19 Saying Goodbye

A year had passed once again, and it was only a few days before he turned seventeen. That meant one thing, his very own pokemon journey! In fact he could just stay at home if he wanted to, but their was a few reasons why he wasn't.

The most important reason was it was simply something he wanted to do. What was the point in being reborn if he didn't travel the world and encounter all the mysteries it had to offer?

Another big benefit of traveling was the experience his pokemon would get along the way. With the talent of his pokemon they could probally stay at home and reach an amazing strength, but by going out there and having battles around the world their strength would increase much quicker, and it would allow them to reach their full potential.

His pokemon had made great progress in this time. Moy had reched the peak elite four rank and would soon breakthrough, the only reason she reached so far was due to the benefits of her evolution which had since faded. Meta had also reached peak quasi elite four due to Moy's feedback. She was already ready to evolve and would be doing so today.

Although Moy and Meta's strength had increased it was obviously slower than it had been in the past due to their increased strengths, but by far the most progress was made by Alba and Cali, already reaching the elite class. This was of course due to Moy's feedback, considering it was a couple years faster than it took Moy and Meta to hit advanced.

Cali was the name he had given Honedge, after excalibur or caliburn. He couldn't think of any actual scythe names and he wasn't goning to name her Reaper or something, that would be cringe, so he just settle on the sword name.

Of course with Cali reaching the elite rank she had also evolved. Her evolution wasn't that suprising just splitting into two scythes. However it seemed she had inhertied the skill that had Aegislash change forms because Cali could do that to. Whenever she wished she could combine her two smaller scythes into one bigger one. This was great considering he was trained to use both, although that made him curious what her third evolution will be.

Even with all her mutations the most exciting thing about her was certainly her abilities, more specifically her Soul Bond ability. You see Soul Bond wasn't actually a new abillity, and had been observed on Honedge before, but the benefits brought to the trainer were immense

The most obvious benefit was the fact that it began the feeding back of strength as soon as the soul bond happened, without having to wait for the elite four rank. This wasn't a big benefit when the pokemon was young, but once it reached the elite four rank the feed back would be larger than normal.

The ability also allowed Cali to enter his body at any time which increased his resistance to damage while she was in it. Since the pokemon could enter the trainer's body it could also exit at any time allowing the trainer immediate access to their weapon. A big benefit considering almost all trainers with a Honedge that had the Soul Bond ability were sword masters, or in his case, a scythe master.

Perhaps the only drawback was that Moy didn't like having to share space with somebody in his head, considering Cali could intiate conversation with him, something only Moy could do in the past.

Cali's other abilites weren't to be put down though, and were quite good in their own right. First off was the ability Long Reach, which allowed her to physically attack things from a distance. Any move, or even just a normal attack, that had to make contact, could instead happen from far away. Her other ability was Skill Link which allowed her two bodies to act with better coordination between eachother.

These abilities took on a different meaning when he wielded Cali himself. Cali wasn't a slouch in fighting by herself but she didn't really know how to properly use her body as a weapon. Luckily that's something he had been training in since he was a child.

When he used Cali he could also attack from afar using her Long Reach ability. But more importantly Skill Link basically gave him the ability to "feel" all the blade and thus better have control of it in battle, leading to a much greater lethality than when he used a normal scythe. Plus it allowed Cali to learn how to use herself as a scythe better, him using her being a training all on its own for her.

Cali was certainly talented, probally since she herself was a scythe, and was making progress much faster than him when he was first learning, even if she was basically getting his skills downloaded into her.

Cali and Alba might both have elite strength but if you had to ask someone who didn't know, they would almost certainly say Alba was stronger. This was due to her absoluty gigantic size. She may be a grotle, but she was already as big as house! Not even a small one, but more a two story suburban home! Not to mention the tree on her back was taller than even her.

This didn't technically lead to her being any stronger than opponets of the same rank and talent, she would still technically have the same amount of energy, but size was a strength in its own right.

This massive size was due to Alba's huge size variation found in the Turtwig line, and her mutation where her tree is already on her back, but even with those she wouldn't grow that big at just the elite rank strength. Instead the main reason was her abilities and the feedback loop they created with eachother. The core of this loop was the ability Grassy Surge which meant she constantly had an effect known as grassy terrain around her.

This grassy terrain came with numerous benefits like boosting the power of grass type moves or slowly healing grass type pokemon. Sadly the benefits weren't as drastic as in the games but it was still a nice bonus. What grassy terrain also did though was increase the growth rate of plants in its area.

It also solved one of Alba's biggest problem and that was moving around. She would eventually grow so big even realeasing her in the forest could destroy the surrounding enviorment. Luckily enough grassy terrain solved that problem as it basically allowed her to walk through tress as if they weren't there. This meant that no matter how big she grew as long as she was in a forest it shouldn't be a big problem.

The increased growth rate of grassy terrain greatly benefited her next ability Chlorophyll.

Unlike the games Chlorophyll did not increase her speed in sunny weather but instead increased the effect of the chlorophyll of the plants on her back and increased the benefits Alba got from all the plants on her back. It allowed her to recover her energy faster and also grow larger, the healthier the various plants on her back were. Something Grassy Surge helped with perfectly.

Her next ability, Grassy Pelt, was similar, increasing her defense the healthier the plants on her back were. Something Grassy Surge and Chlorophyll both contributed to. At this point Alba didn't have any plants on her back except her main tree, which benefited the most from her abilities anyway, considering it was directly linked to her, and a layer of grass. Still even with just that he is sure the combination has worked to massivley increase her size.

Meta didn't have to worry about her ability as team tank being taken away though. Alba would simply be too big to properly protect the others, with enemies just getting onto her back. Meta was never going to be on the front lines either due to her slow speed though, and instead his plan had been to have Meta protect back line attackers, if he gets any in the future.

In that way Alba could be more the first line of defense, stopping weaker enemies getting closer to the long range attackers. Something that would work perfectly, considering Alba would most likely be an aoe attacker in the future, only able to physically fight against the biggest of opponets.

In this year he had also made decent progress with his gravity going up to 31X thanks to Moy and Cali. He had also mastered his sense enhancement and teleporting, although he was only able to teleport a couple miles. His training with Scyther had gotten even more intense, espicially with Cali added into the mix. With the addition of teleporting in his combat style his strength had quickly increased to the peak of professinal rank, and with Meta in the mix it was barely in the master rank.

It was early morning a couple days before his birthday and his team and him all gathered outside to witness Meta's evolution. Meta was massive, at twenty square foot, with a stone pillar atop her that reached 27 feet into the air looking unrealistic, leaving him to wonder how it hadn't fallen over. It must have weighed many tons at this point, taller than Alba herself if you didn't include her tree.

As they all gathered around the ground, with Cali coming out of his body and Alba getting as low to the ground as she could, he spoke up.

"You ready Meta? This will be a big change for you, even bigger than Moy's and you saw how she couldn't control her arms for a couple days, unused to the new appendages."

Ignoring Moy's pout in the background Meta responded, as steady as ever, "Thank you for your worry father, however I am sure I will be fine, the change isn't as drastic as you say, I am hardly gaining new appendages like Moy."

With a sigh, "I know Meta I am just worried."

Before Meta could respond Alba chimed in ever caring, "Don't worry Meta, I know you can do it, just tell me if you think anything will go wrong ok?"

Moy also gave her own words of encourgment with a, "I know you can do it! Become super strong so we can finally fight!" and Cali gave a simple "Good Luck." Which was impressive considering the only one she often talked to was himself, she interacted less with everybody than even Meta, not out of distance with the others, but something he suspected it had something to do with her ghost typing.

With a rare smile on her stoic face Meta replied "Thanks everybody, I'll be fine." And just like that she burst into a white light just like when she had evolved into a Crustle. As she did so he thought of the dangers of evolution. In fact there weren't really any. Not like the dangers of ranking up where if you don't have the proper comprehension and try to forcibly rank up you could cripple yourself.

The reason they were all wishing her good luck and he was worried was because even if nothing had gone wrong before, it didn't mean something couldn't go wrong. He was training pokemon with violet potential to the max of their abilities, something that probally had never been done before. Who know what type of mutations could happen, he didn't excpect anything negative to happen, as that was contradictory to the violet potenial, but he still couldn't help but worry.

Coming out of his musings he was shocked as he saw the white light fade. In front of them was a massive rock crab Meta, about double the size as she was as a crustle. It was low to the ground and an almost pitch black color with two stubby claws, better for defending than pinching. It had an extra pair of legs than the usual Mantor with six in total, plus it was much more crab like, with a more round than long body.

He spoke up as he noticed the evolution light fully fade away, "Hey there Meta, how are you? Everthing ok?"

As she was about to respond Moy interupted her stating "Good job Meta, let's battle now! Moy bets you're so much stronger, but you still can't beat me!"

Even Alba was impatient as she also interrupted Meta, something she would never normally do, "Are you hurt anywhere? Do you need me to check up on anything?"

Stern as ever she responded, "Yes father I am fine, no need to worry, I am not suited to battling you Moy, you should know this. I am not injured Alba, although you may check if you so wish."

As Alba started to fess over Meta with Moy pestering her and Cali at his side he couldn't help but smile, it seemed his team was really coming together. Not his team, more his family it seemed. As he thought back on all the good times they had together, from Moy first hatching, to sleeping on Meta's back, or Alba fussing over the tiniest of injuries, even Cali who acted distant but always cared, he soon felt something break within him.

Looking into his mind he found the solid core of energy he had finished forming a few days ago had broken, expanding rapidly and breaking the boundry of his mind. He soon realized his psychic energy was filling his actual physical brain, instead of the metaphysical, and at the same time reverted to the wispy gas he had started off at it, but it was now a pitch black color.

He had broken through to the third cycle of psychic energy. The reason he hadn't broken through right away was due to the fact that he couldn't. Every psychic had a barrier that held them back from entering the third cycle and nobody knew what their barrier was. It was often some type of mental roadblock though like getting revenge, or asking the one you like out. Either way, that barrier stopped the vast majority of psychics who wanted to break through, making the third cycle psychics the true elite.

That he was able to find and break his barrier so quickly was a true blessing. It seemed his barrier was family, no matter how cheesy that sounded. He loved his mom and dad, he truly did, saying he didn't see them as family would be lying, but it was clear that he wasn't as close to them as he would have been if he was a normal kid.

But his pokemon... they trained, laughed, ate, and slept together, how could they not also be family? It was just something that he hadn't realized untill then considering them as still pokemon, more close friends than family.

He felt the benefits of the breakthrough immediatly, with everything psychic about him being enhanced like it normally was just even more so. For example, he could now see almost 700 feet around him through his divine sense. With that he noticed that the others had stopped chatting and were all looking at him. It was Moy who spoke up once they saw he was paying attention.

"Are you okay daddy?"

With a smile at seeing them all worried he replied, "I'm fine guys don't worry, why don't we all celebrate huh?"

With a collective cheer he went inside to grab some of their favorite foods and before he know it they are all having fun outside. As he watched everybody play and joined in on the dun himself, he couldn't help but feel content.

Another couple of days pass and its a day before he leaves that Moy breaks through to the quasi champion rank. It wasn't all that suprising, given her talent, she easily comprehended an aspect of her future domain.

To become a champion you needed to have a domain. A domain was made up of things called aspects which were derived from a pokemon's truth. You only needed one aspect to reach the quasi champion rank and you could go to champion once you finished finding all your aspects.

Moy had, unsuprisingly, comphended the strength aspect of her truth, increasing the power of her punches even farther. She comprehended this after she had managed to break a rock with simply the air blast that came off her mega punch, completely by accident to.

Before he knew it it was his birthday and he was off to go on his adventure. He recieved a tearful goodbye from his mother and a firm hug from his father. The goodbyes weren't long, none of them wanting it to drag out. He left the house not knowing when he would next return. With his pokemon in their pokeballs, and dust in his eyes, he made his way to the airport. Why? Where better to start his journey than Moy's home reagion of course!