Act 1: Logs 2

Act 1: Logs 2

"Log seven, day thirty-eight. Vulpix and I... suffered our first real defeat today. She was hurt badly, and I..."

There is a long pause in the recording before it cuts off altogether.

"Long seven, day thirty-eight, part two. Sorry about that, professor. Anyway, our winning streak was finally broken. Vulpix suffered from a cracked ulna, several cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, contusions to the head and back, various lacerations, and a concussion. I won't lie, professor, this scared me. The loss stung, but Vulpix's injuries... She'll be back at one-hundred percent in just a few days, which both relieves and awes me. That many injuries on a common animal? One as small as Vulpix? They would be on a long and hard road to recovery if they recovered at all. The whole thing dislodged some... unpleasant memories of home. I had a lioness..."

Again, there is an uncomfortable silence in the recording.

"Animals don't have the same higher brain functions we humans do. Much of it matches up to us, but others are nonsensical, even unthinkable to us. This is going to be greatly simplified or we'll be here all day, so bear with me. In large predators, they often have what's called K-selection reproduction, that's with a capital K, where they produce a small number of very valuable and resource-intensive offspring in response to a stable environment. The opposite, r-selection, is seen often in invertebrates and prey species, who have many 'cheap' offspring, so they can afford to lose several in their usually hostile environment and still continue the species."

"Does that sound callous? Sit down for this next one."

"Lions, one of the big cats I worked with, evolved to thrive in the harsh, arid land of Africa. They've taken an inhospitable environment and mastered it, but such a thing requires some extreme measures... Selective infanticide is one of them."

Birch clicks 'pause' on the recording and wheels his office chair back away from his computer, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling as he pretends Lee's words didn't rattle him. After several long minutes, he sits back up and hits 'play' again.

"To a lion, it makes no sense to keep and invest time into offspring that are unlikely to survive. Some abandon unwanted cubs, others... take a more violent approach. We had an incident back home some months back, after one of my lioness' gave birth to three cubs. Something we could not identify triggered her, and she... One didn't make it."

"It was all too easy to imagine Vulpix... No, I'm not going there right now."

"On a different note, I was surprised to see the healing machines in the Pokemon Center. They were always used as a convenient handwave for healing in the games, as no kid playing a video game would want to wait around for manual treatment and buying healing items all the time would be infeasible. Considering these healing machines, or I guess the proper name is 'Omni-Trauma Units' take much longer and according to Nurse Joy, only work up to a certain dosage before a pokemon's body begins to reject it, it's definitely not a handwave and explains the need for the Pokemon Center needing to address serious injuries manually. Visually, it looks similar to Heal Pulse, so maybe they were inspired by the move? I dunno, I'll research that. I was surprised absolutely none to find that the units are made by Silph Co, who still gives me dystopia megacorp vibes sometimes."

"In other news, I came dangerously close to outing myself as a... foreigner... like a moron. A dragon-tamer named Zinnia, who forced herself in our group, nearly caught me after I blurted some half-remembered line about her tribe, the Draconids. At first, I was reluctant to let her come, but she and her Shelgon were the ones who defeated Vulpix. She and her pokemon are strong, something that may be useful later. As much as the back of my mind is telling me it's a bad idea, the protection she can offer outweighs the risk just the slightest amount."

"We're setting out in the morning, and I've got to get to bed, so that's it for this one. Lee, out."

"Log eight, day forty-one... Fuck."

"I got my Treecko, and a Corvisquire, both on total accident yesterday. We finally made it to Petalburg Woods and began our way inside. For several hours it was uneventful. Or it was uneventful for Brendan and Zinnia, I was too enchanted by all the pokemon to really notice the time passing. Anyway, we stopped for lunch and Brendan's Shoomish wandered away. We found him by a ransacked Pecha bush, and the owner of said bush was not happy."

"This was the first time I've seen a Corvisquire. I vaguely recall his last form, Corviknight, from promos for the latest game, but other than that, he was a total unknown. I knew my meta knowledge was only going to get more and more unreliable, but this threw me for a loop."

"Corvisquire came down at Brendan and Shroomish like a missile, and in such a cramped clearing, only Vulpix had the agility to fight him, so we did."

"My Pokedex gave it's a little blurb about Corvisquire when I was identifying him, saying that his kind are masters of gauging an opponent. This guy came down, saw three humans, a Vulpix, a Shroomish, a Shelgon, and a Swablu, and decided fighting was a good idea. It didn't take long to figure out why. Even with me and Vulpix going full-tilt, Corvisquire kept pace, even taking a Will-o-Wisp to the back and getting up like nothing happened. It looked like we had the edge, then he busted out Extremespeed."

"I would call Vulpix fast. With Quick Attack, she can move so fast that her features blur together to the naked eye, making her little more than an orange, fox-shaped smear. Normally the whole 'move so fast you vanish' thing is a common occurrence in TV to signify someone moving quickly, but to actually see a pokemon be there one second, then be gone the next with the displaced air cracking loud enough to echo in the woods is... something else. I know there must be some trick to Extremespeed, because if my napkin-math is right, Corvisquire would need to move at roughly mach 50 to become invisible, and super-durability or no, I have a hard time believing a bird would not practically atomize itself at such a speed. The delay between his vanishing and his actual attack landing also points to Extremespeed not being mach 50... Unless physics here are different from my earth's. Shit, that's going to keep me awake."

"Vulpix managed a miracle right before she collapsed, firing off a Fire Spin so huge it was like an orange, F1 tornado spawned from nowhere in the forest. Vulpix's eyes glowed the same color as hellfire, and she somehow shielded me from the attack despite how I should have been fried. Zinnia's Shelgon popped a quick Protect to keep her and Brendan safe. Corvisquire was caught in the whirlwind and had countless burns and contusions to show for it. At the mouth of the tornado, he was thrown almost a fourth of a mile with enough force to make an indent in a tree we found him in. This is where we found the Treecko colony."

"Professor, I'm going to confess something I regret. I caught a Treecko I know was supposed to go to another trainer. The damage Corvisquire's impact did to the tree caused the mammoth thing to fall down. It was a long-dead tree and was on borrowed time, but it was still the home of the Treecko colony. As it fell, the Treecko in question froze up, and Corvisquire was still unconscious at the best of the tree. I threw two hail-mary pokeballs and caught both of them, thus saving them, with pure luck. I could justify keeping Corvisquire, as we beat him one-on-one and letting a dangerous pokemon like him go would be irresponsible, but Treecko..."

"I should have let him go. He wasn't meant to be mine, yet I kept him, because I know he grows to be a Legendary contender, and thats legendary with a capital L. Was that wrong of me?"

"I just... Shit, moving on."

"I gave Treecko a rudimentary physical to get a baseline. Physically he's in good shape, mentally I can't say for sure. He just lost his home, after all. Corvisquire was given a Rawst berry that I had Vulpix sniff out to take the edge off his burns and promptly returned to his ball. He'll need a visit to a Pokemon Center to get back up and running. I'm hoping he's not going to be difficult, but I get the feeling he is. I am sick and tired of this forest so we're going to bed to make haste out of here. Once we're in Rustboro, we'll begin training for our gym match. Lee, out."

"Log nine, day forty-two. We're in Rustboro and have some non-flammable training grounds to use. I've had Vulpix limited to just control exercises like maintaining a hovering fireball and moving fireballs along short paths as to avoid a forest fire. We're lucky her Fire Spin was so intense it turned everything it touched to ash instantly, or I'd probably have the Rangers jumping up my ass. Our attempts so far to replicate her burst of power in the forest have been... Well, the less said the better."

"I dropped Corvisquire off at the Pokemon Center, and Nurse Joy cleared him after a round or two under the Omnitrauma. The little bird has been... combative to say the least. He's yet to directly disobey me, even in the gym battle we had today. He even ran an unsupervised errand for me by getting my gym registration in my stead, so I'll count my blessings there."

"in the meantime, I had Vulpix and Treecko begin their own training. Vulpix's physical conditioning is at a level I would call adequate, and she continues to gain lean muscle at a steady rate, so we'll likely dial that back some in favor of more pyrokinesis. For reference, one of the few times I could coax her into playing with me, she easily pulled me off my feet with just a jerk of her neck during a tug-of-war with a rope toy. Before we get too in-depth with her pyro powers, I'll have her help me teach Treecko Quick Attack. It's a wonderful movement option as well as being a force multiplier, and would help his rather tame movepool."

"This brings us to the last event of today: my gym battle with Roxanne."

"I went to the Rustboro Trainer School to see about taking a class or two, and Gym Leader Roxanne was there. Rather than have us wait, she offered to let us battle right there if I helped her teach a class and kept an open mind about working with the School in the future."

"Professor, I know you said your sponsorship would open a lot of doors for me, but I didn't realize it would be this many. She took one look at my ID, saw my title, and practically offered whatever I wanted to work for the School. I told her I'd be open to projects here and there but that my primary research belongs to the lab."

Birch sighs in relief and wipes his forehead.

"The battle was something else. I had no idea that gym leaders have two teams, one for challengers and one of their own personal teams. Considering the citadel-like arrangement of all the regions, it makes sense that gym leaders are stronger than they let on since they more or less rule their cities. The mayors and local governments may say whatever they want, I know the League is really in charge with their monopoly on power. Also, they do need to give young trainers a fair chance, or the League tournaments would be barren."This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

"Anyway, we battled her real team and squeaked out a narrow win. Corvisquire thrashed Roxanne's Geodude with Steel Wing and Extremespeed. Just him having Extremespeed and being a Galar native pokemon makes me think Corvisquire had a prior trainer or let him go, but that's for another time. He was felled by her much more powerful Nosepass, and despite the type disadvantage, I put Vulpix in."

"We held our own, but when it got down to the wire, we had to make a leap of faith. Nosepass's Sandstorm was fouling all of Vulpix's shots because she couldn't see, so using telepathy, I plugged her sight to my eyes so she could fight from the 3rd person. I didn't ex-"

Lmao Braixen

Lucario

wo- Get real

Birch closes the file then goes to the next one.

Custom Techniques - Vulpix

#1

Name: Convergence

-Fire-type

Description: Fireballs spontaneously manifest around target and converge, exploding for Fire damage.

+Leaves little room to dodge.

+Strikes all points of foe, negating need to aim for weakpoints

-Slower than Protect. Current speed can be dodged by faster foes that aren't surprised.

Notes:

Requires pyrokinesis. (See - Vulpix bio notes)

Power good. Need to work on explosion sync, projectile speed, and energy consumption. Don't use in serious battles.

#2

Name: Fox Fire (Name not final)

-Fire-type

STILL IN CONCEPTUAL PHASE

Description: Fox-shaped flame clone runs down and engages foe as a separate combatant. Explodes for Fire damage when defeated.

Notes: Vulpix's pyrokinesis has a long way to go before she can exert this level of control midbattle. Very cool, but very impractical (for now)

Birch whistles to himself as he closes the file. "That's bold, but game-changing if it can be done." He clicks the next one, feeling eager.

Custom Techniques - Corvisquire

#1

Name: Pursuers

-Dark-type

STILL IN CONCEPTUAL PHASE

Description: N/A

Notes: Swift needs deconstructed first.

The next file, the one for Treecko, is empty, leaving Birch to lean back in his chair as his throughs swirl a mile a minute.

"Medi?"

He looks up, seeing his Medicham at his office door with a bottle of aspirin and glass of water already in his hands.

Birch laughs. "Thank you, old friend. Lee is giving me a headache again and you're right on time. Here, come take a look at this," he says, turning his computer monitor around and opening the files again.

Medicham steps closer and listens to each of the audio files, then looks at the text files with his face as impassive as stone. After a long moment, the pokemon looks between his trainer and the aspirin in his hand, before sighing and tossing the little pills in his own mouth without any shame.