Searching Far and Wide - 33 (Patreon)

Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

- Star, Cleffa

Route 4 I

“Were you there for long?” the ranger outside asked. The man looked somewhere between amused and bemused, which Pierce guessed he could understand. Lily was being very overly dramatic about finally getting out of Mt. Moon, dancing around with Talon and Narcissa flying circles around her. Star, for her part, did her absolute best to follow along, bouncing around with her short legs and trying very adorably to keep up.

“More than a week,” Pierce answered with a half-smile as he too, looked at the display. Sure, he himself had been eager to get out, but he didn’t think it was that bad. Lily was even going as far as vocally celebrating their exit with exclamations and such. He was just grateful that they had exited during the night, which meant that there weren’t other trainers coming in, just them and the ranger. “My friend can be a little dramatic.”

“The tunnels can take their toll out of someone,” the ranger told him kindly, going back to checking on their IDs. The man seemed to pause for a moment as he read them over, but Pierce wasn’t sure if that actually happened or if it was all in his head. Either way, it was a barely noticeable thing, so he just pushed that aside. “Especially the ones in Mt. Moon. It’s thought to be because of either the clefairy line pokemon,” the ranger explained, his eyes darting to the side, probably looking at Star. “Or the Moon Stone concentration in it, or both.”

“That’s interesting. Hadn’t really thought about it,” Pierce replied, turning to look back at the mountain. Could that be? “I just thought it was… you know, some sort of claustrophobia for being there for an extended period of time.”

“Could be too, but it seems to hit harder in Mt. Moon, from what we’ve gathered,” the ranger told him. “Didn’t know that before going in?”

“I didn’t,” Pierce replied, turning to look at Lily this time. “She might have.”

“Well, you might want to know that it’s not recommended to stay in there more than a month, although rarely anyone even tries,” the ranger told him. “We usually look for people after they’ve been in for three weeks.”

“Hm, good to know,” Pierce mused, wondering why nobody had told them any of that. Neither the ranger at the entrance, nor Ruth had told them anything relating to that-

“Your friend there probably knows this. She’s an Oak sponsor, after all,” the ranger added then, answering his questions without even knowing. That was an amusing coincidence, he supposed. “Here you go, everything’s in order,” the man told him, passing the IDs back to him. “Have a nice trip and be careful.”

“Have a nice shift yourself,” Pierce replied, walking away and waving at the ranger.

“Thanks, but night shift is always gonna suck,” was the response he got, before both of them chuckled.

“Having fun?” Pierce asked Lily once he caught up. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to just walk away from the ranger control, you know? We were lucky the guy was cool.”

“Hey, I asked before going away,” the girl protested, even though she kept a grin on her face. That much was true, he supposed, but she hadn’t exactly waited for the answer. “Isn’t it great to be out?”

“It is,” he agreed easily, looking around. There was still a whole lot of rock around, but just being able to look up at the night sky felt like a blessing. Then there was the forest that could be seen further away. There were some plants close by too, growing in between the cracks of the rock or on patches of dirt. It was enough to make quite the contrast with the hard monotony of the stone tunnels. “You like being out, huh?” he added, grinning as Narcissa continued flying around. The beedrill buzzed happily at him in response.

“Cygnus is gonna be happy when he wakes up,” Lily commented, which was very true. The psychic would be ecstatic to know that they had finally gotten away from the dark tunnels of Mt. Moon. Pierce expected to have the abra on his shoulders for at least a full day after that.

No way his friend would want to go back to his pokeball now that they were outside. At least not for a while. Pierce just hoped there wouldn’t be a fight between Cygnus and Narcissa. That’d be troublesome.

“Are we going far to set up camp?” Lily asked as they walked through the path away from the mountain. “It’s kinda late.”

“I guess we can just look for a nice batch of grass or at least dirt to put up our tents,” Pierce answered, looking around. “I don’t know about you, but having something other than rock under me would be nice.”

“Yeah, I guess you have a point there,” Lily commented, following his example for a moment before frowning and turning towards Talon. “Can you look for a spot like that close by?”

“Right, good idea. You too, Narcissa,” Pierce said, following suit. To be fair, he was a little tired himself and he was still kind of recovering from the healing marathon that went on in the mountain. They’d had a few days after that, but the dark, hard, colorless tunnels weren’t exactly relaxing, really. “I really want to take it easy for a few days after we can’t see rocks anymore. Cerulean will be great too, to just sit at the beach and enjoy myself.”

“I know, right? If I never have to be inside a mountain that long again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Nevermind the stress of having to heal a small army of pokemon,” Pierce added, getting a grimacing nod from the girl beside him. “I think we got a place,” he pointed out then as Narcissa flew back to them and pointed with her stinger.

“Let’s go then, I could sleep for a whole day.”

[}-o-{]

“Thanks, Pierce,” Lily told him, taking the offered pokegear and stepping a little aside.

“Don’t mention it,” he called behind her, before turning his attention to the matter at hand. While his traveling companion went about calling her family, he’d work on his pokeblocks. He had a decent collection of them so far, having picked up on the combination of berries that his team and Lily’s preferred, with several options for each of them.

He even had a notebook with the recipes, including some for other pokemon that he’d found through their several encounters. His personal recipe book, Lily called it, which he imagined was sort of accurate, in a way. Maybe he’d turn it into an actual one later down the line. A personal one, that is. He rather doubted there wouldn’t be better stuff for sale.

Not that he really cared about it. He felt better trying and finding stuff out himself. It felt more… personal, closer to the actual pokemon, if he did it himself instead of just looking it up and copying someone else’s work. That felt like taking the easy way out, cheap.

Thus he wanted to try and come up with new combinations, things that he thought might work with specific pokemon. So far it seemed to be mostly guesswork, but Pierce wanted to try and find a pattern somewhere. Maybe certain types liked some combinations better, maybe cat-like pokemon had similar preferences, maybe initial stages shared similar tastes. Those were the kind of things he wanted to try and find… if they even were a thing. So far, they were just theories yet to be tested in depth.

“Yeah, I’m using Pierce’s pokegear,” he heard Lily say, her voice barely carrying over. “I told you about Pierce in Pewter, mum. He got a pokegear from the rangers for helping with something. It’s a long story, I can’t wait to tell you.”

He smiled softly as he focused on his work. That is, before he felt Cygnus brush against his mind and prod him to continue listening. In turn, Pierce sent the pokemon an unamused expression and his opinion on eavesdropping. Unfortunately for him, he did manage to pick up on the next line.

“I-No! I told you we aren’t dating, mum! We are just traveling together!”

Where he sat, Pierce didn’t quite know if he should feel amused or embarrassed by that. In the end, he was both, he supposed, and his psychic type partner didn’t waste any time sending what amounted as telepathic teasing without any words in it. Pierce, in response, gave the abra a glare and a single thought.

‘I’ll be waiting for my revenge,’ he told his partner, making Cygnus pause. ‘I won’t forget, Cygnus. There’ll be teasing going your way eventually.’

The abra sent him an apologetic thought then, but it was too late.

His fate was set.

Pierce grinned and Cygnus twitched.

[}-o-{]

The next day, Pierce found himself mostly relaxing, even if they hadn’t yet made it out of the mountain. They’d walked a decent stretch during the morning and the same after lunch, but they still had about a day ahead before they could actually say they’d properly left Mt. Moon behind. For the moment, they’d decided that they had rushed enough and stopped at a nice enough spot.

Lily had taken her team aside for some light training and he’d decided to do more or less the same with his team. Orion was taking full advantage of the fact that Pierce was allowing him to train more and more now that the threat of his previous injuries and such was far behind them. On top of that, the onix was growing bigger too, not dramatically so, but noticeably. He was young enough that his growth was like that. Soon, he’d stop his growth spurt and then slowly grow as he aged, eventually reaching the size of his mother.

For the moment, he was very much still a child, much to his chagrin.

Narcissa was diligently training her speed moves, Tailwind and Agility. She had more or less gotten the hang of the former now. Going as far as being able to properly use it during their spars with Lily’s team and against Orion. Far from her best move, but still usable and battle ready. Agility wasn’t quite there yet, but she’d manage it with some more time, he was sure. As for their project of an “original” move… It was actually in pretty decent shape, really, but then again, it was fairly simple.

They just needed to keep working on it so it’d truly be the ace up his sleeve that Pierce wanted it to be.

As for Cygnus, the abra was currently training not his physical prowess but his psychic one. Teleport was pretty much all he could do, besides some light telekinesis that couldn’t really be called a move. So, he was training with that, appearing and disappearing all over the place. Pierce had entertained the idea of taking his friend’s minor telekinesis and turning it into a pseudo-move of some kind but it was just too weak for that. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to use that to improve their chances.

Pierce was fine with that though. He had a plan for Cerulean’s water type gym, after all. Most of it hinged on his vouchers, but that was still a plan. Once he reached the city, he’d start really preparing for that. Well, there was Giga Drain with Narcissa, he supposed, but they hadn’t made a lot of progres on that front yet.

And last, there was Pierce himself.

He was, at the moment, sitting on a rock with a book in his hands. Yet another one of his texts regarding the things he would need to know to get his First Aid License. Occasionally, however, he’d let himself be distracted and turn his attention to his pokegear. The thing had a radio function that was quite nice, after all. From time to time, when he wanted to take a little break, Pierce would turn that on to get some news from around Kanto. Wouldn’t hurt to be informed in case something important came up.

He was lucky that the charger of Lily’s pokedex worked with the pokegear too. Otherwise, he’d only have the thing for as long as the battery lasted, since the only charger he had for it was the one that came with it, and that only worked if he was back in civilization, not in the middle of the wilderness. ‘I’ll have to see if there’s a solar charger or something like that for sale in Cerulean. Might help to keep our flashlights and such charged too… Or we might catch an electric type too, I guess. Whatever happens first. It’d make things easier to have more than one, after all,’ he mused to himself before shaking his head and focusing back on the book.

There was a lot he still had to go through, understandably. However, Pierce found himself really impatient to go through the test and have his License. It’d really help if he was going to get himself into more situations in which he had to treat pokemon. He was pretty sure he was treading the line of legality as it was. He actually wondered if he was pissing off the rangers with his actions without knowing. Maybe he should have asked Ruth about that…

Well, with some luck, an opportunity would present itself for him to assuage those doubts and fears.

It would suck if he got fined or worse because a pokemon asked for help and he did something wrong.

Besides, maybe after he was done, he could take it a step further in one direction or another. There were a lot of things that interested him, but he couldn’t quite study all of them. He wasn’t that studious. ‘One thing at a time,’ he thought. He had enough on his plate as it was, training his team of three, traveling, exercising, learning about the world he was in and studying for the license. He could add more stuff once he got better in at least one of those things.

Pierce blinked as he felt Cygnus’ mind brush against his, sending him a message. The little abra was progressing on that front too. Instead of random feelings and flashes of pictures, he was getting better at conveying more complex thoughts and feelings. Like at that moment, asking to change his training from Teleport back to physical exercises. Instead of a picture of him doing that, Cygnus sent him a thought that felt like Pierce himself was doing the exercise, but more detached.

‘Getting better at communicating, are you?’ he asked, turning to look at the abra. In return, he got a wave of pride and gratitude from the pokemon. ‘And yeah, you can go back to that if you are tired of Teleport.’

Having already stopped for a moment, he regarded his other pokemon.

“Narcissa, do you mind switching to working on your other moves for a bit?” he asked his beedrill, who buzzed something, twitching a bit before nodding and doing just that. He didn’t want her only training the new moves, neglecting those she already knew. That might end up in disaster if she got rusty or something. Besides, training something she wasn’t completely in control of could end up frustrating her, he knew. “And Orion, the other way around. Back to training Sand Tomb, yeah?”

The stone serpent grumbled something then. He wasn’t a fan of the struggle that came with new moves, evidently. Pierce could only hope that wouldn’t be a problem in the future.

[}-o-{]

“Hm, this is good,” Pierce commented, looking down at his meal and then back up at Lily. “This might be your best one so far.”

“Really?” she asked, eyebrows raising and a smile forming on her face. “I wasn’t sure if I had spiced it up well or not-”

“It’s great,” he reassured her, bringing some more up to his mouth. “Like, most of your meals are kind of meh,-”

“Excuse me?!”

“-but this one really is good,” he continued, completely ignoring her scandalized response. “Honestly though, your cooking is good enough most of the time, but this is good.”

“Hm, I’ll try to remember what I did then,” she replied, clearly pleased. She’d taken up cooking instead of just preparing the standard rations precisely so they wouldn’t have to eat bland stuff. For the most part, she succeeded in that endeavor, if just barely. This one time, she had excelled.

Pierce could only hope that she’d keep it up, but he imagined it’d be harder to make good stuff all the time. After all, Lily had been cooking for a grand total of, what? Not even two weeks? He thought that was pretty impressive progress, all things considered.

“Anyway,” he commented, after emptying half his plate. “You said we should go off the route a bit to properly get into the forest before Cerulean?”

“Eh, it should be some distance away yet. No need to make it more difficult for ourselves. We’ll probably continue this way for a day or two and then we should go off to the South a bit,” Lily explained, their pokemon curiously looking between them as they discussed their future plans. Especially Narcissa, since she was more of a forest creature.

The rest of the night was spent hearing the radio through his pokegear and just talking for a bit. It was a nice relaxing night under the stars and the moon. Quite the contrast to the dull “nights” that they’d spent inside Mt. Moon when they were by themselves.

[}-o-{]

“Rock Blast!”

“Rock Throw!” Pierce called, feeling more than a little silly.

The fight he was in at the moment was… something, that was for sure. He’d agreed to a two on two battle with a trainer not so long before. She’d gone first, releasing a rhyhorn. Immediately, Pierce had known what he was going to do, and he’d also known that it’d lead to something of a… situation.

After all, he’d chosen Orion for the battle.

The rhyhorn was big enough to put up a fight against his stone serpent, which was something that Pierce had been looking for. Unfortunately, this meant setting Orion up in a fight that… was going to take a while. After all, both pokemon seemed to only know normal and rock type attacks… both of which the other was resistant to.

“Charge in, Rhy!”

“Bind!”

“Horn Attack!” the trainer called then, hitting Orion squarely before the onix could fully wrap himself around the rhyhorn. “Again, don’t let up!”

“Come on, Orion! Tackle!” Pierce commanded, but it was for naught. His onix couldn’t keep up with the clearly older, more experienced pokemon. He’d been doing his best to train the young pokemon, but there was only so much progress to be done, especially for someone so young. Orion had clearly never been on the backfoot in a physical fight, so he wasn’t responding well to the hits that rhyhorn got in. “Power through it, Orion! You can’t let it push you around.”

“Fury Attack!” the trainer on the other side ordered then, clearly finding the weakness she wanted and taking full advantage of it.

“We surrender,” Pierce said eventually, before Orion could be beaten anymore. There was no point in keeping him out other than trying to tire the opponent out. That wasn’t something he wanted to do though, since it’d involve the onix continuing to be hit while being helpless.

Arguably though, judging by the expression on Orion’s face, pulling him didn’t really make him feel better. At least he was less injured though, so Pierce would take that small mercy and keep on. The battle was not over yet and he had two pokemon to fight. Rhyhorn also hadn’t really been dealt much damage besides a few Rock Throws and a Tackle or two.

“Second pokemon then?” the trainer on the other side asked and Pierce wasn’t sure if she was mocking them or just excited. Ultimately, he decided to assume it was the latter. No need to unnecessarily think badly of someone he didn’t know and likely wouldn’t meet again.

“Sure thing,” he answered, pulling out his second pokemon. “Narcissa,” he said as he released his beedrill. He didn’t miss the tilt of the other trainer’s head immediately after though. He wondered if she was worried about the third stage evolution or confident because of her type advantage. Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

“Both ready?” Lily asked from the side, looking a little unsure. Pierce couldn’t fault her for that. After all, Narcissa was no weakling but the rhyhorn was well trained. A good Rock Blast could ruin them, and even if it didn’t, the other trainer still had, presumably, a completely healthy pokemon to use. “Then begin.”

“Buffs, Narcissa, and keep away,” Pierce commanded instantly while the other trainer predictably called for Rock Blast. His beedrill dodged that without problem, pulling back to use Harden, Iron Defense, Focus Energy and Tailwind. Not all at once, unfortunately, – they were nowhere near that level yet – but one at a time while dodging their opponent’s attacks.

As this went on, he took the other trainer’s frustration. He looked at the rhyhorn, who seemed content to throw stones around all day. He looked at Narcissa and wondered what to do. Poison Sting would do next to nothing against the creature. Her better options were close range though, which was a bad idea, since Rock Blast’s projectiles spread out a fair bit.

Up close and personal was Narcissa’s style but in this case, like some other times before, it played against them.

Unless…

Pierce narrowed his eyes.

“Want to give it a try, girl?!” he called, shouting since his partner got further away while dodging. He received excited buzzing in response. “Ok, then,” Pierce said, grinning. “You know what to do,” he added, drawing a wary look from his opponent and a curious one from Lily. He just kept his smile in place as Narcissa started flying in circles around the rhyhorn using Tailwind to speed herself up.

And then…

“Tungsten Strike!” he commanded then, making both of the other trainers blink. Narcissa didn’t hesitate a single second, however, having been waiting for the signal. Immediately, she shifted her flight to go straight at the rhyhorn. She shot forward, stingers pointing towards her opponent and her wings buzzing madly.

And then the sound stopped as her body shone silver. Even if her wings weren’t batting anymore, the momentum carried her forward with almost no change of speed. A second later, the shining bullet that Narcissa had become hit rhyhorn right on its side, before the pokemon could even finish turning around to look or do anything else. The force of the attack sent the hulking creature to the ground too, which was perfect.

“Bug Bite!” Pierce called immediately. He knew a single attack wouldn’t take the thing out, especially since this was sort of an experimental move for now. However, it had lost its footing, and that was great. “Finish it quickly!”

“Stand up, Rhy! Come on! Horn Attack!” the other trainer called, but it wasn’t quite so easy to attack while struggling to stand up and having an angry beedrill biting on its side. Ironically, the rhyhorn found itself in a similar situation as it had put Orion in before.

If the rumble Pierce heard form the side was any indication, the onix agreed with that.

“We surrender,” their opponent called then, shoulders dropping, her expression grim. “Was that an actual move?” she asked as she recalled the rhyhorn and went to pull out another pokeball.

“Original making,” he answered, because there was no point in lying, really. Sooner or later it’d get out, and even if he didn’t reveal it now, she might look it up later and find out if he lied or something. Besides, Pierce was riding a bit of a high after seeing his idea work so well. “This is the first time we’ve used it in an actual battle. It was all testing and sparring before.”

“Well, it worked pretty well,” the girl told him wryly. “But I’m gonna win this anyway.”

“You can try,” he replied with a grin.

Narcissa buzzed excitedly in agreement as she positioned herself in front of Pierce.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Just regular traveling after properly getting out of Mt. Moon and our duo enjoying the outside world once more. I don’t have much else to say, really. Sure, it’s not a heavy packed chapter – if one doesn’t count the last scene – but I’m fine with that. I’m all for chapters of normal life, as you guys should know.

I hope you enjoyed it though.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: So, Pierce shows his first original move. Any others you guys can come up with? This isn’t me trying to fish for ideas, I swear… Why are you looking at me like that?

See you.