Rock Type

I sat back against the wall next to the open door of a closet I had thrown everything out of, resting my head against the stone holding my poke-dex up and scanning some of the poke-mon as I spotted them, the range on the device for scanning was pretty good.

Rose stood before me with Tank, both of them were positioned between me and the mass of cops and Jenny's running around. There were a number of Joys out in the warehouse somewhere too, treating poke-mon and looking everything over. I was also pretty sure that at least two of those here were high ranked Rangers.

The main reason my poke-mon were still out wasn't so much to guard me, though Rose had looked ready to throw down with the pissed off Jenny that had tried to start some shit. One of the Rangers had come over and run her off, taking a look at me and my freshly cleaned ax and commented very loudly about how I was lucky the wild poke-mon that took out the Rockets didn't get me. He offered a nod to me and walked off after that declaration.

The Jenny didn't bother me again.

But it wasn't me Rose and Tank were guarding, it was the scarred Chancy that was sitting in the small closet I was in front of. She was asleep at the moment and I was content to let her do so for as long as she wanted.

I had a ton of questions for her, but at the moment making sure Velkorn was alright was the priority.

One of the Joys had come over and was going to put her in a ball to check her out easier and I told her not to. That started another argument that Rose and Tank got into as well. Rose actually convinced the Joy's own Chancy and she pulled the Joy off to tend others.

Granted I was waiting for someone in particular, and I didn't have to wait long.

“This is a mess you know?” Professor Oak sighed looking out at the rows of cages. “Six dead, a reported 'wild' poke-mon on the loose as the killer, a number of poke-mon and humans killed as well. One of them eaten by a Sneasel that managed to drag the body into it's cage.”

“It will take time for all of them to recover. Some may never do so from something like this.” I offered back.” This was torture, pure and simple. Not the first time I've seen something like this. Not the first time I've dealt with it either.”

“You're currently ten.” Oak pointed out as I shrugged and Oak sighed looking at a data pad he held.

“A number of them are stolen. We have their registration, sadly it seems a few of their owners were killed and the poke-mon might be going to next of kin. I looked over the notes as I was coming in. “Oak grumbled. “You are lucky you are 'just' ten. No one will believe you did this on your own. If this sort of thing happens again though.... So what did happen?”

I looked up at Professor Oak and held my hand out to the side towards the sleeping Chancy in the room next to me.

“Professor Oak, meet Velkorn. “ I stated simply. “She is one of the ones I am looking for.”

Oak turned his head looking at the Chancy. His eyes trailed over the scars on her, the egg she was cradling, as well as the fresh burn marks from a shock prod she had on her body in multiple points that were blistering up.

“Well fuck.” Oak sighed.

“Yup.” I offered reaching out to rub Rose's head getting a indignant chirp from her. Tank inched closer to me for his own pets which he received. ”If there are any of these poke-mon that would otherwise be destroyed, like that one who ate part of one of the Rockets, I'd like to use the stable space you gave me to house them instead. They've been through enough shit. They shouldn't be killed for being forced into this and not knowing any better.”

“I wouldn't worry about that. There are trainers and breeders out there who already deal with things like this. You don't have to use your space. We rarely need to put down any poke-mon unless they are an absolute danger or actively hunt humans and even then it's a last resort if relocation doesn't work, given the state of the ones I've seen here the sneasel was likely starved and saw a corpse as the first meal it had seen in probably weeks. Most of the time poke-mon like that where with a bad trainer first and were just tossed away.” Oak offered before nodding. ”It does look good on you to suggest that. I'm surprised you are not looking to capture one of them to train, there are some rather rare poke-mon here that are not stolen.”

“I've scanned most of them, but like I said, they are all traumatized, and I'm not going to capture Velkorn either. I'd rather keep her out of a poke-ball as well. Though if she wants to come with me... is there a way to do that? Like a therapy poke-mon maybe?”

“Hmm, there's a number of things I can do for something like that so don't worry. “Oak looked at the sleeping Chancy and tilted his head. “She's got an egg too, but that's not a Chancy egg.”

“You can tell?”

“Not with 100% accuracy. But close enough to know that is neither a Fairy nor a Normal egg. I could tell more with the right equipment, but I'd bet it was a ground or electric.... maybe steel type egg.” Oak shrugged. “I've got to check up with those looking through the rest of the gym. Giovanni's not here at any rate and given the state of the upper floors he hasn't been here in a while, likely since he was last seen months ago. “

“How does a Gym leader go missing for that long without notice?”

“Off season mostly. Some of the Gym Leaders take a few months off before the next season starts. Giovanni closed down his gym at the end of the last season and hasn't been seen since. Brock does something similar vanishing into the mountains on the off season. Knowing that boy he's probably still looking for his fathers killer.“ Oak hummed. “I'll have to talk to the league about it. See what gym they can lift up for this circuit, luckily they still have a bit of time to find a replacement for the circuit. Giovanni always preferred to not let anyone face him unless they had 7 badges so he was always considered the last gym most faced.”

I nodded at that and turned my head watching the goings on in the warehouse as Oak walked off.

I glanced over to Velkorn and sighed. I knew it was her, without a shadow of a doubt I knew it was Velkorn. When I let her out of the cage she seemed to recognize me immediately though she kept her distance.

What had happened to her after she died. I was still filled with regret about her death. The damn bastard had taken all my power, and used it to kill my friends and countless others. Including Velkorn.

I had been gone as she took her last breath as her daughter was cut from her. Luna and I had raised Rynthia as out own. With both Velkorn and Rhede dead we had to do our best to raise her right, and I think we did okay, but I had no idea if Velkorn would think the same.

Rynthia.. Rynthia was not a peaceful foal. She took too much after myself and Luna. That she wound up with the Element of Magic rather than Compassion like her mother or Generosity like her father spoke of that. She did not follow the path of pacifism like her mother did. Rynthia had believed that if there was an arrow wound, you did not heal around the wound and hope it cured the arrow still in the leg, you ripped out the arrow, used it to take out the one who fired it, then healed the wound.

Not the best analogy, but well, I was never good at those.

My phone started to ring and I looked down at it curiously and winced.

My parents were calling? Why were they calling me this late...

I snapped my head around and spotted the Jenny who had been harassing me, and the smirk on her face as she met my eyes.

Oh that bitch.

By the time my mother had stopped her screaming, my father had finished reprimanding me for going in, my grandmother had stopped asking questions and telling the others to shut up, and my grandfather had stopped his cackling, it was 3 in the morning.

Oak had come though and gotten me a pass for Velkorn to remain out of a ball. She was still required to be registered to a ball I would carry, but the star ball was a rare variation of a standard ball that was designed for service poke-mon. She wouldn't be allowed to fight in the circuit, but she also would not count towards my six ball limit and most places wouldn't require her to stay in the ball when traveling.

It became fairly clear that Velkorn did not want to be separated from me after she woke. I returned Rose and Tank and the two of us walked to the Poke-center and my room there. She refused to return to her ball to be healed at the center so I used a few sprays on her, the scarring that made her look striped barely faded, but at least the blisters from the shock prod were gone.

She also ate whatever the the nurse Chancy brought to her before she passed out again.

I let her have the small rooms bed and used the chairs in the room putting them together to sleep there.

I had slept in worse places for worse reasons.

The next day I explained everything to her as best I could, the language barrier was a bit much as she had never learned human, I couldn't speak poke-mon, and neither of us had the vocal capability to speak Equiss.

However with a notepad and a marker for her, we both could still write in Equestrian. And if any one ever saw the notebooks, it would take them years to decipher the words written there without one of us or a primer. Probably longer with my atrocious hoof writing, something that had not changed even though I had hands now.

Needless to say after explaining everything and answering her questions my hand was cramped all to hell.

Thankfully she seemed alright with us raising Rynthia, though she also knew things I didn't think she could have. Seems she and the others had been watching from the stars after all.

Guess that wasn't just an old foals tale.

Her story wasn't too different from mine. She was born to a small flock of Chancy out on some plains somewhere. She wasn't sure where and hadn't even seen a human until much later in her life.

She had evolved from a Happiny to a Chancy out there and had easily fallen into old habits as the Chancy were often sought out to be healed by the local wild poke-mon.

About a year ago she had her first encounter with humans, poachers who had captured - her entire flock as well as anything else they could in the area.

She lost track of the places she had ended up before appearing at the warehouse, being beaten and tormented to make sure she would heal what they told her to and produce powerful Chancy eggs, the power up not actual eggs thankfully.

She had been stuck there until I showed up, having been given the egg she held by a poke-mon who came in a little under a month ago.

Velkorn wasn't sure what kind of poke-mon it was, just that it was big and tough enough to die before it broke.

Rose seemed rather interested in how the two of us knew each other and I decided to let Velkorn explain it to Rose and Tank.

Tank simply accepted it. He was a rather chill guy after all.

Rose spent a lot of time yelling at me, not that I could understand her. Velkorn mentioned it was a trust issue and I simply pointed out to my little puff ball that how was I supposed to explain it without a translator.

That didn't mollify her much but some ear scritches did.

Velkorn wasn't really thrilled about the poke-mon being forced to fight, though what ever Rose told her seemed to calm her down a little. With Rose and Tank actually wanting to fight Velkorn really couldn't complain as much as she probably wanted to about me using training them to battle. She was annoyed at how young they were.

She was also annoyed to learn I was only ten by the human metric.

The next few days were filled with that sort of thing. The cops popping in to ask questions, Velkorn asking questions, and my parents calling to yell at me some more.

Honestly it reminded me of a lot of the after action reports I gave to Celestia back in the day.

About a week later I finally got to head out again with a bump up to my monthly stipend, a few bounties and lost poke-mon rewards payed to me, and a Earth Badge.

I was not happy with how I got my second badge.

Oak had scrounged up a trainer named Karen to run Giovanni's gym for the start of this circuit.

The girl was a Dark type trainer and a skilled battler as she was high on the ace circuit, and had been trained by Elite Four's Agatha before she retired. Sadly she had no idea how to deal with a second badge trainer and underestimated me fully to get swept by Rose without me really needing to do anything complex.

I explained how I wasn't happy to be practically given the badge, but she told me to take it anyway, as she had learned some things, and given all I had already done here that nearly any gym leader wouldn't have even accepted my challenge and just given me the badge for breaking up the smuggling ring.

I still protested until Rose walked up and took the badge from her and forced it into my hands with a huff.

Seems my poke-mon were okay with an easy win.

I doubled her training afterwards.

I needed to go all the way to the top to find the others, there was no room for being lazy.

With Virideon City behind me, I set out to my next destination to Cerul.... Saffron City... yes we will go there first..... not the water place.

Soon though.....

Maybe.....