The Dave
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Chapter 18, part 1
🕑 Added 2024-12-22 15:24:44 +0000 UTCThe next day, the very first thing Ran does is look up boat tickets to Cianwood City. There’s far more regular passenger ships between Cianwood and Olivine, but there’s still a regular weekly ship from Goldenrod to Cianwood as well. With it specifically geared towards trainers and tourists, tickets aren’t particularly cheap, but do offer the benefits of a proper pokécenter on board, as well as rooms capable of hosting a diverse array of pokémon. There’s a small list of pokémon that are banned from being out of their balls except for a few areas, but none of Ran’s team members are on that list, leaving him quite enthusiastic about the trip.
Of course he doesn’t book just yet, as Josie has remained worryingly mute, so he’s got no clue as to just when he’ll be leaving Goldenrod. Instead, after a quick breakfast, he gathers his stuff and sets out for Route 35, to the north of Goldenrod. A quick message to Josie, informing her of where he’s going for the day, isn’t immediately answered.
For a moment he also considers texting Grady, but then thinks better of it. Actually spending the time with just his team sounds quite appealing, after all. It’s nice to have a traveling companion in Josie, but his brief trek across Route 34, with just his own team for company after Josie raced off after departing Ilex Forest, was enjoyable and kind of left him wanting more.
Now, with no destination to reach and only a limited amount of traveling to be done, he’s got the perfect opportunity to train with his team, spend a few hours just lounging with them and letting them enjoy themselves, and then having another training session. Just thinking of his plans for the day is enough to put some additional pep in his step, as he speeds up slightly in anticipation.
With Goldenrod City’s size taken into account, it takes well over an hour for him to make it out of the city. Then, he still needs another fifteen minutes to wander down Route 35’s main path a bit, before turning off to the west. From there, he starts seeking out a nice tranquil spot next to the large lake that runs along part of the patrolled Route. There’s some other trainers around, but it’s still pretty early in the day, which leaves him able to pick out a spot relatively soon.
Quickly tapping each of the four used pokéballs on his belt, Ran smiles eagerly as his team materializes around him.
Looking from Caesar the Arbok, to Aria the Ariados, to Golbat and finally to Skorupi, he feels his chest swell up with pride, at the sight of his significantly stronger team, compared to when he started his journey just a few months ago. With one new team member and three evolutions, he can only look at them fondly as they all take in their surroundings.
Overhead, the bright morning sun shines down warmly, reflecting off the lake’s water to add further to the lovely scenery of the grassy plains, broken up by the occasional tree or shrub, that border Route 35. In the distance, the properly ‘wild’ areas begin, where the League and the Rangers leave the wild pokémon population in peace as much as possible. In short, standing under the shadow of one of those large, lonely trees, it’s the perfect location for a spot of training followed by a couple of hours of relaxation.
“Skorupi, Toxic Spikes did wonders for us against Whitney,” Ran finally breaks the silence, turning to the youngest of his team members first, “Without you teaching Caesar how to use them, I don’t know if we could have beaten her. So, while you and I will work on some other stuff later, for now, I’d like you to teach Aria the move as well. Aria, I don’t know enough about Skorupi’s natural abilities to be sure of what he can learn just yet, but I bet the two of you can figure something out, right? If not, both Shadow Sneak and Swords Dance would be super useful, so try and see if he can make any progress with either or both of those if the two of you don’t have any better ideas, alright?”
Aria chitters happily in agreement, though Skorupi is a bit sulkier in his response, clearly a bit unhappy to be spending yet more training on teaching a team member Toxic Spikes, rather than getting to focus completely on improving himself. It’s something Ran takes a mental note of, as he continues to build his mental profile of Skorupi, but for now, he’s got two more team members to get started on their training.
Ran turns his attention to Golbat, whose expression makes it quite clear that he knows what’s coming. Just to be sure, Ran still tells him anyways, “You’ll be on your own, Golbat. Keep working on Haze and Venoshock. I’ll try and keep an eye out and we’ll see where you’re at when we take our break later, alright?”
Golbat merely cries out confidently, before taking flight. With only a few strong wingbeats, he circles around the tree, before audibly settling on its other side, claiming some relative privacy as he gets to work. Taking that as their signal, Aria and Skorupi also move away a small distance, getting closer to the water and leaving Ran to face Caesar, whose attention is firmly on the lake’s reflective surface.
“You want to go and take a good look at yourself first, don’t you?” Ran huffs with unconcealed amusement, which is enough to draw a playful swat from the tip of Caesar’s tail. The newly-evolved Arbok clearly doesn’t quite know his strength yet, as the ‘playful’ swat is enough to knock Ran over flat on his ass.
His starter’s expression is sheepish, hood ‘hunching’ slightly as he pulls his head back slightly in apology. Ran merely waves him off, before gesturing invitingly towards the lake. It’s all the invitation Caesar needs, as he swiftly slides over in that direction. Gathering himself and dusting off his bum before joining his starter, Ran reaches out a hand to rest on the back of Caesar’s magnificent hood as he looks at the pair of them in the natural mirror that is lake’s water.
It’s an impressive sight, Ran’s own features slightly sharper even from just the short time he’s been journeying, though that change of course pales in comparison to Caesar’s. He’s beautiful, his purple color truly giving him a regal aura, whilst the pattern on the inside of his hood almost seems alive with vibrant, vivid colors. Yet, though his entire body’s changed, there’s still something in his mannerisms that is undeniably Ekans, leaving Ran confident that he could still pick his partner out of a crowd of a thousand Arbok without needing so much as a second glance.
“So, before we continue working on Acid Spray and Sludge Bomb,” Ran says finally, after merely standing in silence with his starter for the better part of a minute, “According to my notes, you’ve probably learned Fire, Ice and Thunder Fang. Do you think you can use those?”
Caesar doesn’t hesitate to respond, immediately hissing confidently before opening his maw demonstratively, flashing the massive fangs that have grown as impressively as the rest of him. They don’t spark with any particular energy however, nor do they drip with poison, as his starter clearly waits for a proper command.
“Alright, alright, Caesar, use Thunder Fang!” Ran orders, only to watch in delight as his Arbok’s fangs immediately start to glow with yellow electricity before, after half a second, visibly sparking with the stuff.
“Awesome.” He breathes out in awe, hands rubbing together enthusiastically even as Caesar, clearly smug about his new prowess, lets the attack’s energy fade away.
What follows is a swift display of Ice Fang, which seems at first unimpressive, with Caesar’s fangs merely glowing light blue. When Ran expresses as much, however, his starter swiftly slithers towards a large fallen branch from the tree they’d been standing under just a few minutes before. When he bites down, a massive patch of ice radiates out from his bite, with Caesar not relenting until the whole dead branch has become trapped in a large block of ice. Only for him to then unleash a Fire Fang upon the same target, which in short order punches through the ice, melting that to water whilst burning the branch itself to ash.
“Alright,” Ran admits easily, doing his best to undersell Caesar’s performance, “You can pull all of them off well enough, I guess. I’m sure you’ll improve with further practice. Now let’s get-”
He doesn’t get any further, as his starter shows that he’s rapidly getting more accustomed to his newfound physical might, tail swinging out to catch Ran in the gut and absolutely launch him into the lake. Caesar clearly pulls his blow, only speeding up the swing of his tail after impact, to ensure that Ran’s got enough momentum to actually land in the water, without risking breaking any part of his delicate trainer.
The end result is the same however, as Ran lands with a massive splash, immediately soaking him to the bone. He surfaces immediately, spluttering wildly as he hurriedly finds his feet before wading to the shore, hurling threats at his starter, who is clearly hissing with delight at the sight of his drenched trainer.
“I’ll get you for that one!” Ran complains loudly, before putting words into action, as he recalls Caesar before his starter’s eyes can even fully finish widening. Then, within seconds, he releases the massive poison-type once more, this time some five feet behind him.
Caesar’s large serpentine body materializes a few feet above the water, giving him just enough time to understand what’s about to happen, before he plummets into the lake.
This time, Ran is the one to laugh cheerfully. When Caesar’s head resurfaces however, his starter’s glare has that laugh die away within seconds.
“Now, Caesar,” Ran starts, raising his hands in front of him to ward off his starter’s irritation even as he starts to backpedal with an increasing franticness, “Turnabout is fair play, you really shouldn’t have tossed me into the lake if you weren’t ready to- No Caesar wait!”
His pleas fall on deaf ears however, as his starter rushes forwards, using his large hood to keep his head afloat whilst using the rest of his massive body to powerfully propel himself along the water’s surface and rapidly close the distance between them.
By the time Ran finally gets to exit the water fifteen minutes later, an achievement he only manages because Caesar started to get too cold to continue, he’s spent more of that time with his head underwater than above it. The odds of ending up with a cold are significantly greater than zero, but, ultimately, he finds himself not minding one bit.
Eventually, they do get started on training properly, with Caesar soon mastering both Acid Spray and Sludge Bomb. It likely helps that both moves rest on the same basic principles, but the ease with which he suddenly picks both of them up, compared to the difficulty he had when first starting out, can only be the result of his evolution. Which Ran is sure to inform Caesar of, to the Arbok’s obvious delight.
Nobody else progresses quite as explosively as Caesar by the time he calls the morning’s training session quits, but there’s still marked signs of improvement from all of them. Golbat’s increasing success at executing Venoshock is such that Ran ends up regretting not having a single water-type move available, as a thick spill of the poisonous liquid lies at the foot of the tree, right under where Golbat practiced. It’s unfortunate, but nature is well-adapted to pokémons’ natural byproducts, so as long as Golbat doesn’t do the day’s second training session in the exact same spot, they should probably be fine.
Gathering his team of four back together, Ran takes them all in for a moment, before announcing it’s time for a break.
“If any of you want to go back to your ball, let me know. Otherwise, you’re free to go and do whatever you like, just don’t wander off too far, alright?” He informs the poison-types, receiving two nods, a hiss and a chirp in response.
Immediately, Aria takes off for the tree, rapidly scuttling up the trunk before disappearing amongst the foliage. Golbat is slower to leave, but sooner to arrive, as by the time Aria is halfway up the trunk, he’s already settled on a new branch, wings closing around him as he settles in to nap. Caesar, clearly still just a bit chilly from their earlier foray into the water, curls up in the sun in a U-shape, in a clear invitation for Ran to come and have a nap as well. It’s a tempting prospect, but not one Ran immediately follows up on, as he instead looks towards Skorupi, who is vibrating with anticipation but also clearly frozen in indecision, as his eyes shift rapidly from the tree, to the plains, to the lake and back again.
“Skorupi, there’s no need to rush, alright? Unless something unexpected happens, we’ll be here for most of the day. So just choose something to go and do and then when you don’t want to anymore, you can always change your mind, alright? Just don’t wander off too far.” Ran encourages his young poison-bug-type, who eagerly darts forwards to wrap his tail around his trainer’s leg in clear affection for a moment.
His words seem enough to finally have Skorupi’s mind made up, as the most recent of his team members darts towards the lake, where he starts to mess about with the lake’s small muddy shore. Ran watches him for a moment, looking fondly at the team member he’d never planned for, before deciding that, though Caesar offers a comfortable backrest to lounge against, perhaps it’s a bit too early for a nap.
So, though he does settle in against Caesar’s warm body, to the evident delight of his chilly starter, who is as always enthusiastic about leeching warmth off of his trainer, he doesn’t do so with the intent of falling asleep. Unlike Caesar and Golbat, who very clearly have their minds set on exactly that. Instead, he fishes out Introduction to the Geography of the Sinnoh region, one of the books he's recently acquired, and attempts to dive into the mysteries of the distant and mysterious Sinnoh.
Supposedly, there was greater contact between Indigo and both Sinnoh and Hoenn once upon a time, only for rough seas and more aggressive wild pokémon to hamper contact until it faded to near-nothing. In recent years, following the unification of Kanto and Johto into their current state, contact’s been properly re-established, with the League’s leading figures exchanging pokémon and a few strong trainers of good standing per year gaining permission to take part in the other region’s Conferences.
Because of these relatively recent events, Sinnoh is an intriguing subject, as amongst the common people, little is known about just what their native pokémon are capable of. So, reading about the foreign land and its different geography, and what effect that has on its pokémon population, sounds like a day well spent. Unfortunately, as Ran actually gets into the book properly, he realizes swiftly that there will be no vivid imagery or fluent narrative to sweep him off his feet and take him on a literary journey along Sinnoh’s most beautiful and unique vistas.
Instead, Introduction to the Geography of the Sinnoh region reads almost like a school textbook, the material offered in a concise and extremely dry manner. Full sections are actually just bullet pointed lists rather than even attempting to form a smooth narrative. It makes for less than entertaining reading, though at least he progresses swiftly, as the book doesn’t waste any time or effort on ‘chaff’.
Thanks to the book’s approach to its topic, though much of what he reads is swiftly forgotten as it doesn’t aid him in his search and its presentation leaves him rushing through it, Ran does soon stumble upon just what he’s looking for. Because as he’s reading about the unique Great Marsh, which one of his other books focuses on exclusively, he stumbles upon a mention of Skorupi.
Though the book doesn’t go into any great depth on Skorupi’s species, it does mention the poison-bug’s tendency of hiding in mud to hunt, its ability to survive for very long spans of time without eating and its seeming inability to tolerate colder temperatures. All of which is valuable information, but it all pales compared to the brief mention of Skorupi’s single evolution: Drapion, a poison-dark-type.
Discovering Skorupi’s future typing is enough of a surprise for Ran to lower the book for a moment, as he tries to parse through just what he’s just learned. If Skorupi eventually evolves into a poison-dark-type… He’ll be the perfect answer to poison’s deeply troubling weakness to psychic-types.
Did Bugsy know? Surely, he can’t have. A poison-dark-type perfectly counters one of, if not the single most, glaring one of his chosen specialty’s weaknesses. There’s no way Bugsy would’ve gifted him such a pokémon. Yet, Ran has found out this much with just a visit to Goldenrod’s extremely well-known Trainer Department Store. Surely, whoever Bugsy bought or traded Skorupi from must’ve been able to give him the same information?
But then that’d mean that Bugsy deliberately gave him a strong pokémon that perfectly accounts for one of his team’s main weaknesses…
Is Drapion known for being weak? Or for being difficult to work with? What’s the catch? What if-
Caesar hisses warily, as he swings his large head, clearly no longer napping, around to look Ran in the eye. It’s enough to startle him out of his own thoughts, the derail caused by thoughts of Bugsy’s ulterior motives corrected by his starter’s insistent gaze.
“Thanks Caesar, I think I got a bit too deep into my own head,” Ran acknowledges, forcing himself to breathe out deeply and only then realizing just how much of his body has tensed up over the past few minutes.
His starter merely offers a comforting hiss, moving up slightly to rest his head in Ran’s lap, looking at him demandingly until he gets the head pats he clearly wants. Ran obliges for a few minutes, feeling himself relax further as he glances around for the rest of his team.
Golbat and Aria are both still in their tree, with both clearly still napping. Golbat hangs from a large branch, body hidden by his own wings. As for Aria, she’s harder to spot, but she’s made herself a large web between some of the branches, at the center of which she rests easily. Ran can’t see much of her, but with the sun still bright in the sky, her red coloring does her no favors, as glimpses of her form can clearly be caught through the tree’s obscuring foliage.
Skorupi however… Skorupi, he doesn’t immediately spot.
A faint worry starts to rise in his gut, even as he nudges Caesar’s head off of his lap gently. Rising easily, not yet agitated but gradually growing more anxious as he fails to locate his team’s junior member, Ran is just about to raise his voice, when he spots an at first sight innocent heap of mud, near the lake’s edge.
“Skorupi!” He calls out, eyes fixated on the mud pile, “Come on out, it’s time for your one-on-one training!”
Immediately, the pile rips open, as Skorupi comes darting out enthusiastically, racing towards his trainer cheerfully. Ran’s heart beat lowers significantly, even as he makes a mental note to keep an eye on a second of his team members who likes to burrow. At least Skorupi hasn’t shown the instinct before, so perhaps he’ll only feel the need around wet or sufficiently loose ground, unlike Aria, who always looks for some form of tight hidey-hole when she wants to rest.
“Alright guys, that’s enough of a break for now!” Ran calls out loudly, rousing his pokémon from their rests, as in short order both Golbat and Aria leave their previous spots to join the impromptu circle, “Caesar, you’re with Aria. I want the two of you to play tag, all non-damaging-moves are allowed. Caesar will start as the chaser. On a tag, take a minute long break, give the runner some time to get set up and get away a bit. Caesar, you can’t use Glare. Paralysis counts as damaging for this exercise. Aria, I want you working on Agility whilst you’re playing, alright?”
He gets an affirming hiss and chitter respectively, after which the newly-formed pair depart to ensure they’ll have enough room to work with. Ran glances to Golbat, only for his only flying-type to offer an accepting bow and take flight. With neither Haze nor Venoshock mastered quite yet, he doesn’t need any actual verbal instruction to know what Ran expects of him.
Finally, that leaves Skorupi, as Ran examines the eager, though absolutely filthy, poison-bug-type. Without hesitation, he points towards the lake, “Okay, first of all, get in the lake, I’m not letting you sit in my lap when you’re this dirty.”
Skorupi stares at his trainer in displeasure, tail pincers clacking together in clear agitation both at the mention of the lake and probably the idea of sitting in Ran’s lap - though the usually cuddly Skorupi tends to quite enjoy that at any other time - rather than getting the ‘proper’ training he’d been promised.
“We’ll be looking at some videos of moves you don’t know yet, to see if there’s anything in there you think you might be able to pull off, alright?” Ran clarifies, which immediately gets Skorupi to quiet down.
Enthusiastically, he turns towards the lake, only to pause in hesitation once more. For a moment, Ran considers whether his fourth team member is just being childish, before he recalls the recent part about Skorupi’s species’ general aversion to cold temperatures.
“I’ll have a towel ready to dry you off the second you get out, alright? And I’m plenty warm so you’ll be warmed up in no time. Plus, look at that sun, I bet by this point the water’s even warmer than when Caesar and I went in.” Ran cajoles the smallest of his team members. Successfully so, as Skorupi, after another moment’s hesitation, darts towards the lake.
Ran hurriedly digs around in his backpack for a towel, only barely managing to get his hand on one when Skorupi comes racing out of the water once more, making a beeline directly towards his trainer. In the nick of time, Ran manages to settle on his haunches, holding the towel out in front of him as a braking system, as the completely wet Skorupi outright launches himself upwards at his trainer, only to be caught in the big fluffy towel instead.
A few minutes later, sitting on the grass with the sun’s heat warming them both, Ran lines up the first video, of a Gligar using Poison Tail. In his lap, Skorupi waves his tail around enthusiastically, until Ran almost has his eye poked out, at which point he volunteers an arm for Skorupi to wind his tail around, ensuring that he’ll make it through their study session unmolested.
In the distance, he can hear the discomforting noise of Golbat unleashing yet another burst of venomous liquid and the sounds of what appears to be a truly feisty game of tag between Caesar and Aria. As he replays the video of Gligar’s Poison Tail once more, at Skorupi’s clear insistence, Ran smiles in satisfaction.
He could get used to having more days like this one.
Comments
Bryce Rei Forbes
Very comfy, and explains where the breaking of his paranoia might come from
cafenacet
lmao, "this pokemon is perfect for my team, clearly this is a trap and not Bugsy being thoughtful". Glad Ceasar snapped him out of it.
TempestK
Very nicely done, and glad to see that Ran is properly using his resources now. Him finding out Drapion's typing and then immediately getting into a rabbit hole of wondering what the catch was from Bugsy was a little disappointing, but given their history it's understandable. Now that he knows Skorupi's evolution he can try and look up specific information on Drapion. Hopefully seeing a video of one in action or something will properly underscore how much of a favor Bugsy did him.
Heraclitus
Super comfy.
Authorii
This is such a heartwarming team chapter
