Searching Far and Wide - 97

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Kadabra

- Bellatrix, Gyarados (Shiny)

- Andromeda, Vaporeon

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

- Star, Cleffa

- Cinder, Vulpix

Saffron City XII

All he could hear was the sound of flowing water and all he could feel was the cold stone bench under him and the gentle morning breeze that somehow reached him. If he were honest, Pierce was feeling like both things were working to lull him to sleep. Alas, it wasn’t quite the place to do so, but that just meant they were relaxing, which was kind of the point.

Only kind of though, since he was, first and foremost, supposed to be able to focus.

Which was kind of hard when he was barely avoiding nodding off.

It was his best chance though, so, pulling on all his meager mental power, he reached for Cygnus’s presence in his mind. The Psychic pokemon was probably doing a Herculean effort not to make a comment on his poor performance and Pierce appreciated that. Regardless, he focused on the foreign presence in his mind, which was his pokemon’s. Then, he started thinking about his old world and then not, over and over…

And he could feel it, the shift.

It was incredibly subtle, and he wasn’t sure he could describe it accurately with how weird it was to deal with matters of the mind. He knew there was something different between one and the other, but that was about it and sometimes he wouldn’t even manage that. And that was with Cygnus’s presence making everything stand out a little more.

No wonder people had a hard time becoming proper Psychics. Pierce imagined it’d take him forever to get a good grasp on his own mind, let alone doing anything with it. He tried not to let that discourage him too much though. After all, he’d known he was unlikely to get anywhere on that front. He wasn’t there for that. Getting a grasp on his own mind sounded like a good enough development in his eyes, even if it took him a while, with emphasis and all.

“Good mindset,” Sabrina’s soft voice whispered to his mind.

He must have been thinking “loudly”, because the Gym Leader usually stayed away from reading minds. She did look to the surface levels though, which Pierce imagined for Psychics was the equivalent of looking someone in the face. Maybe he could look up what was the Psychic equivalent of common courtesies and such.

“There’s books that speak about that,” the Leader said, her voice growing “louder”, which actually meant she was getting closer and more focused on their “conversation”. He was pretty sure that was just a trick of hers to let people know or something though. He wondered if that would be as impressive as he thought or more so, considering how difficult all Psychic feats were. “I can give you some titles.”

Well, she hadn’t read the last train of thought, it seemed. Then again, now that he was made aware of things, he could think “quieter” so as to keep things away from the surface level Sabrina could pick up on. As he did so though, his concentration finished breaking and he opened his eyes.

“I imagined you could do with a break,” the Gym Leader said, out loud this time as she approached and moved to take the seat beside him. Even the way she moved was a little eerie. Just like her voice and expression, it was all measured, precise and devoid of any flaws, even if those flaws were personality. He wondered if that was all her or if it was a side-effect of the Psychic mastery she had. He imagined it was the former though, considering Cygnus wasn’t nearly as robotic-looking. “People can often try too hard and the mind isn’t something that can be forced.”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind,” Pierce replied with a nod, taking a deep breath in and then letting it out slowly.

“I’m not surprised that you are showing progress already, however,” she continued and he just blinked and turned towards her. There was no way she didn’t notice his skeptical look – nevermind his mind –, but she continued all the same, as if unaware. “Your block is different from most. Not to say it’s unique, but most of the time people with mental blocks have a hard time reaching them intentionally, or at all, being blocked themselves. And even those that are able to do so struggle. Blocks never come with good memories, after all.”

The flash of metal… the stabbing pain… the red blood… the enclosing darkness… the fading sounds…

“Now that felt more like the usual response,” Sabrina commented, and for once some glint of emotion was shown in her expression as she stared at him. What it was, he had no idea, since it was barely there at all. However, there was no denying that there’d been something there, even if it disappeared after a second or two. “How very interesting,” she mused, almost as if just talking to herself. “I think I’ll enjoy teaching you, Pierce Lawson. Shame you’ll be leaving soon.”

She didn’t even ask about it, he noticed, but then again, she didn’t really need to. It was an obvious conclusion. She said it with so much certainty though, that it was a little eerie, as many things were with her. He almost wondered if she saw the future. As one of the – if not the – best human Psychics in the world, he wouldn’t be very surprised if she did.

It’d be cool… if a little frightening.

“Not leaving just yet,” he commented, even though he knew it probably wouldn’t be more than a few days. As it was, he was just delaying so that he could get some more time under her tutelage. Eventually, they’d just leave. Although, at least even after leaving he might be able to attend for some more time. After all, Cygnus could probably teleport them to Saffron for some time before they were too far for his reach. Should at least give him a few more days, if nothing else.

“Not yet, no,” Sabrina agreed with a slight nod. “Now, back to your practice. Tell me how you are perceiving things in your mind.”

[}-o-{]

‘Shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Pierce thought, moving through a stretch of woods on the outside of Saffron, like he usually did when going out on jobs. Strange was the case when he had to work inside the city.

With a place as big, populated and – most importantly – building-packed, it was no wonder why there weren’t many pokemon around. Well, wild pokemon, at least. At most one would meet the occasional creature more adapted to city life, like lines similar to rattata, snubbull, meowth or magnemite. Even those had trouble living in the city, really. After all, for one reason or another, they’d always end up becoming a problem for anyone in their general area.

Much like the meowth that he’d had to deal with not so long before.

Turning around for a moment, he compared the not-so-distant sight of the skyscrapers and other buildings, full of gray and more muted colors, to the vibrant green of the forest around him. It was a contrast to be sure and it reminded him why he preferred nature. Sure, the city had its many comforts, which was the main appeal, but it’d never be as beautiful as the wilds. Not to Pierce, at least.

“Back to the job, Helper-Voice,” Cygnus told him and he nodded, chuckling sheepishly and continuing to walk. He dutifully ignored the looks his kadabra and Andromeda were giving him. “Idiot.”

Rude.

But not inaccurate, he supposed.

Pushing his mean pokemon aside in his mind, Pierce moved through the woods once more, going over the information that his latest client had given him. It wasn’t much, but it painted a pretty clear picture that told him it shouldn’t be too difficult a job. A calm disposition, some conversation, some bribing and things would go smoothly.

He was more nervous about the conversation he was likely to have with his client afterwards, quite honestly.

They were not going to like it if he was right.

Still, there was only one thing that Pierce could think of that’d make a golduck so aggressive while still not quite causing any major incidents. According to his info, the Water type was shooting first and asking questions never as soon as anyone got close to their territory. Fortunately, it hadn’t resorted to Psychic attacks, keeping things simple and straightforward with water shots.

However, Pierce knew that golduck and their line weren’t all that territorial. Hell, some of them would even go out of their way to help people when nearby and such. This wasn’t the same for all of them, of course, but the fact stood that golduck weren’t what one would say a dangerous line… even if all pokemon could be dangerous in their own right.

So, this led Pierce to a rather simple theory that would explain this odd behavior.

“Woah!” he exclaimed when all of a sudden water was shot right in front of him. A Water Gun if he’d ever seen one, and it happened right when he was approaching the river. ‘Well, who could it be?’ he thought sarcastically.

Narcissa, who had been hanging onto his shoulders like usual – something that was so normal that he barely registered it at that point –, let go of him and then flew off. Andromeda, for her part, simply walked in the direction the move had come from. The only ones left were Pierce and Cygnus, who was carrying the camera. He was pretty sure he’d have gone off too, otherwise.

“I would have,” the kadabra confirmed, to which he smiled.

“Well, let’s go before Narcissa gets into a fight that doesn’t need to happen, yeah?” he asked, more for the video than his Psychic type, before following after his pokemon. Soon enough, he found the golduck in a standoff with one hand pointing at each of Pierce’s team members. Andromeda seemed to have kept her calm for the most part, but Narcissa had an Electroweb ready to go off.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

“Hello,” he greeted, plastering his most friendly expression and making the Water type turn both hands towards him, which, in turn, made his team tense up. “There’s no need for that. We just came to talk,” he said, keeping his calm. If worse came to worst, he was sure his team would help. Cygnus was acting as a relay, telling Narcissa and Andromeda to be ready to shoot. Meanwhile, the kadabra himself teleported the camera into a good position to record on its own and prepared himself to teleport in front of an hypothetical attack just in case.

The golduck kept glaring though, but fortunately didn’t go for the attack. That was fine. Pierce just needed to be heard. If a pokemon was reasonable enough to hear him out, there was no need to worry. It was when they were unreasonable that things got tricky.

“You laid eggs, didn’t you?” he asked and the Water type stiffened even more than it already was. “That’s why you’ve been so territorial. You are protecting your children,” he continued, keeping his voice and disposition calm and non-threatening. “Hear me out, alright? Nobody wants to harm you or the eggs. We just want to talk and make sure that everyone is safe. I promise I just want to make sure nobody’s hurt,” he explained, raising his hands placatingly and bowing a little.

He also told Cygnus to have everyone stand down too, with Narcissa lowering herself to the ground and the kadabra and Andromeda relaxing their stances.

Seeing all this, the Golduck took her sweet, sweet time before minimally lowering her webbed hands and making a half-threatening half-questioning sound.

“Thank you,” he said, first and foremost. Nothing wrong with showing gratitude for hearing him out. Reasonable pokemon were the best. “Now, I’m sure we can come to an agreement so that everyone can be happy, yeah? Let’s talk.”

The pokemon quacked, clearly still not very on board with the whole thing. It was probably the threat of his pokemon that was keeping her somewhat calm. Pierce could work with that though. He’d just need to be… careful and go slowly.

“Nobody here wants to fight you, Golduck,” he said, lying through his teeth. Narcissa definitely wanted to fight her. However, it wasn’t because of any animosity or ill will towards the Water type. She was just a battle maniac, so it didn’t count for the purposes of the conversation. “Honestly, I’d be the first to jump in if someone was endangering the young ones,” he continued and he saw how that got through the golduck’s guard. Nice. “Obviously, I don’t understand how you feel. I’m not a father or anything quite like that… although some members of my team do feel like children more often than not.”

“I do hope you don’t mean me,” Cygnus commented, side-eyeing him together with Andromeda and Narcissa. He had, indeed, not meant him. Bellatrix and Orion though, those were proper children. Which was funny, since they were the biggest in his team. “Good,” the kadabra added.

Although, now that he looked at it again.

“All my team feel like children sometimes,” Pierce said, lips tugging upwards when all three of his pokemon glared at him. “All the way down to the childish tantrums,” he added, waving his hand to signal the trio. They might not have appreciated his words, but the golduck certainly did. It was difficult to read a golduck’s expression, especially when their body language was non-existent on account of how on guard she was, but he could have sworn he detected some amusement there.

“We’ll remember this, Helper-Voice,” Cygnus all but growled and Pierce had to hold back a roll of his eyes.

“So, what I’m trying to say is that I understand wanting to protect them, okay?” he continued talking, trying not to sound too…  patronizing? … presumptuous? … Was one of those the word? He just didn’t want to come across like he was an idiot thinking he understood when he really didn’t. “The last thing I want is to disturb your little family, alright? I just want to talk and find a way so that nobody will be attacked, not you and not the people that live near here.”

The golduck stared at him for a long moment, clearly not quite as open to the idea as he’d have liked. Oh well, that just meant that he’d have to keep it up. No problem. He knew just the thing to buy himself time, after all.

“Say, how about we share a meal and talk it out?” he offered and the Water type blinked at him. “I have some snacks that I think you’ll like and we can see if we find a way for everyone to be happy, what do you say?”

Before the pokemon even made any sound, Pierce already knew he’d got her attention.

He grinned.

[}-o-{]

‘Interesting that,’ Pierce thought to himself, setting down the book he’d been reading and pulling one of his now many notebooks.

Then he started taking notes on what he was studying at that moment. Mainly how to take care of magnemite. To be specific, how to help one recharge electricity if it ran out. It wasn’t quite as easy as people thought, apparently. It wasn't just a matter of throwing a battery at it and calling it a day. One had to be careful which type of battery they used – or what alternative source of electricity one had available, for that matter – and how they used it. They might be made of metal for the most part, but magnemite were still sensible, especially to energy – ironically enough – and in their depowered state.

Reading through the text, Pierce likened the charging process to some kind of mix between defibrillation and blood transfusion, just less dangerous if done incorrectly. It still carried its dangers, of course, but one had to mess up very badly to kill a magnemite like this. The chance of doing more bad than good though? That was fairly high, which is why charging them was included in the first-aid category… borderlining on needing proper medical education, actually.

‘... This is gonna take a while,’ he thought, not for the first time, looking at his book and all that was left of it. Nevermind the fact that he had several other books to go through. He’d known that testing for the First-Aid License wouldn’t be easy and would take time, but still… He was allowed to grumble about it, right?

‘How’s everyone else doing?’ he wondered, looking up, mostly just to give his weary eyes a break from all the reading but also so that he could check on his team. He was a trainer though, so checking on them was part of the job too. He just didn’t need to do so as much as one would think.

It wasn’t like looking over their metaphorical – sometimes literal – shoulders would help much. He gave them nudges here and there, pieces of advice and suggestions, to help them along with their training, their learning. Beyond that though, it was a lot of repetition, trial and error. If they got stuck somewhere, that was where Pierce came in with new ideas or approaches. If they refused to do that though, it was his duty to notice and get involved anyway.

Fortunately though, looking at them, it seemed things were going about as well as one would expect.

Most of them were all huddled together next to the water feature where Bellatrix was bound to be. That was for a reason too, since they were all working on Ground type moves. Lily and him had, after all, more or less confirmed that they were going to Vermillion after several talks. So, it was in their best interest to prepare for Electric types… which were only weak to Ground.

Orion was really going to shine there, Pierce was sure, but it didn’t hurt to prepare a little extra. That was why Pierce had the onix working on Dig together with Andromeda. He very much doubted the Water type would be part of that gym challenge, but that didn’t mean she could just skip the training in preparation for Electric types. If the trend continued, they were bound to come across a lot of those in the battlegrounds too, after all.

Then again, Vermilion should have plenty of water types in the mix, so maybe it’d break the trend a little?

Either way, Andromeda and Orion were doing their best to work the energies in a way that would let them go underground and still be semi-aware of the surface. It’d come in handy at some point anyway, of that there was no doubt. It wasn’t easy, but he was sure Orion wouldn’t have too much trouble. That wasn’t what one would call a signature move for onix, but it wasn’t so far off either. The only reason he didn’t know the move was because they focused on other things up until then. Mama Onix would probably have taught him the move much earlier.

Andromeda was bound to have more difficulty, but Orion should be able to help her through it.

Then there was Narcissa, who was dutifully smacking against the ground stingers first. He wasn’t sure if Drill Run was going to be a problem for her, but she definitely seemed determined to do well. She was probably still feeling salty about her loss in Sabrina’s Gym. Pierce pondered having yet another talk with her, but maybe he’d leave that for in case she pushed a little too hard and it became a problem. There was no need to be overbearing, after all, and that was likely to make things worse, really.

Last in the Ground training camp was Bellatrix and the gyarados was truly a happy camper. She was training Bulldoze, which involved a lot of her smacking her tail on the ground and trying to shoot dirt and Ground type energy all around. She wasn’t having a lot of success with that, but contrary to what he’d expected, she wasn’t frustrated at all.

If anything, she seemed to be having fun, adorable oversized noodle that she was.

If Pierce had to guess, she was probably just overjoyed that she finally got to train like everyone else, with everyone else. She seemed happier than she’d been when she started on Ice Fang with Cygnus help, so maybe she just wanted to have fun with her friends.

Being realistic though, that probably wasn’t going to last much, but he was happy for her. She was having a good time and looking more adorable than ever, like an excited super-sized baby snake wiggling her body to show how much fun she was having… except that instead she was hitting the ground and “learning Bulldoze”. He wondered how much of that was actual effort though, but he wouldn’t fault her if she was just messing around.

He’d been the first to say that he wouldn’t mind if she stayed off battling all that seriously for a bit, but he’d run out of excuses, really. She was mostly fine, mentally speaking, so if she wanted to be part of training and battles, he’d allow her to be. If she was patient enough to give it more time as it seemed she was though, he’d appreciate it.

Last but not least though-

“Well said.”

-was Cygnus, who was the only one not part of the newly formed Ground squad.

His kadabra was off to the side, on his own, practicing his own moves. Psychic moves, to be exact, in the shape of Confusion – which he’d already gotten started with previous to the Gym challenge – and Kinesis, which was the actual new addition to his training regime. It was a move unique to his line though, so Pierce expected it wouldn’t take him long to have it ready.

Not what one would call a great set of moves to train for Vermillion, but then again, kadabra couldn’t learn any Ground type moves, sadly. Thus, they’d have to make do and probably leave the battling at the Gym to other members. Then again, Andromeda and Bellatrix were likely less fit for that, even if they could learn Ground moves… So, maybe Cygnus would fight there. ‘The power of versatility, I guess,’ he thought to himself. His kadabra did have a lot of options for the gyms, he supposed. It also helped that none of the Gyms had types effective against him unless they went about it with a double-typed pokemon.

“I’m amazing, I know.”

‘I never said that though,’ Pierce projected flatly.

Back to the matter at hand, Kinesis might actually be useful for more than just battling. It was a move that messed with the opponent’s mind in a way that made their awareness just absolutely suck. Their perception was shot to hell and they had more trouble landing hits and dodging attacks. Why did he think it’d be useful for more than battling though? He thought it might help him with his mind studies, but that was something for later down the road.

As it was-

“Everyone hard at work, eh?” Lily commented, pulling him out of his observations and making him turn towards her. “We are probably gonna be done in a bit, in case you wanna go back to the city,” she informed him and Pierce took a moment to consider that. “Although, I expected you’ll want to stay here for longer.”

“Why though?” he asked, tilting his head and frowning a little, confused.

“Well, you have a visitor here, so I imagined you’d want to dedicate some time to them,” she answered, making him blink before following her gaze when she turned her head to the side and down. Then he blinked again. “You hadn’t noticed him?”

“Helper-Voice is blind. Of course he didn’t notice.”

‘Thanks for the heads-up, asshole,’ Pierce cursed his Psychic type in his mind.

“What are you doing here again, buddy?” he asked out loud, half puzzled and half resigned.

The meowth just did his best Puss-in-Boots impression, sitting down, bringing his front paws up under his chin and widening his big “innocent” eyes at him.

And Pierce could only sigh while Lily giggled.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Another day in the life of Proxym- I mean, Pierce. Personal training, team training, usual job stuff, all in all nothing out of the ordinary. Not very exciting, I guess, but I find this kind of thing very fluffy, very nice.

Is it just me? Probably, but I first and foremost write stories I’d like to read.

Yes, I have terrible taste. Shut up.

Hopefully you guys enjoy it all the same though.

And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for you all, of course.

Important: I’m going on a vacation at the end of this week, as I announced some time ago in the place of patrons. Thus, I won’t be updating anything for a whole month. Wish me luck, guys, because pre-vacation times have not been kind to me.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: I’ve asked this somewhere before, but meh, it’s hard coming up with new questions all the time. My brain’s not great at its job, evidently. Anyway, do you guys exercise or practice any sports? I’ve recently started jogging – Again. Here’s hoping there’s no new pandemic to stop me from having a healthy habit for once. – , mostly because I kind of need to take care of myself if I don’t wanna be rolling around in a few years instead of walking.

See you.