Teams:
Pierce Lawson:
- Narcissa, Beedrill
- Orion, Onix
- Cygnus, Abra
- Bellatrix, Gyarados (Shiny)
- Andromeda, Vaporeon
Lillian Dale:
- Root, Bulbasaur
- Talon, Spearow
- Gem, Geodude
- Star, Cleffa
- Cinder, Vulpix
Saffron City III
The old man tossed a cheap trinket up in the air.
The murder of murkrow followed the movement attentively.
"So, you sure they'll do their part?" the man asked him, seemingly unwilling to take his eyes off the Dark types. Understandable, but that made the birds not trust him in turn and that wasn't helping anyone. Pierce expected that though, so he just grinned and did his best to smooth things over.
"I'm sure," he answered, putting as much conviction as he could in his voice. He didn't want to sound naive or gullible either though, so he also added some steel to the simple statement. The murkrow weren't the only ones he had to convince for his idea to work, after all. He wasn't trying so hard to make it all work just to be dismissed. "You just need to provide them with something interesting and shiny for them to look for every so often. I think it's not a great prize to pay to have a peaceful ranch. They've been driving away other pokemon already, after all. So, things would remain the same, except without you needing to deal with the trouble they cause."
"I'd still need to pay for the stuff," the man argued, far from pleased. It wasn't the first time one of his solutions wasn't quite what the client wanted, however. John came to mind, but there were others too.
"As opposed to paying trainers to send them away?"
"It works."
"For how long?" he shot back with a raised eyebrow. "Are these the first group of pokemon that cause you trouble? The first time you've had to send out a request for a trainer?" he asked him and the silence that followed was answer enough. "It's not and that's because no pokemon has set up this place as their territory so when one goes away, another takes their place. The pokemon of your ranch can't cover the whole place and neither can you. The murkrow can help you finish covering the place for the low price of some shiny trinkets every so often."
Pierce knew he was right. It'd taken him less than a year to notice that there were a lot of jobs like that. People with extensive property would sooner or later run into the problem of wild pokemon invading and claiming territory inside. This wasn't quite as much of a problem for people that didn't own entire fields or pieces of forest, mainly because almost everyone had pokemon, so they could just claim their little slice of land as their territory and defend it normally.
However, when there was a low number of people in a big area, that's when problems started appearing.
Granted, there was a reason why nobody had tried to cut into the situation. For one, striking deals with pokemon was a struggle for normal people. For whatever reason, people that weren't him didn't have an easy time dealing with pokemon for the most part. He attributed this to the fact that he hadn't grown up in that world, so he probably had or lacked something that the rest of them did not.
He wasn't sure on the specifics, but that was a fact. There was only so much he could take people saying he was weird or special before he actually started looking into it. Not that he minded all that much, but it made things a little easier to think that it wasn't some kind of weird planet alignment level of coincidence that caused all that.
It was, however, one more depressing reminder that he wasn't in his own world.
'Focus,' he told himself, bringing his mind back to the present. He still needed to finish convincing his client. Fortunately, he seemed to be getting there. Just a few more words and he'd be done with the job, he was sure.
"This is cheaper and it'll save you future headaches. Sure, it's a bit of a chore, but it's better than the alternative, isn't it?" Pierce prodded, hoping it'd be enough to defeat the man's hesitation and stubbornness. He was running out of ideas to reword things, honestly.
"I guess," the man said, not at all convinced as he glanced towards him and then back at the murkrow.
"Just think it over, if you need to. I can stop the murkrow while I'm here, but I'm not going to be in Saffron forever," Pierce told him before smiling widely. "And, of course, you'll have to pay me for every visit. I have other things to do. I can also just not come back and you'll have to wait for the next trainer," he explained. He wasn't really trying to threaten the man though. He was just speaking the truth.
It wasn't like there were many options for them.
"I guess I have no choice then," his client replied, sighing and rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"It's not that bad, they are actually kind of nice," Pierce reassured, approaching the birds, who were perched on the fences by them. "Sure, they are little rascals, but they aren't bad. Think of them like problematic children," he told the man, extending his hand to pet one of them and getting a peck to his hand. That probably didn't help his argument, but after pulling his hand away he just chuckled. That'd hurt a little, of course, but that was about it. "Case in point."
The murkrow in question cawed at him, annoyed.
"Don't give me that. If you aren't a nuisance, the old man will give you things to look for and might even drop a snack or two if you are good," he told them, winking at the now unimpressed rancher. That is, until the man saw the murkrow's entire disposition change. "See?" he asked his client, grinning widely.
He left the place feeling pretty proud of himself.
[}-o-{]
Completely silent battles were something he hadn't had a lot of so far, but Pierce expected them from Saffron.
After all, the city had, understandably, a pretty high number of Psychic pokemon and he was quite obviously not the only trainer with one that could just communicate telepathically. So, it wasn't a surprise at all that one of his first bouts in the battlegrounds saw him facing someone that did just that. What it was was… interesting, and a little annoying.
It wasn't like he hadn't faced trainers with Psychic pokemon before that could do it, but he'd been there for a grand total of one hour and he'd already faced entirely too many people doing that. One battle or two were fine, it was just how it went. Every other fight or more often? That's when it became more of a thorn in his side.
'Double faint,' he instructed Cygnus, already pretty done with the fighting. Having to be so on edge trying to guess the opponent's next move from literally nothing was grating. He'd have to get used to it, he supposed. People and pokemon in high levels probably could hold an entire fight without talking and even without Psychics involved. That'd be bad for him if he didn't learn to read pokemon.
That still didn't mean he liked it though.
He'd rather hold regular battles. They were much less stressful.
He watched carefully as his abra teleported to the side of the slowpoke they were facing. And thank God for that, because at least the… Well, slowness of the pokemon made it easy to read, for the most part. It had a nasty Psychic move though – which's name was kind of annoying, considering it overlapped with the typing –, he'd admit, which had caught them off guard a bunch of times. Fortunately, Cygnus was resistant to moves of his type.
Regardless, the first faint didn't work, but that was expected. The second made the slowpoke twitch… somewhat and that was their signal. Teleporting again, this time right on the Water type's face, Cygnus punched forward, his fist covered in electricity. The move connected, but they weren't quite done, unfortunately.
What was more, their opponent seemed to recover enough to use Psychic.
'Foul Play, mess that move up,' Pierce commanded, much more sure than he actually was. His pokemon hadn't gotten the hang of that move just yet, after all, even if he was pretty close. Certainly not enough for use in battle. Then again, Cygnus was in his head, so it didn't really matter. His partner knew what he wanted to do and he went for it. Immediately, the abra's body, which had been in the process of being flung to the side by Psychic energy, wavered a little. They'd done it. 'Flash Punch,' he ordered at that moment.
They'd been using many combinations of faints so far. One faint, two faints, even going as far as five faints. They had only done a direct attack twice through the whole thing. One at the start and one a few hits after that. From there, it'd been a matter of trying to trick the opponent without getting tricked in turn. Now though…
'I doubt they are looking out for a straightforward attack,' Pierce thought to himself, much more confident than before. Foul Play had been a bit of a gamble. Not only was the move not fully learned, but Dark moves only messed with Psychic moves that weren't too much stronger than them. It wasn't anywhere close to making Cygnus be like a full fledged Dark type pokemon. Fortunately, the gamble had paid off enough to be counted as a win.
Finally, with the following Thunder Punch, Cygnus closed off the battle, which was great. Pierce wanted to take a break, if at all possible. His brain hurt from trying to keep up with the silent battles.
"I'm tired of this too," his abra told him and Pierce smirked. "Wouldn't be as bad if I didn't have to do your job too."
'Battles are a thing of two, Cygnus. Shut up,' he shot back, amused. He found it annoying to have to read the opponent too. If the Psychic was so against helping him out there as a second pair of eyes, then he could just not participate in the battles. It wasn't like he had a shortage of pokemon ready to throw hands… figuratively speaking. 'Huh, you are the only one that can actually throw hands.'
Cygnus didn't deign that with a response, simply staring at him and sending him his most unimpressed feelings.
'So mean,' Pierce grumbled to himself, walking up to the opposing trainer and taking the bet money. 'Might call it a day in general. Narcissa got plenty of fights and everyone else got their fair share too. I think everyone is pretty happy with how the day went,' he mused both to himself and to his abra.
"Sounds about right," Cygnus said, teleporting to sit on his shoulders.
With that decided, he moved towards a bench close to where Lily was fighting her own battles and took his seat. Then he groaned and looked at the vending machine some distance away and weighted the pros and cons of getting up to buy himself something or just staying seated. Call him lazy-
"Lazy."
-but getting up right after sitting down was awful.
"Give me an extra pokeblock later," Cygnus told him.
'You are a lifesaver, buddy,' he told him gratefully, receiving a mental roll of eyes from the abra. Then he took out the money and watched his Psychic teleport to get him something. He half expected it to be some drink he'd hate, but he actually got something he liked. Maybe he didn't want to risk losing on that pokeblock for a prank? 'I knew you could be smart once in a while.'
"Idiot," Cygnus hissed at him, giving him a punch on the shoulder from the seat beside him on the bench.
'Yeah, yeah,' Pierce replied absently. 'Nap?'
"A nap sounds good right now," the abra answered with a nod. "Call me when we have to leave."
'Sure thing.'
[}-o-{]
Jogging was probably the only part of his exercising routine that he didn't find exceedingly annoying, even while he was at it.
It sucked, but not quite as much as the others. On top of that, it also allowed him to actually check on his pokemon instead of having to focus on something else. Thus, while he ran around the edge of the training grounds Lily and him had rented, Pierce was able to glance at his team and how their training was going.
Instead of all of them doing their own training though, they'd gathered by the pool where Bellatrix was and seemed to be chatting. Judging by the fact that Orion was the only one not there, still practicing Curse, Pierce imagined they were discussing their Dark type moves. He'd stop by the check just to be sure and see if he was needed though.
Later though.
First, he needed to stop by Orion, because he could tell that the onix was feeling a little left out. He was still a child, after all, and he could be upset fairly easily. As Pierce tried to finish his rounds a little quicker, he caught the pokemon glancing towards the group. 'Well, I'll finish later, even if it'll suck to have to get back on track,' he decided, sighing to himself as he stopped running and tried to catch his breath.
"Hey, buddy," he greeted, drawing Orion's attention to himself as he stopped close by and started stretching. "Doing well?" Pierce asked, pushing his exhaustion aside. His pokemon needed a solid pillar to lean on, so he had to be that.
The response he got was pretty mild, but that wasn't exactly surprising, all things considered.
"Struggling?" he asked, drawing a half-hearted grumble from him. "Then maybe Andromeda can help you with the Ghost energy later. I think they are all discussing Dark energy right now," he explained, mostly just to let the big child know that it wasn't that the others were leaving him out on purpose. "For now, how about we switch to simpler things? Iron Tail is almost done, right? Maybe you can try to finish working on it," he suggested, making the onix turn pensive.
Then the stone serpent glanced back to the group by the water and shook his head. 'Because Narcissa could help him with that, but she's busy?' Pierce theorized to himself, narrowing his eyes a little bit. Well, fortunately, there were alternatives to that.
"Then how about Twister? I know you were struggling with that one too, but you don't want to lose the progress you've made, right?" he asked with a smile that widened when Orion seemed much more receptive to that idea. "I'll take that as a yes. How about I keep you company for a bit? Don't tell the others this, but I feel like slacking a little, alright?"
The onix huffed, giving him a flat look.
"We can just say that I was helping you, ok?" he added shamelessly. Orion shook his head at him, but otherwise didn't "say" anything else. "Thanks, buddy. You are the best," he told the stone serpent.
His pokemon snorted, pushing his body against Pierce's shoulder affectionately. Returning the gesture somewhat, he placed his hand on the onix's back while watching him training the Dragon type move. It wasn't doing great, but then again, it was a difficult move and also one that he hadn't touched in a while since they switched to Curse. Orion was the only one with a bunch of different moves, but that was mostly because he wanted to.
As young as he was, Pierce thought it was better to give him a bunch of different things to focus on instead of just the one. If they did it the latter way, then he expected the onix would grow either frustrated or bored, so it was better to avoid that. He'd likely try a similar approach with Bellatrix. 'Speaking of, I might need to get started with that soon,' he mused, glancing towards the gyarados before focusing on Orion.
No need to make the stone serpent jealous.
In regards to his gyarados though, he'd wanted to give her some time to calm down further after her evolution. She was already showing signs of getting frustrated though, since she was the only one without new and exciting things to train on like the rest of the team. His decision to let her take it easy for a while would soon achieve the exact opposite of his goal.
'She seems calm enough and I should be able to deal with any issues,' Pierce thought to himself, running his fingers through his hair, now slightly dampened with sweat. 'Yeah, time to look through the notes again, just in case,' he decided.
He had entire sections of his notebooks dedicated entirely to each of his pokemon. They ranged from what they liked to eat to what they should eat and from how to deal with their peculiarities to what his plans for training them were. Granted, Pierce had left a lot of wiggle room for all of those things, especially training. He didn't know his travel plans all that well, nor did he know how his pokemon would feel or what they'd think in the future, so it was better to leave some space for maneuvering in case a move wasn't a good idea at certain times.
He was distracted from his musings by Orion, who was going for a Twister attempt. The energy gathered in front of him and started swirling just fine. Wind picked up and the ground started suffering from being exposed to the move. Not a lot, fortunately. There was a fee for damaging the place too much, after all. The place could be repaired fairly easily through pokemon help, but that didn't mean the owners would work extra for free.
"That one looked good, Orion," Pierce praised, patting his onix's rocky back after watching the move ultimately sort of… implode on itself and dispersing as some colored wind before even the energy dissipated a second later. "Gotta have a better handle on it, but you seem to have the energy down."
Orion grunted an affirmation, a determined expression on his stone face and seemingly no thoughts about the others in his mind.
'Nice,' Pierce thought, smiling as he prepared himself to see some more Twister attempts.
[}-o-{]
Lightning55Turbo
He calmed down a gyarados!
HE CALMED DOWN A GYARADOS!
ChompChomp
At least there was some normal approach of pokemon in this video… I guess? He had to fight the one murkrow before doing his usual "you are friend now". Almost thought we'd get some actual normal content for once. That's on me, I guess.
Got us in the first half, Proxyman.
CorphishOutOfWater
I wanna tell Lightning that we got it already, but damn if that video isn't burned in my brain.
TM-gaming-and-fishing
Are we sure the trick isn't just him being too handsome for the pokemon to handle? Food is just the explanation they want us to believe.
PolaroidBoy
Today, murkrow. Tomorrow, hydreigon.
I won't even be surprised.
Poison_Sniffa
TM knows what's what.
Ruxlay
Would.
CrystalMorgan9655
On the one hand, Polaroid, that'd blow my mind.
On the other, now I'm here for that.
NamelessStacey3213
How are you guys even writing in italics?
johnyoung4733
Proxyman did it again. It's getting less surprising and more impressive, gotta say. Great content as usual, man. Can't wait to see what you upload next.
SnowflakeMeowth_Gifs
There are murkrow near where I live and they are a nuisance (just looked up how to use italics, pretty neat), but this is genius. I gotta try this… Once I get enough people to back me up with pokemon, because I ain't Proxyman.
ForestEnjoyerClub
Any berry/pokeblock recommendations for murkrow, Proxyman?
Pierce – Pokemon Proxy
This group seemed to like Petaya berries by themselves. For pokeblocks, I mixed Petaya with Kelpsy and some with Wiki, among other attempts. They seemed to like both of those the most. Be careful when feeding them, they seem to like pecking while at it just for fun. I'd suggest presenting them in a bowl or something similar.
ForestEnjoyerClub
Proxyman has shared his sagely advice with us, people. Rejoice.
CrystalMorgan9655
Hail Proxyman.
Ruxlay
Still would.
[}-o-{]
[Samuel Oak]
He shook his head with a smile before turning away from the screen, rotating his desk chair to look out the window.
Pierce Lawson.
What a fascinating individual Lily had stumbled upon. Was it fate that drove one of his sponsored trainers to find such a talent in the field that Samuel himself studied? If not that, nor luck, nor coincidence, then he had to wonder if there was a legend involved. Which, considering…
Anyway, Samuel was very seriously mulling over the idea of asking the man if he'd like to work with him as an assistant. Furthermore, after all that he'd seen so far, Samuel had no doubt that Lawson could be a professor in his own right with some time, dedication and studies. He was holding back for a number of reasons, however.
Not the least of which was Lily herself, or what she'd told him about Lawson. Apparently, he was a man… looking for a place in the world. Samuel himself very much understood how that was, so he'd rather not put pressure on him like that. Lawson seemed dedicated to what he did, which was admirable. So, Samuel could be patient and wait for a more opportune moment.
That wasn't the only reason why he was waiting, however.
Another reason was because Lawson already had a lot of attention from the League and Samuel didn't want to contribute to making that worse. The man seemed to be doing that enough by himself, of course, but that didn't mean he wanted to aggravate the situation even further. His name still held entirely too much weight even in matters that had nothing to do with his role as a professor.
Not that being the target of the League's gaze was a bad thing, but it could be overwhelming. He'd know. So, Samuel would prefer to let the man breathe for as long as possible. Although, at the rate things were going, he'd probably have to step in at some point, he guessed.
Then again, he was surprised by the League's restraint on the matter. Lily hadn't mentioned so much as a simple message being sent Lawson's way that wasn't related to the things Lawson had been involved in. Things had been too professional, by the sounds of it. Either the man was hiding something from Samuel's sponsored trainer or something was going on there.
Because average people weren't the only ones that were still shocked about those first few videos, about that video. Samuel still would look it up from time to time, mesmerized by the sight of Pierce Lawson standing in front of a just evolved gyarados and just… talking to it. That was a level of connection between man and pokemon that he'd never seen. At the very least, never with two individuals that hadn't spent at least a year together.
Pierce Lawson was no normal man, Samuel knew that much.
He had lived and seen enough to have experienced plenty of crazy things. In all his years of life, he'd been witness to many extraordinary events brought by skill, luck and… other factors. All of that told him one thing and that was that no amount of skill and luck would have achieved what Lawson had. He knew some people that were very talented at dealing with pokemon. He had seen what humans could do with enough understanding, empathy and similar factors on their side.
No, there was more at play during Lawson's incident and there were only so many options that he could think of.
'I truly have been blessed with living in interesting times,' Samuel thought to himself, turning back to the screen and closing the tab the video was open on. There, he saw the latest news in Kanto. 'Or, maybe, cursed.'
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How's it going?
Well, I decided to give the comment section a go and I think I did a better job this time. Not great, but a little better. I'm once again reaching out to you to tell me what you think about that. Any feedback I can get on that I'll try to apply for any future attempts.
I was also told that the comment section shouldn't be used too much, so I hope I waited long enough since last time. It's been… What? Five chapters or more? I should check, but I'm too lazy for that. There's also the fact that the comments don't take too much space in a chapter, really, so I don't feel too bad putting it there.
Then we have Samuel Oak himself which… I don't wanna go into. I feel like I could end up saying something I don't mean to or causing misunderstandings or something. So, I'll just leave it at that. Hopefully better than some random guy. Opinions were kind of mixed during that experiment.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.
As always, if you can't wait until next week for next chapter, or if you just feel like supporting my writing, there's up to three new chapters in my Pa tre on:
P a treon . com (slash) AdrianKing
Discord Link: discord .gg/UTDransjJZ
Random Question: What'd you think about this second attempt at the experiments?
See you.