The ground shook a little when Snap ended the battle with a Hyper Beam. His mastery over this move had gotten a lot better as compared to when he first started it out. Now, Snap can freely change the trajectory of Hyper Beam mid-flight and even retain control over the move while splitting the Hyper Beam into smaller fragments of Hyper Beams, which honestly, still astounded me as to how he really managed to make that a reality. I only ever gave him the idea and some of the theoretical workings of how such an idea could be realised, but he was the one who made it happen.
The opposing vibrava lay in a crater within the private training field outside our residence, having been knocked unconscious by Snap's final attack. My opponent, Hugh, recalled his vibrava back into its pokeball with a defeated sigh.
Hugh Matis is the recent addition into the interpol. He was recommended and introduced to us by Skye herself. According to her, the boy has a knack of digging out places where criminals love to hide themselves, which had caught her attention and subsequently Looker's. Looker had given Hugh a test and he had passed it spectacularly, thus making him a full-fledged member of the interpol just like we are.
The only problem with Hugh is that he's only slightly more than a year into his career and has only earned six badges. As a trainer and a combatant of the interpol, that's unacceptable, because considering the kind of things we will have to handle, the very bare minimum skill level expected of the trainers in the interpol would be Elite level. That meant that our trainers must not only have earned all eight badges, but had also competed in an annual Pokemon League Tournament at least once. As such, Hugh's priority will be to increase his skill and power level of both his pokemon and himself in the shortest time possible.
Looker and Skye both felt that Hugh might be worth the investment, because we are indeed lacking a specialist who can specifically dig up and search for specific places or people when it comes to the crime investigation part of our job. Currently, Skye and I are the ones who are mainly filling in the role, but none of us are trained for it. I'm more inclined to make use of my connections to get the information I need from people in high places, but I'm not that good at searching for information on the ground itself. The same goes for Skye.
That's where Hugh comes in. Like this, if we ever have to bust criminal organisations again and need someone to search for information on the ground, Hugh will be the guy for the job. As long as he made it into the realms of Elite trainers, then there's really nothing much for us to worry about him.
"Don't look so dejected, I've been a trainer for two years longer than you did," I reminded Hugh, who was only two years my junior in terms of physical age. He earned five badges within a year and had just earned his sixth badge, which was honestly an impressive feat considering that global statistics have shown that most trainers dropped out of the gym circuit at around the fourth or fifth gym. At this point in the circuit, more than fifty percent of the trainers in their batch would have dropped out of the circuit thanks to the sheer difficulty of completing it.
"How did you become so strong in just three years?" Hugh half-sighed, half-lamented when he lost the battle again. To my knowledge, he had never won a single battle against any trainers of the interpol that he had met thus far. Nova, Akamu, Skye, and I are all able to defeat him with ease because while Hugh is very talented, he's also too inexperienced. After going through the whole Team Magma and Team Aqua fiasco back in Hoenn and also the Team Rocket incident, the standard rules-regulated battles felt very simple in comparison.
"The difference really lies in the experience," I replied after some thought. "I was involved in the defence of Lilycove and the Battle Frontier, and also in Indigo's war efforts against Team Rocket. I don't mean to sound harsh here, but did you seriously think that as a six badge trainer you stood a chance against someone who had survived those events?"
"No, but…" Hugh scratched the back of his head listlessly. "I felt like I lost too… easily."
"Then be glad that you haven't seen or met the truly crazily powerful ones. If you think I'm a skilled trainer, wait till you meet someone like Volkner. He will drive you up the wall and into despair," I huffed with fond exasperation. I still clearly remembered how any member of his team was able to easily handle Kratos at his worst back when Volkner was kind enough to have his pokemon help train my team when we were at his West Forest.
His electivire was truly a monster. Legendaries and mythicals aside, I would go so far as to say that his electivire could very well be the pinnacle of all electric type pokemon currently in existence.
"That… That powerful?"
"He was the strongest Gym Leader of Sinnoh until his retirement," I helpfully added as I stretched my arms upwards to loosen my stiff muscles before deciding to take my leave since my job of helping him to train his vibrava had been completed. "Alright, I'm off. I know you will be going back into training but remember to take breaks and don't overdo things, okay?"
Hugh nodded back in reply but I knew the boy enough by now to understand that my advice was going to fall on deaf ears. He has an obsession to get stronger because after seeing who the interpol were made up of, he felt inadequate, or at least that was what Rena informed me after she had passively gleaned the boy's emotions with her empathic powers. According to Rena, apparently, the boy had a very brief crush on me too, until Wacky and my ghosts decided that Hugh made a very suitable new target for their pranks. Now, Hugh is a little too afraid of getting close to me aside from the mandatory training sessions, courtesy of Wacky and my ghosts.
"Scare him once more, and I will send your pecha berries back to Hoenn as Macky's present," I spoke softly, having sensed Wacky's mischief through the mental link we share that was formed when he resided in my shadow. I felt my shadow going still, indicating that Wacky had indeed heard my threat.
"At least, leave him alone when he's seriously trying to train, okay? If you want to prank him, do it when he's not busy with something. If so, I can turn a blind eye if you don't exceed the limit of pranking him two times a day," I proposed a middle ground, and I felt Wacky's elation almost immediately along with several other ghosts who were also hiding in my shadow. It might serve to be good training for Hugh too, if he ever found a way to deal with ghosts thanks to the harmless pranks Wacky and co love to pull on him. Experience is the best teacher when it comes to dealing with ghosts and it's better to experience such encounters with tamed ghosts rather than the vicious and wild ones outside.
I gave Snap one last headpat before recalling him back into his pokeball, and once only the smaller members of my team were outside, gave a mental command to my ghosts to Shadow Sneak us back to my room in HQ. I don't fancy staying outdoors now that the weather in Nimbasa has been getting progressively colder with every passing day.
I found myself back in my bedroom once the shadow receded and light shone upon me again. It had been getting easier to issue mental commands to my ghosts without relying on Rena, something which I attributed to my mysterious ability that I'm still trying to explore the limits of. Ghosts are indeed a part of the Mind Arts Trio, so I'm not too surprised that they were able to utilise some weird form of telepathy that is unique to them alone.
Actually, I'm still a little hesitant to refer the unique mental link that I share with my ghosts as "telepathy", as it is quite unlike the psychic kind which I'm more familiar with due to my near daily reliance on Rena to act as my translator when speaking to the rest of my team. I don't know how I know or why I felt this way, but my gut instinct made me feel very strongly that the mental link I share with my ghosts is very fundamentally different from the telepathy that humans usually establish with psychic types.
So far, the mental commands which I can successfully relay to the ghosts in my shadow are limited to simple ones, like attacking in a specific direction or person, or Shadow Sneak to a certain place, for example. I still haven't figured out a way to convey more complex and complicated instructions to my ghosts, but the current method I use to direct them in battle works well enough for our cause. Like Agatha often stressed, nobody can claim to be able to fully control ghosts. As their trainers, we can only try guiding them to help us with what we want them to help us do. Ghosts are free-spirited, so micromanaging them or doing anything to rip this sense of free-spirit from them is only going to result in them acting aggressively in defiance. When things get to that point nothing good is going to happen.
Personally, I feel that this is one reason why so many trainers failed in taming ghosts. Many trainers have the habit of micromanaging their pokemon, subconsciously or not. Some species of pokemon do benefit a lot more from such a relatively hard handed approach because it does help to bring out their full potential. However, ghosts react very negatively to such an approach and very often, for ghosts, such negative emotions begets violence. With ghosts, you have to learn how to compromise, you have to learn how to be understanding of their need of not wanting to be shackled down by anything or anyone.
Most importantly, as their trainers, we have to learn and accept the fact that they will not listen to every single order we issue them. You can befriend them and leverage on the friendship formed to have them assist you in several tasks, but you will have to prepare for the inevitable outcome where they will find loopholes in your words to do what they want to do instead, and all we can do is to turn a blind eye and accept it or risk a violent argument with them. That's why many established Ghost Specialists never give out specific instructions with their ghosts, but rather a rough framework of what the ghost needs to do and complete. As for the specifics of how the task will be completed, you just have to trust that the ghost in question knows what it is doing and that it can reach the final outcome you want it to help achieve with whatever method it chose to use. You cannot possibly expect ghosts to follow a very detailed set of instructions from you word for word and then reprimand it when it does not follow your orders as specified, because it simply is not in their nature to follow instructions. For ghosts, you have to learn how to trust and learn how to let go. You have to learn how to give control to them when you rely on them for help.
Personally, my experience with ghosts led me to believe that giving them a set of "guidelines" to adhere to is a lot more effective than expecting them to follow "rules". Rules are strict and unyielding, but guidelines can be flexible. As long as my ghosts and I set a certain boundary on what lines absolutely cannot be crossed no matter what happens and come to an agreement on that, everything else is negotiable. Like this, everyone is happy.
Ghosts do share a similar trait with dragons in the sense that they will never be anyone's subordinates, at least not in the truest sense. However, while dragons behaved that way due to their sense of pride, ghosts acted in a similar manner due to their free-spirited nature. While dark types actively seek to subvert rules, psychics are often the ones following and enforcing rules. Meanwhile, ghosts merely have a dislike for rules and are content with settling for a compromise in the form of loose guidelines as long as it doesn't encroach on their precious freedom. That is the blurry line of similarities and differences of the Mind Arts Trio, an understanding that I had reached after interacting with so many different kinds of trainers and pokemon and seeing them for myself during my journey.
I took off my coat the moment I was back in my bedroom, and actually needed to shake off some of the snowflakes that had landed on my coat. It was snowing lightly outside earlier, a weather phenomena that I would never experience in Hoenn as Hoenn has a tropical climate, similar to Alola. However, Alola's sun is a lot harsher from what I was told and their monsoons are also a lot more wild compared to Hoenn.
My room is very well heated at all times of the day, of which I had no doubt Vance and Sebastian had a hand in ensuring that my room possessed such a feature before I arrived in Unova because Vance knew just how averse my body is to the cold. I changed out of my sweater and jeans for something more loose-fitting and comfortable. I don't even have the drive to even step out of the building ever since the temperature had started to take a great dip across the region, so most of my time now was spent indoors.
I sat and lazily leaned my back against the headboard of my bed, a book already in hand. Amelia had recommended a few books, this time books that are not of questionable tastes, and I was planning to get some reading done to spend my day. I dipped my right hand into my shadow, watched as my arm sunk into it and I fumbled around trying to reach for that one ghost that had been very beneficial to me thus far.
I brought out a young litwick when I pulled out my right hand from my shadow, placed it on my lap, hugging it close to myself as I started reading the book where I last left off. It was only very recently that I realised that the litwick species are very useful in helping me to ward off the cold. They are small enough to hide themselves, they are ghost types which makes it easy for me to approach them, and as fire types they can easily produce the needed latent heat to help me stay warm if I have to stay outdoors for prolonged periods of time. In fact, I had tried hugging one to sleep before and it was a very pleasant experience. With a litwick around, I don't even need to wear a jacket or to cover myself with a blanket to sleep.
I'm not too sure how long had passed while I was reading my book, but Rena caught my attention when she lazily leapt up onto my bed to join me.
'Mistress, Nova's back.'
I was a little surprised, because Nova hardly stays in this building with us ever since we came over to Unova. Like how Skye and I have our own responsibilities to fulfil as an interpol agent, Nova has her own tasks to complete as well, and hers often brings her to all around the Unova region and as such, we don't actually see each other all that much.
'Her claydol asked for my assistance to relay a message to you from its trainer, if you are free to see her right now.'
"If she's asking for me the moment she's back, then it's either something important or something very interesting," I agreed, bookmarking the page of the book which I'm currently at and putting it aside on the nightstand beside my bed. The litwick which had been nestling on my lap and was actually dozing off in comfort leapt away and jumped back into my shadow, disappearing from view entirely.
"Did her claydol say anything about what the issue is about?" I asked as I started to get myself changed into something appropriate instead of the old and faded shirt and shorts which I was wearing earlier. The warm woollen sweater and the pair of jeans that I was wearing earlier would do just fine.
'I'm afraid not, other than the fact that Nova will be waiting on the third floor.'
"Let's go see what the hubbub is all about," I decided and after using the mirror to check my appearance one last time to make sure that I looked presentable, gave the ghosts in my shadow the mental command to bring me to the third floor with a Shadow Sneak.
"Skye, you are here too?"
"Nova sounded so excited when she called for me, so I decided to head down," Skye grinned. "How's the little runt doing so far?"
"A little too eager to prove himself, but other than that he's fine," I told Skye, knowing that she was referring to Hugh when she asked me that question. Nova entered the meeting room just at that very moment.
"Hey girls, it's been a long while, hasn't it?" Nova greeted enthusiastically with her marowak entering the room behind her. She looked as if she had just returned from some great expedition.
"Where have you been?" Skye asked immediately, sharing the same question I had.
"Oh you wouldn't believe it," Nova replied with a grin. "Say, are the both of you interested in exploring a newly discovered ruin?"
"Say what again?" I couldn't help but ask, although I'm sure that I was doing a poor job in keeping my excitement hidden in my voice. Exploring a newly discovered ruin? Count me in!
"Looker approved of it too, so we can visit there for "work purposes". There's a high chance that this ruin might hold information that the Unova League and the interpol will be interested in getting ahold of, which was why Looker agreed to send us out."
"Sounds fun," Skye agreed with a large smile on her face. "So, just the three of us?"
"Hugh is too young and inexperienced for this so sadly, I'm counting him out of the fun. Besides, Looker wants him to focus on brushing up his skills, not going off gallivanting like we are."
"Sucks to be him," Skye shrugged unapologetically, "so when are we moving out?"
"Whenever you guys are ready, and preferably earlier rather than later. And oh, change your attires. You won't need those warm heavy winter coats."
"Huh?"
"The ruins are located on Route 4, and that place is a huge desert."
Character and pokemon list:
Velda Vera, Age: 14, Female, Pokemon Trainer, Member of the International Police
Pokemon on hand:
1) Rapidash (Flamel), male
2) Swampert (Bigblue), male
3) Banette (Dolly), female
4) Flygon (Snap), male
5) Absol (Kelsa), female
6) Charizard (Toothless), male
7) Cradily (Lily), female
8) Espeon (Rena), female
9) Pachirisu (Fuzzy), male
10) Tyranitar (Kratos), male
11) Clefairy (Joy), female
12) Nidoqueen (Ness), female
13) Pangoro (Hulk), male
14) Porygon-Z (Jarvis), genderless
15) Scizor (Archer), male
16) Lapras (Chill), female
17) Gengar (Wacky), male