Tail

It's a beautiful sunny day today, the legendary bird snowstorms cleared up roughly a month ago, the snow and ice everywhere still hasn't fully melted even with it being pretty warm but that's mainly because of Pokémon power nonsense…

Training has been progressing pretty well, mainly just harsh gravity training and brawls with the occasional life or death battle with random Pokémon that seemed to be showing up more and more just before the snowstorms ended…something to do with migration or something, I don't know…

The worst so far was we a rather large herd of Rhyhorn with 7 Rhydon leading them who were migrating south from the pewter planes and came through the butterfree forest…needless to say it was a bloodbath for the butterfree, they lost 5 butterfree for every Rhyhorn they brought down

I was eventually "called" in for help, which I definitely would have ignored if the next place the rocky rhinos were going to be stampeding through wasn't my own home so I had to jump in…

I say battle to the death but I was never personally ever threatened during the technical "species war" with Slowpoke and the growing phanpy watching my back…my mons took a hell of a beating though..

They didn't lose or anything but it was like 80 Pokémon who's species are known to be tough as nails, and they lived up to their reputation..

We managed to bring down about 20 of them and 2 Rhydon, who by the way is way bigger and scarier in real life….before the herd got the hint and started to stampede east in a rage, gradually picking up speed and more anger on the way….directly into the new industrial district of viridian…there was a HEFTY amount of damage before they were stopped…Viridian just can't catch a brea lately…

I was kind of sad not being able to capture them to sell, even though they would probably be worth a chunk of change, but I still had a machop instead of a machoke so that was that…I wasn't going to break my promise to myself and risk it..

Machop has been showing signs of evolution though as he's starting to develop reddish veins on his forearms and biceps which according to the book I have means he's nearing evolution….there's no information on machoke to machamp evolution though which I found strange…

The battle was rough, but my mons held their own, Persian and Miltank dominated the battle field demolishing everything in their way, the big ass Rhydon included….Ferroseed was an unbreakable wall once she was "online"….still working on being able to set up on the fly in the midst of combat…got some ideas but it's still a work in progress.

Skiddo first tried ramming a Rhyhorn in a head on charge at first….I don't know if he would have won given his training or not…because size didn't account for everything with Pokémon, but I wasn't willing to take the risk and had Slowpoke pull him back much to skiddos dismay and annoyance at not being able to throw his skull into a Rhyhorn horn attack, but he listened all the same….he then went for T bone manoeuvres with a skull ram while covered in grass energy…i noticed he was a lot faster than usual while fighting and it wasn't until later I found out it was a "move" called trailblaze which is basically "agility" with damage….

But his hits sent the much larger Pokémon ass over tea kettle, so maybe he would have been ok to rush into a Rock rhinos horn?

But the one who really shined in the battle was machop, I mean with the un-evolved Pokémon, the dude went full chuck norris and was just pummeling the beasts with fervour and skill…at one point I saw him stand in front of a charging Rhyhorn only to back fist it's horn to the left with a bullet punch left handed and unleash a devastating ice punch with the other to the neck/shoulder of the opponent for a classy and obviously badass knockout…it was cool as shit, but I know for a fact I didn't teach him that…he seemed to be a natural…

The fight went on for roughly an hour and a half before the herd ran off, but my mons were exhausted, bloody and bruised but all together pretty happy with how things went, Slowpoke was fine playing support but I need another healer I think, a backup teleporter too….miltank is fine for after battle care and heal bell to help with with status disabilities but for "milk drink" you actually have to drink milk….being mid battle only to rush off to suck some cow titties to heal was bad logistics no matter how you slice it..

Becky was there for that battle as well…she'd been a lot more….tame….since I snapped at her and our confrontation with the police just under 2 months ago, she pulled her head in and she's been putting in the work to listen and pull her self up and build a healthy dose of paranoia and grit just like me..

But the battle didn't go as well for her as I did for me, both butterfree and Marill both almost died multiple time…not badly injured…died….but mvp Slowpoke was pulling asses out of the fire like it was just another Tuesday that day…

Becky learned a bitter lesson that day….she's weak…even with Pokémon….even with all her "training", she had it in her head she was strong if she had Pokémon but that day whooped that right outa her…the world don't give a fuck if you have Pokémon, it will try and murder you and everything you care about every chance it gets

Her new little Nidoran didn't participate, becky kept it back just like I did for phanpy…both too young and probably too weak to be anything but a very minor speed bump for the moving tanks…

Surprisingly zigzagoon was sitting in front of me throwing ice beams around…weak ice beams that barely did anything but ice beams all the same…Zigzagoon and Slowpoke both picked up ice beam during the long unnatural winter…Zigzagoon earlier than Slowpoke because I was just trying out something given the snow generated was by a legendary and thought to myself "hey maybe if they ate the ice they would learn ice beam?"

The answer was no…they didn't, but putting a small chunk ice in his mouth with a mouthful of water and having him spit it out as hard as he could somehow worked eventually which earned him a few extra berries and a few more scoops of peanut butter…

And Slowpoke was not one to be denied extra peanut butter and berries threw himself into the frozen river for a few hours everyday to do god know what after training most days for a couple weeks and came back one day with an ice beam of his very own…

Miltank I wasn't sure if she knew ice punch before or learned it from the ice and snow but she has that…I only really learned about her heal bell, milk drink, stomp and rollout…I've just been focusing on her physical training while I thought I could just try to either train her into some new moves or somehow get TMs later…

Phanpy learned some kind of ice rollout…i still haven't found anything about it in the books but I know it's ice based and pretty damn powerful… especially with his species fondness for rollout….

But besides the Rhyhorn, we had another Ursaring encounter…just 2 this time and they had a baby teddiursa with em so they got a beating for stepping on my turf before they were very quickly escorted south of our spot to continue their migration….phanpy seemed fine with finishing em off to add a few new rugs to our crib, especially given his past with ursaring but killing the parents and baby in front of him felt like it would haunt him later so I let them go…

And last but certainly not least…we got mixed up in some sort of race war between a gigantic pack of Raticate and Ratatta and Ekans and Arbok that spilled out into our area…like literal hundreds of each just going berserk on each other, going for the kill to try and get some food in their bellys….that was almost as bad as the Rhyhorn incident but only the numbers were a threat not actual individual strength…there was so much blood and death….both sides ate well that day…

Ran into the Nidorino pack a few times, he was decisively less aggressive and never tried shit with me again…they looked to settle near the butterfree forest area, I didn't know how I felt about that but the butterfree left them be so I guess it's fine….

But as of this moment…. Me and Becky are..

"What are we doing here?"

"You're just a loving big sister who's taking her little brother out for a walk around the neighbourhood after being cooped up in the house for months after a natural disaster"

This fine sunny day I've decided to try and scope out a few places for a couple burglaries to try and get the cash pool topped up before machop evolves.

"…..ok? But why?…."

"You wanted to learn how to support yourself? This is how we do it…"

I'm walking with Becky and Zigzagoon in a wealthy district of northern Viridian seeing what I can see…I remember that cop eyeing Slowpoke a little much for my liking so my town trips consist of machop as a body guard now with Slowpoke on standby in his ball…. Persian would be better but he's very big and too intimidating to walk around semi unnoticed…

We made our way to a wealthier part of town with relatively lax security, especially considering the gang wars ongoing….but the gangs don't make it this far up..

It's mostly local politicians and upper middle class Viridian council members with the odd trainer thrown into the mix…pretty much the same kind of neighbourhood i bumbled into with the last guy.

But also nowhere near where I last hit, don't need to establish a local pattern…even though I heard the guys death was filed as an accident, you can never been to careful.

It wasn't planning on killing anyone, just burglary….but shit goes sideways and I wasn't planning on getting caught…

I've had zigzagoon training his "pick up" ability, it's basically a 6th sense that can lead the Pokémon with the ability to anything it deems valuable. So iv been using wads of cash and the gold bars in tough plastic packaging I found in the last gig and hiding them around the dilapidated buildings and having Persian and Machop patrol around while Zigzagoon sniffs out the cash and gold.

And he's gotten pretty good at it too, I've been separating wads of cash to bigger and smaller wads and he's been consistently picking the bigger ones on his "hunts"

As we walk down the street zigzagoon tail shoots up straight but he keeps walking as if nothing bothered him….it's code for a big bounty of cash in the house we passed..

Shooting his tail up twice is code for gold, we haven't actually done any pick up training for anything else valuable yet like the evolution stones I have stashed away or silph co bags, we're just working with gold, jewellery and cash for the time being….no need to complicate things..

"Why did his tail stick up like that?"

"Must have smelled peanut butter…"

I'm going to need to give her another lesson on subtly when we are alone again….why would she ask that? I know she doesn't know the "code" me and zigzagoon use but it seems her common sense is still absolute shit to ask something like that in the middle of the street in front of potential mark…

We keep moseying on down the streets back and forth with zigzagoon and Becky rubbing her sore ribs after asking about his tail again in front of another house and receiving the universal sign language for "shut the fuck up" in the form of an elbow to the ribs

We did that for a few hours before restocking supplies while we were in town and heading home once we made it to a secure empty alley via the Slowpoke express..

As soon as we made it home…

"Why did you elbow me!? And why did you do it so hard!?"

"Because you're asking stupid and possibly incriminating questions in the middle of the fucking street you dickhead…why would you not just wait until we were alone and ask then!?"

"…..I….don't know…"

" you've been learning but clearly not enough about subtly… the only way you could have made that worse is if you looked around to make sure no one was listening before you asked….pro tip, don't ask secret shit if you look like your asking secret shit…."

She probably wanted to say I was being paranoid but she knew better than that, especially after all the lessons and her Pokémon nearly dying multiple time…

I release all my mons, they fan out and start stretching their legs as Becky goes to starting putting groceries away with machop..

As she's putting away something she looks over her shoulder and asks

"So what was with the tail thing anyway?"

"It was a code we have for a house that possibly has a good amount of cash in it…"

"Oooooh….that makes sense…..so when are we gonna…you know….go and steal it? Tonight?"

"Fuck no, I'm gonna case the place alone, see who lives there, if there's a family or just one person, if that person has pokemon and if so how many, look for security systems, check out the yard and see possible point where a nosy neighbour see something accidentally I don't want them to see….things like that"

Gotta do homework if I want this to go smoothly, smash n grabs always go wrong…not that a carefully planned out job couldn't , but it's safer and I have a quick get away if things go south…

"Wow, there's so much more to it then I thought…can I help when you do it?"

"Probably not on the first few, I gotta find my rhythm and keep lowish profile, can't have dead weight…"

"I could help! Like be a look out or something! Just give me a chance….I need to start paying my way around here…"

She mentioned the last bit in a bit of a whisper

"Not yet, I probably will eventually but not for now…"

She was unhappy with the answer but she would have to suck it up until I'm ready to take her with me…I reckon maybe a week to pick a target and learn what I gotta learn before I hit a place….

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