Chapter 2

Goldenrod Game Corner, Underground

Held Items are a bit of a controversial topic in this world I've found. While one crowd whines and cries about good items leading to battles being 'pay-to-win', others cheer and sing praises at a Trainer who can use one to swing things around at a pivotal moment and seize a hard-earned victory.

Personally, I don't have terribly strong feelings about their legality one way or the other, but something that does frustrate me is how much more limited they seem to be here as compared to the game series.

Fan favorites such as Eviolite, Weakness Policy, Rocky Helmet, none of them seem to exist. At least not in Kanto or Johto. Didn't catch a whiff of them during my brief stint in Unova either. Leftovers is obviously gone, though oddly enough Black Sludge isn't. So if there's someone out there in Indigo who wants to set up a stall strategy using Muk or Tentacruel then more power to them I guess.

Focus Band exists, but not its far more useful cousin Focus Sash. I've seen a video of a Hoenn Trainer employing a Burn Orb on his Swellow but searching for Toxic Orb leads to zero results.

Assault Vest is real, which caught my interest for a little bit, but unfortunately they're rather prohibitively expensive. Not only that, at truly high levels of tournament play, you can't expect them to have a long shelf life. Even the high quality ones can only absorb so much Special Damage before they start getting reduced to rags.

If there is a singular item for the criers and whiners to point at as being 'pay-to-win', it's probably that one.

When I first started digging into the topic, I thought the most-common Held Item to appear at big events might be the humble Sitrus Berry. It's small, effective, and accessible to just about every class of Trainer. Seemed like a well-reasoned bet. Though to my surprise, Sitrus actually only came in at fourth place. The true gold medalist turned out to be -of all unexpected things- Normal Gem.

A one-time consumable that is typically used to turn a Hyper Beam into Hyper Beam if you catch my drift.

It's actually an impressive racket on the Pokémon League's part. Gem's get manufactured en masse at government owned facilities and sold for healthy profit at basically every major tournament the League sponsors. Water Gems for Hydro Pump, Fire Gems for Fire Blast, Trainers will empty their wallets to make sure they have a fresh Gem to supply between rounds and hopefully keep their winning streak going.

Which leads me into what I think is the most important fact one needs to understand about Held Items in tournament play. According to current Indigo League rules, you are allowed one. The replenishment of single-use consumables is the only exception.

It's something you register when you're filling in the initial paperwork. 'My Blastoise is equipped with an Assault Vest' or 'I'm going to have my Clefairy hold a Sitrus Berry every round'. While audiences love a good surprise, tournament organizers don't. If you don't want to adhere to their rules, then they'll immediately clap back with 'Well you don't have to play in our tournament then either'.

A piece of me finds all that regulation restrictive. Stifling. You can't even do an item switch-up between rounds. Though another part of my brain -the strategic tryhard part- is excited by it. Knowing you only get one item means selecting the right one for the right Pokémon is all the more critical.

Which brings me to here.

I run my fingers along the tunnel wall, tracing the feel of it until I'm back at the entryway. "Well it's not the shoddiest work I've ever seen. How long did it take you to get this far? Three, four days?"

The head Rocket Grunt glowers. "Nine.'' He speaks behind gritted teeth, shooting a particularly nasty glare at a lower Grunt who wilts at the criticism. A Sandshrew whines piteously behind the man's leg while an angry Graveler moves to stand between the two, seemingly protecting the smaller man from the larger.

At the Head Grunt's side a Gloom cracks one malicious eye open causing the Graveler to stiffen..before it clutches its stone fists painfully tight.

I turn away from the byplay and go back to my inspection. 'Workplace politics have never interested me.' "Well regardless, I can understand why your bosses wanted an expert pulled in. All the starting work is done at least. Where does the tunnel need to go?"

The lead Grunt focuses up again. "There's a connecting basement underneath the Miracle Cycle Bike Shop. That's just about three blocks from here. Precautions have already been taken so no overly curious Psychic-types detect us underground. How long will it take you? End of the week?"

I resist the urge to scoff. "Please," I snap two balls off my belt and toss them out. "Who do you think your bosses hired? An amateur? Give me ten hours."

From the first beam of light comes K. Rool , my newly evolved Krokorok, named in reference to the infamous Donkey Kong villain and personal bane of my childhood gaming years. As a foreign 'mon he's regarded with some wariness by the four Rocket members in the room. Unfamiliar Pokémon always are.

Next to him though, the actual threat appears. Ma Ma. The queen mother bitch grizzly herself.

Ursaring: Lv. 58
Nature: Serious
Potential: A

The small cavern seems to shake as the mother bear roars upon her summoning. Two of the Rocket Grunts stumble backwards while the previously mentioned Gloom suddenly looks much less sure of its spot on the local totem pole.

Ursaring as a species has always been a long time favorite of mine. In one of the 'Shadow Pokémon' games I once did a playthrough exclusively using the two 'mons your character has at the start. Eevee and Teddiursa. So when a new evolution dropped in the spin-off Legends game, it suffices to say I was pretty stoked about it.

Recreating that evolution though…has been more challenging than once anticipated.

It's not even the full moon on a cloudless sky nonsense that's the issue. The lunar cycle is a pretty easy thing to chart. It's the item that's been the problem. The 'Peat Block'.

Defined as a brown deposit of organic soil, 'Peat' is formed by the partial decomposition of plant matter in the wet acidic conditions of a bog, fen or mire.

And that's really the kicker of it all isn't it? Bogs or Fens. Marshes or mires. Something Johto -Indigo as a whole really- just doesn't have. Our climate isn't right for it. There's a small swamp-like area in Kanto's Safari Zone but that's about as close as we get.

Every experiment to evolve so far has been a failure. Every pile of wet dirt inert as the next. My new theory is that there's something about the soil in Sinnoh, some organic compound or perhaps elemental mixture, that is necessary for jumpstarting the process.

Some time ago I had a fear, a niggling worry that -if Pokémon could evolve an evolution over time- then what is to say they can't lose an evolution in the same manner.

Hell, how can one be sure, I mean really really sure, that a Johtonian Ursaring can even evolve in the first place? What if there was a genetic component to the population that lived in ancient Sinnoh? What if the Ursaluna evolution itself is a regional variant. The Hoenn Linoone can't evolve into a pure-Normal brand of Obstagoon. At least not to anyone's knowledge.

The one hope that keeps the dream going, is that I think Ma Ma can feel it. Somewhere inside she can tell that the evolution is there. Dormantly lurking. Hibernating. Just waiting for the right conditions, the right catalyst, to rouse it from its long sleep.

With a snap of my fingers and a thrum of aura the two Pokémon jump into work, Ma Ma tearing into the rock wall with furious angry swipes, while K. Rool works as her assistant, focusing on keeping the entire endeavor stable.

The Grunt with the Sandshrew seems panicked at my approach. As though I'm going to bring everything down on our heads like this. 'Hmph. As if. Only amateurs cause cave-ins.'

From beneath my feet a sort of..pulse..travels along the walls of the bedrock as my Ground alignment gives me a snapshot of the earth around us. It's nothing as impressive as the advanced seismic sense of fictional characters like Toph Beifong, but it is a handy trick that I've spent months just getting to this level.

"I am of the earth.." I mutter as my eyes close, my focus on that acorn of a super power growing. "For the earth is all things.."

"My payment."

The Head Grunt looks as though he's sucking a lemon with how thin his lips are. He strikes me as the slimy type who would love to renege on any deal he can but even he can't deny results.

I promised him ten hours.

We got it done in eight and a half.

Granted, the passageway looks…well unfun is a way to put it. Not uniform or friendly to traverse if one needs to move large equipment about. That's why Vlad and K. Rool are currently going through it again, smoothing out the edges and making it more conducive for my employers. But as of right now it is functional. You can travel from the Game Corner to the Bike Shop in just a few minutes following this path.

"Tch," With a head jerk the Rocket member gestures for one of his lackeys to hand a box over to me and a satisfied smile takes over my lips as I crack it open.

Do you suppose it's an illusion that the inside seems to 'pulse' sometimes? A trick of the light? Staring directly at it, you can be sure it's a still object. No mysterious swirling energies to be seen. But then you move it out to your periphery and sure enough a flicker of something catches your attention, bringing your gaze directly back to it.

A Life Orb.

If normal Held Items are 'controversial' in the current climate then this one is damn near 'blacklisted'. It's not against regulations to use one. Nor to buy one from a private collector. What is illegal though, is to in any way be part of their manufacturing or to sell them retail to the public.

In-game, Life Orb's ability is as follows. When this item is held by a Pokémon, the damage from moves used by the holder is increased by 30%. However, the user loses 10% of their maximum HP every turn.

In this world...well I don't know if those numbers translate the same. I doubt it's such clean percentages. But the basic principle remains unchanged. Every attack the holder uses will be supercharged...at the low low cost of a physical backlash that can be dangerous if not treated with respect.

It is for that very reason that they are so heavily restricted in the first place. In the first major tournament after they had hit the market, an incident occurred in the quarter-finals. A Life Orb equipped Gyarados fought and fought and fought...until it dropped dead right there in the arena. Its Held Item having stolen its very heartbeat from it.

Less than 200 Life Orb's had been produced in Indigo before they were hurriedly pulled from the shelves. Only about three dozen had managed to be picked up by registered trainers before the recall. A few more were earmarked for use by the Rangers Association, and of course more than one or two managed to 'fall off a truck' and later reappear as part of high society auctions.

As for all the rest? Who knows? A PR statement from the League right after the incident states they were "being remanded back to the laboratory for 'further study'" or some such. And while I think there's a chance that was initially true, I've no doubt that a few more have managed to 'slip out the back' over the years.

In the end it doesn't really matter where Petrel got one. All that matters is a deal's a deal. It's mine now.

When I first played the Generation IV games, I didn't really care for this item. I was a little kid and having my Pokémon start dying to their own moves was more than a bit of a turn off. It was lame. Why should I equip this thing when I could just be healing with Leftovers instead?

A sigh passes in my throat. 'I almost miss being so naive. That innocent mindset of a 'casual' player. You just can't ever get it back once it's lost.'

What eventually brought me around to a love affair with this item is a certain Pokémon Ability. It's a rather uncommon one. Hidden you might even say. The only Pokémon in Kanto/Johto who even have a chance of possessing the skill are Tauros, Steelix, Krabby/Kingler, the Feraligator-line, and of course...Nidoking and Nidoqueen.

From within his Moon Ball, I can feel Grundy grumble in satisfaction.

That Abilities name is Sheer Force.

Much like Life Orb's effect in-game, Sheer Force also provides a 30% boost in power. Its negative trade-off is that it removes all secondary effects of the user's attacks. Fire moves can no longer Burn. Electric moves can no longer Paralyze. Chance to lower the opponent's stats? Sorry, it's zero percent now. And most importantly, Life Orb's downside of self-harming the wielder is completely, and utterly, neutralized.

And for those of you wondering? Yes. Those multipliers stack. A Sheer Force, Life Orb equipped Pokémon enters a battle with a 1.69x to his offense for doing nothing but stepping onto the field.

My ace's Moon Ball begins to vibrate even more intensely.

"Soon buddy." I soothe. "We'll find you a good fight. Just be patient."