- Flight Prep -
Alexa returned to the Gym the next day with her team, and human again for the first time in over a week. "I keep thinking I should look up," she complained aloud to William and Suicune as they waited for Charizard to finish talking with Morty about something.
"You did spend a long time shorter than me," Suicune agreed. "Although you were still larger. I can't imagine having to deal with stubby legs again."
"Yeah, all fours is alright, but I think two legs is better," William added with a bit of a laugh. "Although I think the door thing was a bigger problem than your height."
Alexa sighed in response to that. She had been forgetting that she could open doors herself again all day, and was about ready to go hide in her pokeball from how embarrassing it was getting. "I could go back to Florabedtor if that would justify it," she pointed out.
"I think my Gym has already had enough proof that we aren't as ready for pokemon-trainers as we expected," Morty cut in, and Charizard chuckled behind him, her Starter once more in his original Fire/Flying type. "Miss Suicune, I noticed that we missed you during the Gym matches."
"Did you? I was in the audience," the Water typed Legendary Beast noted smugly, and then changed into a familiar lithe young woman with long purple hair. "It was a good test of something father got me to make up for his latest fiasco." She held up a bright blue pendant. "A method of turning pokemon human. They are uncommon, but apparently not rare, although I'm not sure by what standard my father meant that."
"So, that was you behind us the whole time?" William half complained, and Alexa agreed with that question. "Didn't even talk to us?" Suicune just laughed at him.
"She probably didn't want to ruin this surprise," Charizard grumbled. "I'll admit I wanted to try that myself somewhere, but everyone who knows me knows my human form already."
"That's what those do?" Morty questioned thoughtfully. "Because I have an old box full of them in a back room that I've been meaning to get identified."
"How big of a box?" Suicune asked with sudden unease.
"At least fifteen of the things. They are found sometimes in old sites frequented by Ghost types," Morty clarified. "That's admittedly from decades of getting them, but we just found two more from Kanto this past year."
"Okay, now I really want to know what my father meant by 'uncommon'," Suicune sighed and leaned against a wall. "I mostly thought this would work better for traveling with you in crowded places. I have a better idea now how much of a crowd you already draw, and I want to try not to make it too much worse."
"That should work, but we're kind of here for a reason," Charizard pointed out. "Gengar does still want to try Magma Contagion, and Morty is willing to let her try."
"Huh, okay I don't know if I'd actually seen Alexa as a human before," Morty then commented as he turned to really look at her. "You look different than I expected somehow. I guess I thought there would be some hints that you could become a pokemon."
"I think I'm actually too much of a shapeshifter for that," Alexa admitted with a frown. "I haven't changed, right Charizard?" Her Starter just laughed at her. "I meant in human form," she quickly corrected herself. "Nevermind. How did things work out with Gourgeist? I still feel bad about how badly we scared them."
"That one was my fault. She's not ready to face Fire typed pokemon yet, and I'm the one who assumed for some reason that your Charizard would be your only Fire type for my Gym match," Morty said firmly. "I had a backup in case you still had Charizard available, but Charizard wasn't even Fire typed himself so I was wrong twice over on that one. Ghost I mostly expected, I was able to warn my pokemon about your team being Ghost typed." He shook his head with a bit of exasperation. "Although I was a bit surprised that Trick-Or-Treat counted enough for Bellossom to use it like that too. It gives the type for a bit, and can cause a bit of physical change, but a pokemon that usually can't use a Ghost type move just using one... honestly, I probably would have returned Gourgeist myself right after that anyway. You showed that you have a team that would be at least fifth Badge strong."
"We have things to work on," Alexa said in response to that. She still wasn't happy with how this Badge went, and they needed to work out their battle plans better. "We can't just count on scaring our opponents back to their pokeballs."
"Still, I think we have a good idea where to go with things at least," Charizard reminded her. "Although for now we have the other side of the stuff we do."
Morty sighed dramatically. "I was almost hoping to get you to forget," the Gym Leader admitted. "But Gengar probably would be mad at me for that if I did pull it off."
"You bet I would," a Gengar suddenly said, and Alexa had to double check that she was still human. "It was bad enough you didn't let me try when he offered it in the first place."
Alexa looked over at William and Suicune with concern. "She is speaking human," William specified. "I'm fairly sure you weren't just pokemon shaped long enough to mess with that yet."
"That was a question?" Gengar joked then looked at Alexa more closely. "Wait, are you the Florabedtor that was here before?"
"My trainer, Alexa," Charizard clarified a bit smugly. "The one who got us started with these strange transformations."
"You were here for trainer stuff," Gengar pointed out with a huff. Charizard just laughed at his own joke and explained his issues with being technically a trainer while they moved to a room better suited for the change.
"So, the most likely results will be a change into a blob of lava," Alexa noted as they started to get ready. "The Magma Contagion generally does stuff like that, and you don't really have body parts."
"Your trainer just said that like someone who knows what not having body parts is like?" Gengar noted with a slightly confused tone.
"It does that to me actually. I can demonstrate," Alexa said and did just that with a dose to turn into a Lobasalt. The cool feeling of becoming a Fire type again, and the stiffness of being Rock, were both a nice kind of different after days of Grass and barely noticeable variable. "Huh, feels a little different now to be bulky but with hands. Anyway, that's Magma Contagion."
Gengar just looked at her for a long moment. "Okay, I want to see what this does to me now," the Ghost/Poison type laughed.
Charizard chuckled himself as Gengar's laugh made Morty a lot more nervous looking a few moments later. The resulting substance had not in fact been lava, but instead a brilliant orange cloud of sooty embers that put out a lot of heat and dark smoke. "Well, what do you think?" he asked as the now Fire/Poison typed pokemon looked herself over.
"It is a lot different," Gengar replied. "I'm fire, it- Ugh, it is hard to explain. There is this stuff to me now, and I don't quite know what it is, but it is kind of nice."
That made Charizard pause, and he could see the rest of the room had noticed the details in that halfway explanation too. "Huh. So are you the kind of Ghost type that was alive once, or were you born one?" he asked thoughtfully.
Gengar was clearly distracted a bit. "Oh, the second one. Wait a minute let me get-" the former Ghost type started to say as she tried to fly up through a wall. Luckily Morty had taken them to somewhere with fireproof walls, because she simply splattered for a moment against the structure. "What, why can't..."
"You made Gengar alive," Morty said with disbelief, more about the transformed pokemon's comment than the failure to go through a wall.
"I don't think we really considered what losing the Ghost type meant here," Alexa admitted with a careful look at the Pokedex. His trainer human again for the attempt itself.
"This is 'alive'? Oh. Oh wow, this is what mom misses?" Gengar asked with a mixture of wonder and unease. "Um, and does that mean I need to worry more about dying?"
"I'm sorry to say I don't actually have answers for those questions," Alexa admitted, and Charizard was glad his trainer was answering. This little experiment he had started was suddenly a lot less fun.
"This is a brand new crisis for me," Morty said uneasily. "I had kind of hoped Champion Ketchum had taken all of your Legendary issue stuff. I think maybe this should be good for the day."
"Uh, do you want us to turn Gengar back first, or is she going to have it wear off?" Charizard questioned with a cringe. There went the idea of getting out of town without more of that problem.
"We are waiting to see what happens, and to be honest I think I'm going to go over the effect myself before I let you do anything else to my Ghost types," Morty declared after a long delay, while Gengar continued to look over herself. "In fact I suddenly have a lot of research to look into, because you have several things that apparently can make a Ghost type into not a Ghost type."
"Also I want to be able to tell my mom what this actually feels like," Gengar said more happily. "And I'm fairly sure she's going to want me to stay like this a bit longer if I can." The cloud of burning embers smiled widely, which was a bit less creepy and a bit more mundanely dangerous looking.
"So, she might end up stuck," Alexa at least waited to admit until after they got out of the Gym.
"Yeah," Charizard and Suicune both agreed, and William just sighed. "The Ghost type might be one we need to be more careful about," Charizard continued.
"I'm going to have to ask dad the next time we talk about it specifically," Alexa planned out loud, and then reversed her current change with the new type breaking technique. "I've got a few reports on using the stuff on Ghost types, but I didn't really look at them that closely for the whole 'alive' thing."
"I'm not sure that they typically remove or replace a Ghost type," Suicune warned, still in pendant powered human form. "It is possible you have changed things a bit there by being you."
"Maybe I should change a bit to be human shaped too," Charizard half joked. "I really hope it wasn't that kind of difference. I'd hate for that to be obviously something special about us."
The conversation then just seemed to stop. Alexa was too busy trying to remember the papers she had read, which was an issue because she didn't have a natural Ghost type and as a result didn't focus on those details. The silence lasted until they made it back to the Pokemon Center.
"Hello," the Nurse Joy said as soon as they entered. "We've just received word from Sprout Tower that they have reopened, and with how long the list they sent to us was we've decided to just inform everyone for a while. They are still limiting access a bit, with those who signed up having priority, so you might want to hold off for another couple of weeks if you weren't there to sign up."
"But I just changed back from the Grass type," Alexa groaned, and to her surprise Charizard did not join in the half joking complaint. Nurse Joy laughed a bit politely at least, but it didn't seem genuine.
"I've discovered I don't like the Grass type, remember," he said as she looked at him. "I think everyone else on our team has more reason to visit than I do now. Come on, we need to plan."
"Plan?" Suicune asked as Charizard took the lead back to their rooms. "Plan for what?"
"We're at the end of the easy route through Johto," William started to explain. "The region splits now, and while we only need the last three Badges that is still more than is on either of the main paths. So we either need to find smaller Gyms off those paths or get ready to come back here again to take the other path."
"That is probably going to require a few flights to get around fast enough, at least for getting back to places we've been before," Alexa added as they entered and Charizard started to get out maps. "I'm kind of glad you have a human form now, it will make figuring out how to keep you with the group easier."
"You say that like you aren't catching me," Suicune said with a frown. "Or even just asking to bring one of my pokeballs."
"I'm not planning on adding to my team for this League," Alexa specified but considered the suggestion. "Maybe we could take along your pokeball, the way I have mine and William has his."
"I'm still up for carrying you as a human if you don't," Charizard offered. "I don't think anyone else has been certified for a passenger, although Alexa does have the HM given training."
"I don't know if it's still good," she had to counter, it had sat for years as just an annoying aspect of her energy. "I'd still want to get certified before I tried to carry someone across a region. Maybe a better form than Vespikiln for flight too. That one isn't the largest and needs a lot of space for wings to move on the back so it would have to be carrying."
Suicune didn't seem to know how to react to that. "On the topic of route," William said after it became clear the Legendary Beast didn't have an immediate response. "What Gyms are we looking at? We have Steel, Fighting, and maybe Fairy if we go down Route 38. On the other side Route 42 leads to Ice, Dragon, and a really out of the way Rock type Gym I'd rather not go to."
"I'd say the same for Fighting," Alexa admitted. "Cianwood City is probably a nice place to visit, but I'd rather not have to do any ocean trips unless we really need that Gym." She then frowned at the map. "Wait, where is the Rock Gym?"
William pointed to a place halfway to Mt Silver from Route 45 near the rail line. "Here, it is a little town that grew out of a common maintenance spot for the magnetic train line," the other trainer specified.
"We're going to Cianwood before trying to find that," Charizard requested. "I'd rather try to swim the sea, instead of trying to spot that place from the air, or worse hike there however they normally get people there. Still, I vote for Steel, and probably that Fairy type Gym first. That way if things go well we can just make the trip to the League with a shorter flight from Mahogany or Blackthorn."
"I do want to see the Fairy Gym," Alexa admitted. "It sounds like that would have interesting pokemon we haven't seen before."
"So the plan is for a flight to Violet City to visit Sprout Tower," William reminded them. "Then we can fly back here and head down Route 38."
"Sprout Tower, then supplies, then Route 38," Charizard specified. "We still need to pick those up, but we should head to the tower first since we did sign up to be reminded."
"Wait, Hanako and Floreon," Alexa realized as she started to consider who was going to be Grass typed for the tower. "We still need to double check that they want to try the permanent version too."
"Well, given that we're calling Floreon that I think we have an idea what they want," Suicune pointed out. "Although really talking to them about that again might have gotten a bit lost in your accessibility project."
Alexa wasn't happy with how the entire city seemed to be clearly much happier to deal with her as a human. Nobody stared at her, or asked William to put her back in her pokeball, or asked Charizard to put her back into her pokeball either, which said a lot about what sort of pokemon people thought could be trainers.
She also was getting a better idea of where she simply could fit as a human now that she had been out of the form long enough to need to remember what places weren't obviously off limits due to size and shape. It was a lot more spaces than Alexa had realized until she was being reminded she could go into them.
"So, did you find a way to make it permanent?" Hanako asked as soon as they were once more inside the building. Espeon then gave a meow that was entirely a demand for the answer to be yes. "Espeon is about ready to see if Celebi can make it happen quicker."
"Don't joke about that, I've heard that Celebi owed Alexa a favor and you should know how a Celebi who wants to do someone a favor goes," Suicune cautioned.
"It involves more favors to make up for other 'favors', doesn't it?" Alexa guessed with a sigh. "Because a lot of stuff with my forms and time travel seems to have happened before my visit here, and I was starting to wonder."
"Yeah," Hanako answered with both the dancer and Espeon looked like they had already known about what Suicune had brought up. "Okay, maybe not Celebi." Espeon squeaked out something that sounded like disagreement.
"I'll admit, a Grass type Legendary is probably the right kind of way to test that sort of thing in your case," Charizard supplied. "However, I'm apparently a Legendary myself and I wouldn't want to risk it. Now, let's let Bellossom out to give her the honor of inducting you into the Grass type properly."
Alexa's currently reptilian Grass/Electric type emerged, took one look at Alexa, and mimicked being a human briefly. "Yeah, I'm in the mood to go back to human for a while," Alexa confirmed. "Are you ready to try the permanent change?"
Bellossom smirked at her, and then they all moved to the training area again. Once there Alexa started to pay a lot of attention to the details. The plan was to see if they could force the change to be stronger, to actually use their apparent Legendary power to make it so the change didn't behave normally. It would be their first attempt at doing more than reversing their own change, but it also hopefully would be about the same as what they usually did.
There was honestly a bit less ceremony than with the first test, with this just being Bellossom dripping the Floral Contagion onto Espeon with a look of concentration, but this time instead of just changing shape the Eeveelution began to glow with evolution during the change to the exact same form as the last attempt, and Alexa could tell that the type change had gone deeper.
The new, and likely first, full time Floreon let out a very happy sound. "Now we just need to make the trip to Violet City," Hanako declared. "The Sprout Tower just reopened and all the Leafeon girls say it is a wonderful inspiration for Grass typed Eeveelutions to dance with." The dancer giggled, seemingly amused by being able to be more generic about that type for Eeveelutions.
"... Suicune, maybe you should pick up one of your pokeballs," Alexa admitted. "Unless one of you would be fine with my Vespikiln form carrying you and willing to wait for a certification."
[Author's Note]
Not the end of Ecruteak, but I am now quite sure that I know why full journey fics don't finish very often. I fully intend to continue this one until completion, but the city and Gym chapters are both ending up slow to write.
I still plan to finish this fic before I start another major project, but I'm not sure how well that plan will survive at this point.