20 THE JOURNEY - SECOND LEG

A/N: my stories are more in the style of journal than a scene/play. so most of the time I will be paraphrasing dialogue instead of writing charcters. if any of you think of a dialogue line that would fit my paraphrasing to be either funny, badass, dramatic or cool in any way or form, please set the dialogue (quote) in paragraph comment .

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN SHIT

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This chapter is a bit(lot) longer. I hope you enjoy this and give me power stones

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Me and the girls had prepared hard for 4 months to finally have a rematch against Sabrina. For these 4 months, all of my time has been spent on either training my own psychic abilities with Sabrina and Pikachu, or preparing Ponyta, Slugma and Vulpix for their evolutions into Plungam, Cephaloy and Ninetales (Phantom) respectively.

This meant that I could not spend as much time with my other Pokemon. Although all of my Pokemon came with me every alternate day to Sabrina for the first month, they only had enough Psychic talent to learn a move each and then get bored of it. Only exception was my Pikachu, who was dedicated to develop any latent Psychic abilities that it could.

Both my Meowths had to spend time with the girls. As I was also preparing their Pokemon for a different evolutionary path, the girls agreed to take care of and train the Meowths for me.

For the 3 months after our initial month here, the girls and Meowth attended Dojo regularly, learning as much as they could from their father as well as my father, When he comes for his own practice.

Nova constantly trained with Eve and her Yamask that evolved into Cofagrigus during these months. This is because Eve and Nova always got along the best, even better than how much I got along with Nova, and I get along great with it. During the time I was preparing Eve's Vulpix for its evolution, the Vulpix was able to use moves like Phantom force and become intangible with conversion. Nova showed a particular interest in a similar path.

This led to Eve using her grandma's Gourgeist to often use Trick or Treat on Nova, to make her more familiar with ghost type moves. Taking inspiration from my fusion moves, they tried their own shot at a fusion move.

They first combined the move Payday (normal) which manifests money/coins that it throws at Target for small damage, with the move Poltergeist (ghost) which lets the user control physical items, like held items of opponent, or in Nova's case, money/coins that it just manifested.

Now normally Payday as a move doesn't even manifest out enough coins with it to even feed the Meowth, even if it uses the move all day. That changes by the about of energy fed into the move(level dependent). But more energy a Meowth spends, the more hungry it becomes so the math is still not in payday's favour, unless energy/food cost are not even a bother.

Such things are often viable for farms and for stationary trainers sometimes, but Meowth is notoriously independent species that responds harshly to strickt training, so good luck finding a Meowth that is willing to perform the same move, all day, every day. it's a Pokemon, not an office worker, it's still got wild instincts.

Nova, being the Queen that she is despised the lack of pizzazz from the fusion move of payday and Poltergeist. It asked Cofagrigus (formerly Yamask) to help teach itself the move Night Shade(ghost) which shows the target their worst fear. Nova was able to use that concept of illusion with greed, instead of fear with the help of Cofagrigus, who are famously greedy/attracted to shiny (valuable) things as a species.

Final move that it combined was it's signature move Swift (Normal). it was not a move exclusive to it or its species, but it was definitely the move that it had most practiced and could compeat with the best in their mastery of the move.

We named the final fusion of these moves 'TREASURE HAUNT'. The move involves manifesting the subject of target's greed , be it money, jewels, shiny objects or something else (with Night Shade ). That objects then attack the target (with Poltergeist), making them confused .

Due to being based on greed, the target also has a chance to be infatuated with it's subject of greed, that is manifested from this move. The move Payday is used to change the focus of Night Shade from fear to greed . The move Swift ensures that objects that are being controlled by Poltergeist are accurate and fast in hitting their target.

It could already use moves like Icy Winds, Vacuum Wave and a lesser version of Heat Wave, as if it were an Air Bender (from Avatar). After its time with Cofagrigus, it even added Ominous Wind to its air bending capabilities. It can even use Ominous Wind on its back to give itself some speed boost in a pinch, like the Move Tail Wind. It doesn't need to worry about getting hurt by the move since it is immune to the move (normal vs ghost).

With both moves Payday and Night Shade having effects that scale with level/energy, Nova can easily control the amount of energy needed for the move by just weakening the move. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to cast the move without expending life energy as well. And as it gets more familiar with the fusion moves, it will requires less energy to achive same effects, allowing it to increase the effects at cost of energy.

While Eve was taking care of Nova, Ava was taking care of Marigold. Marigold was always got along best with Ava as they were both steadfast and strong ladies. During their time together, Ava and bronzor, who evolved into Bronzong, became its official Coaches at the Dojo, where it participated in many fights and tournaments in three months.

With the help of Bronzong, it developed it's own fighting style that looked like judo , even to my untrained eyes. It revolved around the move Gyroball (steel) in which the user tackles the foe from a high-speed spin. The slower the user is compared to the target, the greater the damage. It was a move that uses target/attackers own momentum to punish them, just like judo.

Marigold also learnt the moves payback( dark), Revenge (fighting), counter (fighting) and Sucker Punch (dark). All these moves require initiative from the opponent, just like in judo. It still knows punch and kick moves to take initiative and put the pressure on the opponent, but it's counter attack was a threat it's opponents in those tournaments didn't expect. ( knowing Judo or atleast counters to it are important even in real life MMA, it's such a threat if you don't know how to deal with it)

Marigold can now even use sucker punch with energies other than dark, replicating the moves it already knew like Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Thunder Punch, Poison Jab and Play Rough. But even these moves, when used as sucker punch requires initiative from the target, to use its own momentum against it and gain priority for move.

Although Marigold had not really created a fusion move, just used same move with different energies, it still developed it's fighting style of baiting the target to attack and then counter attack. It even learnt the move Feint Attack(dark) to add Feints to its fighting style.

A simple and direct counter to this fighting style was to keep distance and not engage my Meowth in close range. For formal martial arts tournaments with point system at dojo, it wasn't a big problem. But for actual pokemon battles where it's opponents call up the forces of nature, bringing thunder and lighting, fire and brimstone, Small Tsunamis and Earthquakes, it was a huge problem.

Ava found a small workaround by teaching it Rock Smash (fighting) to break up the ground under it and use the debris from it for the move Rock Throw (Rock). This work around was effective, but still weaker than its own fighting style, making Marigold almost always be the one to take initiative to close the distance between it and the opponent to show it's Close Combat skills.

Problem with that was that it's main Fighting style depended on letting opponent have the initiative and not taking initiative itself. Despite this , Marigold was more effective and versatile in close range than it was in long range with Rock Throw.

Although I didn't have time to train my Meowths, that didn't mean I didn't socialize with them. we still spent a lot of the time eating and playing together, where the girls told me about their progress and I told them about their fire Pokemon's progresses.

When i found out about the struggle Marigold was facing,I suggested they look into the moves Rock Blast (Rock), Nature Power (normal), Secret Power (normal) and terrain pulse (normal). They work similar to how he has to use terrain to smash rocks and use Rock Throw.

They created a fusion move with all the above moves and call it Turf Blast. In the move, Marigold stomps on the ground , forcing whatever terrain it is on, to burst into debris and then punches that debris while they are still in air, towards the target. The type of damage it does depends on the terrain.(reminds me a bit of Earth bending from Avatar)

I even requested Nova to teach it's sister Marigold the move Payday, and asked Ava to help it learn the move Fling (dark). This was so that even if it doesn't have a favorable terrain, it can use Payday to manifest coins that it can throw with fling, just like it throws Rock with Rock Throw and Rock Blast.

Eventually Marigold was forced to develop a style for long range fighting, where it either breaks the terrain for debris or uses payday to manifest coins, which it punches with all its might at Target. The type of punch (Ice Punch, Fire Punch etc.) and the type of terrain(electric terrain, grass terrain, cave, indoors, etc) affect the type of attack.

With this move, it was able to win a famous pokemon tournament with Ava and outclassed any other pokemon in its weight class. It was a tournament called Power House Championship, and was an individual Pokemon tournament rather than team battle that most pokemon battles are.

The organisers of the tournament, the Power House, was a famous family that had tires with all the important old clans in saffron city. This included Sabrina's family, koichi family and even the family of Silph Co President. They have been organising tournaments for ages and are famous for getting great prices through their contacts.

These tournaments have weight classes with landmark weights at 10kg, 25 kg, 50 kg, 80kg ,150 kg, 250 kg, 350. kg. They don't often get Pokemon with higher weight than that, but if there are any that want to participate and there are 8 or more such Pokemon, them they form the final weight class.

Both Nova and Marigold had participated with the girls and showed great performance, gathering a lot of praise. Both of them were fighting in under 10kg weight class, with Nova at weight of 4.5 kgs and Marigold at 7.6.

Nova is taken out in semifinals against another opponent, despite being favourite to win that fight. After watching the replay, I knew that she didn't lose due to her lacking power, but due to her overconfidence/arrogance. I know that at some level this is Eve's doing as she spoils Nova but I can do nothing about it, but hope that they learn from losing to a weaker opponent.

Marigold is able to win the Title for its weight class and it's new long range style was very impressive. It wouldn't have won without it. The price for this weight class was an Armor Fossil from Unova region that is tied to a belt like it is a Wrestling Championship Belt. Marigold wore it over the black belt from Kain(koichi) with great pride.

The DNA from the fossil had already been extracted and it couldn't be used to create a Shieldon. But It still had some pre-historic energy in it and was similar to a TM in that it had the energies recorded for moves Ancient Power(Rock), Rock Polish(Rock) and the move Metal Burst(steel).

It could help a Pokemon learn these moves as the fossil still contained the energy memory (like muscle memory) of the Shieldon that used these moves thousands of years ago. The organisers told us that the Shieldon born from the fossil also knew these moves as egg moves.

It was a belt that had to be worn in the waist, with the fossil up front. This put the fossil in danger of getting broken every time Marigold battled. The belt was it's most prized possession, having fight tooth and nail for it, so it didn't want it to be damaged but it still wanted to wear the belt as much as it can as a matter of pride.

After all our fire types evolved, I finally got to spend some more time with both my Meowths. I oversaw their training and thanked the girls and their pokemon for the excellent work they had done. I then took them to my mother and talked to them about future paths they might want to take for their future evolution.

Me and my mom inspected and Telepathically talked to both Meowths about it. They both said that they feel that they have just started exploring their fighting styles and an evolution might lock them into one type of style. (this concept is explored even in anime with Ash's Pikachu vs Lt. Surge's Raichu)

They are right in that assessment as it is well known that evolution reduces a Pokemon's versatility and improves their speciality. Despite having made some progress in their ideal fighting style, they both felt that they could do more in this form before evolving, especially since their most well known evolution forms are quadruped while they are bipedal and use their hands very well.

At this point Nova is like an Air Bender, bending air with different energies of fire, ice, ghost, etc. While Marigold is like an Earth Bender, controlling it's terrain and throwing blocks that it gets from terrain, be it Rocks, Magnetized Stones (Electric terrain), Purified Stones (Misty terrain) , etc. And they had just started exploring these styles.

After talking to my mom about them, we decided that even if they don't evolve, they deserve a reward for their hard work and improvement for their time here. They are probably the strongest Meowths in existence, unless some other Meowth decided to not evolve, having surpassed the necessary level for it twice over

(level of my Pokemon when they came back to Saffron city was around 35-38, currently all of them are around 50-56, with both Meowth being at 56 due to faster leveling of unevolved Pokemon)

I ask my Meowths to give their items of black belts and Marigold's championship belt to my mom for an upgrade, while we battle Sabrina.

Me and the Girls go to Sabrina for our 6th challange. Due to us only having 5 badges, the team Sabrina could use was Under-leveled compared to us. With over almost 10 levels above them, we had an almost easy time against the same Pokemon that were running over is last time we battled.

For my battle, I brought out Pikachu, who had been here to the gym with me every alternate day and had developed a psychic bond with me. it allowed is to talk to each other in our mind and even boosted our battle bond(like ash-greninja). It was even able to add Telekinesis to its Magnet Rise to become even more mobile in Air and in Ground.

Pikachu has trained psychic energy in these 4 months especially to better defend against it, to the point of also training Dark energy with it to better resist it. None of the current Pokemon that Sabrina is allowed to use have anything else that would be effective enough. This let's my Pikachu sweep Sabrina's Pokemon without me having to bring out another Pokemon.

Sabrina didn't mind and even thought that I was doing this just to show her how far me and Pikachu's had come from our training. She had been like an older sister to me for these 4 months and I am very grateful.

Eve and Ava were also able to Clear the Gym ,but they had to use all their Pokemon except Tangela and Tentacruel. Sabrina was shocked to see Cephaloy (since Ninetales just looks like shiny version of it).

To everyone who is not family, we plan to tell them that it and my Plungam are undiscovered species of Pokemon until my mom is confident in publishing her research. Even after that we will never tell anyone how we achieved what we did, but we will publish who they evolved from.

But Sabrina had become like a big sister to me. And although she is cold to literally everyone, she had been kind and supportive to me and Pikachu. Both Pikachu and me have become powerful psychics because of her.

I knew she had a haunter that she loved. She couldn't use him in Gym Battles because he was not a Psychic type. If my Mom can help Sabrina get a psychic evolution for her Haunter, it would make Sabrina very happy .

Currently her every other pokemon is bonded to her Psychically , so they are literally like her hands and feet. Pokemon battles are like personal fights to her, that's why she hated it, but it brought status. Haunter is exception to this as it is more like pet than an extension of herself. It can still be talked with Telepathically, but it has emotions and thoughts being what she allows it.

If my mom can help her, we can even publish that work, since it would be impossible to insure the secret forever.

Just like she did with Wooloo, if she can find an alternate evolution for a Kanto favourite, her name will be on every lip in the region for atleast a week. This could lead to more Monterey grants and further success, but this has to be played right. I know we can trust Sabrina in that she won't go publisizing our achivement. But, it's just that as a Gym leader, she is often in spotlight so hiding the truth for long would be difficult.

By the time we are done with the Gym challenge and come back home with Sabrina, My mom gifts my two Meowth with their upgraded items.

She used ghost Pokemon to turn the black belts into reaper cloth, similarly to how she used them to create spell tags. She gave this to Nova who loved it for how fashionable it looked as a scraf, pure Gothic. When she wears it as a scarf or a cape, it gives of a horrifying feeling.

It challenges the opponent's resolve by adding the ability Pressure to Nova, where every movement/move of target will take double the energy and stamina too perform. Considering prolonged fighting was Nova's weakness to a degree, an item that discourages prolonged fights from opponent is very welcome. It also increases power of ghost type moves.

Similarly, the Armour Fossil from Marigold's belt had been turned into a Hardened King's Rock. This kind Rock was made by using and imbuing the moves Power Gem (Rock) and move Rock Polish (Rock). My mom then sent it to a friend of hers in kalos to imbue the move King's Shield (steel) with help of her friend's Aegislash. It only took her 2 days to have everything fine, while we were challenging Sabrina for three days.(one day each)

Imbuing new moves into the Rock removed it's previous imbued moves (ancient Power and metal bursts) but it made Rock Polish even more efficient. Marigold had already learnt all the previously imbued moves and could perform them without the fossil, although with less efficiency, but that will come with practice. Now she can slowly learn these new moves and the King's Rock even has more functions.

The King's Rock Gives out a majestic Aura that may flinch an opponent. This will challange opponents will just like Rappers Cloth that Nova has, but instead of Horrifying Pressure, The King's Rock Gives out a Majestic Grace. The King's Rock even has the properly of increasing efficiency of Rock and Steel type moves. (it is the fossil of a Rock/Steel Pokemon)

After that I help Sabrina greet my mother and let them talk about her Haunter. We stay the night and with plans to leave the next morning to continue our second leg of the journey.

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