Day 9 of the trip to Kanto. Overcast.
This morning, Reiji wolfed down breakfast with Blaine and Amber, then took Poliwhirl and the others straight to the training room.
Once inside, he released Pelipper, Kingler, Scyther, Gyarados, and Shelmet, then left them to train on their own. He had already gone over the program yesterday, so all they had to do now was follow it.
That just left Rhydon. It had been training with Blaine's Rhydon these past few days, so Reiji hadn't recalled it.
Poliwhirl and Zapdos were out too, but for different reasons. Zapdos was still too young, and Reiji wasn't comfortable leaving it loose for long. Poliwhirl, meanwhile, had teaching duties today, so it didn't need its usual training.
After leaving the training room, Reiji headed to the mid-level deck, ducked into a random restroom, changed clothes, and walked back out looking like someone else. Ditto handled the face.
Once the disguise was done, he went to one of the public training rooms and rented a mid-sized one for four hours. The rate was five thousand an hour. The larger rooms cost ten thousand an hour, which was practically robbery.
The room had all the standard equipment, though the space itself wasn't that large. Reiji only needed it for one reason anyway.
Today, Poliwhirl was here to teach Toxicroak new moves.
"Darkrai, check the room. Make sure nobody's peeking," Reiji said. He didn't release anyone right away. Instead, he stood in the shadow cast by the training-room lights and waited.
"No one," Darkrai replied after circling the room, then the hallway outside, before slipping back beneath Reiji's feet.
"Good. Poliwhirl, Toxicroak, come out."
After releasing them both, Reiji said, "Poliwhirl, your job today is to teach Toxicroak Ice Punch."
Poliwhirl thumped its chest, then waved Toxicroak over to a sandbag and started demonstrating the move.
"Darkrai, you know Sucker Punch. Teach that to Toxicroak later too. It really needs that move."
"That's fine," Darkrai said. "Let it get Ice Punch first."
Reiji nodded, then let the rest of the group out. Marshtomp, Golbat, Gengar, and Spinarak all came out for breakfast, and he also had Poliwhirl start teaching Marshtomp Waterfall.
"Gengar, stay in here after you eat," Reiji warned. "Don't go phasing through walls to play outside. There are too many people out there, and if someone spots you, that becomes a problem."
Gengar nodded eagerly. For all its greed and love of fooling around, it was still pretty obedient when it counted.
"Marshtomp, once you finish eating, you're training with Poliwhirl. Got it?"
Marshtomp kept eating from Reiji's hand while making soft noises back at him. It wasn't as clingy as it used to be. Lately, it had started looking outward more, curious about the world around it.
Once Toxicroak and Marshtomp were sorted out, Reiji turned his attention to Golbat.
Sooner or later, Golbat would replace Spinarak as his last visible line of defense. At least, that was how it would look on the surface. In reality, Gengar and Darkrai were still hiding in the shadows.
As his strength kept climbing, Spinarak was starting to fall behind. Once Reiji stepped into the Elite Four tier, Spinarak would probably be ready for retirement. Keeping it at his shoulder after that wouldn't mean much.
A Spinarak that never evolved would have a hard time breaking into Elite Four-tier potential. But if it did evolve, it would lose the small size that made it so useful on his shoulder in the first place. And even then, there was no guarantee it would actually break through. It was a dead loop.
That made Golbat the next bodyguard in line.
Its echolocation was too useful to ignore, and with its Elite Four-tier potential, it could stay relevant for a long time.
Which meant Golbat also needed some new moves. Steel Wing. Agility. Roost. Those were all core moves for a Flying-type.
Scyther and Pelipper already knew them, so Reiji could have Golbat learn from them when there was time.
For now, though, Golbat's physical development mattered more.
All that flying practice had finally started paying off. Its body had nearly caught up to the poison inside it, and once that gap closed a little more, it could move on to the next stage of training.
A healthy Pokémon like Marshtomp didn't have that problem. Once it got past its growth period, it could jump straight into proper training.
After kicking Gyarados off the alias team, Reiji's "cover identity" lineup was back down to four usable Pokémon: Toxicroak, Golbat, Marshtomp, and Gengar.
Really, though, Gengar and Darkrai were still emergency-use only. Neither would show itself unless Reiji had no other choice. They were both trump cards.
Ditto couldn't count either, since it stayed on his face most of the time. In the future, its role would probably narrow down to nothing but disguises. Spinarak was heading the same way.
That meant the Pokémon his alias could openly use had dropped to just three real fighters.
Far too few.
Even so, Reiji had no plans to catch new Pokémon just for the sake of padding numbers. After the Indigo Plateau Conference, once he returned to Mikan Gym and started studying those five combination-evolution Pokémon, he could always reassign a few of them to his alias team if all five turned out to be workable.
Weezing, for example, felt like the kind of Poison-type Pokémon made for a villain role. It would be a waste not to put it to work doing shady-looking things.
That still left Slowpoke, Mantine, Dugtrio, and Magneton to sort out. Once the time came, he could assign them by team need.
At the moment, though, his alias lineup was getting dangerously close to becoming a full Poison Gang. Toxicroak, Golbat, Gengar, and then Weezing on top of that—four Poison-types already.
A setup like that would get massacred by Ground- and Psychic-types.
Darkrai could cover some of that, but Darkrai couldn't be exposed. So Reiji still needed a Dark-type replacement he could show in public.
Once he started thinking along those lines, the options opened up fast. Murkrow, Houndoom, Weavile, Sharpedo, Tyranitar… all of them were Dark-types he liked.
Umbreon, Absol, Zoroark, Hydreigon, Greninja, Incineroar… he liked all of those too.
But the same problem kept coming back. Either they were too hard to get, too hard to evolve, or too expensive.
If he limited himself to Dark-types he could realistically find and maybe roll for high potential, then Murkrow, Houndoom, and Sharpedo were the only practical options. Those at least existed in decent numbers.
Finding a Weavile at all would already be a pain, let alone stumbling into one with high potential. That would take luck.
And in a place like the Orange Archipelago, there might not be many things around—but sharks definitely were.
So on paper, he had choices.
In reality, he really didn't.
Which meant Sharpedo again.
It fit the "villain" image perfectly anyway. After the Indigo Plateau Conference, when he returned, he'd need someone to help catch sharks. Sou's fishing village would be perfect for that. Relying on some random angler to hook one by chance would take forever.
So that settled the direction of his alias team.
His rain team had changed too. Shelmet had been pushed out, and Gyarados had taken its place.
Right now, Shelmet simply wasn't as strong as Gyarados, so there was no point pretending otherwise. Reiji had moved it down into the third tier, while Toxicroak and the rest of the alias team now formed his second tier.
The third-tier roster still wasn't fully worked out. At the moment, it only really included Shelmet and Zapdos, and both of them were still babies that needed time to grow.
Add the remaining combination-evolution candidates—Slowpoke, Dugtrio, and Mantine—and that made five.
As for Magneton, Reiji was leaning toward giving it to the alias team. It had loads of resistances, especially against Psychic-type attacks, which made it a great fit for the Poison Gang.
The only miserable part was its four-times weakness to Ground.
That part really was awful.
The Poison Gang already hated Ground-types, and then Magneton came along weak to Ground four times over. Reiji could only sigh at that.
Even so, he still wanted Magneton on the team.
Because while Ground-type moves threatened it, Magneton could float.
If the attack came from the ground and couldn't actually touch a floating Magneton, then that four-times weakness didn't matter nearly as much as it looked on paper.
Besides, if he was going to have Zapdos on his main team in public, then his alias needed an Electric-type too.
In a place like the Orange Archipelago, how could he not carry one? Otherwise, people would just keep zapping him while he had no way to zap them back. That would be ridiculous.
As for the Pokémon he had left at the Gym—
The ones with decent potential were Butterfree, Karrablast, Tentacool, Barboach, and that Magikarp that refused to leave.
He would keep raising them for now. Once he became an Elite Four-tier trainer in the future, if he ever opened a Gym in the Orange Archipelago, they could help fill out the roster of a Water-type Gym and handle the rookie challengers.
After all, they all had Elite Four-tier potential. Raised properly, they would still count as real fighting power. Worst case, he could throw them into a lake and let them rule the pond. Especially that Barboach. That one was born to become a pond tyrant.
And if he ran into high-potential Pokémon during his travels, he could catch those too. Even if he didn't use them himself, they would still be useful later.
If he opened a Gym, they could be bred for offspring, used as rewards for Gym apprentices, or sold through a breeding ranch.
With a proficiency panel this absurd, not using it to open a business and make money would be a waste.
Once he had a Gym, the Gym itself could just be a side job. The breeding ranch would be the real business.
That was how plenty of Gym Leaders did it anyway.
Giovanni was the obvious example. Running a Gym was the side job. Being the head of Team Rocket was the real one.
Cissy was the same. The Gym was secondary. Her family's oranges were the real business.
Luana too. The Gym was the side job. The family hotel was the real one.
There were plenty more like that, but Reiji didn't bother listing them all.
These were just thoughts about the future. He had all kinds of possible routes in mind: open a Gym and spend his days fishing, coast through some easy League post and spend his days fishing there instead, or stir up a little trouble in the Orange Archipelago.
Any of them could happen.
Or none of them might.
That was the future. Who knew?
Everything he was doing now was just preparation, because every one of those paths had the same requirement.
Real strength.
Without that, he wouldn't even be able to fish in peace.
Reiji shut the little notebook, stuffed it back into his bag, and started his own workout in the training room. Dumbbells, lifting, waist work, ab work, treadmill—he tried a bit of everything. It all felt pretty good.
He spent the entire day in that room.
Blaine even called him at lunchtime, telling him to come eat, and Reiji still didn't go back.
He had already prepared lunch for Kingler and the others, and he put Scyther—the strongest one there—in charge of handing it out. No one was likely to object.
When his rental time ran out, he added another eight hours. He didn't plan to go back for dinner either. He spent the whole day training with the team until it got dark, and even then they were still going.
Only after the full twelve hours were up did he finally step outside.
The luxury liner was still blazing with light. It was still crowded, still noisy, still lively.
He went back to the public restroom, removed the disguise, and took the elevator to the top floor to collect Kingler and the others from Blaine's training room. After that, he was ready to head back to his own room.
He hadn't even made it inside when one of Blaine's maids spotted him and came over, asking him to come with her.
"Old man, what is it?" Reiji asked when he reached the deck. Blaine was still watching the sea, Amber asleep in his arms. Reiji sighed and sat down across from him.
"Where were you all day, kid?" Blaine asked. "Amber and I couldn't find you anywhere."
"I went over there and fought a few matches. Made a bit of money."
Reiji lied without blinking.
Amber was asleep, or he wouldn't have dared say it.
"Is that so? Must've made a fair amount." Blaine didn't question it. Everyone had secrets. As long as Reiji never harmed Amber, Blaine could let the rest go. That was his line.
"Come on, just say what you called me here for. I'm exhausted."
Reiji yawned again. He reached for the fruit on the table but ignored the tea. Strong tea would keep him awake, and he had no interest in giving himself insomnia.
"It's nothing much," Blaine said with a small smile, like he was chatting with an old friend. "You vanished for a whole day. I thought someone might've cornered you."
Then his tone shifted.
"I checked on what you mentioned before. Amber really does seem to have a special ability. So far, all I've found is emotional perception. Nothing else."
"That's not exactly powerful," Reiji said, rubbing his chin. Compared to his panel, that kind of ability wasn't all that impressive. It wasn't even close to the other five known supernatural abilities, and it certainly didn't measure up to full psychic power.
"True," Blaine agreed. "And hers is passive. Anyone or any Pokémon who gets close enough to her can have their emotions picked up. The range doesn't seem very large."
"She's still young," Reiji said. "Maybe other abilities will show up when she gets older. Right now, the only ones who really know what happened to her are Ho-Oh and Dr. Fuji."
He let out a quiet sigh.
Meeting Ho-Oh again wasn't exactly realistic.
And Dr. Fuji was either dead or missing. If anyone had personally overseen Amber's cloning, it would have been him. Which meant if anything had been added to her, he would be the one who knew. He probably never even wrote it down. Reiji could easily imagine him refusing to leave any clone records for his daughter where someone else might find them.
"Exactly," Blaine said.
He knew all of that already. But between the living, only he and Reiji knew enough to even talk about it.
"Oh, and one more thing," Reiji added. "Keep Amber away from too many people for now. Let her get used to the ability first. Otherwise other people's negative emotions will wear her down. You know that already, right?"
"Of course."
How could Blaine not know?
Throw Amber into a crowd, and her passive perception would start catching all kinds of conflicting emotions at once—joy, grief, resentment, anger, all of it piled together.
That would torment her.
At best, it would leave her drained and miserable. At worst, it could start affecting her appetite, her mood, even her health. Neither of them wanted that.
"Alright then. Handle it however you think best. I'm going to bed."
Reiji was done with the topic and stood to leave.
"Kid," Blaine said, giving him a sidelong look, "you brought Amber to Cinnabar Gym because you wanted to dump the responsibility on me, didn't you? You vanish all day and never even come play with her."
Reiji laughed. "Old man, if you already know, why ask? I'm terrible with kids. When they start crying, it's a nightmare."
Then he waved and walked off the deck.
"Don't stay out in the wind too long," he called over his shoulder. "You'll catch a chill."
"Heh. Brat."
Blaine's mouth curved slightly, but Reiji was already gone and didn't see it.
In truth, Blaine had already asked Amber about him the day before.
She had never sensed anything negative from Reiji.
From the moment they met, what she picked up from him had always been things like happiness, worry, relief, and quiet ease.
After learning that, Blaine trusted the strange young man a little more than before.
Otherwise, Reiji would never have been worth this much effort. He wouldn't have been worth Rhydon teaching personally, and he definitely wouldn't have been worth bringing out that thing Blaine had been saving.
If the brat ever found out about it, he'd be stunned.
[End of chapter]
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