Chapter 06

After getting challenged by the rashly acting boy named Luke, Mikael and his Eevee, Ori, followed the scientist and the professor back outside until they reached the battleground.

The smirking Luke and his desperate Croagunk quickly readied themselves on one side of the field while Mikael and Ori did the same on the opposite side.

"This is far from being an official Pokemon battle, but given the occasion, I will be the referee of your match." Professor Rowan said before coughing and positioning himself right at the battlefield's middle line

"The rules are pretty basic: the first one that makes the opponent's Pokemon faint win." Professor Rowan explained as he was looking towards each youngster before asking "Is everyone ready?" making both Luke and Mikael nod while Ori was licking one of her front paws in disinterest and Croagunk was scratching the back of his head, surely because of his trainer's naive decision to have a battle

Professor Rowan coughed in his hand once more before declaring "Then, let the battle begin!"

And instantly, Luke shouted "Croagunk, use Poison Sting!" which made the bipedal frog Pokemon inhale as his cheeks grew in size

"Ori, use Baby-Doll Eyes!" Mikael ordered with a voice that seemed somehow more meaningful than usual while his own eyes shone for a moment but couldn't be noticed by the naked eyes of anyone around

Ori then cutely winked at the Croagunk who was about to release numerous purple darts from his mouth, which made him surprised and embarrassed as he coughed in the middle of exhaling, releasing but a few darts towards Ori.

Ori then swiftly evaded the few poisonous darts by darting to the left before dashing towards the Croagunk without seemingly receiving orders.

"Now Ori, use Swift!" Mikael shouted and a multitude of star-like projectiles appeared around the Eevee before being launched towards the Croagunk

"Croagunk dodge and use Mud Slap!" Luke yelled slightly frustrated that his previous attack didn't work as intended

Croagunk then jumped to avoid the stars but still got hit on his legs while the remainder projectiles rose dust from the ground between Eevee and Croagunk.

Because of that, the moment Croagunk got back on the ground he couldn't use Mud Slap without knowing where his opponent was located so Luke ordered "Stay wary of the dust cloud and attack the moment you see something!" as he couldn't locate the Eevee as well behind the dust

"Now Ori!" both Luke and Croagunk heard and focused their attention on the dust cloud until the ground below the frog Pokemon suddenly opened and made him fly away as Ori charged at him from below

"Croagunk no!" Luke desperately shouted as his Pokemon landed on one side of the battlefield with severe injuries but was still conscious

Luke then heard "Don't let him get up, use Quick Attack." and, with panic in his voice as he knew that his Pokemon wouldn't be able to dodge, he said "Withstand the blow and use Revenge!"

The Croagunk was then barely able to get up and rubbed his injured smirking mouth with one of his hands, watching as the Eevee who he knew was stronger than him before the match even started rush at him with high speed.

*BAM*

A few seconds of silence passed as the Croagunk took the Eevee's blow head-on, and while Luke thought that he would finally be able to use the move he asked, the Croagunk then fell on his knee before his whole body followed as his eyes were now confirming his fainted state.

"Luke's Croagunk fainted, the match is over and the winner is Mikael and his Eevee!" Professor Rowan declared as he kept a curious look on Mikael since he suspected something interesting about him once more

"Croagunk!" the worried boy shouted before moving towards his Pokemon and holding him by his back

Mikael also approached and asked "Eevee, heal him." since the little quadruped was still near the fainted Croagunk

"Vee." Ori let out before closing her eyes as a golden light emanated from her fur before getting absorbed by the frog Pokemon, making all injuries disappear as he slowly opened his eyes

"T-thank you." Luke muttered as he was embarrassed from his previous cocky behavior and didn't expect an Eevee to win against his Croagunk

"How did your Eevee learn Dig? I didn't expect such a Pokemon to have any dangerous moves against my Croagunk..." Luke added as he was curious about it

"We trained a lot against a Garchomp and a Gible so it wasn't that hard for her to learn it by observing and trying." Mikael said as Ori climbed back on his shoulder with a smug look on her face

'She actually learned it after seeing it once but I can't say that' Mikael thought as he knew why she acted so cockily

"Then why didn't I hear you order her to use Dig?" Luke asked since he should have known about it preemptively

"That's a secret technique we agreed to use during battles." Mikael replied while winking and putting one finger in front of his mouth

"And I am more surprised about your Eevee healing all of Croagunk's wounds." Jake said before adding "And this color... My knowledge of shiny Pokemon is low but I can only think of that mutation, interesting..." as he rubbed his chin in wonder

"The move she used was Heal Bell." Mikael shortly confessed as he didn't want to talk more about it since, although possible, it wasn't the move used by Ori

No one except Mikael and Ori knew what move was truly used.

"You would make an amazing trainer if you can teach such moves to your Pokemon... And since you are Professor Rowan's student, I can't imagine how incredible you truly are as a scientist as well." Jake said which made Mikael slightly embarrassed from the praise

*cough*

"We should get inside and prepare dinner, I have a lot of things to ask you Jake about the researches that happened around Mt.Coronet." Professor Rowan said which seemingly made Jake worried about something

On their way back inside, Jake started to explain their discovery over the years which also made Rowan's expression more solemn.

"The space-time rifts aren't just becoming more frequent, but they appear further and further away from the epicenter... We even recorded a few of them at Kanto and Johto." Jake said before giving a few papers to Rowan

"I guessed so... Professor Carolina also warned me about them, and after reading her records of history... It seems to be expanding exponentially, isn't it?" Rowan said as he looked at the map which showed all the places where rifts appeared before looking at a graphic comparing the number of appearances over the last thousand years

The technology to find the rift was not as futuristic as one could expect, in fact, humans from a certain Clan who lived on top of the Mt.Coronet for ages created an artifact that allowed such reading.

The reason for this creation was because their main temple held the first space-time rift appearance that, a millennia ago, was occurring once every ten years at the same spot.

At first, it served as a clock to never miss the time when the rift would appear again, but over the years, they realized that it became more and more frequent, to the point of occurring once every year.

In the present day the temple and the whole Clan disappeared somewhere nobody knew, only leaving ruins at the top of the Mt.Coronet but with the rift always present, in a dormant state that is.

This first rift does nothing when interacting with it, however, when it starts to shine and shake, it means that another rift appeared somewhere on the continent, and occasionally more than one at a time.

Luckily, they vanished after a certain amount of time, until the next pulse occurred.

It would have been fine if they were harmless, but in all cases where someone got sucked inside of them, they would reappear from another random rift with nearly one hour left to live before passing away because of a sudden aging effect leaving them with so little to survive.

But that wasn't even the end as recently, Pokemon that weren't documented started to appear, to the point of establishing their home in certain areas and becoming part of this world's ecosystem.

These Pokemon weren't any different from those that always walked on this planet, they simply seemed to come from another place similar to ours as they didn't seem bothered by humans, didn't appear to be of a new type, and easily prevailed were they choose to live at as if they always did.

Sadly, no humans from the other side were known to come from those rifts, making the scientific community wonder about their existence even though those Pokemon seemed to be used to living amongst humans.

'*Sigh* The world is getting more and more hectic recently' Professor Rowan thought as he kept on reading the documents Jake gave him

During this important chat between the two adults, the two children behind them were also having a conversation of their own.

"How were you so sure about facing my Croagunk with your Eevee? You should have been wary of me using a fighting-type move, no?" Luke asked as he looked at the weird colored Eevee who peacefully slept on Mikael's head

"I knew that your Croagunk wasn't trained enough to have learned any fighting-type move except for maybe Revenge, and noticing how he wasn't sure about facing Ori, my guess wasn't wrong." Mikael said which made Luke's nod in acknowledgment as he never trained his Croagunk to learn new moves and only faced some Pokemon of the children coming here during the summer school

'And fighting-type moves are neutral on Ori' Mikael thought but wouldn't talk about it since he knew that Ori was both special and unique as an Eevee and more, as a Pokemon

Nevertheless, the rest of the day passed quickly as they ate dinner and discussed for hours before going to bed.

Over the next few days, Rowan read through all the information gathered by the scientists posted around Mt.Coronet while Mikael and Luke trained together, surprising the former with how dedicated Mikael was at training both his body and his Pokemon.

Sadly for Rowan, the scientists working at the Mt.Coronet didn't come back during his stay and he couldn't take a detour to where they were since he had to be back at a precise date since his duties forced him to not leave his laboratory for too long.

Something that could be taken care of by using flying Pokemon for fast travel but it was not the point of Rowan's journey towards his home.

"Be careful during your travel, Professor Rowan, Mikael." Jake said as everyone was in front of the gate since it was time for them to part ways

"Thank you, Jake, we will." Professor Rowan politely replied before Luke exclaimed "Next time we see each other, my Croagunk will surprise you, Mikael!"

"It's a promise then." Mikael replied with a smile as his Eevee was snorting while looking at the Croagunk who still acted nonchalantly

The duo finally left the Pokemon Summer Academy and was on their way towards their next stop, Solaceon Town.

After a while and when there were only the two of them on the road, Rowan couldn't keep something to himself and suddenly asked "Say, Mikael, you can use Aura don't you?"

Mikael was surprised for a second but quickly composed himself and honestly replied "Yes, I can. Did you notice it during the battle?"

Rowan nodded before saying "At first I had a hunch since I already know that you can understand Pokemon's speeches which may or may not be related to an innate ability to use Aura, but during the battle I was sure when I saw how you were able to convey your orders silently... It could have been some sort of psychic powers too, but humans with such powers are emotionally locked which is not the case for you."

"Sorry for hiding it from you, I just didn't know if it was something I should have talked about with anyone else since I barely found any information about it." Mikael mumbled as he looked down slightly ashamed

"And you would be right." Rowan first replied which made Mikael look up at him once more "Aura and everything related to it has been erased from history a long time ago, in fact, we don't know if users exist nowadays but you proved me otherwise."

"How did you learn about it then?" Mikael asked as he was curious about how could Professor Rowan know about something that ceased to exist since ancient time

"It was information given to me by my friend Professor Oak who visited the only place where data about Aura is kept, which is the Cameran Palace in Kanto... I would recommend you to go there when you visit the region since it could help you strengthen your ability."

Mikael was thoughtful for a while before replying "Thank you for the advice, I will visit this palace when I will travel through Kanto then, but I don't think I will go there in the next couple of years." which simply made Rowan nod and not inquire further than that about Mikael's strange and numerous capabilities

'I will never regret taking him as one of my students, he's too exceptional to be left behind' Rowan thought as he played with his mustache and smiled but it wasn't caught by Mikael who was nudging his Eevee on his head since she was sleeping too casually and had her paws hanging in front of Mikael's eyes while drool was slowly going down his face

One thing that Professor Rowan didn't tell Mikael yet was that he already made a promise to have someone as a student once he came back to Sandgem Town, which meant that Mikael would have a fellow child learning with him.

This didn't bother Rowan since it would allow Mikael to have someone around his age and potentially a friend, which was also the case for his other future student.

'And here I thought that going back home would allow me to rest' Rowan thought as he kept smiling while thinking about how busy he would be at home with two smart and curious children to take care of while teaching them everything he knew