Into the Unown (Pokemon Fanfiction OC)

Author's note:

ONE MILLION VIEWS!!!

Bonus chapter release for this story reaching a million views on Royal Road. Thank you all for sticking with me up to this point. 

I said this before, but when I first released this story, I wasn't even expecting 100 readers, let alone the thousands of you that come back on a regular basis.

Oh and the 8k average views are skewed by the early chapters and the people who've already dropped off. The actual number is around 3k per recent chapter. Numbers go brrrrr!!!

***

Nina happily stroked the Magby who was sitting on her lap. She was particularly enamored by the little nubs on the Pokemon’s head which she had thought was hair or oddly shaped fur at first. But in reality, they were callouses of sorts.

Magby cooed as Nina stroked her and pampered the Fire pokemon with Berries. Meanwhile her trainer sat all by her lonesome on the opposite aisle. Lucy had been very compliant with Nina’s demands post defeat, just quietly following the girl around even as she was dealing with her own matters in the Sea Cottage.

“Am I… a firecracker?” The sullen girl asked, during their bus ride back to the city.

Nina hummed and just shrugged. “The problem with rushing to the conference during your first year is that people tend to also rush their Pokemon’s development in the process,” she explained.

“Professor Bill, whom you just met, is an expert on Evolutions. And finds it a particularly appalling affair that young trainers these days have the tendency to force premature Evolutions for the sake of a misguided expediency. Gym badges have a validity of two years for a reason you know?”

“So… You’re saying that Charizard evolved too early?”

Nina took her eyes off the adorable Magby and looked towards Lucy. “Hmm? Oh no, not at all. The researchers did a quick exam of your Charizard just now, yeah? If he had evolved too early then they would have made a comment about it. It’s actually perfectly normal for the three regional starter species to mature at a rapid pace. It’s the reason why they’re so sought after to begin with.”

Nina recalled reading some materials from Professor Oak about how the regional starters relied on emotional triggers to evolve. Hence why they’re given out to his sponsored trainers, because he valued the nurturing of strong bonds between trainer and Pokemon above all else.

“As for the rest of your team though,” Nina tilted her head in consideration. “Well I’ve pretty much said all there is to say. Manectric, for example, would have benefited from training his Type Energy manipulation a bit more at the Electrike stage.”

“Justin always makes fun of me, says I’m a firecracker. I didn’t know what he meant until someone explained it to me. I was super pissed back then…” Lucy murmured.

Nina chuckled. “Yeah, my bad. I might have taught him that term. To be fair, that’s what I use to make fun of him whenever he gets impatient about his Pokemon’s progress. So it’s not like he has much right to be throwing that word around either.”

“I couldn’t even beat a single Golbat…” Tears of frustration began welling up in Lucy’s eyes as she recalled her loss.

Nina sighed and got up to place Magby back on her trainer’s lap. Cuddle time with a cute Pokemon was always effective in alleviating one’s mood.

“Honestly, of all the first year kids that I have to deal with on the regular, I’d say you’re better than most,” assured Nina.

“What about Justin?” Lucy asked, in between sobs. “Can I beat him — hick. You think?”

“Right now? Yes. Handily. Your friend has a tendency to pick up some really troublesome Pokemon. So he needs more time than most to get them in shape. You can probably even sweep him with just your Charizard. In a year though… Who knows?”

Lucy snorted and blew her nose on a handkerchief before looking at Nina with a hardened gaze. “Do you think I’ll be able to make it past the prelims next month?”

Nina hummed. “Honestly, it depends on your luck on how many conference veterans you end up facing. For most others in your year though, you’ll do just fine I think.”

Lucy nodded with grim determination. “I’ll wait for one more year, maybe get Magby trained up and find a sixth Pokemon first. I’m not gonna let Justin call me a firecracker for the rest of my life.”

Nina thought it was kind of cute how the girl assumed that she would be friends with the boy for her entire lifetime. Friendships can be very fickle — if they lose touch for a couple of years during their journey, who knows if things will remain the same. But it was this sort of innocent optimism that only children with infinite possibilities could possess.

“Man, I’ve been getting real sentimental lately. I suppose if I counted my past life… Mentally, I’d be close to forty years old now huh?” Nina was knocked out of her musings when Lucy declared that she wouldn’t lose to her the next time they met, before hastily getting off the bus.

Nina chuckled in amusement and went back to idly caressing Espy and reading her ebook until it was time for her to get off.

***

TM printers were expensive. Not that Nina needed to worry about the cost since Johnny said he would pay for her.

Problem was, the list of brands and models that the TM shop proprietor sent to her all contained products that were too big and unwieldy. Looking through the pictures, Nina was reminded of those massive office printers from back in her old world.

There were smaller more compact TM printers of course — some looking almost like the Walkman disc players of Miles’ past. But Johnny refused, on account of the fact that those were linked to the ‘corpo spy network’ of their respective producers.

Translation; most modern printers these days were linked to the Pokenet, which gave the companies that sold them some degree of access to the devices’ metadata. Not to mention, the usage and functionality of those TM printers were often softlocked by way of a subscription fee.

The alternatives then were older models with no network capabilities or niche brands that cost way too much for way too little features in exchange for a simple, but easier to maintain construct.

Thankfully, Nina was a Gym Trainer and the Cerulean Gym had their own TM printer which Nina had borrowed. She still took Johnny’s money though, asking the man to transfer her the subsidy and claiming that she would purchase a printer before getting back to him with a fresh TM of Kage Bunshin.

When Nina handed the TM over to Johnny, the stoner looked like he had just achieved orgasm for the first time in his life.

“How do you know that’s even the real deal anyway?” Asked Nina. “I mean, I wouldn’t cheat you. But you don’t know that.”

Johnny tutted at the ignorant girl in front of him. “Heh. See this is why I own a TM joint and you don’t girlie. I can tell what a TM contains just from a look. ‘Course the details still need to be verified.”

“Actually, you know what? Johnny’s in a good mood today, come along and I’ll show you how it’s done.” He then stood up unsteadily and beckoned Nina to follow after him.

“Sure, Nina… Follow a druggo into the sketchy backroom of his back alley store. What could possibly go wrong?”

As it turned out, nothing. The backroom of Johnny’s store was actually very well lit and quite spacious as well. Even more so than the front end, which was all cluttered and required Nina to wade through precarious looking stacks of Technical Machines.

The space actually looked almost like a gun range with how barren it was. The walls were bare concrete with only a few machinery and a desk with a PC by the corner.

“Here’s where all the magic happens.” Johnny said, with a wide and dramatic gesture.

“You mean this is where you record TMs?” asked the intrigued Nina.

“Yup, Johnny’s one of the best in the biz. I do a whole bunch of recording for all sorts of peeps.” In particular, he explained that his clientele mostly consisted of Ace tier trainers who valued discretion. Nina and Nairy weren’t the only ones who came up with their own custom moves after all.

“Why would they pay money to hire you when they can just buy a TM printer of their own instead?” Nina assumed that it would be more economical in the long term if these people were creating new moves on a consistent enough basis.

Johnny scoffed at the girl’s naivety. “Making a good TM ain’t just about hooking your Pokemon up to a recorder, girlie. It’s like making music — sometimes you need an expert Move Director like moi and spend a whole day just to find that perfect take. Maybe even make a few adjustments along the way. You’d be surprised at how big a difference a properly tuned TM can make.”

But what really caught Nina’s attention was when Johnny started sharing tidbits about secret TM auctions that were held on an invite only basis. So in addition to acting as a director in TM recordings, he was also a broker of sorts that procured TMs and helped trainers list their custom TMs for sale.

“Consider yourself invited to the club,” said the jovial Johnny when Nina asked about the matter. “With a treasure like the one you brought in today, how could I not? ‘Sides, you’re a good enough trainer that I have a feeling you might have your own brand of secret sauces. If you’re looking to sell, make sure to come to your old pal first, yeah?” He said, with a knowing wink.

Nina nodded in agreement and joined the man by the computer. She watched as Johnny slotted the TM into a boxy looking disc reader and began inspecting cryptic looking patterns that showed up on the screen.

“Incredible…” muttered the reverent TM connoisseur. “To think the day would come that ol’ Johnny would be able to feast his eyes on such a legendary move…”

The man did have his complaints, however. In particular, he pointed out a few spots where he said was a bit noisy, even a few parts where he could tell that Brucey was a little distracted when he was using the move.

Nina just nodded along, completely out of her depth when it comes to the nitty gritty of Technical Machines. “So if you can glean so much from just looking at patterns on a computer. Are you able to break down the move into its individual components and reverse engineer it as well?”

She had been completely ignorant about this aspect of TMs and was now feeling a little paranoid about the spread of the Koga clan’s secret. “Should I tell Alfred and have Johnny eliminated?” A dangerous gleam flashed through Nina’s eyes for the briefest of moments.

“Nope!” exclaimed a slightly panicking Johnny. “Johnny ain’t no snitch. ‘Sides, if I showed you the wavelengths of Lisia’s song, do you think you can sing it as good as her?” However, he did admit that he could tell Kage Bunshin was based off Payday, since he recognized patterns unique to the move. It was just that he had no idea on how he would go about applying it in the right way.

“Hmm… Well you better not try to pull a fast one on me,” Nina warned. “There’s people who won’t be too happy about it. And I’m not talking about Koga. Feel free to hang it in your toilet or whatever, but nothing else okay?”

Johnny gulped. “‘Course, ‘course. Trust me, I don’t wanna go the same way as Villy…” He shuddered in fear at the thought he just invoked in his mind.

“What happened to Villy?”

“What, you don’t know? Didn’t Purple Shadow tell you? Guy went nuts and took out Villy’s whole gang. They say he melted Villy alive in a vat of Poison and made his entire family watch before suffocating the lot with gas.” Johnny confessed that no one knew for certain that it was Purple Shadow, but the motif and the modus operandi all checked out.

Nina frowned at the revelation but opted not to look into this any further. It was odd that Shadow did not just do this sooner and get away from the fight club. But based on the bits of information that Alfred was willing to share, it seemed like it had something to do with Shadow’s ninja creed. But the moment that his financial obligations were fulfilled, the man no longer needed to hold back in repaying the more personal vendettas that he had accumulated over the years.

“Alfred seems like he has a handle on the guy, so no point worrying,” thought Nina. Though she did make a mental note to not offend Purple Shadow too much in the future.