1I

''Tut tut"…

A young teenage-looking boy is making weird motions with his lips while looking into the void in a daze. In front of him is a small table on which lays a Pokeball and some half-scribbled papers.

He is currently thinking about his next course of action.

"V! Come eat, dinner's ready"

Too lazy to answer, he stands there motionlessly for a dozen seconds before heading downstairs. Making his way into the living room, he sits down on a chair and lays his head on his hands with his elbow leaning on the table.

"How was your day?" The gruff man sitting by the table asked him.

" I don't know." He said half-heartedly.

"Still stuck with your research?"

"Yes," he said dejectedly.

"Hey stop being so moody and let's eat" said his mum trying to lighten the mood.

They then proceed to eat dinner in silence whilst sometimes exchanging stories about their work life.

"Theodore, dear, how about we sponsor V's journey and give him a royal starter?" asked his mom.

"I don't need it. Stop." chimed in Valentine, without looking away from his stew.

"Giovanna, we have already talked about this and although I agree, our son has a problem with adapting to new things and a Pokemon would mean a lot for him, so before he has fully familiarized himself with it, I doubt he would accept one and consider it his own. So our best bet is to hope he slowly gets to know more about them through his experiments and acknowledges one of them as a friend." The man named Theodore let his opinion be known.

After that, dinner quickly came to an end, and after helping with the cleaning, Valentine quickly went to his room. He then took out a Pokeball and let it fall to the ground.

'Mukk'~

A purple sludge made its appearance after the Pokeball fell.

Valentine proceeded to then sit down and look at the Pokemon in silence.

' Mhhh… how can I let Muk's digestion of organic and inorganic matter enhance his overall mass, elemental energy reserves, poison effectiveness and potency besides the method I'm working on?' After a bit of brainstorming and observation, he gave up and recalled Muk inside its Pokeball.

'Nevermind, tomorrow I will go outside and execute some tests.'

After that, he went to bed and kept wandering in his imagination for a couple of hours before falling asleep.

***

"Valentine, come eat breakfast with us" exclaimed his father from downstairs.

After grumpily making his way downstairs in his pajama, he sat down and said:

"I need a lab assistant, can you give me a beldum?"

"Wh-what?? Do you know what you are talking about?!" choked his father on his milk.

"Yes".

"Okay, it needs some time but I will talk to Metagross and try to get it done as soon as possible."

"Thanks, Dad."

His father then went off to work.

He works for the academy in Viridian city where he teaches as a professor. He had obtained a beldum in his younger years whilst working in Hoen for a project. So now evolved into a Metagross, he decided to ask his father for a beldum as an assistant. Reason being that as a genius/computer/psychic Pokemon, it could help him with various research and studies.

With that done, he quickly saw off his mom, who was heading outside because she worked as a trainer for Pokemon at a daycare centre.

Valentine went back upstairs in a hurry and took the Pokeball with him before storming out of the house and down the road.

After a couple of miles, near the periphery of Viridian City, a small warehouse of about 200 meters squared came into view.

He made his way inside the building, which was full of research equipment and liquid-filled capsules and so on. Walking up to a capsule filled with green liquid, he looked at the content inside… a floating scyther.

'Not yet, not yet.' He thought.

He then made his way to the table and started writing something in a small notebook.

' The unstable, radioactive energy that is found inside the corpses of recently dead Pokemon, which would otherwise go to waste, is what Muk needs to convert into his elemental energy and mass which is basically poison, can this be made possible with a poison core?'

This longstanding project of his was on the verge of a breakthrough. Because if his assumptions were correct he could create a deadly weapon…

The principle behind it is that muk feeds on waste. Making a poison core and utilizing his ability to digest waste whilst transmuting energy through the core into his own elemental energy and also assimilating the nuclear waste to make his poison even more poisonous. The big deal about this was making the actual core something that would not be seen as foreign by the body, could automatically execute its task and let the stored energy still be as usable as before. After many experiments, he created an artificial core which could synergize with Muk and was compatible with it through partial adaptation to Muk's cells and quenching with elemental energy.

So after briefly documenting every step of his experiment in the diary, he grabbed a purple sphere full of ramified incisions and let Muk out of his Pokeball.

Muk stayed completely still while he shoved the sphere down its throat and just lay there motionless.

After a while, a purple light strongly lit up inside Muk's body.

The new organ was sucking in all of Muk's energy and storing it. After a couple of minutes, the process was done and Valentine ordered:

"Conjure a mud ball."

The Muk then proceeded and a mud ball appeared in front of him.

'Perfect. So it can still retain and utilize its elemental energy but, it draws it from the core as expected.'

He then recalled Muk inside its Pokeball and went outside, headed for the viridian forest.

Once he arrived he called out Muk.

"Muk I want you to go up to all the carcasses you can find and eat them, but remember to circulate the energy through the core. Don't worry the core will do all the work itself just make sure to feed it the energy."

'Muk~ mu~muk~' the muk affirmed to his trainer it understood what it had to do and trailed off into the forest.

***

Muk was strolling around whilst occasionally finding a dead bedrill, wurmple or caterpie to eat.

No one dared to attack him because well… he was literal trash. After a couple of hours cleaning up scum on the forest's ground he came back to the entrance, where he met his trainer.

"Good job Muk. Truly a good job." Said Valentine after seeing a ginormous Muk approaching.

'This is only possible thanks to the body structure of Muk being stupidly simple and his form being liquid-like, which allow him to accumulate mass after eating'. Taking note Valentine ordered:

"Make yourself smaller."

'Muk~'

The Muk then began to condense itself, making his body, which was as big as a dozen Muk and looked like a river, smaller until the point it looked like its previous self.

After taking out the Pokéball and recalling Muk to rest after a job well done, he smiled and a mad glint appeared in his eyes:

"Hahahahahh— I'm so happy. Finally, many of my plans can come to fruition."

He then turned around and hummed a song on his way home…