Chapter Text
Everything settles into a routine given enough time. Molly Cypress had yet to encounter any event that could stop that, no matter how jarring, how traumatic. If you were still alive you would settle into a routine.
Like most routines hers started with an alarm, and the requisite inability to acknowledge the noise. There was only one answer to this, and Molly quickly encountered a sudden excessive amount of poking. To complain or to beg would not change her fate so Molly did the only thing she could to sate the beast, and turned off the alarm. She knew that the poking would only continue in a few moments if she didn’t start moving but that wasn’t the point. She had already lost the war but refused to concede this battle, she was the Pokémon trainer and she wasn’t about to let her Pokémon train her into being a functional person. A heinous plot only a Ghost-type Pokémon could conceive of. She lay back down ready to continue the war for another day.
Within half an hour she was out the door, still chewing some cold crustless pizza. Watching the Duskull that ruined her morning crawl into her shadow nibbling some pizza crust.
In hindsight naming him Dante may have been a bad idea. She resolved to never tell him about how the original Dante wrote a story where all his enemies burned in hell. The hellion didn’t need inspiration.
Pausing only to throw the pizza box under her arm into the recycling, she made her way to work. It wasn’t far, the apartment she lived in was owned by her work for that exact reason.
A quick clock in, since computers weren’t very common yet, so her sign in was just that, signing her name in the booklet behind the front desk with the date and time. The differences between this world and her old one always interested her. Despite being massively ahead on numerous technologies in some regards, it was rare to see a lot of it being used. Pokeballs were one of the rare examples of something high-tech being available to the average consumer and they had to massively subsidize it too. No one wanted a market to exist for bootleg Pokeballs.
“Hey kid, do you mind grabbing a fresh pot of coffee for us?”
Being stuck at the desk was one of the assignments officers would complain about to no end, despite there being no one waiting in the lobby, two police officers were expected to man the desks at all times thanks to policy. The policy made sense but in this branch of the SPD was particularly undermanned so those who without essential skills elsewhere would find themselves with an awful lot of it booked in their schedule.
There were few duties that were as universally despised as Front Desk duty. Thankful Cadets weren’t allowed to man the desk thanks to Molly’s eternal relief, unfortunately this wasn’t the same for the sewer inspection which was a systemic purge of the sewer system where every Muk and Grimer down there had to be caught for relocation into a landfill somewhere before. Which involved fighting a Pokémon battle in the bloody sewers, no one came out of that clean or happy. Molly had been unfortunate enough to encounter a Grimer while on her inspection and her senior officers out of an indescribable kindness from the bottom of their hearts let her practice her battling while they watched from afar. Those officers were marked, she never got them coffee.
Molly just yawned and grabbed the empty French press sitting on the desk, she was rewarded with two tired smiles. These two weren’t in the Book of Grudges.
Well French press wasn’t the right name anymore, it was a Kalos press now she thought as she made her way into the kitchen.
The Daybreak Police Department’s kitchen was well equipped but the greatest purchase beloved by all the officers there was the boiler right above the sink. Hot water on demand, no waiting around for a kettle to boil. Quickly rinsing the French press out and refilling it with new coffee grounds, she filled it up with hot water and then found a mug and a tea bag and made herself a drink. She had never liked the taste of coffee in either life.
Stopping only to drop off the coffee pot at the front desk, she made her way to her own desk. One of twenty in the building that actually had a computer, she put the mug down, turned the computer on and looked over at the clock. 12:17pm, perfect. She promptly put her head down on her desk and closed her eyes.
In twelve minutes the poking had resumed. The war between trainer and Pokémon knew no ceasefire.
“Dante I wasn’t asleep I was just resting my eyes” The Duskull’s mask didn’t lend itself to facial expression but Dante had long since learnt how to make the most out of what he had and had an impressive really now face plastered on it.
Dante might think he was winning his war but unknown to him, his plan had a minor hiccup, Molly could now take a nap whenever she wanted without worrying about how long her break lasted, surprisingly handy when you consider that the average person doesn’t have an alarm clock, calculator, source of all of human knowledge and a phone in their pocket at all times in this world. This battle went squarely in Moly’s favour, one of her rare victories.
She stood stretching, reaching over to grab the mug of tea and dropped the tea bag into the trash. The tea was long oversteeped but in Molly’s opinion that didn’t mean anything, the department brought budget black tea and she had learnt to love the taste of oversteeped cheap black tea in her old life. She started the quick walk to her next destination.
She still liked the same foods and drinks she had in her old life, though a few new foods had entered her favorites list. Magikarp tasted different depending on where it was caught and she was a big fan of river Magikarp which was basically just salmon, the flesh was both better and cheaper, but as a trade off you couldn’t eat the skin anymore, it was too tough. She remembered hearing in her old life that people had different taste buds and what tasted good to you could taste awful to someone else based on genetics not taste. Well with a sample size of two different bodies with different genetics, she could confirm that some people just had terrible taste and any nuanced argument of respecting each other’s taste could be ignored.
Breaking that train of thought she stopped outside the Superintendent’s office, and knocked. Hearing a muffled “Enter” she made her way in.
Superintendent John Rockwell could have fit on the set of any Earth police drama and no one would have blinked an eye, he didn’t have the diverse range of hair colors or eye colours that Earth was lacking, just simple black hair, presumably dark brown eyes but in this world black was an option so you could never be quite sure. The stubble and bags under his eyes completed the tired detective look even if he wasn’t a detective anymore.
“What do you need, kid?”
The voice expressing the utmost desire for nothing too exhausting or emotionally draining at this moment.
“Case fileeeeeeeeeeeees.”
He sat up with that and looked more alert.
“Damn forgot I had you on those, alright.”
He stood fishing in his pockets and pulled out some keys before making his way to the door.
“How many more of them do you have left?”
“Three full boxes left and the one I was working on yesterday.”
Molly said as they made their way to the storage room where all the casefiles were kept, she had been scanning and uploading the contents of old casefiles to the database ever since John had found out she was fairly good with a computer.
“That’s all of the low level ones done then, good. How about this then? Do three hours of scanning and I’ll have you patrolling with Char and we can do some battling practise before your shift ends.”
“Still trying to butter me up in the hopes I come back to the force when the season is up?”
He turned and smiled at her, before turning back to the door and fumbling with the keys again.
“Glad you remember how good cop works then. It’ll be good when you come back.”
“I already told yo--” “
Yea yea, Cypress is the name of a tree so you have to become a Pokémon professor. Not all Pokémon professor have tree last names kid.”
“Oh yea? Name one.”
“Just because I can’t off the top of my head, doesn’t mean they don’t exist, there’s got to be one out there that doesn’t.”
Molly just scoffed at him as she pointed out the boxes she needed on a shelf she couldn’t reach without a step ladder. When he turned to pass one of the two, she was already waiting by the door.
“Lazy brat. I still have to lock the door.”
He said fondly. Molly walked up to him, and when he leaned down to let her grab the top box, she fished through the pocket she saw him put the keys in.
“I’m not telling you which key it is.”
She just grinned as the door locked on her first try, she had kept her eyes open when he unlocked the door in the first place.
Eventually he started talking again as they walked to her desk.
“Look, just consider it alright? The sponsorship we offer will last you three years if you get two badges in your first season and three by your second. I know with a good team behind you can make it to five if not six. A five badge team and Cadet training will see you getting a very generous offer, plus Cadets always get better offers than other trainers do from the police department.”
Molly sighed, it wasn’t as if she didn’t keep it in mind. She just didn’t like making backup plans, always felt like it’ll make her more likely to fail if she had some kind of fall back.
“I know, I know. Don’t worry if I’m broke I’ll be hitting you up before the Rangers.”
Pokémon trainers were always in high demand by basically every government organization and many private businesses. Catch a Gym Leader’s eye and you might be offered a Gym Trainer position which includes a living wage, accommodation, mentorship, training and most importantly connections. ACE Trainers were the Pokémon World’s equivalent of the military and were expected to respond to disasters like rampaging Pokémon or military action, most of the time they just did guard work, this era was particularly peaceful. Rangers were basically weird park rangers on steroids, they worked on the routes keeping everything safe. Tracked and if possible relocated dangerous Pokémon away from routes. Posted warnings, found lost people, acted as a coast guard, and many other tasks that involved keeping the balance between the human world and the wilds. Since Pokémon training was heavily encouraged to children in what amounts to an extensive propaganda campaign by every region in the world, Private businesses were always looking to sponsor up and coming trainers to elite trainers so they could act as walking advertisements, or more rarely for private security.
The question was how did you get a Pokémon trainer to quit the Gym Challenge and start working for you? The former was always easy, 60% of trainers would quit before their first season ended. There were a myriad of reasons, from finding they didn’t like Pokémon training, or just the constant travelling, sometimes injuries or death, be it the trainer or their team. Seeing their beloved Pokémon hurt badly scared them off, or getting injured themselves. A Pokémon dying almost always ended a trainers career on their first season, and dying themselves didn’t need explaining. However the number one reason was always running out of money.
Taking the Gym Challenge was expensive and with how many that attempted it every year, the Sinnoh Government only offered discounts on some services instead of a fund. They weren’t being stingy, it was generally regarded that handing out money to teenagers was a waste, after all the first lesson most trainers learnt in their first season was budgeting. Funding went instead to resources and discounts on certain goods and gear. So every organization had their own method of getting new recruits and the most successful was always sponsorships, at some point laws had to be put in place to stop teenagers from signing contracts mandating that they would work for X organization but even with that it was still more cost efficient to sponsor a trainer than to hire one. Though not everyone did, Rangers made do with propaganda, practical experience and offering long holiday periods that coincided with the Pokémon Season for promising recruits.
The Sinnoh Police Department Cadet program was the sponsorship that John had managed to convince Molly into taking. Free accommodation, money and not being stuck in a classroom like she had been for nineteen years since she had gone straight from highschool to university to primary school. It was arguably one of the best paying sponsorships but it had a few harsh restrictions and few would actually manage to receive the sponsorship. For a start, you had to spend two years as a Cadet while attending highschool or delay their Pokémon journey, a six hour shift six days a week. Most of which was grunt work like making coffee, being a messenger and other intern crap. Molly’s recent task of scanning over a hundred years of receipts and other case files that were safe to hand to a teenager was a good example. Most teenagers couldn’t handle doing a half day at school and then doing a six hour shift at their local police station and if you couldn’t keep your grades up you would lose the scholarship.
This wasn’t a problem for Molly since she had graduated at age ten and finished her two year degree at twelve, hence her sleep in. The Pokémon World was a lot more accommodating for geniuses, or in this case a reincarnated twenty year old. While this harsh workload sounds counterintuitive to the overall goal of convincing teenagers to rejoin when they have finished their third season, Molly had gotten her suspicion confirmed by John after she had noticed the workload notably got a lot easier after her first nine months. They were trying to get kids to quit, they taught all the basic police procedure, law and policy during those first three months and then the work really ramped up for the next six. The ones who could cut it were statistically more likely to get more badges over their sponsorship they had found, and the ones who failed? They now knew basic police procedure, stuff like what to do in a crisis, crowd control techniques, first aid, and a whole list of things that the Police Department wishes the average trainer knew.
The Cadet program was really a training program in disguise, the few trainers that actually joined after their Pokémon seasons was just a side bonus to their real objective.
It was a dastardly plot and Molly couldn’t help smiling as she remembered it, she had the only one from her batch of six to make it past those nine months, the sewers did the remaining two in.
John put the casefiles down near her desk and looked at her.
“As long as you keep it in mind, and come to my department if you do. Which is the one you were working yesterday?”
“Top one.”
He reached down and picked up that one for her, placing it so she could reach inside while sitting and removed the lid for her. And promptly wiped the smile off her face by stealing the post-it note she had used to mark her position.
“You sick fuck John.”
He ruffled her hair and laughed all the way back to his office.
After twenty minutes of comparing papers to the last page she had uploaded yesterday and then another three hours of scanning casefiles and a lunch break, John finally made his way back to her desk.
“Sorry I was stuck in a phone call for the last twenty minutes.”
Molly just gave him a look of pure loathing. He shrugged and released an Arcanine, handing her the Pokeball.
“Go run the downtown patrol route with Molly here Char, and don’t let her buy you snacks again.”
The battle worn Arcanine in a big police vest; John’s starter, Char, just grunted at that, and then looked at Molly and gestured to the door. She grabbed her hat, coat and headed out.
Molly was in her second year of University studying Anthropology when she had died, so studying the Pokémon World from an anthropological point of view had been her only hobby when she was younger, well that and freak out adults. For example, on Earth sending a fourteen year old Cadet with a dog to patrol alone would get you fired anywhere sane. In this world however, no one would blink at it. Molly wasn’t really patrolling, the route she was going on is the safest route John could send her on, and even if something happened, it was expected that Char would handle it. Molly’s real job was to follow along, call in any incidents and write a report for Char if necessary. It was a cultural difference built off how the Pokémon World typically considered fourteen year olds adults that couldn’t buy alcohol or vote, but could live alone, and Pokémon as responsible figures. This was a world where babysitting was a very niche market since you could just leave your Pokémon at home and never have to worry.
John was basically sending Molly on a glorified dog walk but she got to ride Char and it was a nice day so she wasn’t about to complain.
Stopping to pick some gear, notepad, pen, walkie talkie, cuffs, first aid kit and some spare Pokeballs for wild Pokémon that needed relocation, and signed out her gear.
She started blinking at the sunlight, her desk was far away from the windows and she’d been staring at paper or a computer screen for the last few hours. Char was waiting and knelt down to let her climb onto him, his police vest acting as a saddle. She called in her patrol and got the clear to go from Communication. Char moved without a command as he heard it himself with his superior hearing.
She kept her eyes and ears open because it was good to keep in habit but this was for the most part pointless, she knew the best way to know if something was happening was to pay attention to Char. His ears, nose and eyes would spot anything long before she did. There was no point competing in the first two brackets and even with her glasses she wouldn’t spot anything before he heard it.
Daybreak Town didn’t see much serious crime, at most she expected to deal with a pickpocketing incident and to give some directions. The town made most of its money off tourism, it’s harbor long since turned to a lovely waterfront with seaside cafes and hotels. On a day like this yachts would be out in full force, the beaches packed as tourists coming from Carmilla Town and Sunnyshore City came to enjoy some time on one of the few beaches in Sinnoh that wasn’t freezing cold.
She was prepared to enjoy a nice calm patrol right up till she remembered what the time was and where her route was going to take her. A sense of dread overcame her as she realized she would be outside a primary school right as they released all the little monsters.
“Hey Char, can you use John’s Kalos Press as a chew toy tomorrow morning before he gets his coffee?”
Char just snorted and some smoke floated up out of his nose, her long history with him told her that meant while he was amused, he wasn’t going to do it.
“He sent us past a primary school when the kids are going home.”
He paused in his step with that, and then grunted. She had him, no further bribery required. That said even with her revenge prepared, she still had to emotionally prepare herself for the nightmare to come.
Molly hated children.
It wasn’t that kind of hate where you saw her referring to children as crotch goblins like those childfree people who made it their personality. No, her hate was born of exhaustion. Molly was six when she regained the full extent of her memories, before she had them to a degree but like they were like half remembered dreams. Rarely impactful and she only had evidence since they expressed themselves in artwork of her own original Pokémon like the Kiwi or the Elephant or what John had referred to as a weird Empoleon when she had first met him. Along with weird personality traits like an obsession with tea that her younger self had and she was fairly confident she hadn’t erased some poor child with her existence.
While she had managed to skip being an infant, she didn’t quite get out of schooling. Molly now had the patience to impress a saint, not through some innate talent; she hadn’t been very patient in her last life, no she had to learn this the hard way. Even if she only had to attend six years of schooling and only four of those with her full memories, that’s still nearly a thousand days. Sinnoh might only do ten years of schooling compared to her old nation of New Zealand’s thirteen, they made up for it with longer school years, and started earlier to boot. Children weren’t terrible; she'd seen plenty of examples of some fantastic kids, but did they ever drain. It was exhausting to be around them and since she had moved so often, she was always the new exciting thing. It didn’t help that the most common personality was the unholy offspring of horse girls and Pokémon nerds.
Molly shuddered as they drew closer to the school, she knew this one, they were terrible at teaching children how to behave around Pokémon. Char paused as if steeling his will. They crossed the road, so they wouldn’t be on the side the school was, they could avoid the entrance that way.
“Bend down Char, I’m going to have to run interceptor on the dumb ones. Dante, keep an eye on the traffic, just in case.”
Sliding off Char, she saw Dante emerge from her shadow where he had been napping and make a noise of agreement, before vanishing back into her shadow. He knew this dance and it was best to keep him out of sight, Ghost Pokémon weren’t taboo but around children? Best to play it safe.
Kids running into traffic wasn’t a huge concern, the school bus was the only vehicle in sight right now since cars never really took off here. Rideable Pokémon was Molly’s leading theory as to why, especially in Sinnoh on account of Mount Coronet since that made any drives across the country a very long road trip. That said she wasn’t about to let Dante get away completely scot free from this, at the very least he’d have to watch carefully while Char and her suffered.
They came into sight and the reaction was exactly as she expected, a few parents caught their children before they ran out of reach but many children were expected to walk home from a fairly young age so only a stern remark from one of the teachers at the crossing held them back from sprinting at them. That teacher even had the nerve to smile at them, like they did some kind favour by doing the bare minimum of keeping his charges in line. The Book of Grudges didn’t require a name for an entry.
Most of them slowed down when they closed in but a few kept running, she knew they were about to use poor Char to climb on. There was a solution to this.
“Stop right there.”
It was firm, stern and to their credit all but one particularly dumb child stopped. Sinnoh's children were infinitely better trained than what she remembered from Earth, they were just exhausting like all children. She stood in front of the path of the one dumb one, he ran around her and jumped on to Char, she caught him by the backpack before he could land. Exactly as she planned.
She bent down, and stared into his soul. Intense always worked well on kids she had found, they weren't used to it and it caught them off guard.
“What. Are. You. Doing?”
“Playing?”
He had the look in his eye that said he knew he was in the wrong, but was surprised he was being called on it.
“Did you ask? Do you know this Pokémon?”
His eyes widened as he started to realize that this wasn’t going to be shrugged off, that hesitation meant he didn’t respond fast enough to the question and Molly barreled on.
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t ask me if you could play with my Pokémon, you didn’t ask for permission from Char here either. You just treated him like your personal playground without regard for his feelings.”
He flinched at that, and Molly kept going. She knew from history how far she could push this and she was getting close to making him cry. She’d have to stop soon if she wanted this to work.
“Would it be fun if Char here climbed all over you? Well he’d probably crush you but I imagine that isn’t fun either.”
This was how you dealt with them, you gave them a chance to realize their mistake, and made an example of the ones who failed that basic task. The rest would remember this moment, even if they weren’t the one in trouble they knew that might have been them. It had the flaw where the example might double down on their behavior but you couldn’t help human nature.
“What do you say?”
He sniffled, proving he wasn’t about to double down like some did. If he had, Molly would have dragged him to his teacher and used him as a tool in her revenge.
“Sorry.”
He directed it to Char so she gave him a nod and let go of his bag.
“Good man, now head home.”
She wasn’t perfect at handling kids, she was good at it in her own way, but she wasn’t willing to go the extra mile. She was happy with an imperfect lesson, so long as it was brief. One of the children who had stopped when she told them, thought fast and spoke quickly.
“Can I ride your Pokémon?”
She nodded and watched as he repeated the same question to Char, and then picked him up and put him in a secure position, Dante would catch him if he did something dumb like swandive off Char. She started moving towards that one teacher before anyone else could ask.
Part of the trick was to reward the smart ones.
Molly enjoyed the smug sensation she felt in her soul for the rest of the patrol. The teacher had fallen for every verbal trap she had left open.
“You mean that was acceptable behavior?”
“Char is a 6th Badge tier Pokémon, a Police vest is not enough to be sure and if you are teaching children that I will be making a note for my superiors.”
She didn’t end up making a note, John would just try to organize a school trip in the four days before she left to start her Pokémon Journey just to spite her for his soon to be destroyed French press. Doing it in front of parents not subtly listening in was enough, overkill but she had seen too many bad teachers and this guy had all the red flags she learnt to spot.
She called in returning from her patrol, slid off Char who promptly yawned and returned himself. A quick walk to return her gear and made her way to John’s office to return Char’s Pokeball. The man in question looked all too eager to use Molly as an excuse to get out of doing more paperwork. Officially he was doing his job and teaching her, in practice the man never got to battle very often and he wanted to beat her around and call it productive work. Not that Molly cared, John was fair and used some of the department Pokémon not his personal team. John got some stress relief, Molly got to battle a competent trainer using Pokémon on par with Dante and the department Pokémon got training against a ghost.
Win win win, for all parties.
The Police building had a backyard with an arena for officers to practice in on their breaks or after their shifts. It was only rated to 2nd Badge combat any higher and you needed more safety precautions than patch of dirt had. Dante was all but humming on the walk down there, in a rare moment where he wasn’t in Molly’s shadow.
While Molly didn’t care, Dante was well aware of the suspicion many had for ghost Pokémon and kept out of sight of the public when Molly was out and about. He didn’t care for his Pokeball and instead would ride along in her shadow, enjoying rest where he would prevent Molly from taking any if she was working. She was convinced John had got him to do it, but didn’t want to see his face if she accused him. She knew that smug look too well.
“You ready?”
John called from his end of the field, the Pokeball in his hand could be anything.
“To crush you like always?”
Molly surveyed the terrain as she lied through her teeth. It hadn't rained in a few days so it might be dusty, Dante didn’t have a way to kick up a dust storm yet but John’s Pokémon might. Nothing else except the burnt out tree Molly had heard plans about getting rid of since she started here and that was outside the boundaries.
He just laughed and threw the Pokeball out. Dante was Molly’s only Pokémon so he didn’t have to wait for her to make up her mind.
“Buizel!” “Dante!”
Molly didn’t throw a Pokeball out, Dante just emerged from the dirt in front of her.
Buizel was one of the more common Pokémon you could expect the Police department to have, they were easy to train, could be used to put out fires or leant to Lifeguards when the beaches got too busy. Water-type moves were also less destructive to property, than say Rock-type. It’s why Fire-type and Electric-type were popular for the police force. The training it’ll have would be focused on search and rescue and fire fighting. Trying to drain it’s internal reservoir of water was pointless as that’s where it’s training would have started, duration was important, output would come with evolution or could be compensated with more Water-types. He’d be able to pull moisture from the air, and with the coast only but a kilometer away there was plenty of it.
“Dante, it’s fast and can deal out damage, but it can’t take a hit. Long haul, bait out Pursuit!”
“Buizel, use Water Sprout on the ground around you and wait for him to emerge.”
Both Pokémon obeyed the orders from their trainers. Well advice in Molly’s case, she didn’t believe in shouting every basic command like evade or tackle. Dante knew what he was meant to do. Long haul was how Molly preferred her fights, slugging matches gave her time to think and her style of battle made it less tiring. Interject when she saw an opening, tell Dante which moves were to prioritize and which he had to look out for, otherwise let the battle play out.
Dante immediately phased through the ground as Buizel turned the torn loose soil, damaged from past battles, into a mud patch all around him. Buizel didn’t even look remotely out of breath, confirming her earlier assumption.
Molly grasped John’s plan in a moment.
"He’s going to use the mud to slow you down Dante!”
It wouldn’t be too severe but Dante had to unphase himself to strike at Buizel, and with the mud all around them some of it would cling to him as he emerged. Fighting ghosts was a lot like dealing with dig, you either used something that could force them out, or started using set up moves like Safeguard or Sword Dance until to force the Ghost to interrupt or lose the battle.
Dante emerged from the mud and Leered at Buizel when it turned, hearing the mud slosh. Dante phased back into the ground before the Water Gun could land. John must have coached Buizel on the way down, because he didn’t shout a command.
It was a good educated guess, but the real intent behind the Water Sprout was to give Buizel an audio cue when Dante emerged. The mud wouldn’t slow Dante down too much as once he rephased it slipped right off him, but the sound the mud made? That’ll give Buizel a moment and it was fast enough to exploit that.
“Use Confuse Ray as well!”
She shouted, trusting Dante would hear her, and then she did her best to counter John’s plan. The field was small enough for it to work.
“----ow a song that gets on everybody’s nerves, everybody’s ner----”
She’d looked over the League Rules once to be sure some of her tactics wouldn’t get her disqualified, and there was no limit on what Trainers could say outside of slurs. She planned to remedy that across her career, so she could die happy knowing she was annoying enough to get a rule changed to stop only her.
And that was the fight, Dante would emerge from the ground and fire off Confuse Ray for a moment, Buizel would twist and fire a Water Gun, Dante would phase back underground, rinse and repeat.
The short term Confuse Rays slowly built up over time to make up for how brief they were. It wasn’t going perfectly for Molly and Dante, Buizel had managed a few hits and once she started singing, John started calling out directions on a clock whenever Dante emerged. When she finished 100 bottles on the wall, she joined in shouting directions. Buizel hadn’t spent enough time with John to know his voice immediately, police Pokémon could be used by anyone and it had the instinct to obey anyone shouting at it in a police uniform.
“Start skipping Dante!”
Skipping being a prearranged move, where Dante would emerge from the ground long enough to be spotted and then diving back down before either side could use a move. It exposed Dante to Water Gun which could damage Dante while phased thanks to the Water-type Energy in the move but without the force from the water it was only chipping away at him, not dealing real damage. The real intent was to force Buizel to keep spinning around.
Soon enough, poor Buizel was struggling with the constant Confuse Rays Dante was using, along with all the spinning around to aim at the Ghost. Molly didn’t call out a command, she trusted Dante to know when to strike.
He emerged from the now thoroughly soaked soil in front of Buizel and smacked both sides of Buizel head using Astonish tanking the Water Gun Buizel fired by reflex and then Shadow Sneaked behind Buizel.
“Pursuit!”
Buizel was fast enough to spin around and use Pursuit, he’d only get faster if Dante tried to phase away but it had flinched and Dante landed the Shadow Sneak, striking Buizel again.
“Hold!”
Dante didn’t dive back into the ground, and was rewarded with Buizel using Pursuit after slowly turning around, too stunned and confused to hear John and Molly shouting different commands at it. Dante promptly used Disable without order from Molly, he’d been instructed to at the start of the fight and he knew the drill.
“Keep up the pressure!”
With that the fight was over, John tried to get Buizel to use Quick Attack and Water Gun, one to reposition and one to fire on Dante however, the Buizel clearly hadn’t been trained for that and the Ghost Shadow Sneaked until John called the fight.
He approached the two while Molly gave her Duskull a well deserved hug and promised him to order a crust only pizza tonight for him.
“Now what did poor Buizel do to deserve that?”
“Exist? Dare to challenge my glorious ghost’s undefeated reign?”
John just laughed, he was well used to Molly’s antics.
“Well done, you two have been practicing since we last battled. I thought the Water Sprout trick and Buizel’s speed would be enough to give you a hard time. Just keep in mind that trick won’t work in every fight, Earthquake will still hurt Dante even if he’s phased. That said, it’ll get you through the first two Gyms.”
“I know, it’s just one of the best tricks we have available right now.”
He shrugged at that, content that his advice had been heard.
“You’ve got it down, the only training you need to do in future is incorporating new moves. Now then, you didn’t take nearly as long as you normally do. Ready for a second round?”
He had one of the department’s Magnemites and a smile on his face.
It was time.
The thought gave her pause, she’d grown accustomed to this routine, her lifestyle here in Daybreak town. She hadn’t had that very often since she came to this world, at best a few months at most. It’ll be another six months before she’d be settling down again, to wait for the next season and it wouldn’t be here.
She’d miss this apartment, it had been the first sign that things were returning to how they used to be, that she wasn’t a child anymore in need of care anymore. Molly had it to herself for two years now, with only her assigned agent in Child Services and John popping in and checking she hadn’t trashed the place. This was the last time she’d see it, the last time she’d lock that door.
There was a weight to that finality that hadn’t existed before she died. The knowledge that things could change and never return to the way it had been, how she wanted it to be. It had existed as a concept in her past life, everyone knew it but felt wanted to acknowledge how fragile existence could be. Now she felt it deep in her bones, the weight that never again could hold.
She spent most of yesterday cleaning, and then the rest walking the city. It was Monday now and her last shift had been on Saturday and John had thrown a small celebration. She hadn’t complained like he expected, not when he surprised her, not when they took photos or gave some speeches, not once, she knew how precious those memories would be now. Besides he brought a lemon cake, that was worth any number of sins.
She wouldn’t be taking that much, she’d donated all the clothes she wasn’t taking and the furniture was here before her. She had six general outfits fit for the outdoors, and one nice set of clothes and shoes for special occasions or if she decided to enter a contest. A mountain of socks and underwear. Two pairs of boots she had broken in, jandals, comfortable shoes for when she was back in civilization. 26 liters of water, three weeks of non perishable food, cooking equipment, camp stove, camp lanterns, camp chair, camp table, camp bed frame, sleeping bag, inflatable pillow, blankets, tent.
As she went down her physical list she had already ticked off, she thought to herself that perhaps that she had more than she first thought. She hadn’t even made it all the way down the list, there was still more to go. The thing was it didn’t look like much when you stared at the unassuming messenger bag she had it all in.
It wasn’t a bag of holding to her endless disappointment, there were simpler solutions to that problem. The answer was repurposing an existing technology, and so enters the Storage Cube. The technology behind how Pokemon fitted inside Pokeballs but with the life support removed, significantly less capacity and massively overpriced. These little cubes could expand to 30 cubic centimeters, or 12 inches cubed roughly, and then you could jam as much as you could so long as you didn’t compromise the seal between the lid and body. Press the button and they shrunk back to their original size and weight, effectively a cube Pokeball that stored stuff not living breathing creatures.
She had six of them, all but one the same size. The exception was a rectangle where she put all her tent and other long objects that couldn’t be folded inside. Six was a ridiculous number, most people would be lucky if they could afford two but she hadn’t broken the bank for this luxury, hell she hadn’t even paid for any of these. While planned obsolescence did exist in some aspects but this was a world where massive chunks of every government had very strong feelings when it came to environmentalism and you couldn’t get away with even a fraction of what Earth companies got away with.
Because of that, these were all hand me downs from her work, still going strong nearing two decades after they were first brought. She had their warrant of fitness checked a week ago and they were good to go for another two years before she had to get another warrant. Normally these would be kept in the family but the department had still managed to ask around for six of them, even with the expectation that they would never get them back. Just for her, a gesture she wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
Unlike Pokeballs which had the patent brought out by everyone everywhere decades ago, Storage Cubes weren’t massively subdized so they cost a nifty two to four grand each if you brought the latest model on sale and not secondhand. Hers could probably go for nine hundred if she was lucky, maybe more. The market could be very competitive since the companies producing them had no incentive to lower their prices, governments had to step in to allow some to reach the public but the vast majority produced were snapped up by freight and other logistic services.
A poke in the back broke up her thoughts.
“Alright, just one more minute Dante. Just gotta close the windows and say goodbye to the old place.”
He shook his body in a no and pointed at a window she had open earlier to air the place out, now closed. She gave him a look, the Duskull was extraordinarily helpful compared to what she had been forewarned to expect, but sometimes he didn’t get it.
“Or we could say goodbye now I guess, you impatient ghost.”
She leant down and swung the bag across her shoulders, checked her pockets for anything out of place, her belt for Dante’s Pokeball, straightened her clothes and took a moment to take in the apartment one final time.
Her goodbye went unspoken, not everything had to be said. Only remembered.
And with that silent goodbye, she took those first steps and started her Pokémon Journey.
Notes:
Author's Note: So yea, I’m doing the thing. This will be the first fiction I’ve written seriously since Primary School, so take it easy on me. Molly is not me, and only loosely based on myself.
Inspiration goes to The Natural by lightningwarrior215, Borne of Caution by Fuggmann and Y'know Nothing Jon Snow! by Umodin. I’m a big fan of The Natural, and wanted to do my own take on the Self-Insert genre.
That said there are elements of each I don’t agree with, or didn’t line up with my personal headcanon, which partly inspired this fic. I could enjoy the writing but sometimes the world building bothered me and I figured why not do it myself, aiming for a fusion of game lore and the anime. I want to do more stuff like the Storage Cubes.
Somethings that won’t be appearing in this fic.
Pokemon team sizes over six: I might change my tune in the future but as of now I’ve got a firm limit in mind.
The Anime Plot: Let’s be honest, Pokemon Movies? Kinda bad. The settings will appear because I kinda love Alamos town and PokeVenice’s aesthetic but if the movie's plot appears they’ll be abridged. Same goes for Ash, he’ll exist but probs not appear.
Metaknowledge from the anime/game: Molly gets whatever I can remember of the anime, so most of the movie plots roughly and a bunch of random assortments of stuff, and then muddled a bit more since I watched them about a decade ago and that’s nearing two decades ago for Molly. Same with game knowledge, I overleveled my starter growing up, I don’t know anything cool.
The Imperial System: I’ll try to include some conversions but no promises.
Smoothed over Departure from Earth: Molly got issues and it may have been nine years since she’s arrived, she’s not over it. She’s also kinda a dick.
Probably some more stuff I can’t think of but this author note is getting long, updates whenever I write. Still getting in the swing, I make no promises.
Chapter Text
There had been a nervous tension in her body when she took those first few steps, Butterfree in the stomach. She wondered if that was a sign that she wasn't the first to be reincarnated to this world, or perhaps it was just that humanity wasn't very creative. She didn't want to think about either of those two too hard, but regardless she had been nervous. Had been.
It was hard to stay nervous when she had been on a bus for the last six hours; the overnight bus from Sunyshore City to Hearthome City, it had arrived in Daybreak town at 1pm and was expected to arrive in Hearthome at 4am the next day. It wasn't as fast as she was used to from Earth, the roads in Sinnoh were significantly less developed than New Zealand's, which frankly said a lot, New Zealand roads were pretty terrible sometimes. Still it could be a lot worse, she thought to herself, she could be walking.
Molly shuddered to herself with that thought, the Butterfree in her stomach making a dramatic return. That trip at her pace could take two weeks if she was lucky, and three if she wasn't. She had six months before the season ended and she had to get two badges to keep her sponsorship, she had no intention of wasting any time whatsoever. The sponsorship covered off season too and she spent two years getting it so she had no intention of giving it up now.
It was a lot of money, $250 every week for three years straight. Molly was not playing games with that kind of cash on the line. The six month deadline hung above her head at every moment but still, thinking about it wouldn't help.
Hearthome City had a lot of opportunities for her, for a start Fantina who she vaguely remembered from Pokémon Pearl ran the Gym there which meant it was a Ghost-type Gym. The sponsorship had a clause that if she became a Gym Trainer, it would pay out in full. She didn't think she would be able to pull that off or particularly wanted to be a Ghost-type trainer, but it was pretty common to go to Gyms to ask for help with a particular type, it's why they were called Gyms afterall. She wanted to go and do a few of the courses they offered anyway, Dante had been struggling with a limited Move pool for a while now and neither of them could overcome that hurdle yet. Ghost-type Pokémon were rare and none of the resources she had found in Daybreak Library were particularly helpful, Hearthome Gym was her best option in that regard.
That said, this early in the Season Fantina would be swamped with trainers, so chances are Molly would be dealing with Gym Trainers instead if she attended those courses. Which is why it was always good to be achieving multiple goals instead of one. Outside of the distant hope of becoming a Gym Trainer, Hearthome City was dead center in between three different Gyms geographically, which gave her options for four different Gyms when it came time to get her first two badges. She could challenge Fantina and hope that Dante was as strong as John promised her he was, catch the bus to Veilstone City and rely on Dante being immune to Fighting-type moves, take the week long hike to Oreburgh City and take a Gym fight where she had no particular advantage, or head down Pastoria City and challenge the Water-type Gym. Of all of these, the latter is the one she was least inclined for, Gyms could be challenged in any order excluding Sunyshore Gym but her last battle with John proved that without a solid ranged option Dante struggled in fights where he couldn't exploit his phasing, and the Water-type Gym would deny him solid ground to phase through.
No, she'd head to Eterna City or Canalave City before challenging Pastoria's Gym, unless she got some new Pokémon that changed things. Which despite the feeling in her gut was her first step, from Hearthome City she could head out onto Route 209 and start hunting for new Pokémon. Route 209 had two of the three Pokémon Molly had her eyes on, the Swablu in that area was particularly strong and ever since she flew on an Altaria she'd known she must have one. It's the fluff, it's just so impossibly comfortable, it looks like cotton but feels like what you imagine a cloud would feel like. Molly had to get a Swablu, she had no intention of walking everywhere for the rest of her life, and mundane transportation was incredibly slow thanks to less infrastructure being required. So long as trucks could get in, or you had some kind of harbour, no one would complain, roads were for cities without tram lines, not towns silly. Maddening for Molly but she couldn't deny the results, Pokémon World inhabitants were fit, they had to be, you couldn't drive down to the grocery store after all.
Aside from a Swablu, Molly wanted two other Pokémon, Mareep which didn't appear on Route 209 and Eevee. Buying an Eevee on the market could cost you upwards of fifty thousand so she wasn't going to get one from the market barring divine intervention, which left two options, connections or just catching one herself. Molly had tried the former but unsurprisingly she hadn't had much luck on that front, thus she spent hours talking to numerous trainers about where she could find one and the most reliable answer she got was miles off track of Route 209, there was a population of Eevee that hadn't been caught. The fact that no less than three trainers had informed her of this over a four year period made her a touch nervous that the population of Eevee might have been tapped but she was willing to spend three of her very precious weeks investigating for any sign of Eevee.
Two weeks, she'd spend two weeks in Hearthome City to expand Duskull's move pool; she needed Night Shade and Mean Look, before she set out hunting a Swablu and Eevee.
It was quarter to five when the bus finally pulled into Hearthome City, Molly had slept through whatever delayed them so she wasn't entirely sure why. She didn't have to wait for luggage, she'd kept her bag on her. So she set out immediately, she had a schedule for the next five months and she intended to keep it.
First destination, the first Pokecenter she could find. She need accommodation for the next two weeks and while trainers in their first season were allocated a month of free accommodation in Pokecenters to be used as they pleased, Molly had been forewarned to expect the Pokecenters in Cities with Gyms to be packed to the rafters with trainers hoping to get their first badge this Season early. No, the real reason she was going to the Pokecenter was because they were open 24/7, and they would be able to direct her to everywhere she had to be today, a reputable hostel, the library, training fields frequented by trainers on her level, the Gym and somewhere good to eat. She was starving.
It was still dark out, the sun had yet to peak over the horizon, any minute now the first rays of light would light the night sky but for now, she'd enjoy it. She wasn't a morning person, if she had her way she'd never be one but moments like this almost made her want to give into Dante.
Almost.
It wasn't a long walk to find a Pokecenter, walk in any direction long enough and you'd find a sign that would tell you where to go. She'd gotten one of the smaller ones, the distinctive building you could find in the four Nihon regions. A city like this would have a larger one that served as a hospital as well as a Pokecenter but for her purposes any of them would work. The building's front had been plastered in a veritable blockage of no vacancy notices, Molly wondered how many people ignored those and still asked.
It was a male Joy manning the counter, the men of the Joy Clan typically went into business or research. Traditionally they worked as gardeners, or herbalists, collecting the herbs and berries needed for their clan's medicine and producing the medicine the female members of their clan would use to treat patients. They did subvert expectations since it was the males who were expected to cook, clean and maintain the home and clinic as part of their tasks. While some elements of that tradition still existed, times had changed and better agriculture techniques meant they had less work compared to their counterparts, so they had transitioned to running the business side of the Joy Clan. Appraisal, and trade of Pokemon, breeding, teaching, managing property and supply chains for Pokecenters and when demand had increased dramatically as the population boomed. Many started to become Nurse Joys themselves, demand breaking down the gender roles so strictly enforced culturally by their clan. That said it was still uncommon for a female Joy to break that barrier so they still had further to go but it was undeniable that the Joy Clan had been a forefront of medical research for years and throughout their history had offered their aid without strings or caveats.
The Joy looked up as if hearing her thoughts as she approached the desk.
"I'm sorry but we're currently booked full, no vacancy."
Molly thought that answered how many people read the signs.
"I saw the signs, I assume it's the same at the other Pokecenters?"
"Ah yes, we will be getting updates…. In four hours to see which Pokecenters have room but until then I can't help you."
"That's fine, I'm planning on staying in town for a few weeks and wanted something more permanent. Could you give me a recommendation for a trustworthy hostel?"
He looked relieved at that, and the tension in his shoulders went out as he relaxed to a more comfortable position. He fumbled around in the drawers attached to the desk.
"Yes we have pamphlets.. Somewhere… With a list of hostels that the League recommends, you said a few weeks? Are you planning on challenging the Gym?"
Molly shook her head at the last query. The Joy was still digging through piles of paper.
"I wanted to do some of the courses on training Ghost-type Pokémon at the Gym but I don't plan on challenging it yet."
"Found it!"
He brandished a pamphlet above his head, it was vaguely stained in what smelled like coffee and handed it over. Molly gave it a brief glance, it was fairly well done. A list of hostels, their prices and on the back a map that gave directions from how to get to the Gym from each hostels.
"Sorry, we've been handing them out to everyone and we haven't had the chance to print more off yet."
Molly just shrugged. The coffee stain hardly mattered after months of scanning faded documentation at the Police Station.
"If it's training you're after then I'd recommend the Spring Hotel, they offer a discount to first season trainers and their prices for one person rooms are reasonable. They're fairly close to the training fields new trainers are recommended to use as well."
"Sounds perfect, can I keep this pamphlet or do you have a map of the city?"
"We have maps, now then is there anything else you need help with?"
Molly was pretty happy with herself, she'd gotten a room at the Spring Hotel, had a shower, changed into the outfit she kept for wearing in cities and taken advantage of their free breakfast. She was keeping to her schedule so far, which did a fair bit to sate the feeling in her gut. She'd been told that trying to get into the Gym right now was a fool's errand but the Gym shared resources with the Delian Library; they named them after former champions in Sinnoh, so that was her first stop. From there she had as much time as she was willing to spend at the library.
She started with the ol reliable, walking up to the front desk and asking for directions. Works every time.
She started skimming books, and it wasn't looking good. For a start, the most useful advice she had gotten was in a manual by Morty; Gym Leader of Ecruteak City: "Ghosts are difficult to train and what works for one may not work for others." It was a summarized version of his much longer spiel on how training Ghosts could not be generalized, each Ghost would require its own approach. Molly had written this advice off when she first read it but after another hour of research she was starting to realize what had brought Morty to that conclusion.
None of the manuals she had in front of her agreed on anything.
There were common elements certainly, Ghosts are dangerous, Ghosts will play pranks on you, Ghosts weren't spirits and instead something new that formed from people and Pokémon dying. They agreed on the core traits of the Pokémon but how you were meant to handle them could vary completely, Agatha of the Indigo Elite Four recommended using a stronger Pokémon to beat down any would be tricksters, while Phoebe of the Hoenn Elite Four advised being too adorable and cute for Ghosts to prank you without feeling bad.
None of which was useful by the way since Dante didn't play tricks. Molly had to deal with a Pokémon trying their best to be generally helpful, not actively working against her or refusing to train. Dante ate her pizza crusts and made sure she was on time to work, not any of the long list of possible pranks and how to prevent them. This explained why all the resources at Daybreak's Library weren't helpful, she thought it was just a poor selection of material but now she was starting to see that training Ghosts was both a metaphorical nightmare and sometimes an actual Nightmare.
Well that kills becoming a Ghost-type trainer.
She hadn't planned on it since she brought it up to Dante once and he had shook his head for entire minutes until she said she wouldn't do it a few dozen times. Still this wasn't a complete waste of time, she had made notes of Duskull's evolutionary process. Once he evolved into a Dusclops, the advice had been fairly unanimous that she needed to let him grow into that state until he was ready, and then track down a Reaper Cloth, which were pieces of cloth someone had died on, preferably murdered and the more gruesome the better. Large pieces worked best but the difference was only in how quickly they would evolve, a smaller piece could work if the death was gruesome and if the cloth was the murder weapon it worked even faster.
Molly really didn't want to meet whoever did the research on that particular topic.
Well Ghost-type manuals were a bust for her current problem and she didn't want to resort to Technical Machines quite yet. TMs didn't teach moves like the game would suggest, they instead taught the foundation of a move, and the trainer and Pokémon would have to work off that. They were best for moves that weren't the same type as the Pokémon or for Molly's current roadblock where they needed something to push them over their current roadblock.
Still if Ghost-type manuals weren't going to help, she could try more general trainer manuals, she might have narrowed her search down too fast.
The advice her research had turned up was to overcome a challenge. Find someone who is stronger than you but not impossible to beat and fight them. Which was how she found herself in the training fields taking one challenger after another. Finding people to fight her was easy, she walked into a training field and shouted.
"Fifty bucks if someone can beat my Pokémon and has one or less badges."
It had gotten a bit of interest, but what really got people's interest was when she slapped the $25 she'd gotten from the first challenger down and shouted.
"Seventy-five dollars if someone can beat my Pokémon and has one or less badges."
The pile was just over two-hundred dollars now; the losers had to pay her half the pot if they lost, and Dante had beaten four different challengers now. She was starting to understand why John had told her that she could get two badges easily now, these guys sucked. Their Pokémon weren't bad, in the hands of someone like John she imagined they could have given her a harder fight but on a tactical level they had no idea what they were doing. She'd feel bad if this wasn't the city with the Ghost-type Gym, really she was doing these guys a favour.
Her fifth challenger had been doing a bit better than the rest, until she pulled out her notebook and started reviewing the advice she had copied down. He promptly lost his cool and gave a bad order that Dante had exploited almost immediately. She gave the fight a quick look, Dante hadn't even taken a hit yet but her opponent's Cacnea was looking very confused. It was kind of disappointing, Cacnea could learn Dark-type moves so she'd been hoping it'll give Dante a run for Molly's money.
Maybe if I go for endurance, take on ten challengers in a row.
Molly's thoughts were interrupted by a tap on her shoulder. It was an older woman, her pale blue hair was kept short under a Breton hat, her clothing was practical wear and her boots well worn. If Molly had to guess she was one of these kid's older siblings who were on their third or fourth season, or a Ranger on a Gym Holiday. The older woman had finished her own examination of Molly and gave her a nod.
"I'm not interested in the money but I've got three badges and a new Pokémon I'm trying to bring up to speed for my fight with Fantina, you interested?"
"Ranger?"
She nodded, Molly's second guess had been right.
"Sure, I'm trying to give Dante here a workout after all."
Both Molly and the Ranger looked at the field where the recently defeated Cacnea was still being shouted at by his trainer to stand up.
"I believeeeeeee in you Toppy!"
It wasn't working.
Molly took this fight a lot more seriously than she had taken the last five, Rangers weren't a joke to fight. You had to have three badges to be accepted for Ranger Training and they had careers where they were giving their Pokémon in practical experience, every single day. Plus they spent the vast majority of their downtime away from society and were left with whatever they had brought with them for entertainment and battling their coworkers. The Rangers Corps had a bad rap among trainers but Molly was inclined to believe that may be because trainers got yelled at by them when they made a mistake. If this woman had been given a holiday during one of the busiest periods every year it meant her superiors thought she meant business.
Molly was at a disadvantage here in more ways than one, her tactics had been revealed in the last few fights, her opponent had years of practice on her and Dante had just fought five battles in a row. Needless to say, it was going exactly as planned.
She had gathered a fair bit of an audience by this point and someone had volunteered to act as a referee. No idea why she had but Molly had looked at the Ranger and she shrugged so they had a ref now. They both had blinked when the girl had pulled out a Pokeball and released a Ralts which she said could put up a weak barrier. Molly would never complain about safety precautions but she was surprised to see such a rare Pokémon.
They both turned and looked at the ref and she flinched before stuttering some words out.
"Will both sides choose their Pokémon?"
The words sounded more like a polite request than a demand. Molly didn't move, Dante just emerged in front of her. The Ranger pulled a Pokeball off her belt and whispered a few words before tossing it out.
It was a Shellos, the pink kind which meant they came from the West Sea. Molly wasn't sure they could even learn Dark-type moves so she didn't have anything to warn Dante about. She had a list of every Pokémon that could learn Dark-type Moves in one of her notebooks, but that one was in a Storage Cube. She didn't think she'd be battling today.
"This battle will be a one on one, there will be no substitutes. Let the battle betwee--"
She had started so strong and suddenly looked sheepishly at the two of them.
"Molly." "Steph."
"Let the battle between Molly and Steph begin!"
Molly immediately focused on the battle before her, Steph had plenty of time to observe Dante's tactics before requesting a battle so she had to have some kind of plan.
"Probing!"
She needed information before she settled on a tactic, Dante wouldn't commit to a strategy and launch his attacks when he thought it was necessary or there was something to exploit. The whole point of this was to see how the other trainer would react to Molly's Duskull spending most of the fight underground.
"Water gun!"
It was quick and well aimed which told Molly that Steph had put some time in training that, but it hardly mattered Dante had already phased below ground. A few moments and he had yet to emerge so Steph would be responding to that any second now.
"Start Hardening Pinky!"
Molly hesitated for a moment as she internally judged Steph for her naming practices before shouting her own command.
"Disable."
Now the question was, how would she respond to her set up being denied. If she didn't have an answer, Molly had this one in the bag, Shellos was significantly slower than the Buizel John had used.
A few moments dragged out until it was apparent that Steph didn't have a plan to deal with Disable, and Dante emerged behind Shellos and used Astonish before fading back below before the Shellos had finished spinning around, the Water Gun it charged up hitting nothing but air. And that was the exact moment Steph threw a wrench in Molly's plan.
"Use Recover and then start Hardening again."
Molly wasn't sure what the exact interaction Recover and Disable had but the grey light that soon started coming off Pinky told her that it acted as a purge of some kind.
"Confuse Ray, three quarters, take opportunities to attack when you can."
Three quarters referred to how much Dante needed to prioritize using the move over dodging. Full would mean tank and use the skill. It wasn't a long term solution but it gave Molly time to think of one without throwing the fight.
Her mind whirled as she thought through her options. As she did, a real fight emerged, not Dante and Molly's standard fare of hit and phase. Dante couldn't use phasing to reposition himself if he wanted to Confuse Ray to have any effect in the next five minutes, so he had to dodge the Shellos' Water Guns the normal way and only occasionally dipped below ground when he needed cover.
Steph had only instructed Pinky to keep using Water Gun which meant two things, first she didn't want a Pokémon that spent a lot of time Hardening but was very confused, and secondly, she was happy with how the fight was going currently. Her Shellos had some wicked aim and even with Dante's Confuse Ray she was still landing hits.
Molly had decided on her three options, she could resort to her standard tactics and let Steph use Recover to purge Disable and then just reapply it. Harden scaled based on how much time you spent Hardening not how many times you used it. If she did that, she turned the match into a long haul where her win condition was forcing Shellos to use Recover until it couldn't anymore and then Disabling Harden and going back to comfortable ground. The issue was in that Dante had just fought five fights and while they might have been easy, fighting was still tiring. She had trained Dante for endurance but he had put in a good thirty minutes of fighting already with very short breaks.
Her second option was exhausting Shellos' internal water reservoir and then use Shadow Sneak and phasing to gain a speed advantage and use hit and run tactics again but this time force Shellos to come to Dante as he used Confuse Ray and ran away from her. The issue with this one was about the same as the last solution and that this Shellos had some good aim so Dante might go down before it ran out of Water.
No, she'll have to go with her third option: All out attack.
"Dante block out the sun!"
There were a few neat things about Shadow Sneak, firstly you didn't have to be in contact with your shadow to use it and secondly, you could choose where you emerge from your shadow. Dante's position blocking out the sun meant he was casting a wide shadow with plenty of options to choose from. You could do this normally but the wider the area you covered with the shadow with Shadow Sneak the longer it took. Blocking out the sun meant that Dante didn't have to expand his shadow at all to cover a wide area.
The second advantage? Poor Pinky had to stare at the sun to shoot at Dante.
Dante sneaked down from his position, hit Pinky and picked up some mud and threw it in Shellos' face before dodging the Water Gun and flying back to his earlier position. It didn't hurt but it did piss little Pinky off and the Pokémon squinting at the sun behind Dante fired a Water Gun. Dante promptly all but teleported next to Pinky the second the move left her mouth and punched her in the gut before flying away again.
It was working and Steph knew it.
"Use Ancient Power but make a big umbrella over you!"
"Astonish and keep hitting her until she stops building an umbrella!"
"Take the hits until it's up and then reposition and use a Water Gun whenever you see the Ghost, otherwise Recover."
Soon enough the umbrella was covering a wide circle above the Shellos and Dante had to reveal himself to it's aim before he could Shadow Sneak since he couldn't phase through the rocks thanks to the Rock-type energy keeping them afloat. Molly was impressed that the Shellos could keep the umbrella up and use Recover or fire Water Gun. Her impression so far was that Shellos was being trained to fight for long haul fights but at range, keep the opponent constantly moving with Ancient Power while firing quick Water Guns to deal chip damage over time while using Recover to heal any return fire.
The solution Steph came up with to counter the sun plan was good, but it had one glaring flaw. Dante could Shadow Sneak through shadows that weren't his and the umbrella was casting a wide shadow.
"Dante, abuse Shadow Sneak to dodge and attack."
Steph looked confused at that but quickly muttered what Molly assumed was a curse under her breath when she saw how quickly Dante was moving under the umbrella.
"Drop the roof and use Recover!"
"Below ground now!"
She had made her choice then.
"Disable Recover and then go back to the Sun Plan."
The battle hadn't gone much longer after that, Dante would Sneak from his position and hit Pinky whenever she tried to make a move and it had taken damage from dropping Ancient power on itself and without being able to use Recover it wasn't able to endure the barrage.
Soon enough Steph called the fight, Dante looked exhausted but he wasn't hurt all too badly while Pinky was both abused and exhausted. Steph had committed too much to a plan that didn't pay out.
They didn't do the trainer thing where they walked onto the field and shook hands, the field was covered in mud and rocks. They walked around the field and shook hands. Steph was the first to break the respectable silence they had going on.
"It was a good fight, if I had known that Shadow Sneak could be used like that I wouldn't have gone with the umbrella idea."
Molly just shrugged at that, Move interactions could be weird and then repeated that thought aloud.
"Pokémon Moves are weird, I didn't know Recover could purge Disable like that."
She actually started rummaging through her bag for her general notebook and started writing that one down, in the corner of her eye Steph nodded.
"Yea it depends on how strong the Pokémon are in comparison to each other, if I was using one of my stronger Pokémon your Disable wouldn't last long enough to matter but if your Duskull was stronger, Pinky's Recover wouldn't have removed it."
Molly looked up and nodded before jolting that down too in her notebook, it was good to know. John had used strong Pokémon on her before but they had always overpowered Dante before any of her fancy tactics could do anything. Raw strength was always a good answer to clever tactics.
"You get that workout you're after kid?"
Molly finished writing down her notes before looking back at Steph and shook her head.
"We're stuck on learning new Moves, he can't seem to get any new Moves no matter what we do and all the advice I had found wasn't helpful."
"So you went looking for something to challenge your Duskull, it's a good plan. How about this, you and me get our Pokémon checked up at the Pokecenter and grab some lunch? I'll give you some advice if you can give me some tips on Ghost-type."
"I can't say I'll be all too helpful but I do want lunch."
"Uhhh... "
They both whirled and looked at the girl who served as their ref. Up close Molly started noticing more details, her long hair was a vibrant deep red and was currently being played with by the Ralts she held in between her arms. Her stylized straw hat, sundress and sandals accompanied by a belt with one Pokeball and a purse completed the look that screamed to Molly as a shy rich kid.
Her hair actually kind of annoyed Molly, she was reborn into a world with thousands of hair and eye colours and she had ended up with grey hair and grey eyes, while being surrounded by people with bright hair colours that required none of the upkeep dye had. She looked prematurely grey surrounded by people like Steph here with cool blue hair.
She hesitated, she was surprisingly skittish but quickly powered through.
"CouldIcomewithyou!"
Molly and Steph looked at each other.
The cafe they had chosen was on the list of places the Joy had given her all those hours ago. It sold oven baked pizza and Molly had ordered an entire large pizza with no toppings, cheese or sauce for Dante which had raised a few eyebrows and then ordered a small River Special which was smoked river Magikarp, some kind of white sauce, and a sprinkling of red onion and dill along with an iced tea. It was surprisingly hot out, she might need to get a hat like the other two people at her table outside. She kind of wanted a beret but that didn't really help with the sunshine.
The silence was eating at the other two, Steph clearly didn't know where to start a conversation, the newly introduced Lucy was far too nervous and Molly? She was too busy enjoying the other two's social inability to help. They had done well on the way to the Pokecenter and when they were deciding where to eat, but she'd been keeping count, it had been roughly forty seconds since they had placed their orders and they hadn't said a word since.
It was kind of beautiful in it's own way. The side glances, the fidgeting Ralts on Lucy's lap.
Lucy cracked first and looked at Molly and spewed out a question.
"Howdoyoustaycalmlikethat!"
Molly just looked at her and waited for something at a reasonable pace.
"Um, how do you stay calm in fights like that?"
She said significantly slower than she had before. Molly yawned as she thought over an answer that wasn't, I'm extremely stressed over a time limit I have over my head or I've died and everything else in comparison is kind of easy. Both were varying degrees of heavy for a first meeting.
"It's how I battle, I don't shout out every command like dodge it and so on. I've trained Dante so I don't have to, which lets me focus on strategy."
Steph jumped onto that opening proving how uncomfortable she had been with the silence to Molly's amusement.
"I did notice that you were doing something like that. Who taught you to battle like that? It's an interesting style."
"Last fight wasn't really a good example of my style but are either of you two familiar with the Cadet Program the Police run?"
Lucy shook her head and Steph made a noise that presumably meant something but Molly had no idea. She looked at Lucy.
"It's a sponsorship program they run where you work as a junior officer and do a bunch of grunt work. My boss would send me on patrols with his starter which is 6th Badge level and it was established to me very early on that he was in charge and I was there to write reports and call in incidents since he couldn't talk or write."
She smiled, it hadn't even been a full 24-hours and she was starting to miss Char. John not so much.
"I just got used to the idea that I didn't have to give a command for everything and that stuck when I started training Dante."
Molly didn't elaborate any further.
"But that doesn't help if you can't stay calm, it just gives you time to think."
Molly paused at that, that was fair and she hadn't really expected it from her. Steph spoke before she could.
"This is your guys first season right? Molly probably practiced during her Cadet program but how many battles have you been in Lucy? Ten or less right?"
They had obediently nodded at each question directed their way and Steph continued on.
"People will say they have all kinds of tricks and no disrespect to Molly here but they're all bullshit. It's too fast right? Everything is moving fast and you can't keep up. It's one reaction after the other. You were watching and I'm sure you saw how Molly wouldn't hesitate when something changed, her style gives her time to think but it doesn't explain her reaction speed. No offense again."
Molly shrugged, she wasn't wrong after all. She had her eyes on the waiter moving their way with their drinks.
"Nah, you want the real secret to success? Just keep battling people, when I look back I remember being in your exact position but I didn't find some trick to deal with it, it just became easier after I fought more battles."
The conversation broke up when the waiter brought around their drinks. Molly was enjoying her lemon ice tea when Steph looked at her.
"You said you were struggling with your Ghost learning new Moves right?"
"Yea I don't know what's holding us back, I was busy most of the time with my Cadet program which only ended… Three days ago, so I haven't really had time to work on it till now. I don't know what to do, I just kinda assumed he'd learn more Moves as we trained, that's how he got Shadow Sneak."
Molly paused to take a sip from her drink, the straw was metal. She hadn't actually ever seen a plastic one in all her time here.
"I went to the library earlier today but all the advice for Ghost-types was for keeping them in line and how to use them in fights. Not how to teach them new Moves and the general trainer advice told me to go challenge something stronger than you when you start to reach a plateau. So I did that so I wouldn't have to buy a TM."
They both looked completely baffled at that.
"Molly, how many moves does he know?"
She had to pause and count, she had never thought about how many he had.
"Five? Five."
"You haven't had him too long right?"
It was Lucy this time, which tipped Molly off that her problem might be really bad.
"Only… Three years…"
"Molly, I hatched Pinky from an egg three months ago and she already knows six Moves."
"Oh no…"
She was watching Dante eat his pizza, actually everyone was watching Dante eat his pizza. Ghosts are rare and Dante was adorable, she told them not to cut his pizza and he was holding the entire thing with both arms, it was nearly as long as his arms length and he took small bites before savouring the moment with a look of pure bliss. Molly had no idea why he enjoyed eating pizza crusts so much and frankly she was starting to wonder what they tasted like since it had been two years since they had found how much he loved them and she hadn't had one since.
"Duuuskuuu."
God the noises he made were adorable, she needed to reward him more often. It was excellent distraction material from her failures as a Pokémon Trainer weighing on her mind.
Molly had never once told Dante to practice one Move repeatedly, she ran a bunch of experiments on every Move, that was how she found out about the shadow trick with Shadow Sneak. But training one Move? Why….? There were better ways to spend her time training in her mind, going over tactics, building endurance, speed training, throwing rocks practice, throwing balls at Dante to help him practice his phasing on command, dodging practice… She was starting to see where she had gone wrong just assuming he would learn stuff as they went.
Lucy had gone into detailed explanation about how practicing Moves would give Pokémon experience in controlling the various types of energy inside of them. If she had him practice Leer over and over, he might have learnt how to use Mean Look since they had similar roots. If she had him practice Shadow Sneak he'd be able to expand his shadow faster and cover more ground. Molly's issue was that she saw Moves like something from a game, they had hard-set limits and that's all they would ever achieve in those boundaries. She spent her time working around limitations, trying to exploit loopholes instead of just improving the Move until it had less limitations.
It wasn't a complete nightmare, as Steph had reassured her. She had learnt how to battle really well thanks to her trying to create more options with a severely limited Move set. And internally Molly thought that thinking about Moves asymmetrically was how she found the trick with Shadow Sneak.
They had asked her how she had missed something so basic; and she had plans to ask John why he'd never pointed it out at some point, but the food had arrived and she used that as an excuse to end the topic. Dante was a great distraction.
The truth was she had probably just missed it, she had skipped so many years of education via testing out and she didn't get to do much on the basics of Pokémon, they would have gone into advanced stuff like actually training Pokémon in latter classes but the ones she had been in focused on stuff like learning the names of every Pokémon and the Type-chart. She was only two years ahead in subject and along with how often she had moved growing up, the curriculum she had gone through was rather spotty.
"When exactly do they teach you about how to train Pokémon?"
Both Steph and Lucy turned away from Dante who had now made a crescent moon from his pizza and was working his way down from the top.
"They started when I was twelve? I think."
Steph just nodded at Lucy's answer, never really taking her eyes off Molly.
"Sounds about what I remember, why you asking kid?"
"I graduated highschool when I was ten, that'll be why I never found out and I never bothered to read the basic training manuals."
She had assumed her problem was something medical or to do with Ghost-types in particular. It just never really seemed like an issue because she rarely lost battles and only so far to John.
"So what, you've been doing that Cadet program for the last four years?"
"Last two, I went and did a two year course on Archaeology first at Southern Shore University."
Much like their longer school years, so were their semesters. One of the areas where she thought they had made a mistake when compared to the Earth equivalent. It had been... Stressful.
"You graduated four years early and had a degree by twelve!?"
Lucy looked gobsmacked and Steph wasn't too far behind, Molly wanted to feel proud of the fact but in truth it had always bugged her how long she took to get out of school. She was twenty possibly twenty-nine years depending on how you measured it; she hadn't decided which she was comfortable with, four years felt far too long for someone her age.
"But how did you graduate if you didn't finish the Pokémon classes?"
Molly just gave her a look.
"I went to university when I was ten Lucy, no one was going to hold me back because I hadn't finished the Pokémon classes."
The two of them fell silent at that and resumed eating their food. Molly wiped the crumbs off Dante's face before cutting off the crusts on her pizza and handing them over.
She was hoping to get a nap soon but it looked like she was heading back to the library.
Notes:
Authors Note: I'm hoping Molly doesn't look too dumb for this mistake, I wanted something to show off how she thought about training differently.
Chapter Text
They had agreed to meet up again tomorrow at 10am, which meant Dante had woken Molly up at 8:30am. She moaned, she groaned but sure enough she arrived at the park and found a bench and went right back to sleep. She had only stopped studying basic textbooks meant for children at 7pm ish… And crawled into bed at 9pm, so a sixteen hour day and it was hard she refused to be shamed for it.
Soon enough Molly was rudely awoken by her Ghost with no appreciation for how much sleep she needed. Both Steph and Lucy were eying her with a strange look.
"Not a morning person huh?"
Molly squinted her eyes at Steph and then yawned as her answer, and then gave an actual answer.
"My bus pulled into town at like 5am yesterday and I hadn't slept well on it."
"Molly you didn't sleep overnight in this park right?"
"What kind of impression do you have of me Lucy? I slept in a hotel room."
Dante took this opportunity to press the lidcup of her thermos into her hands, she didn't know why she had the world's most helpful Ghost in existence but she wasn't about to complain, she just enjoyed the oversteeped black tea.
She stood, yawned once more and then looked at the two standing before her.
"Right then I owe you some advice on fighting Ghosts."
They had relocated to a nearby training ground and found an empty spot to start off their training session.
"Before we start on fighting Ghosts, let's get your Duskull practicing moves first. What moves do you want him to learn?"
"Will-O-Wisp, Night Shade and Mean Look, in that order."
Molly quickly responded, she barely had to think about it, there was so much she could do with those moves.
"Umm Molly, could you explain why those Moves in particular? I'm curious how you would use them."
It was a fair question and it didn't take a lot of thought.
"Will-O-Wisp gives us something that deals damage over time without tiring Dante. We can just use that and then have him phase away until they collapse. If they don't have an answer to phasing, we just win. Night Shade gives us a ranged option, which lets us have more options during hit and phase combat and gives us a counter to Flying-types since Dante has to either confuse them or hit them when they try to hit him. And I want Mean Look for when we go and try to catch more Pokémon for our team. Plus if we have Will-O-Wisp we can also use Mean Look to prevent people from switching to Pokémon who aren't burnt."
"Solid logic kid, right then I'd recommend going for either Night Shade or Mean Look first. It's harder to learn a Move if your Pokémon doesn't already know a Move with the same type."
Steph set Dante to practicing feeling the energy he used while using Leer; a move Molly rarely had him use since Confuse Ray was a superior status effect in her eyes. Instructing him to use Leer but with the Ghost-type energy he used with Astonish should in theory teach him to use Night Shade. Lucy returned to the picnic table they had claimed after instructing her Ralts to practice using Double Team, the little psychic would turn around and glare at Molly whenever she thought no one was watching. Steph had her team in dodging practice, the little Shellos from yesterday was taking potshots at a Luxio, Staraptor and a big Tangrowth.
"Right then so you want advice for fighting Ghosts? I can't tell you much about what Moves they might use for, ah obvious reasons."
Steph just scoffed at her understatement. Molly pulled out the ring binder she had taken out of one of her Cubes last night and looked out over Steph's team and started hunting for the right entries.
"Right then, Staraptor can learn Thief which is a damaging Dark-type Move, your Luxio should know either Bite or Crunch by this point, it can also learn Thief, Fake Tears and Snarl but you're better off spending time to get type coverage for your other Pokémon, Tangrowth normally learns Knock Off and can learn Thief, Fling, Brutal Swing and Payback. Gastrodon learns Memento at some point and none of your Pokémon can learn Ghost-type moves."
Both Steph and Lucy leaned over to look at the ring binder while Molly talked. It wasn't quite a Pokedex but those had only been announced by Professor Oak a few months ago so she made do.
"You just have a notebook with every single Pokémon and if they can or can't learn Dark or Ghost-type moves?"
"Ah yea? I need to know what I'm sending Dante in to fight… So anyways, that's type coverage down. You don't really have any ranged options so you'll probably land one hit before they take it to range, and they'll never go near your Luxio."
Molly paused for a moment as she collected her thoughts. She never fought a Ghost-type before so she had to go off what she would really hate someone doing.
"The question you need to be asking yourself is what's your answer to phasing. Not every Ghost can phase but the ones who can will be using it, they'll hang low and whenever a move comes their way, dodge into the ground and use it as a cover. Do all your Pokémon know set up Moves?"
"Set up Moves?"
"Molly means stuff like Harden, moves you use when your opponent gives you time, Lucy. Sparks knows Charge and Ivy knows Growth, setting up while you can't see your opponent is standard tactics Molly."
"But can't the Ghosts just do what Molly did and use Disable?"
"Exactly, which is why set up means more than one thing. You can start setting up the terrain in your favour, I'm not sure what the exact interaction between phase and Stun Spore or Poison Powder is but I bet it's not pleasant. Like you fought me yesterday, you had both Recover and Harden and I had to pick one to Disable."
Molly paused to think of what else would seriously annoy her.
"The other trick you can do is use Moves like Ancient Power to make obstacles they can't phase through without hurting themselves. That's why Dante didn't phase through all of Pinky's Water Guns and only unphase to hit her, the Water-type energy in Water Gun would have hurt him. Not nearly as much as getting hit by a Water Gun normally but it still hurts."
"Finally you can just force them to come to you if you can fly, your Staraptor would destroy Dante because he can't fly nearly as fast and Dante doesn't have any ranged Moves. If it knows Double Team you can just spam that and they won't even be able to use the ground for hit and run tactics even if they have a ranged option."
"It's like fighting Dig basically but you have even more options."
"Pretty much yea, if you have a Pokémon with Earthquake too, you can force them out since the Ground-type energy will mess a Ghost up when it wouldn't hurt most Pokémon that do know dig."
Molly poured herself another cup of tea and looked out to Dante, his Leer was looking a little different now.
"It's good advice kid, let's test out that idea you had with Stun Spore."
Molly had a new note in her journal, Stun Spores do hurt while phased, and so does Poison Powder but they hadn't tested that one as much. She still had the rest of the day ahead of her and Steph had recommended she try to have Dante try to use Night Shade in a fight, hoping that instinct would guide him but first she owed Lucy some help. The older of their trio had remained practicing some tricks to put Molly's advice into practice but Molly and Lucy headed out to the same training fields as yesterday.
It was interesting watching someone else fight, Lucy wasn't like Molly or Steph, she didn't have that confidence to shout an order and trust it was the best thing to do. Actually she should write that down for Lucy , imperfect orders are better than hesitating. The hind part of your brain would scream at you "What if, what if it makes things worse?" but in Molly's opinion if shit was hitting the fan, throwing the fan out the window might make things worse but it's arguably better than cleaning shit off every surface.
Hesitation would end with confidence, and that could be built up. No, what Lucy really needed is a foundation to build off so that asked the question of what would Molly do with this Ralts. Confusion seemed to be how Lucy did her damage, which had interesting implications from what she could see. Confusion was basically a little force push with Psychic-energy attached to it, if it was fire and forget you might be able to chain the moves into a more serious attack. That had potential but what really interested Molly was that the move was invisible, kinda. Whatever Psychic-energy in the Move didn't show itself and Molly only assumed it was there because the Pokémon hit by it were taking far too much damage for the little shove. The only sign you would get that someone used Confusion was the seeing the little shockwave of air and the look of concentration Ralts would make. The force push always seemed to come from in front of Ralts, but was that necessary? Was that the only vector Ralts could use or could she choose another?
If Lucy could train her Ralts to not show any sign of concentration and if it was possible to use vectors not immediately in front of Ralts, you could have an invisible undodgeable attack so long as you pushed at a location out of your opponent's sight and at an angle that would hit them. Molly wrote down her thoughts and some diagrams to explain what she meant by vectors.
The Bidoof that Lucy was fighting, tried a tackle and bounced off the barrier that appeared in front of Ralts. Lucy had told Molly that she had come to Hearthome City to do a barrier course that the League offered, do a quick course on how to referee Pokémon Battles and pass the test and they would give you a TM of Reflect and Light Screen and help you train your Pokémon on how to use them. The Sinnoh League wasn't willing to give teenagers money to spend on themselves but they were more than happy to fund programs like these if it meant more safety precautions were taken in Pokémon Battles. That said you had to pay to take part in the program but it was cheaper than buying a Reflect and Lightscreen TM.
The thing was, it wasn't very efficient how Ralts used Reflect and Lightscreen, for a start they weren't exploiting physics. The barriers Ralts placed were always perpendicular to the angle of attack, which must be a hold over from the training the League gave it. You needed to block the entire attack if you were protecting an audience, but in a battle where no one was behind you? Ralts should be putting the barriers on an angle so attacks would rebound instead of either stopping or breaking the barrier. Or if you wanted to be really efficient you could make a staircase of barriers and then stand on one well above the Bidoof and fire Confusions down at it.
Missy the Ralts had potential, the little psychic hated Molly after all and she only ever saw that in strong Psychic-types like John's Slowbro. No, the problem was Lucy . She just didn't have that spark, the feeling of pride after winning, of overcoming a challenge. Not once had Molly seen Lucy excited by a victory, it meant respite to Lucy , that it was over. It was a trait the best generals had, but in a Pokémon trainer? If you couldn't enjoy the challenge, the struggle to be better, then why were you fighting?
Lucy had fought three battles before losing her third and Molly had to confirm to a Police officer that she didn't have any badges and this was her first season after going 4-0 after continuing her bet from yesterday, someone had accused her of lying about her badges. She capped her bet at $100 if you win, $50 if you lose since her prize pool would require her to find a representative of the League or a Police Officer if she kept her old plan of half the pot per loss. Plus she started feeling bad about taking these kids' money.
Still over $500 in two days wasn't chump change which is what brought her to her current position.
"Molly, you don't really need it."
Lucy was quickly becoming a valuable friend with her ability to point out the glaring flaws in Molly's ideas. She was right of course but Molly had just fought a few battles with Dante's proto Night Shade and it was amazing. It didn't really do a whole lot of damage yet but it worked off eye contact so it was pretty hard to dodge. Just having the Move changed so much, and another ranged Move that slowed people down could be interesting. But as she stared at the price tag on the Icy Wind TM, Lucy's words of reason crept in.
Lucy started tugging at her sleeve since she had been ignoring her for a solid minute now.
"Molly…."
"So lunch right?"
Molly just started walking out the door instead of acknowledging anything that just happened. She was curious how Lucy would react to that, Lucy just pouted at her before speaking.
"What are you planning on doing?"
"Today? I was going to head to the library and start taking more notes. Gonna do some research on Swablu."
"Isn't that what you did after lunch yesterday?"
"I was pretty tired, I didn't get much done. I don't want to miss anything as basic as how to train Moves again."
"That's fair I guess, I don't suppose I could join you?"
Molly paused at that, it was pretty apparent what Lucy was really after but the question was could Molly fit friendship in her schedule? She didn't mind spending time helping Lucy but she kind of had to head into the wilderness for nearly an entire month to find some more teammates sometime soon.
"Lucy, what do you want?"
"To.. Learn?"
"No I mean what do you want to do this Season? Why are you going on a Pokemon Journey?"
"Oh… I don't really know."
Molly knew that look on Lucy's face, it was distant to her now but she remembered seeing it in the mirror a thousand times. She had been working towards these exact moments for so long, she could barely remember the indecision that plagued her first youth, the weight held by the knowledge that her life was defined by these moments. It was crueler here than her old life she thought, here they would fill their children's heads with dreams of being the best and never once tell them how few could reach it. Not dreams like being a doctor, or a teacher or a thousand other careers, only of being a trainer, everything else was a reluctant compromise. Something you did after you failed.
It almost reminded Molly of Santa, a lie every parent would tell their child of something wondrous and magical, only for the truth to shatter that illusion. How many of those children she saw at the training fields today would return home in a few months with their tails between their legs, only for their parents to tell them stories how they once believed in that illusion too before it had been shattered. This world could be kind but some cruelty remained universal it seemed.
"It must be hard."
It was a different kind of stress than the one Molly faced, Molly worried she was taking too long, that she was wasting her precious time. Lucy knew she was.
They walked in silence for a few minutes before Lucy asked.
"What do you want Molly?"
Such a simple question and yet, Molly could have answered in a dozen ways. A strong team, funding for her goals, to be a Pokemon Professor, to see this world like she wished she had seen her last, to reach new heights, to discover, to be remembered, to be someone, a home. Molly wanted all of those and a thousand more but she knew her real answer, her first desire, what had motivated her for so long now.
Molly Cypress wanted answers.
They had settled into a routine, each morning they would meet at the same park bench, at the same time and train together. Steph wouldn't always join them but more times than not she would. From there, Lucy and Molly would find someone to battle them. Molly would write down observations for Lucy before taking her own challenges on. She had made a name for herself in this short time, new trainers who wanted to beat the local legend among the first season rookies, and older trainers with similar offers that Steph had made.
On the fifth day she finally lost to someone who wasn't John, it had hurt in a no small sense. John had always been unbeatable in her mind, it was always the Pokemon he used that caused him to lose, the tools rather than the craftsmen. Molly hadn't brought into her own hype but it hurt to see her Ghost so remorseful as if he had failed her when she knew it was the other way around. The cheering her opponent received from everyone watching had annoyed her too, she had made a few detractors with her "cheap" tactics and refusal to fight "fair".
It was the ninth day now, Dante was progressing with his new Moves. He had Night Shade down by this point and Mean Look was progressing well, the Move was interesting. In the games she remembered it prevented Pokemon from fleeing, in practise it seemed to make Pokemon flinch if they tried to run or if their trainer tried to return them the recall function would fail. It might change as her Ghost got stronger but right now it wasn't exactly what she had wanted but it'll work for catching Pokemon. As for Will-O-Wisp, well Dante could make the air warmer now. He was starting to get the hang of Fire-type energy but she'd have to have him work while on the Eevee Hunt.
Which had brought her to her current destination, the Ranger Building in Hearthome City. The librarian she spoke to recommended she come here for the topographic maps she wanted, which served her purposes well since she wanted to come here to hand over an intentions form. She had gotten directions from Steph before parting ways, she was giving Dante the day off so she hadn't joined Lucy in battling.
She walked up to the front desk, it had never failed her before. The woman running the desk seemed surprised to have a visitor.
"Hi there, I was hoping to find some topographic maps here and sign an intentions form?"
"An intentions form?"
"Do you not have them?"
"No, we do, it's just rare that we get anyone signing them here. Most intentions forms are handled by Pokecenters. Give me a moment to print one off."
Molly just waited as the woman got up to retrieve the paperwork. It was a little surprising to see a computer at the front desk. The Police and Pokecenters didn't use them for front desk work, the Police had them available for checking or updating the Police Database only, but that might just because they were kind of underfunded from what she could tell. As for Pokecenters, well they might just be in the process of transitioning to a digital workplace, Molly hadn't really interacted with pokecenters very much to be sure why they hadn't taken to computers.
The woman returned with the paperwork and asked what maps she would like to look at. As she hurried off to get those, Molly started filling out the forms.
The paperwork was familiar, who are you? Surprisingly more complicated than you'd think but she just wrote Molly Cypress. Emergency Contact was John. When do you plan to leave and return by required a quick check of her calendar, she was keeping her schedule and she still had research to do so leaving early wasn't necessary. Do you have a PLB if so what is it's registration number? She actually had to move to the little waiting room set up they had, to pull it out of the Storage Cube she kept it in. She'd keep it in her bag when she left but she sincerely doubted she'd need a Personal Locator Beacon in the middle of a city and she needed space for her notebooks she wanted on hand for battling. Medical conditions and if so what medication do you take? Molly only had one medical condition and you couldn't treat that, but she wrote it down because it was important if she went missing.
The only real differences between this intentions form and the ones she had filled out in her last life dozens of times, was the lack of a mobile number question; since they were still in the brick phase, the accompanying Pokemon question, she wrote down some quick details about Dante, and one final question which would have been a joke on Earth, do you plan on catching Pokemon on this trip? Who knows maybe in the nine years she had been dead that might actually be a question on Earth, assuming time passed at the same rate which was a big assumption since time was governed by a Pokemon in this world.
Molly quickly filled out the rest of the questions instead of thinking of the existence of super powerful creatures with an alien morality system. She had only one question left, and she needed a look at those Topo Maps to decide what route she would be taking before she could answer where are you going.
On the twelfth day she finally rang John, there was no real reason she hadn't yet, she just hadn't really felt a need to yet. John had always appeared in and out of her life with little warning, almost like an uncle who lived far away, she had actually seen him more frequently than she saw her actual uncle in her last life so perhaps that didn't fit. Family friend maybe?
Her thoughts were interrupted by John finally picking up the phone, she had just used a public phone booth, not one of the fancy video calls the Pokecenters were in the middle of rolling out.
"Superintendent John Rockwell speaking."
"Hey John, it's Molly, could you put Char on the phone? I miss him."
This could go three ways, one he might laugh and they would have a normal conversation, two he would actually put Char on, which jokes on him, she actually did miss Char, or three he might pretend he doesn't know a Molly because she took too long to call.
"Alright give me a moment."
Bless John's sick little mind, he didn't even hesitate and she quickly heard the distinct sound of a Pokemon being released. She didn't really plan for her bluff being called but Molly quickly rallied and started regaling Char with what she had been up to. She only got to talk for a bit under a minute until Char grunted and presumably dumped the phone back on John, if her interpretation of noises she heard over the line was right. Char only rarely played along with their games unfortunately.
"Oh it seems he doesn't miss you as much as you miss him Molly."
Molly sniffed. Knowing full well that Char could hear her talking to John.
"Oh.. It's just been really hard since I left."
"Are you alright kid?"
"I'm fine, I just wanted.. To talk to Char.. He was always so good at listening.."
Molly started to take short breaths.
"It's alright, I shouldn't have assumed…"
"Is everything alright Molly, you can talk to me if you need to?"
She could hear shuffling which meant that Char had presumably moved closer to the phone, it was time to cut the act.
"Oh really that's so kind of you John, so how have you been?"
Molly spoke clearly with none of the mock dismay she had been putting on, she could hear Char growl in the background.
"You're a piece of work Molls."
"I'd blame you but we both know you were the straightest lace Detective to ever exist."
"If anything, you were the bad influence on me."
"Oh yeah absolutely, I lured you to the dark side, we have cookies."
He laughed and paused as if remembering something.
"Do you remember when you baked me those cookies, I told you they were the best thing I had ever eaten."
"I was what? Like ten right?"
"You used salt instead of sugar."
Molly laughed, she remembered that his acting was almost as bad as hers was back then.
"I neither confirm nor deny that I intentionally used far too much salt to see your face as you desperately pretended they were edible."
"Why are you like this?"
On the fourteenth day Lucy finally asked, Molly had told her and Steph her plans to go catch some new teammates yesterday, a sentence that made no sense in any other context. Steph had asked her to watch her Gym battle in a week's time but had understood when Molly explained her badge requirement to keep her sponsorship. Lucy hadn't said anything really about it until now. They were on their way to this Ramen place, one of the few she had left on her recommendation list from the Joy a fortnight ago. He had excellent taste.
"We're friends right?"
"Of course."
Lucy paused herself and said the words at last.
"Could I join you on your trip?"
The first question had thrown Molly off, but she had been preparing for the second for the last day now.
"What do you plan on catching for your team?"
"I don't know."
"Just gonna ad lib it? Catch whatever looks cool?"
Lucy looked frustrated at that, and for the first time since she had met Molly raised her voice.
"I don't know Molly! I'm not as confident as you, how could anyone be? You just… Do stuff."
Lucy had drawn a few eyes with her outburst, Molly just calmly made eye contact with those watching and pulled the middle finger. Lucy just laughed when she saw it.
"Like that! They talk behind your back you know, calling you names, the Ghost b-word. Do you even care?"
"No."
"Of course not, why would you? I wish I could be-"
Molly interrupted her, she didn't think she could stop herself from laughing if Lucy wanted to be like her.
"Lucy , why do you want to be a Pokémon trainer?"
Molly watched as she floundered for a moment before collecting her. She took a big breath.
"My sister always wanted to be a Pokémon trainer, Dad didn't let her go on a journey because he wanted her to take over the company. So when it was time for me to go on one she got my Ralts Missy and made sure I could even though Dad didn't really want me to."
"So you're doing it because she couldn't?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that the same thing as your Dad saying she couldn't do it?"
"No, it's diffe-."
"He wanted her to work in the company, she wants you to go on a Pokémon Journey. Neither person asked what do you want to do. Are you sure you want to be a Pokémon trainer? Is that what you want, Lucy?"
"I don't know, but shouldn't I be one? I have an opportunity not everyone gets."
That resonated with Molly, hadn't she always wondered why she got to live twice, was it something everyone got? Did she deserve this second chance? She might not be the person out there who deserved this most but..
"I don't know Lucy , I can't tell you who you are or what you want. Just that you deserve to be happy."
They had a quiet dinner.
The walk to Lucy's hotel was tense, the unfinished conversation hung between them, until they finally reached her hotel. Molly had some rapid thoughts when she took in the structure.
"I assumed you were rich but isn't this a bit much?"
"We umm, own the chain."
"Of course you do, no wonder your dad wanted your sister to keep the company in the family."
Molly wasn't an expert on Hotel Chains but this place was fancy enough to explain why Lucy had never once given her last name. She wouldn't have recognized the Hotel Chain, but Chandler's Delights was a fantastic pun and she would have absolutely made candle puns all week if she knew.
"Lucy Chandler, your presence has me alit with a new shine."
"Please don't."
"I suppose I could extinguish the light your family has set aflame in me."
"Please Molly."
"You're no fun."
"Oh thank the guardians."
Molly just grinned, puns were the best. One day she'd convert Lucy.
"Thanks Molly. I don't know what I'm going to do yet but you helped."
"Don't be a stranger alright, it's nothing personal I just don't think wandering around in the woods is what you want."
"Didn't you just tell me not to let other people tell me what I want?"
"I mean you're welcome to join me on the condition I can tell as many puns as I want about your name."
"Strangely I think I'll pass."
"Alas, a mystery to haunt me to the end of days."
Lucy laughed and Molly joined her. Molly hadn't planned on making a friend, but it was nice.
"Time for me to bid you adieu."
"Is that goodbye? You're so weird sometimes Molly."
"Not my fault you don't know French."
"What is French!?"
Molly just laughed harder and walked away, waving goodbye as she left.
"Stop making words up!"
Notes:
Authors Note: Did you know the word adieu comes from the phrase "à dieu vous commant," which means, in French, "I commend you to God." Which doesn't exist in the Pokémon World at least in my world building, since worship of Arecus never became a mainline religion.
Hell, multiple languages might not even exist, no one would blame me if I said they all speak Pokenglish.
Not as confident with this chapter as I was the last two.
Chapter Text
Molly had enjoyed hiking in her last life, there was something about taking a weekend, or even a week and seeing the natural beauty all around her. To stand at the top of the world and make a cup of tea, to arrive at the hut at long last and watch the faces of those around her as they ate their sad pasta and store bought sauces while she cooked steak, lasagna, or a dozen other memorable delicious meals. Molly had liked cooking in weird locations, there was a challenge to it she enjoyed, and again the looks on some people’s faces was just fantastic .
Hiking had a hobby, a challenge, an enormous money sink, good exercise and yet, Molly didn’t enjoy it anymore in this new world.
The views were still great, it was the wildlife that bothered her she decided.
New Zealand famously had no native mammals aside from a few species of bats, the most dangerous animal you could encounter would be a wild pig or a deer. There was a confidence that she stood at the top of the food chain, that the only danger around her was her own stupidity, other people and natural disasters like earthquakes, flooding rivers or landslides.
“It isn’t the same anymore.”
Molly had yet to feel well and truly scared of a Pokémon, barring her first experiences way back when but there was a tension to her that natives didn’t have. No, tension was the wrong word, Molly was simply uncomfortable with the idea she was no longer at the top of the food chain. Perhaps she could take a Starly in a fight, but could anyone take on a second or third evolution Pokémon without one of their own? She wasn’t sure.
Molly always thought the sheer focus on the Pokémon Trainer career wasn’t just a bizarre cultural trait, but instead something that had been carefully cultivated. The Pokémon world was surprisingly safe considering the super powered animals running around everywhere, but when Pokémon decided to start killing people? Things go from 0 to 100 real fast, Gyarados were a prime example, there were dozens of historical records of that one species killing thousands.
It was these thoughts that ran rampant through her mind as she walked, as the Pokémon surrounding her, from the Bug-types to the numerous Flying-types in the woods around her watched her on her journey. There wasn’t any intent behind it, just curiosity but still. She was uncomfortable knowing that her safety in this world would always be defined by the loyalty of the creatures she would surround herself in, otherwise it would be the whims of every Pokémon around her that decided her fate.
“Dus....”
The Ghost was tugging at her sleeve as if he had heard her thoughts. He refused to come out in public unless she tempted him with pizza crusts but out here? Miles from civilization, he happily enjoyed his time out of Molly’s shadow. It was nice.
“Duskull.”
She knew that tone, that look, the little ghoul wanted to be carried.
“I thought you were building up your endurance, young man.”
She said sternly, putting her hands on hips in that classic teacher pose. Dante just sighed and raised one hand to wipe at his brow, a pointless gesture since Ghosts didn’t need to eat, drink or sweat. He must have learnt it from her. She sighed, as if put out.
“Very well then, just this once.”
It was a complete lie, both sides knew the truth, she loved holding Dante. It was pretty hard to put into words what exactly he felt like, frankly it felt like he wasn’t all there which might be technically true but he was very squishable and isn’t that what matters? Adorable isn’t a world typically applied to ghosts but Dante was the exception.
“I suppose we have a busy day tomorrow.”
He bobbed his body and made a noise of agreement. It was almost unbearably adorable.
After three days, they had started to get the hang of setting up the tent in a reasonable time frame, Dante had started to become vaguely competent. It was odd to Molly’s hiking sensibilities to have a tent with such head height, she could actually stand upright and wasn’t that an outlandish thought on a hike. The A-frame tent had headroom and a fairly spacious floor plan, it didn’t have a floor but Molly had tarps if need be and she had been given it along with a light wooden bed frame so she wasn’t hugely worried about mud. One of the officers had given it to her; it had been sitting in storage for three years after the officer had finished her journey and settled down in Daybreak Town.
She’d have slept under a tarp in this weather but the tent would be a lifesaver in heavy weather and she wanted her and Dante to be able to throw it up quickly if need be.
She had purchased a chair and table for herself, the chair was the stereotypical director's chair, and the table was a fold out frame where you slotted the pieces of wood to form the table surface. It was nothing less than a small miracle that these along with the tent and bed frame fitted in the rectangular Storage Cube she had been given but they did... If you were willing to spend a bit of time shoving it all in there.
As Dante pulled out the sleeping bag and pillow, and set about making the bed, Molly refused to travel without a pillow in both lives, good sleep was important. While Dante finished the final touches of the tent, she set herself to preparing dinner. Food in the Pokémon world was weirdly familiar, you could find dishes that Molly knew shouldn’t exist without the historical contexts that led to their creation. Which bothered her when she thought about it, she wasn’t sure if it was just pure chance or evidence of more people in her position. However that little thought had been massively overshadowed by something that bothered Molly even more, people ate Pokémon . Molly had gone through an existential crisis about the whole thing when she first came to. Well, she had gone through quite a few existential crises, hell some were still ongoing like her current age debate but the eating Pokémon one was one she had to solve rather urgently unlike the age debate she was still having to this day.
“Not the time for existential crises Molly.”
She had a gas stove but again, she wanted to practice her bushcraft. She was nearly a decade out of practice, plus there was a charm to cooking by fire. She began shaving slivers of wood off the dry sticks Dante had gathered to make a pile of kindling and tinder. She had fire starters she made from cotton buds but it hadn’t rained in a few days so the wood was dry and she could make a nest of shavings to start the fire, it would save her from making more firestarters when she got back to civilization.
“Dante, can you dig a channel again?”
Placing the kindling she had made in the channel he dug, she lit it aflame by dropping a match into the nest she had made. She didn’t use a Magnesium fire starter, she had always seen those as a gimmick. She had plenty of matches and a few lighters spread amongst her cubes and bag, if she lost all of those, she still would have Dante and his improving Will-O-Wisp for fire. If she lost Dante, well she was screwed in more than one way.
She quickly fed the growing flame the slivers of wood she carved and progressively added more fuel to the flame. There was a simple pleasure to creating a fire but she delegated it to Dante’s eager hands so she could set about prepping her ingredients and placing them into the pot, potatoes and leek diced, a handful of mushrooms quartered, some salt and then a bit of water. She’d need to wait before the fire had enough coals for her to cook her meal without burning it so she set it aside and sat down on her camp chair, leant back and watched the sun set over the hills.
Molly hadn’t gone full vegan, or even vegetarian, for a few reasons, mostly because she didn’t have to, everyone else had. Pokémon Rights groups had a lot of weight in this world compared to what she remembered from Animal Rights groups on Earth, it was a vegetarian’s wet dream basically. They had put an end to Pokémon being eaten decades before Molly had been born, along with a dozen other conservation goals like safeguards to prevent unethical breeding or overproduction of Pokémon Products like MooMilk, the establishment of National Parks.
Not every Pokémon had been spared the plate, Magikarp and many other fish species weren’t considered sentient enough to qualify, which in Molly’s opinion wasn’t wrong. She had been happy to eat pigs and cows, and they were significantly smarter than every Magikarp she had ever met and she had gone out of her way to confirm that fact. It was widely regarded if a fish was dumb enough to get stuck in a net, it was dumb enough to eat. Additionally when the Pokémon Rights movement was finally gaining momentum and laws began to change to ban the consumption of Pokémon, some reasonable people had stood and said “My Pokémon is an obligate carnivore, what the hell am I supposed to feed them now?” Thus Magikarp had been left to the literally chopping board when compromises of getting rid of your Pokémon that eat Pokémon, and feeding them dead humans had failed to gain traction. Strangely the public wasn’t too enthusiastic about those.
The other exception which had sparked debates in even Molly’s living memory, was lab grown meat. It had started being developed before her second birth but had successfully reached the point it could be commercially available to everyone when she was about five. Many Pokémon Rights groups had moved to limit the sale of lab grown meat stating that beyond ethically feeding Pokémon, it filled a market that didn’t need to be filled. The position wasn’t completely unworkable but they had messed up hard when they assumed everyone agreed with them. When chefs had come out of the woodwork arguing that with proper legislation framework, they could bring back traditional and cultural dishes they had been unable to create for decades, they had framed it as reclaiming their history now that it was ethical to do so. Their opposition didn’t have the tact or nuance of their predecessors who had succeeded decades ago, failing to prevent it and a culinary renaissance had kicked off.
“No meat tonight though, better to save what we have left for later.”
Molly had moved the pot over the fire and waited for the ingredients inside to cook before adding a cup and a half artificial Farfetch'd stock and two half heads of broccoli and cauliflower cut into little chunks, stem included and two spoonfuls of flour. She stoked the fire and gave the pot a good mix. Gratin was a generic name for a dish with cheese and breadcrumbs on top but it was the name her first mother had called this dish so she stuck to it. Once the pot had reached boiling, she moved it further away from the flame, it needed to simmer now, she’d move it back over the coals when the fire had died down.
“Tomorrow we’re hopefully going to get a new teammate Dante, you’re okay with that right?”
The Ghost perked up and only nodded eagerly, she had asked before but his aversion to adding more Ghosts-types to the team made her wonder. His loyalty and devotion was frankly a little disconcerting in its intensity since she wasn’t sure how she had earned it when every other Ghost-type Pokémon was kinda a dick at the best of times.
“Long day tomorrow, are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
He shook his body, since he didn’t really have a neck. She wasn’t surprised, he always refused the offer of food, Ghosts didn’t need to eat food like other Pokémon, instead existing off more esoteric sources of food that researchers still struggled to understand but she kept trying, wanting something other than pizza crusts and bread to reward him with.
She leant back into her chair and started to watch the fire, her dinner needed to simmer for twenty minutes before she stirred in the sour cream, and then added cheese and breadcrumbs over the top. She’d have Dante grill the cheese and breadcrumbs using Will-O-Wisp, he was starting to get good at the Move and she had him practicing controlling the heat it outputted, she was hoping she could get him to simulate an oven with enough practice.
He loved fresh bread the most, she was hoping she could teach him how to make it and get him to bake it while they’re out in the wilderness.
“Oh god why?”
Three hours of progressing up the mountain, only to hit another dead end. She wasn’t about to start rock climbing up the cliff face before her, that’s why she was here, to catch a Pokémon so she’d never have to. She sat down on a flat rock and pulled out the ziplock bag of maps she had. She had spares in a cube but it was good to keep these things on hand.
The plan had been simple: head to Roost Point, rock up to a gathering of Altaria and Swablu and announce her intentions, give her sales pitch, fight a few battles with Swablu to prove her strength, and leave with a Swablu who chose to join her. Sure Molly could just catch one of the Swablu around here but that was fucken dangerous. If she was going to do that, she would have caught any random Swablu off the literal street, not travel miles on foot and up a decent sized mountain to catch one in front of it’s entire accumulation and expect no response from said group. She had woken up before dawn and left just as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon so she had plenty of time before the sunset, no that wasn’t the problem.
The problem with her plan was she was starting to find out why the accumulation of Altaria and Swablu made their home here, the area was as far as she could tell, impossible to reach by foot. Sure the maps she had found looked like there was a smooth slope up the mountain if you look at the contour lines but the gaps between contour lines were further apart than she was used to or the map she had was just bad. This was the second dead end she had come across thinking there was a path and she couldn’t see any other way up by foot on this map. It was time to take a risk.
“Dante, I think you’re going to have to carry me up the cliff face.”
Dante gave her a look, silently asking if she was sure. Molly nodded, and received an earnest salute. She packed the map back into her bag and pulled her raincoat out. It wasn’t raining but she brought one that served as a windbreaker as well. This world had some fantastic clothing for hiking and you could get a discount if you were a new trainer between those two she managed to find some fairly good gear.
They had practiced Dante carrying Molly before so they quickly started ascending with Molly being bridal carried with her bag held on her lap and her glasses firmly in her hand, just to sate her paranoid thoughts of something falling as they went up. Molly kept her eyes firmly on the cliff face instead of the increasing distance between her and the ground. She had what she considered a reasonable fear regarding heights.
The rugged rock face in front of her was eye-catching, what with its blurry rocky.. Rocks. And those rocks there, and wow if you look over there? Is that? It’s more rocks! Molly desperately kept her eyes on anything except the now very distant ground, like that rapidly approaching blob of blue and white.
“Oh sh- We got incoming!”
This was exactly what she was worried about happening, something attacking them while Dante literally had his hands full.
Molly squinted, closing her right eye so she could see clearer, her eyes had different prescriptions and the left one was basically normal. She relaxed a tiny bit seeing that it was only a Swablu and waited for it to get closer, it was absolutely aiming for them.
“Down now!”
The way Ghost-type levitation or at least Duskull’s worked was pretty simple. Ghosts innately had the ability to apply force in any direction, they had control over how much force they applied at any time and could push themselves to move at speeds they couldn’t normally, like Dante was doing now to both pull his own weight of 22kg and Molly’s weight of 56kg upwards. Molly might not have known that you had to practice Moves to learn new ones, but that didn’t mean she wasted all the time she had already spent training Dante. Once she had a reasonable idea how Dante’s flight worked, she spent hours making him lift weights with his levitation so he could push past his limits for much longer, and it worked.
They plummeted.
No longer having to work against gravity and applying all of his force to pull them down, they all but vanished and the Swablu’s dive passed over them harmlessly. Molly’s stomach rebelled as Dante halted their descent and she forced herself to look around. After quickly taking in the area around her, she did some quick thinking. Dante was extremely fast for his species thanks to Molly’s training but she had never once had him practice slowing down, if they kept going at the same speed from before they’d slam into the ground before Dante halted their velocity, which was normally a good thing since Dante could just phase and halt his velocity underground where only a few Pokémon could target him. If they went slower, the Swablu who she could already see turning around would get one or two more swings at them and it’ll be harder to dodge.
Molly made a mental note to put Dante through the beep test and made her choice.
“Put me down over there.”
She pointed at the outcropping she was reasonably sure could take her weight. Dante only hesitated for a moment before quickly moving her onto the ledge a few meters down. It took her weight and he turned around and promptly socked the diving Swablu in the face, the telltale signs of Astonish being used seemed to have little impact but the force of the blow certainly made an impact, the Swablu had practically ran into Dante’s fist. They both fell back a bit, Dante glanced at Molly while the Swablu flapped its wings to regain stability.
“Normal type! Use Confuse Ray for now and keep close to it.”
They had countermeasures for Normal-types, it was certainly annoying but she didn’t come this far without fighting a Normal-type before. She put her glasses she had clutched in her fist this entire time and instantly regretted it. It was so much easier to ignore the height when she was panicking and her vision was crap. That said she saw what she was looking for, the round object laying right next to her bag. She took a breath, steeled her nerves and started carefully moving closer to it without getting too close to that edge…
She grabbed it and stepped back to her earlier safe position and waited for the moment to strike. Timing was everything with battles. The two had made a few exchanges of blows already, the Swablu was faster but once it started moving it was practically locked into that direction for a few seconds, Dante had more range of motion. He shifted to the right, dodging a Peck attack and went in closer, the Swablu realized it wasn’t going to land a Peck and changed tactics. Dante reeled back from a Disarming Voice at nearly point blank range, canceling his Confuse Ray. She had fought Swablu before but this once was easily the most aggressive she had seen, constantly going in for melee attacks instead of the mid-range attackers she was used to. That said both sides were right now recovering from each other’s Moves, so Molly took a step forward, shifted her body weight and threw.
It was a good throw, Molly had a lot of practice from throwing tennis balls at Dante, he learnt to dodge and she learnt how to throw stuff, which would help if she needed to throw a Pokeball. All that training paid off beautifully, the rock struck the Swablu right above the left eye and bounced off falling down to the ground below. Dante who had recovered faster and had not been pelted with a rock in the face dove for it, catching it in his hand.
“Grapple it!”
He roared and charged the Swablu, grasping one of it’s wings and holding it tight he began laying into the Swablu with his other hand, bludgeoning it with the rock. Dante might not know any Moves that could damage Normal-types yet but he could beat something up with a rock. Molly’s tactics were efficient. The Swablu struggled but it couldn’t form the type-energy needed to use a Move under Dante’s relentless assault.
Molly began to relax as she watched it, her nerves vanishing with the certainty that came from watching a would-be attacker getting pummeled. She still wanted to get off this bloody ledge though. The rock crumpled in Dante’s hand and the ghost looked to her for what to do next, the Swablu was clearly unconscious at this point, Molly opened her mouth to give an order and-
Hesitated.
Molly pulled herself up a large boulder in her path, there had been a track, a whole two days back. Now she was bush bashing or whatever the mountain equivalent was and making her own trail through the wilderness, which wasn’t actually as bad as she had expected. She’d done some bushbashing in New Zealand but both the plant life and animal life were vastly different here and it was much easier than she was used to. Her old homeland’s native bush was both extraordinarily dense, if you went off the trail you could encounter such a dense bush it was practically a wall, even in the alpine. Here the plant life was a bit more mellow, and more importantly there were large Pokémon who could easily push their way through the thicker bits and create paths for others like Molly to use.
It was a bit nerve racking to follow game trails that included tracks from Pokémon like Ursaring but she had a schedule to keep and she was already two days ahead of her best estimate thanks to using them, which helped calm her down. Something she needed after that last fiasco, she was still frustrated about the whole thing.
Which only resurfaced when the Swablu Dante had been carrying up the mountain for the last ten minutes started to come to. Molly had used one of her very expensive Potions on the bird so it should be fine, if very sore. Potions, like a lot of things she remembered from the games, were pretty new and had only hit the market half a decade ago. They were pretty expensive however and she left with only five of them.
She fixed it up and took a closer look at the Swablu, it was clearly female and it’s small blue feathers on its body were all messed up down the side of its body where Dante had broken a rock beating it, spraying a potion on it had done nothing to fix the now broken feathers. However she couldn’t really see any damage where she hit it with a rock though which made her doubt her ‘I could beat a Starly’ theory.
The Swablu had finally noticed Molly glaring at her and let out a quiet meep.
“Starting to realize you fucked up huh?”
Molly sat down on a mossy rock and pulled her thermos out. She'd boiled some water to make porridge this morning, poured the rest into the thermos and tossed a teabag in. That was a few hours ago, the tea was lukewarm and she had never removed the teabag. Needless to say it was perfect.
“We treated your wounds and didn’t leave you for dead even though you tried to kill us, you absolute piece of shit. We didn’t go after you, we didn’t do shit to you and you still tried to kill us for what?”
She took a swig of her tea, never once breaking eye contact with the Swablu, Dante floating behind her, silently giving her support. The Swablu was clearly in pain, her beady eyes had been watering from the start and it had only gotten worse when she started shouting at her.
“You’re lucky we didn’t drop you off that cliff like you tried to do to us. Kindly fuck off and never try that shit again on anyone.”
She watched as the Swablu made pitiful noises as if she was apologizing before realizing Molly had no interest in hearing it. The bird jumped into the air and flapped her wings, once twice and seized up in pain, before promptly flopping over and falling flat on her face, startling a laugh out of Molly. She tried again, fell once more and then turned to look at the two of them with a sad look on her face.
“ Oh goddammit .”
Notes:
Author’s Note: Took a holiday and was not going to write on my phone. Also writing without any characters for Molly to bounce off messed me up a bit.
Next chapter should be significantly faster to come out.
Swablu get?
Chapter Text
The trip was worth it for the view alone Molly decided, near death experience included.
It was as if some great giant had swung a sword cleaving the mountain in twain, the earth had cracked this isolated point and left a thousand outcroppings and juttings in its wake, the sky rose up above them, the sun’s light as it set casting the cliffs in golden light or jagged shadows where it caught on a thousand blades of stone. A small stream bubbled through the great crack, the wide stony river banks showed that it could be fierce had it rained recently.
It had taken them some time to find a path there, and quite a few less eventful lifts from Dante. You’d think having a guide would help but said guide could fly and never had to walk like a plebian. Molly wanted to be annoyed by that but at this point she just wanted it to be over.
It had been a long day, and she was currently cooking her dinner to the interest of the Pokémon surrounding her. They had been very shocked when she had lit her gas stove, it was very cute to see the horde of Swablu take a step back when the gas had caught aflame.
It wasn’t a complex meal, it was her last bit of bacon or the closest equivalent she could find, frying in its own fat, she’d take it out to give the mushroom and diced onion some room to cook, before adding it all back with the powdered milk she had mixed with the water and set it to simmer. She hadn’t tried this before on the gas stove so she had the timing off a bit, the sauce would finish long before the pasta did on the other burner.
Dante was busy lying her sleeping bag down on the flattest ground they could find, running his hand along its length, stopping, lifting the bag and removing the tiniest of pebbles before repeating the entire process. She hadn’t even asked him to, she had just taken her sleeping bag and pillow out and tossed it on a flat spot. He seemed so affronted she didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t have to.
Dante was odd like that, a solitary Honchkrow watched him too with an amused look.
There was a few different species here, the Swablu and Altaria made the significant bulk of the gathering but she could spy exceptions to that rule if she looked closely, a Skarmory in its nest of rusting blades, a few Staraptor and their many smaller kin also made their nests on that outcroppings that made ideal nesting locations.
It was one of the Staraptors who had flown out after Molly had arrived and returned with a sitrus berry for the wounded Swablu, it had waited until after the Swablu had flown around, cheerfully chirping before giving her a smack with its wing.
Molly had managed to keep the smile off her face when she saw that, the punished was now shyly watching them sitting next to the Honchkrow who was preening her of her broken feathers, many of which were beyond repair and had not healed.
She hadn’t told them that Molly gave her those injuries it seemed, or if she had no one was angry at Molly for doing it. Molly would find herself a Swablu in the morning, for now she wanted to eat her dinner without having to share too much of it and sleep.
There are moments in everyone’s life that you never forget, yesterday she saw one when she stumbled her way into Roost Point, today? Today a great swarm of Swablu had descended upon her as she rested and had created the closest equivalent Molly had found to heaven. She lay there for what felt like hours, just enjoying the mountain of soft cool wool? Cotton? Floof . The soft cool floof upon her aching body, smothering her in a cocoon of comfort as the Swablu horde slept on top of her.
It was two hours later and she was still riding that high, not even a one sided Pokémon battle in front of an audience of wild Pokémon was snapping her out of it.
Dante was losing to the Honchkrow from yesterday, she had made her pitch, offered her pre-prepared bribe of food, and showed Dante off as an example of what they had to gain from her training.
And Honchkrow had answered her offer of a battle to prove herself. Molly was starting to think that Swablu had ratted her out after all.
They hadn’t lost yet but the result was not in question. Dante surely would lose the second he exposed himself to the Honchkrow’s Dark Pulse. He was currently phased under the rocks and only popped out to throw a rock Honchkrow as he casually kept himself aloft above the two of them, none of them connected yet.
“Alright, I know a hopeless fight when I see it. Dante, stop trying to throw rocks at him, we’re done here.”
Her ghost emerged from the soil sullen and disheartened, Molly took a moment to appreciate that Honchkrow hadn't blasted him immediately as the feathered Mob boss took perch and did what Molly assumed was his version of raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t give me that look, it’s a pointless fight. You shrugged off Confuse Ray, Leer, and Mean Look like they were nothing, you’re not immune to Night Shade but even if Dante used it all day long on you, at best he might give you a headache.”
There was no win condition that Molly could see, Honchkrow was basically Dante’s natural counter at this moment at time, their only hope in this fight were throwing mundane rocks and hoping that Honchkrow strained a muscle while dodging. And trying to fight him in the air was a suicide attempt in the making, Honchkrow was faster, more experienced in aerial fighting and Dante’s best melee and ranged attack was still throwing or hitting him with a rock since he resisted Ghost-type moves and Will-O-Wisp wasn’t hot enough to use yet.
Molly sighed, “Did we pass your test or were you just being a dick for the sake of it?”
He just grinned at her before offering her a nod.
“So you were just being a dick.”
That got her a loud caw which Molly translated as a chuckle before he flew over to one section of the audience and nudged one bird in particular forward. Molly kept her face blank, the perfect image of ignorance before she plastered a smile she desperately hoped wasn’t pained on her face and crouched down to one certain Swablu’s level.
“How about it Swablu, want to join me on a journey?”
Molly prayed to whatever God would listen that she would not regret this.
The Gods were dead.
It was official, other evidence not required, she had all the proof necessary for her thesis. It had been five days since she had met Swablu and Molly was considering the best way to make a scarf from her.
It was as if someone took the worst traits of a Chihuahua and transposed them onto a bird, energetic, bouncing off the brush around them and picking fights with everything that moved. The constant high pitch barking Chihuahuas all had was present but Molly kinda liked all the chirping and singing, honestly rather soothing and almost certainly the reason Swablu still lived.
That hyper aggression sounded great for a Pokémon trainer, hell it was the reason she came out here for a Swablu in the first place. A Swablu in the city had made a choice for safety and easy access to food over the danger of the wilderness, they were docile creatures and it would be an uphill battle to get them even willing to fight, let alone good at it.
Not every city had such a kind ecosystem, some could be downright vicious but the equivalent of Pokémon Gang wars were heavily discouraged whenever possible, no one liked their home being destroyed in a fight, or children stumbling onto a Pokémassacre. It was one of the Police’s many, many duties to maintain the Pokémon ecosystem in a city and Molly had endured many a lecture on the subject. She’d seen the stats, Hearthome was one of the best at it, a Swablu from there would be basically a pet.
“Swablu, please don’t get in another fight today. You’ve had two already.”
“Blu! Blu!” was the frantic response she received. Molly had no idea what it meant at this point, interpreting Pokémon was for scammers or the psychically blessed and Molly was the opposite of that last one. Still it was fun to project a mental voice onto their responses.
“No he didn’t look at you funny and I promise you, once we arrive in Hearthome City in a few weeks, you’ll be fighting until you drop. But we’re on a mission so could you please cool it a little bud?”
The blue bird broke off her staring contest with a Metapod Molly was fairly certain was asleep, and snuggled into Molly’s neck. A dangerous mistake as the scarf thoughts returned with a vengeance. She could have this sensation constantly, for the rest of her life. It’ll just take a few minutes with a knife and really, isn’t that a bonus after everything she’s gone through in the last few days?
Dante broke off her fantasies with a tug at her sleeve, he pulled her over to some tracks in the mud, it had rained recently and it looked like it would rain again. Some very familiar looking tracks… She pulled him into her arms and held him tight.
“That’s my boy, good job! Let’s check them.”
She quickly found a dry spot to sit and dug through her bag for the notebook she’d filled on Eevee, a ghost on her lap and a bird on her shoulder peered along with her as she flicked through the book looking for the photocopies she had made on Eevee tracks.
On hands and knees she crawled over to the tracks, and then started squatting when she saw the mud, she hadn’t seen a river in a few days and her pants were clean.
“I really shouldn’t have cheaped out on the photocopying.”
It looked like Eevee tracks but it was a bit difficult to compare her black and white copy to what she had in front of her. And there was a fourth set of tracks that looked to be leading them which looked different. She could hear Dante flicking through the pages behind her but she was trying to remember what the coloured version had looked like.
“Duskull!” He said before shoving the book in front of her.
“Good catch, I think you’re right they do look like Leafeon tracks. I’m going to shower you in pizza crusts when we get back.”
It was the whole reason she thought there might actually be a group of Eevee in this area, there was a Mossy Rock noted on the maps she had seen a few days south of this area. Eevee in the wild tended to be found in areas they could evolve in and along with the rock, to the west of here was a few small lakes where Waterstones might be found.
Ignoring the squealing noises coming from her ghost and what she assumed was Swablu asking what a pizza crust was, she took out her compass and carefully made a note of the bearing the tracks were heading in case she lost the trail.
“Alright you two let’s get a move on, shouldn’t be too long till we have a third teammate.”
It crept quietly, every step calculated, every breath quiet and eyes ever focused on the slowly moving flash of colour it could see through the dense brush. A patient dance, one the scentless creature was now very familiar with. Slowly advancing, step by step it came into a clear view of its prey and sighed at the sight of it.
It was a Buneary, digging through the dirt and eating the roots that it unearthed.
Molly was starting to get the impression she hadn’t really thought this adventure through. Sure on paper it sounds great, go to Roost Point, find bird, convince bird to join you, go to Eevee place, find Eevee, capture it, leave. Brilliant planning truly, Molly liked the bit where she mentally wrote down capture it, as if it was easy.
She had made preparations, spent hours researching in the library, purchased aids like the scent remover she sprayed over herself but you can’t buy skill and Molly was rapidly learning that this was a problem that required it. A brown creature like Eevee had a surprising amount of natural camouflage in this terrain, brown tree trunks, fallen trees breaking up the sight lines, stumps, roots, decaying leaves. These all served to make it difficult to spot them before they spotted her, and on top of all that? There are these other extremely common creatures called Bidoofs and Buneary who were also brown.
Molly was actually kinda happy with herself, this was the first time she had managed to sneak up on a Buneary so far. She was improving at least, even if this was the third time today she had mistaken a Buneary for an Eevee from a distance. She started moving away from it with the same care she had used as she snuck up on it. A Pokémon fight would be loud and warn all the Eevee here where she was.
The Bidoof weren’t too bad, she’d started listening carefully for that distinct gnawing sound that they made when they grinded some poor twig into cellulose. It was the Buneary, they and Eevee both had a mix of light and dark browns and when you’re trying to spot an Eevee through three layers of brush, bush and twigs it can be a bit difficult making out shape.
The forest around her was dense, thick with scrubs and undergrowth that reminded her of home. You could barely move without brushing against some plant life, almost tailor made to make it impossible for something Molly sized to sneak up on an Eevee, if she hadn’t seen a few Eevee by now she would have left days ago. She had seen four Eevee at this point, one Leafeon and two Vaporeon, there was almost certainly a large Eevee population here and she was starting to see why.
But there were limits to how much the thicket could protect them from Molly, Berry plants need sunlight, nutrition rich ground and most importantly? No competition. She had read a paper on the symbiotic relationship between Pokémon and Berry plants, Pokémon were notoriously protective of Berry plants, protecting them from other aggressive species of plants, watering them in droughts and fighting their fellow Pokémon who would seek to monopolize them.
Molly had been moving towards one of the many Berry plants she had scooped out in the last few days. A sitrus berry tree in an open clearing with this fantastic nook she could lie down in and wait for Dante to attack one of the visiting Eevee.
Settling into her stake out point, Swablu inside her Pokémon ball to keep her from scaring off any Eevee, or starting a fight before Molly was ready, and Dante hidden in the berry tree’s shade.
The sky moved, and time passed.
Pokémon came and Pokémon left, yet Dante had not given her the signal she could only lie in the space between two fallen trees, with a Pokémon ball clutched to her chest and carefully controlling her breathing.
Molly was a patient creature, and that patience was rewarded with some silent prodding from her spirit.
The signal.
Slowly, very slowly she began moving into a sitting position, and spied her target, the brown fur of two shades, the fluffy neck fur, the distinct look of an Eevee. The fifth she’d seen in the eleven days since she had set out. At a glacial speed she pulled herself up into a squat and took aim. The Pokémon ball was already primed, expanded to the size of a baseball as was typical in normal operation. The whistling noise as it flew through the air warned the Eevee but it reacted too slowly and was quickly engulfed in light.
“Dante Mean Look now.”
Surging from the shadow, Dante set to work. Mean Look as a move has two components, first the actual Mean Look, which could terrify Pokémon into fight or running, a flight or fight response. The second element was the black mist it produced, it varies from Pokémon to Pokémon but there was always a secondary effect that inhibits movement, a Psychic-type might produce purple barriers, a Ground-type a ghostly sandstorm, Dante produced black mist a common variant for Ghost and Water-types.
Molly had tested it herself, it wasn’t the strongest, it was similar to walking through water if weaker than that. Recall beams could prentarate it but they were sluggish and eventually Dante would be able to produce a mist that prevented that.
When the Eevee finally sprung free of the Pokémon ball Molly had hit it with, it was trapped in an arena of black mist, with Dante looming over it. She had thrown the Pokémon ball to give him time to set it up, past attempts had failed to trap them before they could run.
Molly stood to her full height and looked down on the now trapped Eevee with its fur sticking up, enjoying the frantic looks of the Eevee as they realized their situation. Molly had an unfriendly grin on her face.
“Why hello there. I don’t suppose you’d come quietly?”
The Eevee’s fur settled down. Molly didn’t like that one bit.
“Dante attack now before it does something.”
The Eevee dove at Dante with the telltale signs of Bite glowing in its mouth, Dante did the right thing and ducked into the dirt, letting the Eevee pass right above it. It just bit the mist and drove through the gap it had created and started running.
“You can do th— Swablu after it!”
Molly said as she released her newest Pokémon and ran through the mist as well.
She had not seen an Eevee in a few days now since the last had shown Molly the flaw in Mean Look.
The problem Molly thought as she sat inside her tent watching the drenched world from her window, was that no one wanted to be outside right now, not her, not the Eevee, not anyone.
It was now day thirteen of her three week trip, and it was still raining. It had started raining on day eleven after her most recent attempt, kept raining all of yesterday before clearing up a bit as she was cooking dinner. By then of course, it had been far too dark to traipse around the woods with a flashlight, a ghost and a soon to be scarf to go looking for an animal that was likely asleep in a hole.
Today wasn’t much better, the wind howled above the treetops and the rain fell at odd angles. She’d seen a few Pokémon today but the majority seemed content to stay in their homes, it was the Ground and Water types that were out and about right now.
A group of Wooper marched past her temporary home, eating the worms that had crawled to the surface. She considered catching one and cutting her losses, Roark had the Rock type gym after all, and the Ground-typing would be a god send when she went for her final badge at Sunnyshore but she had her team planned out for a few years now and she wasn’t ready to exchange her future Piplup for a Wooper. Sure her planning hadn’t exactly worked out for her, at any point in time, but she had strong feelings about that future Piplup.
She lay back down and stared at the ceiling some more.
Dante was asleep in her shadow, she was pretty sure he was at least, he might be staring at worms and Swablu passed out on her chair softly breathing. It was very cute but Molly had been watching her for the past hour and was kinda bored of it. She hadn’t figured out how to detach the wing fluff from the wing without ruining it yet. Or prove in a court of law that the Swablu deserved it.
It was time to make a decision, tomorrow marked the end of the first month of the season. There were six more before the season ended which gave her three months per badge, if you ignored the week it’ll take her to get back to Hearthome City if the weather kept up. And that was really the question, would the weather keep up?
If she stayed, she had good odds of seeing another Eevee. They’d be hungry after all the storm would have been keeping them indoors too, but that was rather the problem wasn’t it. If the weather kept up, Molly was going to run out of food too. She had a week’s worth of food left, and emergency supplies that could last her another week if she stretched it, plus her supply of Swablu meat that might last her another day if she finally snapped.
And if she caught an Eevee, she’d have another mouth eating through her supplies as she headed back to civilization and foraging would be slim after all the Pokémon in the woods emerged after the rain ended. Not to mention the search teams and Rangers that would be looking for the no-badge rookie who hadn’t returned at the time like her intentions form had said she would. To make matters worse if she didn’t catch an Eevee, she’d have people looking for her who might find one themself and tell their mates about this spot, unless she used her Personal Locator Beacon which meant she’d have to lie about something keeping her stuck out here.
She looked at the ceiling and wondered if it had answers for it. The only upside to this trip so far was she knew her tent was very good.
“The risk is I might get in trouble with the law if I’m caught lying, waste my precious time, and reveal this Eevee spot, the reward is I might catch an Eevee. Alternatively, I could stick to my turnaround time, get my two badges come back whenever Dante is ready and not have to eat energy bars and plain rice for a week straight.”
The ceiling didn’t answer her but she didn’t need it to, that last one really decided it.
It was cold, wet and raining and Molly was really starting to feel nostalgic. It was just like how she remembered tramping, the rain pitterpating on the hood of her raincoat, her feet sore and mud, mud everywhere you looked.
“That tree!”
She had denied Dante and Swablu the privilege of shelter, Swablu was doing suicides or the best equivalent Molly could come up with while walking which was periodically pointing at something and Swablu had to fly around it three times, and then another three times in the other direction and then fly normally again. Dante on the other hand was carrying a big rock, no idea how much it weighed but it looked like a lot and it was wet, slippery and it had been two hours.
Needless to say, Molly was having fun and they weren’t.
There was a method to her madness, Swablu was getting used to rapid direct changes on a dime, she stopped crashing into things as much yesterday to Molly’s infinite disappointment. Dante on the other hand was strengthening his arms by holding the rock, his levitation by countering the rock’s weight force and every now and again Molly would make him dip it in mud and find a different hold on the rock.
That last one was just sadism, she had told him it was to improve his grappling and grip on slippery Pokémon but really? It was sadism, most of this was sadism. Molly just told him that to make him do it, she did not have to wake up at dawn today but someone had other plans.
“Tree!”
A tired wet Swablu dove at it, her beautiful wings muddy from a few failures to turn correctly and a few of the feathers on her body were sticking out at odd angles from the day's training.
Again, Molly was having fun. She’d been a bit worried at the start about Swablu, Dante had spoiled her as the most unrealistically eager to please Pokémon to exist, even if he wouldn’t let her sleep in. So she wasn’t sure how she’d adapt her training style to Swablu but it was going well. The trick was finding Swablu’s bribe, which was physical affection and cleaning her feathers, i.e. an excuse to play with Swablu’s floof. Oh and violence, if she let Swablu fight as much as she wanted, and bailed her out with Dante when she got her fluffing kicked in, Swablu was about willing to do anything.
That said there were limits and she’d been pushing them about half an hour ago, so she better stop soon. After one more tree, she thought with a grin as the two lagging Pokémon shuddered at the sight of it behind her.
“Alright one last tree, that one over there. Once she’s done you can drop the rock Dante.”
The sounds of relief were a little rude and Swablu even was cheerfully chirping as she crawled out of the mud she had crashed into on her second to last lap.
“Alright you two are done, I’ll give you both a wash when I find somewhere dry for lunch. Until then Swablu take a nap in your ball and Dante you can sleep in my shadow or your ball if you want.”
Dante dove for the shadow as per normal, not even bothering to let go of the rock, just phasing out of existence and letting it fall from his now non-existing grasp. Swablu on the other hand just lay gasping for air in some muddy grass as she waited for the sweet release of her ball.
They had hit Route 209 last night, now it was somewhat maintained dirt paths, with periodic changes to wooden walkways when things got a bit swampy or there was a river. Molly really hoped that she’d hit the city by tonight, otherwise it was a ration bar for dinner. She’d wager she wasn’t too far off, it was a bit hard to place her memories of dry normal land with the mudhole she was in now but if she remembered right there should be a long stretch of walkway soon that had a shelter part way through.
The trick with tramping was to keep thinking about the wonderful things awaiting you when you got where you were going, she’d never quite understood those people who would travel a hundred miles in a week eating only candy and baby food, sure it was efficient and ultralight but why? She’d always carry extra weight if it meant an actual meal, not that weight was a major concern for her now.
“Shouldn’t be too far now.”
Her boots made resounding thuds on the walkway as she stepped onto it, it was always nice when you hit a wooden section, a pleasant change from the squishing and squelching stepping in mud made, and the periodic windmilling her arms to get her balance.
The tree line had cleared and she was off the muddy compacted dirt road for a considerable stretch now, there was even a handrail which meant Molly had all the time in the world to think
This was a bad month, you spent actual years preparing and planning for one moment, gathering funds, researching, dreaming and then you actually tried to do it and nothing seemed to go right. Sure she had beaten up lots of children and taken their money, but say that sentence again and then consider that was the highlight of her month.
It was not a good look.
Dante had made a lot of progress sure, Will-O-Wisp was at the stage where it was starting to become practical to use in a fight. The charge up was a bit much though, and it didn’t travel very far, or very fast but he was improving. Mean Look was also improving at a steady rate, they’d mostly ditched the fear element and she was having him focus entirely on the black fog it produced because that stuff was useful, even if you could apparently break it with a Pokémon Move, quantity would make up for that. Night Shade just kinda existed, they had worked it into their battling but it wasn’t their focus, a victim of Dante’s main sparring partner being completely immune to it.
Swablu, the other debatable success of this month, brought mixed feelings. On one hand, she had the Swablu she always wanted, and it was adorable, soft, eager for training and the floof was exactly as she remembered. On the other hand, attempted manslaughter, the constant fights she picked, the berserker like energy this ball of fluff had for battles, that time she almost killed Molly, the inability to use tactics or use a range attack, the murder attempt.
Molly slinked back into Hearthome City with her metaphorical tail between her legs.
Notes:
Author's Note: So as it turns out, getting a new job where you work at a desk all day, coming home and sitting at a different desk and starting to write is kinda painful.
No promises on how fast the next one comes out.
Chapter 6: Chapter 6
Chapter Text
The worst part about having Dante around was it was impossible for Molly to drown in a bathtub.
Dante hated water.
Well not exactly, he just hated Molly being in a body of water larger than a puddle. She had no idea why this was the case, but he would freak out for the first few years if Molly went for a swim. It was the few times he would actually come out in public, if she was swimming he would hover around her, ready to pull her out at a moment's notice. Sweet but bizarre.
Molly had no idea if it was actually possible to drown while sleeping in a bath or if this was some myth like the Korean fan death thing. She was safe from this supposed danger, much to her annoyance when Dante started poking her awake in the bath.
“Do you have to?”
Dante just splashed water in her face in response and pulled the bath plug as she spluttered with water up her nose. By the time she had stopped flailing about in an effort to get out, the warm water was mostly gone from the bath and Dante was back to folding the laundry.
She glared into his back and plotted her revenge, she’d do it. She’d eat the pizza crusts in front of him for this crime, before deciding maybe that was a step too far. Instead she lay back down, closing her eyes for but a mom— “Duskull!”
“Fineeeeeeeee.” She groaned.
She pulled herself out of the bathtub and plopped over to the stool she left sitting in the middle of the room, slowly moving a sleeping and wet Swablu off the stack of towels. Molly started the long process of drying herself off with damp towels.
Pokémon Centres had large bathrooms Molly appreciated, the entire thing was waterproofed top to bottom and the bath was large for Molly to starfish herself in and still had plenty of room. Two giant appliances sat set into the corner of the room, a washer and a dryer, everything you needed after a long muddy walk. The shower was the only thing that tripped her up, literally if she wasn’t careful, there was a long shower hose. No stall, just a showerhead with a long hose and a dial for temperature and pressure on a wall. The entire room was the shower stall for washing off Pokémon she supposed.
She rather liked the stool, good for sitting on while Dante held the shower head above her.
Dante floated over with a wide tooth comb and started slowly combing her hair as she blow dried Swablu’s wings. The cloud-like material took a lot of effort to get soaked, but there had been a small ant hill of dirt and mud to get out. By the end of the scrubbing they were sodden and hung off Swablu in big clumps, this was the only thing she should do to them according to her research. Wash them with water and nothing else , never comb or brush them and under no circumstances use shampoo or soap on them. Use a hair dryer or the sun, a towel if you’re desperate and want to shock yourself with static electricity for the next four hours.
She left Dante to finish off Swablu and started sorting through the stacks of clean clothing for an outfit to wear. Underwear and bra? Check. Her red plaid lumberjack shirt and a black undershirt? Check. One of her six pairs of identical black pants, and a pair of black socks? Check. Maroon raincoat? Check. Dante had cleaned the floor of mud when she was asleep, she had clothing on, she had her two Pokémon, everything you need to leave the bathroom. She packed up the clothing, storing it in the storage cube and picked up Swablu. Pokémon draped her around Molly’s neck like a scarf, she was ready for her big day and headed out for the lobby prepared.
At the brisk, dark hour of 4am. She immediately changed her mind and headed for the closest bench. To Dante’s eternal despair and the chuckles of the Joy manning the front desk, she went back to sleep practically in moments.
The prodding was oddly softer today, hesitant even. Molly sensed the weakness behind it and immediately went back to sleep, point to Molly in her long war.
Dante promptly pushed her off the bench.
Flailing on the ground she got up immediately leaving poor Swablu who had been asleep on her chest groaning on the floor.
“I’ll eat you!” She said glaring into his eyes, in response her executioner simply pointed behind her at a tired looking Nurse Joy, and a Chansey peeking out from behind her.
“You'll find it difficult to eat a Ghost-type I’d imagine.” She said with a faint smile.
“I’m… I’m fairly certain it wouldn’t be impossible to make cutlery out of a Dusk Stone. Can I help you?”
Molly bent over to pick up Swablu whose response to being knocked onto the floor was to lean into the floor and go to sleep. Molly was jealous.
“Yes in fact, I was hoping to ask for your assistance with the centre breakfast? Someone must man the front desk at all times and we’re short handed right now thanks to league flu.”
The Sinnoh League paid Pokémon Centres to feed trainers who stayed overnight breakfast and dinner. It was one of the many ways they supported trainers without actually giving them money, but–
“League Flu?” That was new to Molly. It seemed to startle the Nurse a little more awake.
“Ah, it’s umm… a clan term for a phenomenon we see at the start of the Gym Circuit each year, all those people in close proximity and the sudden spike in travel, you see more and more people getting sick.”
“Oh, that makes sense. All those illnesses catching a ride on the kids?” Molly stretched and rubbed the sand out her eyes. “Alright then, where’s the kitchen?”
Nurse Joy leant forward and grabbed Molly’s arm, quickly shaking it up and down.
“Thank you, that's a huge relief. Poor Nathan is alone in there, if you just follow Chansey here?” She gestured to the Pokémon who Molly had unknowingly threatened to eat.
It was odd walking behind the front desk of a Pokémon Centre, like being in the staff room of her school there was a faint sense of trespassing. It was about what Molly expected, wide hallways, very clean, strange medical equipment beeping away, classic hospital stuff.
The Kitchen, and it deserved the capital letter, was equipped. It was large, spacious and filled with machinery Molly couldn’t name. The obvious stuff was the gas stoves, the ovens, the sinks, what she assumed was a walk in fridge or freezer, but there was more than that, like the machine currently spitting out what looked like pellets into a large bowl. The pink haired man, alternating between two stoves looked relieved to see them.
“Morning, have a good sleep?” He had been manning the front desk when Molly had arrived in Hearthome, at what was looking like four hours ago since the clock said it was now 6am. His eyes were tired, and his apron was stained in what Molly hoped was berry juice.
“It could have been longer, if someone didn’t keep waking me up!” The Chansey beside her let out an odd noise but Molly was too busy glaring at her feet to notice, it all too quickly grabbed a foot staool and started stirring what looked like porridge.
“Orderly Joy, thank you for helping. If you could take over this stove? I need to start cutting up the fruit and berries for breakfast.” He gestured to a frankly enormous pile of fruits set aside on one of the stainless steel tables.
“I’m Molly, Dante here can stir, instead I can help you out with all the fruit.” She said, washing her hands at a sink.
“A Duskull? Are you certain they’re ahh…?” Ghost-types did have a reputation for mayhem after all.
“Relax he’s not like most ghosts, he’s too responsible. Besides there’s no way you’re getting through all that in time.”
Molly put Swablu down on a bench out of the way with her raincoat serving as a bed, she rolled up her sleeves and accepted the knife and chopping board the Orderly handed her. Molly handled the more ordinary fruit and berries, apples, pears, water melons, strawberries and more. The Joy watched her closely for a minute, before deciding she wouldn’t cut herself and began carefully dicing the expensive berries and pouring them into the strange pellet machine.
He eventually spoke up. “So do you cook often then?”
“Yea I practically came out of the womb knowing how to cook, it's an important skill.” She had learnt how to cook fairly young in her first life, now two decades of practise meant she was an apt hand at it.
“It is isn’t it. I’m glad to see it, the skill has been on a decline lately among trainers at least.” He said, pouring a bucket of what looked like chum and chunks of berry into a separate machine, which promptly began spitting out pellets. Molly was noticing a pattern with many of these machines.
“We’ve been trying to run cooking classes among trainers but it’s an uphill battle getting any interest or results and the League isn’t helping the matter.”
“Is it the pre-made meals they’ve been selling? “ Molly had moved onto deseeding all the papaya so she could cut it into the little cubes Joy wanted.
“Not completely, it’s more of a symptom, it’s the convenience really. First it was premade Pokémon feed, and then we starting offering free meals–”
“And now they don’t even need to feed themselves while travelling, just learn to heat the food correctly.” Molly didn’t really care for the pre-made meals the League had started selling in recent years, it was freeze dried and she had found the meat dishes a bit lacklustre. Dante could cook something better, and they were also much more expensive than raw ingredients plus she had to carry the packaging back. It would decay eventually, they didn’t use the same kind of plastic here. Theirs wasn’t basically immortal like Earth Plastic.
“I remember reading an article about some of the development issues among trainers in Kanto due to the poor diets, surely it’s better that they’re eating something actually nutritious.” Though Kanto trainers started at twelve years old, that might exacerbate the issue. Sinnoh trainers started at fifteen because sending small children out into the Sinnoh wilds resulted in equally small frozen corpses. Those three extra years meant they were going out there after the worst of puberty, not during which was an important factor.
“Mmh, that’s why we began offering the free meals. The League only started supporting us with it afterwards” He sighed. “We thought we solved the issue but we failed to address the root cause. It doesn’t help that the education board is saying it’s for the parents to teach how to cook.”
Molly scoffed, she had been through this world’s foster system, that wasn’t an option for every child.
“Kicking the problem down the road instead of resolving it now, so much for progessive Sinnoh.”
She cleared her workbench of scraps and gave her knife and chopping board a quick rinse.
“Alright that’s the fruit done. What’s next?”
“Hey John, it’s Molly. Still alive, arrived in Hearthome City earlier this morning. Don’t report me as dead or whatever.”
Voicemail left that covered all her bases on reporting herself alive. The Pokémon Centre would have reported she had arrived so strictly speaking she didn’t have to, but it was polite and John could be a worrywart.
It was the ripe hour of 7am. The sun was shining, the bird on her shoulder was desperately trying to go back to sleep and the flowers were walking around. Fortunately for Molly, the Hearthome Gym opened at 7:30am and she intended to be the first person there.
The streets were empty save for the odd avian Pokémon pecking at scraps and yawning workers on their way to their day job. Molly followed her map of the city, she had stopped at the very first Pokémon Centre she had found so she was on the outskirts of the city, making it a bit of walk.
The massive line she had seen in Hearthome City when she first arrived would be long gone by now, it was the fifth week of the season. The trainers who won their Gym battle would have headed off to another city and would be still travelling, and ones travelling to Hearthome would have either caught the bus in Pastoria City and have already booked their battle or still be stuck travelling from Oreburgh City or Veilstone City.
As for the trainers who lost their Gym battle? There was a two week ban on booking another battle, so if she had timed this right that first wave of the trainers who had lost their first battle would have had booked their second battle roughly for the fourth week, since the third week would have been booked out by everyone who arrived late and missed the initial rush. The fourth week battles would be over, so she’d have a pretty good shot at getting a slot on the sixth week since her competitors were only the winners from Pastoria and the stragglers.
Soon enough she had arrived at her destination, a few minutes before it opened and completely deserted. She spent them poking her sleeping Swablu and giggling at the noises the fluffball made, so soft. Soon enough the receptionist opened the door and waved her in.
Molly hadn’t actually been in a Gym before, sure they did a lot of outreach with local schools off season but that normally meant coming to the school not going to the Gym. Plus Molly hadn’t actually stayed in a city with a Gym until after she graduated.
The Hearthome Gym looked like a fancy Hotel, a cavernous space with hardwood floors with a rich rug in the centre of the room and a grand chandelier hanging above it. The reception set to the side, directly in front of the entrance was a great door easily three times Molly’s height, lifts and staircases flanking either side. Set directly across from the reception were recliners, coffee tables and a few custom TVs designed to look like windows, they were playing highlight reels from the start of the League it seemed.
Hell the receptionist’s uniform was even a fashionable blue ball gown matching her hair colour, no high heels it seemed however. Fantina was merciful in that at least.
“Are you here to book a Gym battle?” The receptionist said, snapping Molly out of her sightseeing.
“Yes but could I ask you a quick question?” The receptionist hmmed. “Do you have to pay for the dresses you have to wear to work or is it paid by the Gym?”
That managed to quirk a real smile out of her, not the business smile she had been politely wearing before.
“The Gym pays for our work clothing, if we resign they go to the Gym’s wardrobe for future employees or for trainers to borrow when they battle Fantina. I would encourage you to take advantage of that, Fantina often gives away the outfit if she thinks it suits them well.”
“That’s.. Really cool of her.” Gym Leaders all had their theme but Molly had taken a dim view of Fantina’s when she had first heard of it. It had seemed cruel to make growing teenagers purchase an outfit for one battle when they’d quickly grow out of it.
“If you don’t mind waiting, one of our stylists starts at 8am who can help you pick out a dress that fits you. You can of course come back later but it is still quite busy here. They only recently stopped sleeping outside the door.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Excellent, now which badge are you on?”
Soon enough she had completed her pre-Gym test, picked out her outfit for her Gym battle and was booked for early Sunday, only five days away.
The pre-Gym test had been deceptively complicated, they had a wide variety of obstacle courses, like the ones you’d see at a Dog show but on steroids. Molly had picked the small flying variation and had been led to a large circular room with dozens of hoops, tubes and pillars. She made Swablu run the course because she was jealous of the amount of sleep the bird was getting.
In the centre of the room were four stands each with a screen, the screen would display an image depicting the action the Pokémon had to take, for example dive through the purple tube, fly through these hoops in this exact order, land on top of that black pillar.
Worse, the command would only appear on the screen facing the quadrant the action had to take place in. So each time the Gym Trainer decided the Swablu had completed the action and triggered the next image, Molly would have to dash over to the next stand, figure out what it was asking her and then translate it to Swablu. They were being judged on how fast they completed the test and how many mistakes Swablu made, which was thankfully zero. Molly’s training had paid off, she had invented tree suicides out of complete sadism but she’d have to invent something new now, Swablu had earned it.
Maybe I do the beep test but with weights.
The second part of the test was extremely easy in comparison, it was just a one on one Pokémon Battle. She’d let Swablu demolish the Buneary they had released; they were apparently having trouble finding enough Ghost-type Pokémon for the Gym to use this season.
The dress took longer to pick but they settled on what the staff member called a sleeveless midi dress with a straight across neckline. To Molly it was a black dress, it certainly looked good on her and fit her well. It just was that fashion wasn’t really her thing, she didn’t ignore it, she just preferred walking into clothing stores and trying things till she found what she liked. The names weren’t important to her.
A sentiment she was regretting as she tried to name the hat on the Postman in front of her. Sometimes it frightened her how much she was forgetting from Earth.
It had ear flaps so somewhere cold right?
“So how much for a flight to Oreburgh?”
“700.”
“That’s a bit much isn’t it?”
He shrugged, not really talkative was the impression she had gotten from every single Post Office worker she had ever met in this world. So she went to her old classic, looking around.
The building was old, like historical site old. A great tower of stone you could see large birds flying into and out of—
“Swablu.” Molly nearly twisted to look at the Swablu on her shoulder but no, it came from the man in front of her.
“Yea?”
“Good bird, where from?”
“It’s ah from Roost Point, it's a bit east of Route 209.” He nodded, clearly familiar.
“Strong birds there, we have to fly clear. Altaria, not the fastest but they can fly forever.” He was more animated now than any post office worker she met, when she had asked for her mail he had grunted three times across the same number of minutes.
Here’s my trainer ID, grunt. Do I have mail, grunt. Can I have my mail? Grunt. Postmen were weird here.
“Yea that’s why I wanted one, can’t swap between multiple Flying-types like you guys. Plus the wings are amazing.”
“Soft, not like a Skarmory.” He said with a wry grin. Molly shuddered.
“You hear horror stories about trainers freezing to their Skarmorys sometimes, any truth to that?”
“Mmmh, or burns. Sun heats them up, they don’t notice but their trainer will. Good to have for fights while flying.”
They struck up a bit of a conversation while they waited for Molly’s post, normally it wouldn’t take this long. A Courier would pick up the post from the Post Office, from there its route depended on where it was sent from. If Molly sent a letter from Daybreak Town to say Camellia Town instead of going directly to Camellia Town it’ll go to Sunnyshore City since they had a depot there and then all the mail gathered in Sunnyshore for Camellia Town would be picked up, taken to the Camellia Town Post Office and someone would take it to the address listed.
Except for Molly she was a trainer, so she didn’t have an address. Her mail would be marked with her trainer number which was publicly available, name and region if it was interregional mail. From there it would go to the nearest depot like the building Molly was in now, they’d check their records which would say Molly’s mail is to be forwarded to Hearthome City and then Molly would have to go and pick up her mail. When she left Hearthome she’d have to update them to forward her mail to wherever she was headed to next, or else she’d have to pay a fee to forward it a second time.
All this meant that some poor worker had to go through all the mail for trainers or travellers in the C box, and find all three letters their records showed were addressed to her in it.
I’m pretty sure the hat isn’t Canadian so that leaves the Nordic Countries and Russia.
Sure enough a harried worker with two papercuts all but shoved the mail at Molly, interrupting their discussion on what bird’s favourite foods tended to be.
She was polite enough to ignore the slight bloodstain on one of the letters and said her goodbyes.
One letter from Southern Shore University, which she skimmed and promptly shoved into her pocket for when she found a trash can. You’d think they’d get the hint that she was going on a Pokémon Journey, when she had stopped responding to their spam a year ago.
Her subscription to Pokémon Researchers Monthly arrived, she’d have something to read on the next bus ride.
“Huh– Dante, John sent us a letter.”
That was odd, John had never sent her mail before. He just kinda showed up every now and again and made sure she wasn’t dead or something she assumed? The Police felt pretty bad about how they handled her case, it was why they paid for her room for the two years while she did the Cadet program.
“Let’s see, Hi brat, I hope Dante has let you sleep in as much as you want.” It said the opposite but she was 100% sure Dante did it because of John, maybe he’d stop if she lied to him enough?
Please?
“Blah blah blah, generic greetings, Char doesn’t miss us, Paulette has broken up with her boyfriend again and is making that everyone’s problem. If I call Jason I can place my bet on how long it takes for them to get back together, 3 to 1 odds on two weeks right now. He complains about how meeting me was the worst day of his life, how he had a great life ahead of him. Blah blah. I am the worst.”
A few passerbys looked at Molly oddly when she read her mail outloud to the bird clearly asleep on her shoulder. Damn, he sent this ten days ago she was too late, that would have been easy money for the Paulette bet. They never figured out that Paulette knew they were betting against her and Molly split the pot with her.
“Please stop sending me voicemails of creepy heavy breathing, I know it’s you. PS don’t contact me at Daybreak Town anymore, I’ve been… Promoted…”
She stopped in the street and reread that again.
“John’s the Assistant Commissioner of Snowpoint City. Huh. ”
Battling with Swablu was different to battling with Dante.
Dante was a careful instrument of war, a scalpel Molly had complete control over and used to target weakness wherever she saw it. Swablu was a dog she let off the chain.
Swablu knew exactly five moves but she would only use Tackle, Peck, Disarming Voice and Fury Attack. She would violently dive at whatever Molly threw her up against and use some combination of those four moves relentlessly until someone collapsed.
And it worked.
It worked so well Molly promptly ditched all the training plans she had carefully laid out over the years for this exact moment. Her image of a graceful, elegant bird ducking and weaving through each blow and unleashing breath attack after breath attack with careful distancing was torn to shreds by the violent manic reality in front of her.
But it was the fifth Move Molly was interested in, Cotton Guard. Mostly because it made Swablu even more fluffy but that fluff served a purpose, it was cushioning for any blow Swablu took. Molly had tested it herself, initially softly punching Swablu’s wing and ramping it up until Swablu told her she had actually felt the hit, it reinforced Molly’s belief that humans were for the most part defenceless to Pokémon. Especially since Molly could hit Swablu as hard as she could when Swablu had used Cotton Guard and the bird would feel nothing.
There was a reason for this testing. Molly had noticed something, an interaction between Cotton Guard and another move that might prove to be very promising.
When certain Moves were used, you could see the Type energy coat the Pokémon’s body. If Dante used Astonish, you could see the Ghost-type energy glowing in his fist in the moments before he struck and when Swablu used Peck her beak would glow with the blue light of Flying-type energy.
Molly had seen John’s Heracross use Take Down before, its entire body glowed in the exact same way Swablu’s beak did when she used Peck. If Molly could teach Swablu Take Down, she could remove both Move’s drawbacks. Cotton Guard certainly made Swablu more tanky, but it also meant that Swablu’s wings hit like a luxurious pillow. Take Down on the other hand, was so violent that if the Move connected with anything it damaged the user with the sheer force of the Move.
Combine the two and Swablu could use her own wings as cushioning for the blow. It’ll dull the impact certainly but Swablu only weighed a bit over one kilogram, the velocity of the attack would never do as much damage as the Move’s Type energy impacting the victim. If Molly could make this work, she would have a weaker Take Down that could be used relentlessly without consequence to the user.
The trick was teaching Swablu Take Down.
Which is what led to Swablu’s present situation, Molly had gone to the city’s weights room and picked out the ones meant for avian Pokémon at Swablu’s size. Weights were essential to trainers, but they had a few issues for the average bloke. They were expensive, difficult to bring with you on a Journey and Pokémon had this annoying habit of evolving. Suddenly changing shape, size, strength and requiring a brand new set of weights.
Selling them was a nightmare too, good luck finding a trainer who has both a Pokémon that could use that particular set of weights along with the money to spare to purchase them off you. Most Pokémon weight sets ended up in two places, second hand stores for a fraction of the original price, or donated to weight rooms that Gyms had set up for trainers to use freely.
“Aright Swablu, according to this manual this harness shouldn’t restrict movement of your wings or pinch in these locations.” Molly instructed, poking the corresponding areas on Swablu’s body.
Swablu flexed her wings, stretching them out and testing the full range of motion. Molly had to lift Swablu up with one arm so the bird could stretch the full length of her wings downwards. Satisfied, Swablu let out the happy chirp, the one they had designated as “yes” or “good” or “yum”.
Off on the other end of the field Molly had taken, Dante was working on Mean Look and Will-O-Wisp. They had tested the black mist after Eevee escaped and the best way to make it absorb more damage was to condense it into the smallest possible area. So Dante was off practising how to most quickly release the condensed mist, before burning it away with Will-O-Wisps and trying again.
“Good, I’m going to add the weights now.”
She added one to each side, balancing each other out so Swablu would stay balanced. In future she might add them all to one side to simulate a wounded wing, but for now she just wanted to make it harder for Swablu to take off. She was very careful with the knots holding the weights in place, Molly did not want one flying off and hitting her.
“Here’s the plan, we’re going to practise you taking off. When I saw John’s Heracross use Take Down, he always moved like so!” Molly stepped forward in one swift motion, pushing herself forward with the one movement. Swablu tried copying that with her tiny stub of a leg, and fell flat on her face.
Molly helped her up, looking her bird in the eyes.
“That’s not going to work for you, you need to do the same thing but with your wings. One big flap propelling yourself forward, you’ll need to block with your wings so only use the one flap, give it a try.”
They worked at it for a little, eventually stopping and removing a few of the weights when they realised Swablu couldn’t even fly. Molly picked her up and let her take off from Molly’s hand, but Swablu just glided downwards no matter how much she tried to gain altitude. Soon enough Swablu figured out the best motion to launch herself off the ground.
Molly drew a line in the sand and had Swablu repeat it three times, measuring the distance Swablu had travelled and writing it down along with the arc the songbird had flown. After that they tried another motion, the previous one launched Swablu at a 45 degrees angle which was great, but what was the best way to launch Swablu at 70 degrees or 20 degrees? Not every enemy would be at a 45 degrees angle from Swablu.
Eventually they worked out the most efficient ways for Swablu to take off at a certain angle with one flap of her wings. Molly made a note to set aside time to figure out the same thing but backwards but her arms were really sore from lifting up Swablu so she could figure out the best ways to launch herself on the downwards angles.
Now that they had the most efficient ways to derive the most velocity from one flap of Swablu, it was time to work in Tackle. Eventually with enough practice it should become Take Down.
In a moment of sudden insight Molly snapped her fingers and she said.
“That’s it! He was wearing an Ushanka!”
Author’s Note: Faster than the last chapter.
I hope the explanations on what Molly is doing with Swablu make sense to the reader.
I’ve been playing through Platinum to refresh myself on Sinnoh in general, I had to write down a lot of stuff before I did that so I had an accurate idea of what Molly would remember give or take, I haven’t played in Platinum in a decade, she hasn’t in two but she’d be desperately trying to remember for the last decade so it should balance out to be realistic.
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