle what came next. William was already at the desk to get them rooms, as she had asked him to move a bit more quickly to get somewhere for them to rest.
"Alexa Larch?" the Center's Joy asked and she raised a currently human hand. After all that had happened Alexa wanted to be human shaped for a while. "We have a call waiting for you. From another region, so I guess this was good timing." The Nurse was smiling happily.
The Typechange Legendary moved to the phones with a bit of confusion, and that wasn't really countered by the appearance of a young man in a professional investigator's outfit. Older than William, and Alexa could not really understand what this would be about. "Hello, this is Alexa Larch. Who is calling?" she asked.
"Hello Assistant Larch, my name is Jack Ladder. I'm an Investigator's Assistant working on a criminal case, and I was told by your father that you were the one who really came up with the new Crystal Syrup method. I want to thank you personally," Jack said earnestly. "My team was recently in a major battle, and one of my pokemon suffered a serious injury. If not for your work the medical facility we got to wouldn't have been able to help him in time. I owe you my pokemon's life."
Alexa wasn't sure what to say for a moment. "I'm happy to have helped," she managed, as she tried to process the news.
"I cannot thank you enough," Jack said. "I wish you luck on your League." The Investigator's Assistant nodded and after a moment they both ended the call.
Alexa had understood at a high level that Crystal Syrup was a kind of medicine for emergencies. However, she had not fully considered what kind of injuries that would be, or how more of it being around really translated into saved lives. How her efforts on these things could have big benefits as well as the complications she had dealt with all day.
"Alexa, is everything okay?" William suddenly asked her.
"I think it will be," she admitted, not fully reassured, but feeling much better.
[Author's Note]
The final moment has been planned for quite a while.