Pokemon: Mega Tactics - Chapter 2.1

You held up your hands in a placating motion, "Whoa there, we're not here to cause trouble big guy." you said, though Pidgeotto was tense and prepared to shoot into action at the slightest move of aggression from the massive bug and fighting type pokemon.

Heracross cocked its head at you, "Cross." it grunted, unfolding its arms and gesturing for you to continue.

You reached into your pocket and pulled out the Charizardite, "I'm looking for something like this, I don't suppose you've seen one around here anywhere have you?" you asked, holding it up for Heracross to see clearly.

Heracross' yellow eyes widened a bit, before to your surprise, it turned and walked away from you, jumping into the air and unfolding its shell at the back for its wings to appear and flying up into the dense leaf foliage of the gargantuan tree.

"..Huh?" you stared in bemusement at where Heracross stood previously. You turned and looked at Pidgeotto, who merely shrugged his wings, just as lost as you.

You stood there for maybe thirty seconds, and just as you were beginning to get antsy, Heracross jumped out from the foliage of the tree and dropped down the hundreds of feet to land in front of you, the sheer bulk of the bug and fighting type and how hard he landed once again making the ground rumble beneath your feet.

Your eyes went wide as Heracross lifted its hands, and showed you, the small yellow sphere cupped between them. Different from your Charizardite, with the symbol within being of blue, orange and red opposed to the orange and red within the Charizardite.

Without a doubt though, it was a mega stone! You couldn't believe your luck! You've only been on your journey for a day and already found a mega stone! Were you born under a lucky star or something!?

"Pidgeo!" Pidgeotto crowed in excitement, flapping his wings as he hopped over to the Heracross a bit and examined the small gem-like sphere.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to give that to me?" you asked.

Heracross grunted and shrugged, eyeing you expectantly. It looked like it was asking you what you wanted with it.

Well the truth was always the best for the most part, "It's called a mega stone, what kind I'm not sure," you told it, "See, they can be used to temporarily evolve pokemon into an even stronger form that takes a pokemons abilities to the utmost limit, called mega evolution. But only a few pokemon actually have the ability to mega evolve, for instance, you'd need this one I'm holding, Charizardite to mega evolve a Charizard into Mega Charizard."

"..Hera..?" Heracross hummed in interest and looked down at the stone it was holding.

"Still, it's not something a pokemon can do on their own," you continued, "A pokemon needs to have a strong bond with a trainer who has something called a key stone while they have a mega stone, and only then can that pokemon mega evolve."

Heracross looked up, interest still blatantly on its face as it met your eyes, "Something interesting to know, is that Heracross are one of the few pokemon known that can mega evolve,"

Heracross' eyes widened at the information you provided and you grinned, "My name is Cobalt, I'm a new trainer who wants to raise pokemon that can mega evolve," you said, and held your hand out invitingly, "I came here looking to see if a Heracross would be interested in becoming my pokemon and to chase the faint hope that there may be a Heracrossite here, never in my wildest imagination did I think I'd run into one as amazing as you, in the ownership of a mega stone no less."

Heracross eyed your hand, "You're perfect, so what do you say, would you like to become my pokemon and chase the power of mega evolution with me?" you asked.

"..Hera.." the bug and fighting type continued to eye your hand intently. You were disappointed when it curled its hand around the mega stone hiding it from view and stepping back, shaking its head.

Before you could say or do anything though, Heracross raised its other hand and beckoned towards you and Pidgeotto with the traditional 'come at me' gesture.

"Oh, you want to battle!" your eyes widened in realisation before you grinned, "Want to test me huh?"

"Cross!" Heracross grunted with a nod, as it stared at you with hard, set eyes.

Your grin widened, "Alright then we'll take you up on that!" you clenched your first and punched forward, "Pidgeotto, Quick Attack into Wing Attack!" you ordered.

"Pidgeotto!" your flying and normal type bird pokemon quickly shot forward, a trail of white energy exploding from its body and wings as he closed the ten or so feet of distance in all the time it took to blink twice.

One of his winged exploded into white power and he slammed it into the massive Heracross hard.

Just before the wing attack hit, Heracross' body gleamed with silver energy and the bug and fighting type threw both of its arms up to take the glowing wing in a cross block.

"Hera!" it grunted loudly as it tried to hold its ground, its yellow eyes widened a moment later the soil beneath its feet gave away as Pidgeotto gave a piercing cry put all his strength into the attack.

Heracross shouted as it flew backwards and your grin couldn't get any wider, "Now Gust!"

"Pidgeo!" Pidgeotto's wings started glowing with blue power next as he began to rapidly beat his wings towards Heracross, kicking up a massive gale force wind that almost blew you off your feet even though it was facing away from you and you were quite a bit away from it.

The massive force of wind swept over Heracross and the bug and fighting type gave a bellow of pain as another four times super effective flying type attack slammed it into the ground hard.

The winds continued to buffet Heracross for a few seconds before the bug and fighting type beetle pokemon thrust two glowing arms up into the air and carved the wind around it apart with sheer physical strength.

Yellow eyes locked on to Pidgeotto as Heracross aimed its massive horn forward, beginning to glow with crimson red energy. With a shout, the energy exploded forward from the massive horn, forming into over a dozen large lances of crimson red energy that shot through the air towards Pidgeotto like a stream of bullets.

"Quick Attack then Mirror Move!" you shouted, and Pidgeotto was quick to obey.

Shooting into the air at rapid speeds with Quick Attack, the bird pokemon ducked and weaved through the energy lances, only gaining a few scrapes for his efforts and when he ascended above them all, he spread his wings wide and gave a piercing cry once more, his eyes glowing silver, before his beak erupted into crimson red energy just like Heracross' horn.

With a thrust of his beak, Pidgeotto fired just the same, over a dozen large lances of crimson red energy down towards Heracross.

Bringing his wings out, Heracross flew right up into the attack, body gleaming silver again and right through them!

Pidgeotto shot down with Quick Attack to meet it head on, "Spin below and Wing Attack!" you ordered.

Heracross thrust one glowing arm out towards Pidgeotto just as they were about to collide, but using his speed, Pidgeotto barrel rolled beneath the blow and lashed out with a glowing with using Wing Attack, striking Heracross directly in the face full force, just at the same time Heracross lashed out with its other glowing arm and delivering an overhead blow straight to Pidgeotto's head.

They both cried out and a small shock wave of wind was blasted outwards from their attacks landing on each other. And then...they both fell from the air.

They slammed into the ground in front of you, hard. And as one, they both struggled to their feet, glaring at one another, staring into each other's eyes.

But then a moment later, Pidgeotto's legs gave out beneath him and your bird collapsed face first, unable to continue. 'One blow was all it took!' you couldn't help but be shocked and impressed at the sheer strength Heracross possessed.

Disappointment filled you, but you rose your pokeball up and returned Pidgeotto, "Good work buddy, you almost had him." you praised the pokemon contained within his pokeball.

You stowed the pokeball on your belt before smiling grimly at Heracross who hadn't moved an inch, "Well I guess you win then." you mused. It was annoying and disappointing to be sure. And you could easily bring out Gible or Charmander and finish Heracross off easily. But that would be cowardly as hell. You failed the challenge, that was all there was to it, no use whining like a little brat.

To your surprise though, Heracross shook its head from side to side, shakily, the pokemon leaned down and to your surprise, deposited the mega stone on the ground in front of you, before smiling lightly at you and nodding.

Then, its yellow eyes rolled up into the back of its head and Heracross collapsed face first, just like your Pidgeotto before it.

'Huh..' you thought blankly, staring at the collapsed pokemon. So it was a draw then. And it seemed Heracross had given you its approval.

Walking over, you ignored the mega stone on the ground for now and made your way over to Heracross, pulling an empty pokeball from your pocket and enlarging it, "Welcome to the team." you said softly as you gently touched the pokeball to Heracross' horn.

It clicked open and Heracross was turned into red energy and sucked within the pokeball. Like with Pidgeotto, it glowed red for a few moments, before letting loose a loud 'ping' of success signifying that Heracross had been successfully captured.

You eyed the pokeball for a few moments with a smile before clipping it to your belt and turning around to pick up the mega stone Heracross had given to you.

"Let's see what you are shall we?" you hummed. You reached into your backpack and pulled out one of your uncles Mega Stone Scanners. He only had five of them in total, and you were really lucky he was willing to part with one. What they did was analyse the frequency given off of a mega stone. The frequency always matched that off the pokemon capable of using it.

Honestly, it didn't even look all that impresses. It looked like an old pokegear mode with a camera-like lense on the back and a screen up top.

You aimed the lense at it and scanned the mega stone, and a few moments later, the image of a Heracross appeared on the screen.

"So it's Heracrossite, just as I figured!" you cheered happily. It led even further credicene to your uncles theory of Mega Stones appearing at places large amounts of pokemon capable of mega evolving congregated.

"All I need is a Key Stone and I can mega evolve Heracross!" you whooped in excitement.

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By time you made it back to Santalune City and dropped off Pidgeotto and Heracross at the Pokemon Centre with Nurse Joy, it was just about nine in the morning.

Once you were done there, you headed for the Santalune City gym.

"Wow, this is really nice." you whistled as you admired the gym from the outside. It wasn't anywhere near as large as the Lumiose Tower that functioned as the gym in Lumiose but it was still pretty big. And it was done in varying shades of green hues that reflected off of the street lights and beautifully cut hedges outside of it.

You could rightfully believe this was a gym dedicated to the bug type pokemon species.

Making your way up the stairs, you pushed open the glasses doors and entered inside, closing them behind you.

You found yourself stepping in to a lovely blue tiled wide open hallway. It was beautifully and tastefully decorated with expensive black leather couches spread along the lengths of the hall and beautiful plants. And all along the walls on both sides of the hallway were dozens of beautifully taken photographs of all types of bug type pokemon. They were so amazingly done you thought they were better suited to an art exhibit.

"Heya, how can I help you?" a woman called out to you, as you were in the process of examining a powerful looking Scyther clashing blades with another in one photograph.

You looked up to see a pretty older woman dressed in a tight white tank top and greyish green capri pants making her way towards you, a camera hanging around her neck.

"Hey, I'm Cobalt," you introduced yourself, "I'm here for a gym battle."

"A gym battle huh?" she tapped her chin, "Well, I'm gonna be really busy today, but I suppose I've got enough time for a quick one on one if you're fine with that."

"Oh, you're the gym leader?" you asked in surprise, "And that should be fine."

"That's me, Viola, the Santalune City Gym Leader," she winked as she introduced herself to you, "Let's go have a gym battle then!" she beckoned you to follow her and led you down the hallway.