12 Asmond's Eleven

Following the directions that Leafeon had given them, they had almost arrived in the general vicinity of where the Raichus might be. Espiria was playing scout for them using her ESP to detect any Pokemon before they were scared away by their presence.

     As she crept through the search area with the others trailing her at a safe distance, she finally came to a stop and signaled for them to do the same.

     *There seems to be a battle going on up ahead the Raichus might be in trouble.*

     *Alright then, we'll proceed with caution and assess the situation. The Raichus might be in trouble so be prepared to jump in, if needs be.* Asmond instructed the others.

     They all followed Espiria, while moving towards the location of the battle. Once the scene came into view they could see a Hippowdon giving a Luxray a pretty hard time. If Asmond had to guess, this would probably be the Luxray's last battle. It certainly seemed to be on its last leg, despite clearly having dealt some damage to the Hippowdon.

     He couldn't see any Raichus around and the Luxray didn't seem to have a partner, so he was wondering why Espiria would bring them so close to this troublesome battle. Before he could ask, however, Espiria explained the situation.

     *There is a Hippopotas behind the Luxray. It isn't doing too much but the two of them are making excellent use of their Ground Type attacks to prevent the Luxray from escaping. Also, I think there is a Shinx hiding out just on the edge of my ESP. I can't detect any more Pokemon within my ability's range and so the other Luxray could already be dead.*

     'Hmmm...why would there be Luxray and Hippowdon here. I suspect that

Electric Type Pokemon might be somehow related to the frequency of lightning strikes in an area. The Hippowdon, however, might be hunting outside his normal habitat. We aren't currently that far from the even larger mountains to the east of Forina and I suppose that's a logical place for them to be found. There really isn't that big of a difference between ground and rocks, logically speaking. 

     'Come to think of it, wouldn't a Shinx do just as well as a Pichu. It might even be better. That's it. It's decided. If there really is a Shinx over there I'm nabbing it. This hunt has gone on too long and I want it to end. Once we grab that Shinx, we'll head back over to the western mountains and grab a Geodude.'

     *Alright, Espiria, get ready to attack. I want you to sneak up behind that Hippopotas and overpower him. We'll all attack Hippowdon together and once Hippopotas is dead you can finish off Luxray. We can't take the chance of leaving a Pokemon that powerful alive. Also, he'll be a good meal for Eevee.*

     Once he had conveyed the rest of the plan to his team, they continued to watch the fight while Espiria snuck over to her flanking position. As the battle progressed to a point where Asmond guessed that the Luxray was about to bite it, he ordered all of his Pokemon to attack Hippowdon simultaneously. He, however, used his Death Metal for the first time in real combat.

     Sending Death Metal along the ground on Luxray's blind side, he maneuvered it carefully into position and then sent it quickly towards Luxray's throat. 

     Luxray barely had time to process what was happening, before a long metal chain seemed to come out of nowhere and wrapped itself around his throat. This strange metal chain, however, had incredibly sharp blades on it. Luxray thought he was going to die the instant it wrapped around him but he didn't. For some reason the chain just sat there on his neck.

     Luxray didn't know what was going on but he knew he was alive and his enemy was now engaged with some odd newcomers. He wasn't about to hang around and greet them he needed to get back to his Shinx and getaway from this place.

     He immediately turned around to flee and only managed to run about twenty meters, when he felt it. The nightmare he had envisioned, when that chain had first wrapped around his neck. It just came true, as he began to feel the blood from his neck flowing out onto the ground. He looked up to see an Espeon walking out from the trees in front of him.

     Luxray didn't have the chance to wonder about where the Espeon had come from, before he breathed his last breath and collapsed onto the ground.

     After wrapping up Luxray's throat, all Asmond needed to do was maintain Death Metal's position and Espiria would do the rest. Because Death Metal was actually heavier than the rocks that he typically trained with, he was still in the middle of strengthening his Psychic Limbs to a point where he could wield it effectively. He didn't currently have the strength to finish off Luxray, just keeping it in place was difficult for him.

     The others on his team had done a fine job of assaulting the unsuspecting Hippowdon. Squirtle had thoroughly drenched it in water which weighed it down, Happiny was using her newly acquired Light Beam, Seedot was constricting its movements with his vines, Eevee was headbutting and scratching it, while Torchic was throwing fire kicks in its face.

     The five of them continued their assault, until Espiria arrived and she quickly landed a few Psychic Tail Whips onto its head, ending it for good. Before they did anything else, Espiria led them over to the small little blip in her ESP.

     Sure enough, there in a leaf covered tangle of sticks and vines, was a Shinx and it was clearly terrified that they were also here to kill and eat it. Espiria spoke into Shinx's mind to calm and comfort him. Once he was convinced that he wasn't in any immediate danger of losing his life, Espiria picked him up and placed him on her back. Once everyone had eaten their fill, Espiria and Shinx rejoined the group and they began working their way back towards the Grass House.

     During the two day trek back to the Grass House, Shinx had finally begun to accept that these strangers had saved it from that monster, even though they couldn't save his father.

     After checking on Magikarp, upon their return, and making sure they caught and found enough food to hold him over they set out once again towards the western mountains.

     As they traveled, Asmond began sharing his training methods with the now much calmer Shinx and told him that in order to avoid ending up like his father he needed to become as strong as possible. He also ensured him that, as a part of his team, they would always have each other's backs but most of them were still fairly weak compared to more evolved Pokemon. This made it imperative that they all train as hard as possible, until they could evolve.

     As Asmond expected, once they reached a fairly rocky area not even having reached the mountains yet, Geodudes could be seen in most of the places they looked. This Pokemon Acquisition Mission wasn't nearly as eventful as some of the others. All they did was to monitor the area for Gravelers with eggs and prepared accordingly for their heist.

     Using Espiria's Psychic Limbs and Seedot's Vine Manipulation to their absolute limit, they had nearly a hundred meters worth of reach between the two of them. If it was only for something small and it was just being stretched thin in one direction, Espiria could manage a good sixty meters. Seedot, on the other hand, tapped out at about forty meters with just one vine.

     After locating the Graveler's resting place, they waited for them to go to sleep and sure enough they both went to sleep at nearly the same time. No guards, or traps, or doors. Asmond sighed in exasperation but was also grateful for their negligence, since it made things easier for him.

     At the entrance of the Graveler's cave, Espiria grasped Seedot with her Psychic Limb and extended him into the cave as far as she could. Seedot stretched his vine out as far as possible and held position, while Espiria began running towards the Graveler's den. The Graveler's noticed that something was amiss a couple of seconds before Seedot was within range but couldn't recover from their slumber fast enough to realize their egg was being stolen and by who.

     Once the Graveler's had noticed Seedot and his vines wrapped around their egg, he had already signaled Espiria, who was running out of the cave while retracting her Psychic Limb. Seedot began retracting his vines, the same moment he signaled Espiria. With these three factors accelerating the speed of the egg, the egg's parents could hardly track its trajectory. They could only run helplessly to their cave's exit and, after easily breaking through the thieve's Vine Barrier, stare at a completely vacant crime scene, while regretting having wasted their energy to make an egg only to have it stolen right from under their rocks. 

     Seedot had constructed a Vine Barrier, with a small hole, before they went inside, at the cave's entrance and Espiria jumped through that hole, dragging Seedot and the egg out with her. Once they were out, Seedot closed up the hole and put up a couple more last second obstacles, before they all hightailed it out of there never to return. 

     Espiria and Eevee ran straight out towards the east, Torchic, Seedot, and Happiny ran towards the southeast, and Asmond, Squirtle, and Shinx ran directly south along the mountains. After running two hundred meters minimum, each team began to alter directions and met up at a location about three hundred meters into the forest. 

     They camped out here for the rest of the night to make sure the Gravelers hadn't been able to track them. In the morning, after the Night Guards completed their training and they confirmed no Gravelers were on their tail, they made it back to the Grass House safe and sound.

     During all of this house building, running around, and carrying Pokemon on his back, Asmond had begun to notice more and more just how limiting his little more than five year old body was. He really wished he could find some way to grow faster and he actually had a decent idea about how to go about it but he couldn't try it just yet.

     He suspected that he might be able to do something with his magic, although he couldn't really guess how effective it might be. At the time these thoughts occurred to him, he needed to use all of his magic to stimulate Eevee's evolution whenever possible.

     It was now nine days later and Asmond was using his magic to pet Eevee with electrified hands, during their evening training session. As he was petting him, Eevee was suddenly enveloped in a bright light that covered his entire body.

     Asmond looked down at the bright glowing Pokemon in his lap and said, "Finally."

     After the light grew in size and changed shape, the light began to slowly dim and Asmond saw before him the very Pokemon he had been waiting to see. He smiled at him and asked, "So how does it feel?"

     "Jolteon" Jolteon said happily.

     "Hahahaha, I'll take that as a "Wonderful."

     Asmond spent the rest of their training session testing Jolteon's new abilities and giving him advice on how to increase his strength. At the end of it all, Asmond eventually drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. Not only because his Eevee had finally evolved into Jolteon but also because, aside from the few days a week he would use his shadow magic on Seedot, he could now focus most of his magic expenditures on testing whether or not his magic could help him grow up faster.

     The next evening's training came in the form of Asmond sitting in a meditative state trying to remember everything he could about Human biology and how it developed from a young age. Bringing all of this knowledge together, as he spread all of his magic out through his entire body, Asmond cast what he called the Growth Assist Spell.

     The moment he activated his magic he immediately felt a moderate amount of pain throughout his entire body. Not just on his skin but in all of his organs and bones as well. It only lasted for about a fraction of a second but the all encompassing nature of it made it seem much worse than it was.

     After recovering from the pain, Asmond checked himself over and even went to the door frame, where he measured his growth every week, and he didn't seem to notice any difference. 'Dammit! Did it not work at all? Were those not growing pains I just experienced? Hmmm...I suppose I should give it at least a month and, if there's still no more growth than expected, I'll have to try something else.'

     After another month of nightly growing pains, Asmond once again approached the doorframe and measured himself. 

     'Hahaha, it definitely works! Growing an entire inch in a month might not be as fast as I'd like but it's better than waiting nearly a decade or more. At the moment I'm about three feet ten inches, which should be just a bit taller than average for my age. At least it was in my old world. If I keep this up, I could be a full six feet tall in less than three years!' Asmond thought cheerfully.

     A few days after confirming the effects of his Growth Assist Spell, Vaporeon appeared again and expressed being quite satisfied with his growth during this time and informed him that they had already made their egg. He told Asmond that he could begin visiting anytime he wanted, in order to encourage the egg to hatch into an altered state Eevee.

     Since he planned to leave this territory to Jolteon during his journey to the east, he decided that now would be a good time to get him used to his new station. So, after Asmond and the others had prepared themselves to leave, Jolteon stayed behind and wished them well in their travels.

     Asmond had thought about teaching Jolteon to conjure pure elemental energy and then sending him to bathe the egg in it for him. However, he wasn't certain whether this process was related to Espiria being so attached to him as soon as she was hatched. If it was then he might end up making this new Jolteon more dedicated to his current Jolteon than it would be to him. This obviously wouldn't do and so he decided he'd do it himself.

     Asmond had discovered some weeks ago, that he could transform his magic into an energy that had all of the characteristics of its given element but was essentially inert. This is what he referred to as conjuring Pure Elemental Energy. Not only did it require the kind of technical understanding that he had he also wasn't sure Jolteon would have time to learn it before the egg was hatched. He still tried to teach this to all of his Pokemon but, as he expected, none of them had managed to do it yet.

     He assumed this was necessary since, whenever he was egg sitting Espiria's egg, he would send his Psychic power into the egg and not just near or around it. He wasn't sure that electricity around the egg would have the same effect and he suspected that getting electricity inside the egg would not only require puncturing the egg but would almost certainly cause damage to the embryo.

     It was for this reason that a pure inert energy was required and conjuring it required you to gather all of the technical knowledge you possessed of an element and essentially conjure that knowledge as energy. This, of course, meant that there were qualities of this energy and that the more advanced ones understanding of an element the more potent this elemental energy would be. However, due to its inert nature, at least in terms of causing damage or powering abilities, its only function seemed to be conveying the properties of the element in question to the desired target.

     There were still many more questions Asmond had about this Pure Elemental Energy's potential but it would probably take him quite some time to unravel them. For now,  he was inside Vaporeon's territory and Leafeon and Vaporeon were carefully watching him bathe the egg in Pure Elemental Electric Energy.