Searching Far and Wide - 23 (Patreon)

Mt. Moon I

Pierce held back a groan as he pushed himself up with his arms before going down again. Push ups sucked, he decided for what felt like the hundredth time that day. Exercising as a whole sucked, actually, but it wasn’t like he could stop, really. Not only would Narcissa have something to say about that, but keeping up would set a good example for the other two…

‘Although, I don’t think they need it, really,’ he thought wryly, twisting his head to the side a little. Narcissa was training by herself, still trying to learn Tailwind and polishing her use of Focus Energy. Cygnus, for his part, was walking, very slowly, around the clearing to build up his muscles, as usual. As for Orion, he was currently moving around and using Rock Throw and occasionally using Bind on a tree. The latter was about to reach his limit in training, imposed by Pierce so the young one wouldn’t push too much when he was still recovering.

With a grunt and a sigh, he finished for the moment, sitting on the ground and looking to the other side. Lily was training her two pokemon quite diligently as usual. He didn’t keep up on what they were doing, however, but he’d enlisted Cygnus to try and do so. Maybe it was a little shitty but… Well, it wasn’t like she was trying to hide what she was doing anyway, so it was probably fine. Besides, his abra wasn’t in any condition to pay all that much attention to them anyway.

The offended feeling he got from the psychic type would have said otherwise if not for the weariness that bleed through with it too. It was soon followed by frustration as Cygnus realized that his argument had been ruined at the same time it was “voiced”. Poor guy was getting used to training physically still and Pierce couldn’t really fault him, in all honesty.

A buzzing and a very annoying amused feeling washing over him made Pierce slump. With a sigh, he stood up and started his next exercise, another round of doing laps around the clearing. ‘Stupid Narcissa, stupid Cygnus. Who’s the trainer here?’ he grumbled internally. His eyes darting to check on Orion to make sure he wasn’t pushing himself too much. ‘Eyes on Lily’s team, buddy,’ he added as he saw Cygnus struggle keeping his head up. ‘You can take a break if it’s too much, you are smart enough to know when that is, buddy,’ he added.

Immediately, the abra sent him a wave of determination with the smallest bit of understanding. That last part was the important one at that moment. Pierce didn’t know his pokemon as well as they knew themselves. They would know their limits better too, but Cygnus was probably the only one smart enough not to try and push past those. He’d rather not have to worry about all three of them…

Although, Pierce would still check, just in case.

[}-o-{]

“Being back on the road is…” Pierce commented not long after that while sitting in front of the fire they’d used to prepare their food. Or rather, the fire Lily had used to prepare their food. She was the one that had put more effort into learning how to have better meals than those rations they had had while going through Viridian Forest. He’d have felt bad, but she’d told him that he’d make up for it being their little group’s medic, what with all the work he was putting on preparing for the First Aid License. “... It sucks,” he finished with a sigh, eating some more of the meal. “Not the food though, it’s good, it’s just…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Lily muttered, looking down at her dish. “We got used to being in the city again, huh?” she mumbled, bringing some of her food to her mouth.

“I guess,” Pierce agreed with a shrug. “There is something nice about being out though, not gonna lie, but I’d rather have a nice bed to return to at the end of the day.”

“You and me both,” Lily agreed before perking up a little. “But Mt. Moon will be neat, we might meet some pokemon of the Clefairy line!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. Pierce, for his part, refrained from pointing out that it was rather unlikely that they would. He’d let the girl fool herself, since he knew she was very aware of that fact. Hell, some time ago, she had been the one to tell him that and he’d been the one to convince her it wasn’t impossible.

“That’d be something, yeah,” he agreed, not even having to lie. Even if it’d be surprising if it actually happened, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice if it did. Nobody would have him complaining about getting to meet pokemon that were supposed to be very elusive and rare, that was for sure. “I’m kind of looking forward to after we get through Mt. Moon. I want to see water types, personally.”

“You haven’t seen many of those?” Lily asked, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Hm, well, Pallet is close to the shore, so we can meet some of those over there. I hadn’t even considered that. Although, it might be nice to travel alongside a river for a while too, I guess.”

“That too,” he said with a nod.

“You looking forward to Cerulean?” his traveling companion asked, tilting her head. “Will you challenge the Gym there?”

“I might,” he said with a nod. “I’ll see if I can get Narcissa a move that can help her against water types with one of the move vouchers. And maybe one for Cygnus… Orion isn’t a good option for that Gym, sadly. So, it’s between those two and how good our chances are looking. Also depends on if I find some other partner, although it might be too soon to add someone else.”

“I guess that makes sense, I just think it’s a little weird,” Lily told him, looking more confused than mocking. “My friends and I never really considered the possibility of not challenging a Gym until we had good pokemon for those fights. One of them got Charmander as his starter, but he was still going to go for Pewter first with us.”

“Well, he’s braver than me then,” he replied with a wry smile. “Oh, don’t be drama queens, guys,” he added, rolling his eyes at his pokemon as they tried to argue against that comment. “It is a little cowardly to avoid a gym when I don’t have good typings against them. I prefer to think of it as being smart, but it’s a bit of both, pretty sure.”

“I mean… I think it’s more smart than cowardly, if it helps,” Lily told him, smiling widely. That is, until she realized that his three pokemon were now glaring at her.

“Relax, guys, or there’ll be no spoiling after dinner,” he threatened, getting both Narcissa and Orion to calm down. As for Cygnus, he just sighed at his easily influenced teammates.

[}-o-{]

“Now, Twineedle!” Pierce called, trying not to outright scream. He still felt quite silly doing that, even if sometimes it was necessary. Fortunately, this wasn’t such a case and Narcissa could hear him just fine before dashing towards their opponent. An opponent that was a currently trapped sandshrew, stuck to the ground with String Shots. It had taken a few attempts, but they’d eventually nailed the thing down to the ground with their threads.

Now, it was a matter of taking the thing out of the fight. From what they’d gathered through the initial stage of the fight, the ground type only had Poison Sting for range attacks, which wasn’t a huge problem, really. After all, beedrill were resistant to poison type attacks. Other than that, the sandshrew was resistant to that too, so staying away and using the move themselves was out of the question. Up close and personal was the way to go, even if it put them in more danger. At least the mobility of their opponent was reduced, which would make it easier for Narcissa to deal with it.

They’d also stacked Harden and Iron Defense before charging in, for good measure.

“Fucking hell,” he heard their opponent groan. “Come on, Shrew, use Rapid Spin. You can get out of that!”

Except that no, it couldn’t. The threads weren’t letting the pokemon curl up properly for the move, which meant that its attempts were less than effective enough. It was still trapped, and that meant one thing.

“Fury Attack and keep it going,” Pierce called then, and he could almost feel Narcissa’s approval of that. She was a rather vicious little bug, as it turned out. If he had to guess, it was because being just a little bit ruthless meant that she was proving her strength over her opponent. He wasn’t precisely against that, but he was against her bullying pokemon or doing things in that vein. So, he’d have to do his best to curb that attitude as best he could.

“Ok, ok, we give up!” the trainer across from him exclaimed, recalling his pokemon before grimacing and sighing. “Damned bug types,” Pierce heard him grumble. To be fair, it was kind of disgusting how strong Narcissa was compared to most other pokemon just because of her evolutions. He did wonder how long that would last though.

Soon enough, there’d be people laughing at his bug type and Pierce was determined to get them grumbling by the time the battle ended. The more he thought and heard and read about the opinion most people had regarding his pokemon and similar ones, the more annoyed he was. ‘I guess I’m starting to share Narcissa’s goal a little bit,’ he mused as he walked up to the guy and took his winnings.

Wishing him luck, Pierce moved to stand beside Lily, who was fighting one of the other trainers in the group they’d come across. He was just in time to see Talon taking out a zubat. He gave a quick “congrats” to his traveling companion before Lily moved to take her own prize money so that they could continue traveling. As for Narcissa, he hadn’t recalled her, so she was currently buzzing around.

Apparently, she was riding a bit of a high. She’d likely come back to get a piggyback ride soon enough. ‘It’s uncomfortable with the backpack though,’ he thought to himself. He’d forgotten about that, considering he didn’t carry his bag much while in Pewter, but now that they were back on the road… Well, it had come to mind once more, obviously. ‘Maybe I can get a messenger bag instead? It’d be more comfortable… And the boxes kind of make having a lot of space in the backpack a little redundant,’ Pierce mused idly before Lily came back and they started walking.

With all the money he had in his account, that purchase would likely be no problem at all. Sure, he still wasn’t rich, per se, but he was unlikely to have monetary trouble for some time. At least if he kept his rather frugal lifestyle. If he started spending more freely, he was likely to slowly bleed his savings until he ran out. Which was definitely not something he wanted to do. There was a lot of expensive things to get in his future, he knew. Between move training vouchers and maybe some evolutionary items, he was likely to have to spend huge amounts of money on things, so it was better if he saved for the moment.

“Are we good or what?” Lily asked him, looking like a happy camper as she walked next to him, a skip on her step. “We are good.”

“I mean, you guys and Narcissa are. Jury is still out on me though,” he commented, drawing an angry buzzing from Narcissa as she latched onto his back and squeezed his neck with her stingers. Even Lily pouted at him with narrowed eyes.

“Don’t be dumb, Pierce. Just because Narcissa is great doesn’t mean she does all the work,” his companion accused, waving a finger threateningly in his direction. “I will smack you, mister.”

“Okay, okay, no need to get violent, woman,” he mumbled, rolling his eyes. “First her pokemon eat all my food and now-”

“One time!”

[}-o-{]

Pierce looked on, as patiently as he could, as Narcissa and Cygnus faced off. Although, maybe that was the wrong wording, really. The two of them were sitting (or as much as the beedrill could sit) on the ground in front of each other, staring intently into the other’s eyes. Meanwhile, Orion was curled up behind Pierce, acting as a backrest once more while the two of them watched the bug and psychic types.

This was the result of one of the trainer’s latest ideas, to have Cygnus teach Narcissa about psychic type energy. The reason for this was that Narcissa could learn Agility, which would be a great addition to her arsenal. On top of that, there was Rest, but that was much later down the line, since it was part of the list of moves that didn’t come naturally to her line. It’d set a nice foundation though, and maybe they could put some work into that later…

For the moment, he just wanted to know if this could help. Cygnus was – no offense to the others – a little more… intellectually inclined, so Pierce thought it wasn’t such a stretch to think that he’d have a better time explaining his energy type to the others instead of, say, Orion trying to teach Narcissa about rock type energy. He’d be sure to give them a chance to prove him wrong, of course, but that was later down the line.

As it was, Pierce just wanted to see if it would help at all, really.

People didn’t seem to be too sure about the topic in the sources he could find for information, which wasn’t very reassuring. However, since it worked sort of in the same vein as how unnatural moves were taught, surely this would help, right? Then again, moves seemed to use the type energies in very specific ways, so it was… Sort of complicated. Just because Cygnus knew how to wield psychic energy didn’t mean he could teach Narcissa Agility, since he didn’t know the move himself. Hell, he was pretty sure the abra couldn’t learn Agility himself.

However, Pierce didn’t want him to help her learn the move, he just wanted him to help her learn how to feel the energy or work with it or… something like that. If he could do that it’d cover some of the necessary ground for the move, and that’d be a win. Training was a slow process, after all, so he’d take any shortcuts he could find, even if they weren’t that good. Something was better than nothing, after all.

At some point, Pierce was broken from his musings by the rumbling sound of Orion’s “voice” as it were. He turned to look at the rock type then, wondering at the confused tone the pokemon had used. Catching him looking off to the side, he followed his gaze. Pierce noticed, then, that there was something brown and red lying on the ground and twitching. ‘What’s that?’ he wondered as he moved to stand up.

Before he could do anything else, he paused as a picture flashed through his mind. The picture of a spearow. Turning to regard Cygnus, he saw the psychic type nod his head.

“Ok…” he mumbled, seeing the grounded flying type moving again, but it was… It was strange. It certainly wasn’t flying, but neither was it hopping as he’d sometimes seen Talon. It looked… “I’ll go check,” he decided, picking up his backpack and swinging it over his shoulder.

As he started moving, he received a message of sorts from Cygnus that boiled down to him and Narcissa staying behind. Orion, for his part, seemed to decide that he was curious and bored enough to follow him. Pierce would have told him to stay back, but he supposed it was better to have someone with him in case the spearow was aggressive or some other pokemon decided that he was easy enough prey or something.

“Hey there,” he called once he was close enough to see the bird on the ground. It was lying on its side, twitching and turning weakly. At the sound of his voice, the spearow made an even stronger and sharper motion, but all it achieved was to turn so it could see Pierce. Which was actually a good thing, really. “Calm down, little one. I want to help, ok?” he asked, raising his hands. “I just want to check if you need help and if you are fine I’ll be on my way, ok? That’s all,” he explained softly, taking another step forward and kneeling to the ground. He was close, but not enough to be hit with something if the spearow decided not to trust his word.

The bird stared at him with its black eyes before they turned a little, likely looking at Orion. It chirped in a way that Pierce guessed was supposed to be threatening but came out more pitiful than anything. Taking a deep breath in, he considered how to best approach this.

“I won’t catch you, Spearow,” he said, drawing the attention of the flying type once more. “I won’t do anything other than check on you and see if I can help, ok? Just… let me, please,” he told the bird, drawing another long look and silence. Behind him Orion rumbled something and he saw the spearow deflate and chirp something. “Great, thank you.”

With that, Pierce got to work. First, he took off his backpack and got closer to the flying type. Instantly, he sniffed a few times, catching wind of a sweet but still disgusting smell. He narrowed his eyes as he took out one of the expanding boxes, the one that contained his medical supplies.

“Poison, huh?” he said out loud, just to let the spearow know what he was thinking and likely going to do. “I’ll give you an antidote, ok? Is there anything else I should know? Chirp if yes, remain silent if no,” he said, and he could only hope the lack of answer meant that indeed, there was nothing else. If there was… ‘One problem at a time,’ he told himself.

A caw from nearby made him pause.

Turning to the side, Pierce caught sight of a few other spearow that had not been there before.

Regardless, he smiled.

“Your friend will be right as rain before you know it,” he reassured them, keeping his voice low and soft. “I promise, just leave it to me.”

[}-o-{]

[Lillian Dale]

“Good work, guys, let’s take a break,” she announced then, making Root deflate a little and Talon give her that annoyed look he usually did. Her flying type just loved to train… Or more like, he loved to get stronger, which was basically the same thing. Thus, the spearow hated having to stop training. In his mind, he was above breaks, after all… “I’ve told you not to give me that look, Talon,” she told him, unimpressed, and only getting a huff in response.

She’d known from the very beginning that he’d be a troublesome one in her team. Lily could only hope that he’d be the only one though. All in all, Talon wasn’t that bad, after all. Actually, he was positively friendly compared to some horror stories she’d heard regarding pokemon some trainers had caught.

“Now, come on, I think we should get something to eat, don’t you?” she asked. To that, both of her pokemon perked up. ‘God bless Pierce for teaching me that food is super effective against all kinds of pokemon,’ she thought to herself, grinning widely. “Let’s go find Pierce and the others, yeah?”

As expected, Root agreed easily enough. A little less expected was the fact that Talon seemed to be indifferent about that. Lily wondered if he was warming up to their traveling companions. Sure, he’d been fine with them so far, but he’d made it no secret that he’d be perfectly fine with not having the other trainer and his pokemon with them. Fortunately, it was only when they were in private, otherwise Lily would have had to have more serious words in that regard with the flying type.

“So, what do you guys think I should prepare for us?” she asked idly, knowing they wouldn’t give her a real answer regardless. Sure enough, both pokemon gave responses that she knew were about as meaningful as baby babble. “Hm, I’ll see what I feel like making, I guess,” she mused as she made her way around the big rock Pierce and her had put between them for training. A convenient block of each other’s vision, really.

Not that they were doing much secret training, but it did have its perks to know that the other didn’t know everything they did. It’d be nice to have some surprises, like when Talon had sprung Aerial Ace on Narcissa. Lily did wonder if Pierce was preparing something for them though, it’d be interesting, if nothing else.

“And remember not to eat so much this time, guys,” she told her pokemon, who had the good grace to look embarrassed. Well, Root did. Talon just looked smug, the little shit. “I’m serious. If you do that again, I’ll do something you won’t like, I promise. Pierce is already insufferable enough as is.” To that, the flying type looked away, but there was little else to note from his response.

With a sigh, Lily looked up towards where she imagined Pierce would be.

Then she paused and blinked.

‘How… What… Why…?’ she wondered, unable to even finish a question in her mind before a new one appeared. There had to be an explanation to the sight before her, right? Surely there was one. ‘Yes, of course there is one,’ Lily decided with a wry expression.

The answer was that Pierce was involved.

Sure enough, the man himself was sitting on top of Orion, who was curled on the ground. Around her traveling companion were the reasons for her pause and subsequent bafflement. Spearow, a small flock of them, were standing on top of the onix and even on Pierce’s shoulders and leg. One of them was even laying on his lap.

From what she could see and hear, he was talking about something to them. Judging by his gestures and tone, Lily would bet that he was telling a story. ‘How did this even happen?’ she wondered as she continued walking. Turning a little though, she had to hold back a laugh as she saw that Talon, to her side, was even more shocked by the sight.

“Do I want to know?” she asked, which might have been a bad idea. It definitely seemed to be one, considering how all the flying types tensed up and turned towards her sharply with rather… displeased eyes. Lily froze then, gulping down her nervousness.

And then Pierce snapped his fingers, drawing the spearow’s attention back to him.

“Hey, what did I say? Behave yourselves,” he chastised… And the spearow listened, every single one of them seemed to deflate a little, looking down like scolded children. Lily couldn’t believe her eyes, even after being witness to several of Pierce’s impressive feats. “This little guy was poisoned and couldn’t recover on his own,” he explained, looking down at the flying type on his lap. “So, I treated him and the rest of them have been here to make sure I don’t do anything bad.”

As if Pierce could do anything bad to a pokemon. Lily was sure the man wouldn’t be able to do such a thing even if his life depended on it. That was just the kind of person he was.

“This is Lily, guys, she’s the traveling companion I was telling you about,” Pierce continued then, making the spearow look between him and her as they listened to him. Lily, for her part, simply smiled a little and took a seat to listen. This was exactly the kind of thing that had caused her to want to travel with Pierce. She was reasonably sure that other trainers didn’t get half as many encounters like this. Lily, in turn, would make friends with some spearow instead of just continuing the trek with nothing happening.

Her friend was sure to make her whole journey more interesting and she was completely fine with that.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, there’s traveling things happening, training things happening and also Pierce things happening. Business as usual, really. Right, guys?

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Staying completely still except for your good hand, what’s there within your reach? For me… Well, there’s the mouse, my laptop, my headphones, my phone and an empty mug with a spoon.

See you.