Chapter 10:Beginning
For those that have been asking, yes, there will be actual sex scenes in this story. I've never written one before but expect one by chapter thirteen at the latest. I don't own Pokemon.
Ash stood outside of the ferry that had transported him, his pokemon and his luggage to the Sunnyshore City Docks, squinting slightly as he held his hand above his eyes, searching for a telltale sign of black or yellow. Pikachu sat atop his hat, his ears twitching in random directions. "Do you see her, Pi?" He asked, referring to the young woman they had spent the last couple of minutes looking for.
(A lot of scents, sights and sounds, but no Cynthia...) Pikachu replied.
"Where could she be?" Ash pondered, his eyes darting across the hustle and bustle of disembarking passengers, dock workers and pokemon while rubbing his arms to ward off the chill of the early morning.
Sensing his friend's discomfort, Pikachu hopped down from his post and onto Ash's shoulder, nuzzling against his face, hoping to provide some warmth. "Come on, let's walk around and see if we can spot her." Ash said, adjusting the dufflebag around his shoulders and hefting his suitcase.
Meanwhile, Cynthia and Garchomp landed on one of the smaller piers of the docks, an old wooden one mostly used for small fishing boats. Looking at her watch, she saw that Ash's boat had already arrived and he was most likely looking for her.
She quickly released Braviary and Togekiss from their pokeballs. "I need your help finding someone." She told them. They both nodded, waiting for a description "A guy with black hair, wears a hat and Pikachu on his shoulder, kind of on the short side." The pokemon quickly took to the air in search of their quarry while Cynthia walked down the pier, also looking for her new apprentice. Cynthia's usual serene smile widened at the thought.
She couldn't wait to begin training Ash and his pokemon, she would be the second Champion in history to take on an apprentice, the first one being Alder when he took on Marshall. Though she wasn't sure if that really counted, since all the wandering Champion seemed to teach him was how to "chill out and live in the moment" but she couldn't deny that Marshall really did need to relax.
Technically, she was the third Champion to take on an apprentice, the first was definitely a Champion level trainer, and defeated a Champion but never officially accepted the title, but those who knew of his abilities called him a Champion out of respect, even Lance, and his apprentice was still Champion of Johto.
After a few minutes of wandering around, Braviary swooped down and perched on a mooring post. "Did you find him?"
Braviary cawwed. (Comrade Braviary reporting, Glorious Leader! Target located and locked down! Comrade Togekiss is with target and awaiting extraction!)
"Good job, now show me where he is, you big goof."
(Of course, Glorious Leader! Forgive my impudence!) One of the reasons why Cynthia and her pokemon were considered the strongest in the world was their teamwork and communication. Cynthia had always had something of an instinctive understanding of her pokemon, whereas with most trainers, that understanding only came with a very close connection to their pokemon, their starter most likely, and even then a bit of guess work was involved.
Her and her pokemon's ability to understand one another was only helped when Cynthia's old friend and travelling companion, Riley, an Aura Guardian-in-training, had taught her to channel the latent Aura abilities all living creatures have, definitely nowhere compared to an actual Aura Guardian, but enough to use it passively without accidentally using up all of her life-force and turning herself to stone.
The only way she was able to use it was to increase her understanding of her pokemon, up to the point of knowing with unerring precision, exactly what her pokemon meant when they spoke. It wasn't as if she translate it into human speech, but just knowing what it was they were saying. She had a theory that Ash may have been using that ability unknowingly. Judging by what her lucario told her, Ash had unusually high reserves of excess aura, still nowhere near the level of a formally trained Aura Guardian, but considerably more than the average human.
So it was possible that Ash's talent with understanding poke-speech was a by-product of excess aura reserves or just a natural gift that was on par with her own. Interesting either way, she thought. Turning hers eyes towards the skies, she saw Braviary dive to the ground and followed in the same direction.
She found Ash and Pikachu marvelling at Braviary, who seemed to love the attention. She correctly guessed that the two had never seen a pokemon of the Unova region before, it being to the far east of Kanto and fairly cut off from the other four regions, closer to the Kalos region if anything. "Ash!" She called out to the boy, who gave a large, friendly smile and raised his arm in greeting along with Pikachu who shouted "Pika pika!" as a hello.
WTLM
Ash had been wondering if something happened to make Cynthia late, when a togekiss and some other strange flying-type he never saw before swooped out of the grey sky. The unknown pokemon landing in front of him, stood stock still and chirped unfamiliar syllables to the floating togekiss before taking off again.
Ash turned to the togekiss. "Are you one of Cynthia's pokemon?" He asked.
The normal/flying type cooed her name in response. (Hello Pikachu-san, Trainer-san, I am Togekiss, a loyal friend and ally of Cynthia-sama. She has tasked myself and Braviary-san to find you. Please wait, my lady will be here shortly.)
A minute later, the other flying-type landed again and stood like a soldier awaiting his next orders. (Greetings, new recruits! I am unsure what our Glorious Leader sees in you little bug-types, but Commanding Officer Braviary will whip you into shape!)
"Whoa, what kind of pokemon are you?" Ash asked mostly to himself, not knowing the odd pokemon had insulted him. "Those are some pretty powerful looking wings, you must be a great flyer!"
Braviary stuck his hooked beak in the air. (Of course, comrade! I am the top percentage of all braviary in the world! I am Glorious Leader's greatest aerial warrior! So yes, I am 'great flyer!'" Braviary boasted, puffing his plumage.
(Really, Braviary-san, *you* are Cynthia-sama's greatest aerial fighter?)
(Ahem, I am ONE of our Glorious Leader's greatest aerial fighter!) Braviary hastily corrected himself.
"Ash!" A voice to his far right called out, he turned to see Cynthia and waved to her.
(Hi!) Pikachu shouted. Cynthia walked over to them, her coat and hair blowing slightly in the sea breeze.
"Hello, Ash, Pikachu, I see you've met Togekiss and Braviary."
"Is that what it's called? I've never seen this pokemon before."
"He, actually, Braviary's species is solely male. He's a normal/flying type from the Unova region."
Unova region? "Oh, I see..." He said, not asking the obvious question, he didn't want the young woman who offered to train him and his pokemon to think he was an idiot or anything.
As if reading his mind, Cynthia smiled kindly. "I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it, it's really out of the way, so people tend to forget about it."
Ash blushed in embarrassment. "I can't say I know it. So, you've been to the Unova region? What's it like?"
"Yes, I spent a year there when I was eleven. It's an amazing place and it's history is fascinating. You know, there's an underwater ruin off the east coast, it's architecture is startlingly similar to various sites in the Hoenn region, which is amazing, because they've been confirmed to been built during what the ancient Hoennites called the Era of Storms, and any sea-travel during that era would have been impossible because of..." Cynthia stopped herself. "I'm sorry, I get a little carried away when it comes to archaeology, you could say I'm a bit of an ancient history buff." She laughed.
"Uh.. No, it's fine, you really know your stuff, huh?" Cynthia knew a lot about old stuff, Ash thought, it made sense that she had an interest outside of pokemon training. If she wasn't challenged very often, then she'd need something to do or else she'd go crazy.
This, of course, was before Ash learned the cardinal rule of being pokemon trainer, or being a ninja, or a shinigami, with great power, comes great insanity.
Lance was a prime example, people like to forget that he and the Kanto Elite Four tried to take over the world that one time. Steven Stone was obsessed with stones, go figure. Homika of the Unova League had a history of attacking people with her bass for no reason and Ethan Gold once got into a sword fight with the leader of a criminal organisation, with a POOL CUE and Alder and Bruno fought wild pokemon for fun. Ash would one day have the honour of seeing Alder throw a gigalith over his head.
And then there was Cynthia herself, her "quirks" were well hidden but still there and in the future, Ash would get very well acquainted with them.
"Yeah, you could say that!" Cynthia played her substantial knowledge down, she didn't like to show off and the poor guy looked intimidated enough. He seemed interested though, maybe she could tell him more some other day. "So, are you ready to go?" She asked.
"I'm ready, but where are we going, Cynthia?"
"There's a private island to the north of the city, that's where we'll be doing a lot of your training." She explained. "You have a strong flying-type right?"
"Yeah, I have a couple. You own an island?" He wondered. He knew Champions must make some good money, but a whole island?
"Not really, the Pokemon League owns Shouri Island and the Champion's Tower, that's where we'll be staying, but the Champion and Elite Four of the time are entitled to stay there whenever we like and train there. It's a great place, a huge forest, a few mountains, lakes and a couple of beaches.
"What about wild pokemon?" Ash enquired.
"There are wild pokemon, yes, and they are fairly powerful, but they've never bothered us." Cynthia released her garchomp and in a flash of light, a huge bipedal dark purple reptile appeared as she recalled Braviary and Togekiss. She let out a small growl, small for Garchomp, but still enough to make nearby glass windows vibrate. "Garchomp gar. Garchomp chomp garchomp." Was what Ash heard, but Cynthia understood her starter pokemon. (They are small and weak. I will enjoy their suffering.)
Ash picked out two pokeballs from his dufflebag and called out Pidgeot, the same Pidgeot that he released into the Viridian Forest years ago and Staraptor, one of his first pokemon from the Sinnoh region. "Hey, Staraptor, mind carrying this suitcase for me?" Staraptor nodded. "C'mon, let's go!"
WTLM
As the two trainers and pokemon flew into the horizon, three figures, two normal-sized and one much shorter, looked on. "So it's happened, huh? The little twerp is really starting to moving up in the world..." Jessie spoke.
"Yeah, gotta say ah'm happy for the twoip. But we ah still gonna try to take that pikachu, right?" Meowth asked.
"I don't know Meowth, is going after Pikachu and the twerp really the smart thing to do since they will be with the SINNOH CHAMPION for most of their time?" James remarked.
"James may have a point, Meowth... Maybe we should just leave them alone for a while? Meowth?" Meowth didn't answer, but the human members of Team Rocket heard a sniffle.
"Meowth?" Jessie asked in disbelief. "Are you crying?"
Meowth rubbed his paws against his eyes. "Yeah, so? Ah you cryin'?"
Jessie turned her face from him, tears also prickling her eyes. "Yeah, so what?"
James scooped them both up in a bone crushing hug. "I know I am!" He cried, tears streaming down his face.
"James, you cry-baby, it's not like we'll never see them again!" Jesse snapped.
"Yeah, we'll be ahttacking 'em with giant meowth-themed mechs before ya know it!"
"I'm not crying about that! I'm crying because the next time we see them, they'll be at least ten times as strong!" James shouted.
"OH NO!" Jessie and Meowth screamed as they began sobbing as well.
WTLM
Due to Cynthia and Garchomp (thankfully) slowing down as much as they could, they arrived to the airspace around Shouri Island at the same time. Cynthia and Garchomp glided over to Ash, Pikachu and Pidgeot.
"It's huge!" He exclaimed, taking his first look at the Champion's home away from home from the air. True to her word, there were three mountains to the north end of the island, two smaller ones flanking the largest, which was at least the size of Mt. Moon. The coast was mostly golden brown sand, though he could see many perilous looking cliff faces. The island itself was mostly thick forest, but he saw many large plains, meadows, fields and lakes. One of these fields looked to be covered in thousands of flowers.
And in the rough center of the island, in one of the larger clearings, stood a skyscraper-type building, at least twenty-five stories tall.
He looked to Cynthia, who smiled at his statement. She directed him downwards, next to a nearby lake. Dismounting and recalling Pidgeot and Staraptor, he walked over to her. "You live here!" He asked, stunned.
"Being Champion does have it's perks." She chuckling slightly at his obvious awe. "The roof is a garden, the top ten floors are two story apartments, the rest are a common room, a gym, a bowling alley, if you can believe it, a library, practically everything you could want. And that's not even the underground levels." She replied.
"Underground?"
"In due time, dear apprentice." She said, relishing the words. "Now, I think the best way to start is to introduce our pokemon, so we both know what we're dealing with, then you can familiarise yourself with the tower and the surrounding area. We'll begin your actual training tomorrow."
"Sounds great... So where will I be staying?" He asked.
"With me," She told him. "In my apartment. Each apartment has a guest bedroom.
"Right." Ash reached in to the dufflebag, and took out two handfuls of shrunken pokeballs and threw them into the air.
Now dear readers, a small explanation to avoid confusion at a later date. If a pokemon is speaking to a human, like so, "Pika pika!" (Hi!) The poke-speech before the translation means that the human does not have a close connection to the pokemon and only hears the poke-speech. If a pokemon speaks like this, (Hi!) It means that the human and pokemon have a close connection and the human understands what the pokemon means.
So remember, if you see the pokemon says it's name and then it's translated, that means the human doesn't understand the pokemon.
From the pokeballs came thirty-one bright, white lights that took shape, revealing all his pokemon of all shapes and sizes. "Okay, everyone line up!" Ash called out. Cynthia was amused to see that his pokemon swamped him almost instantly. The smile on Ash's face told her that is must have been a fairly common occurrence. She saw a gengar happily lick his cheek like an over-excited growlithe, paralysing Ash. "Gen, gengar!" (Hey, mother-licka!)
Then an extremely enthusiastic bayleef body slammed him into the ground. Cynthia winced slightly from the groans, then raised her voice over the noise of pokemon calls. "Could everyone line up, please!"
The pokemon immediately got out of the dog-pile and formed ranks. Like she said, being the Champion has it's perks.
She observed Ash's pokemon, a good mix of types and species, some quite rare, she noted, but many hadn't reached the potential she knew they could.
His pokemon were his trademark pikachu, a primeape, a charizard, which was three times the size of the average male of his species, a sceptile, a still sleeping snorlax, a glalie, a staraptor, a beautiful pidgeot, an infernape, a serious bulbasaur, a swellow, a noctowl, a cheerful-looking totodile, a torterra, a bayleef that was still rubbing against Ash's hand, a heracross, the cutest little gible she had ever seen.
A gengar with a friendly smile, for it's species at least, a gengar's smile always seemed sinister, a buizel, a surprisingly tough looking butterfree, a corphish, a donphan, a lavitar, a lapras, which was an extremely rare pokemon, she wondered where Ash found her. A kingler, a muk, a tauros, that looked like the leader or second-in-command of his herd, a quilava, a torcoal, a gliscor and finally, a squirtle...wearing sunglasses?
In conclusion, Cynthia was impressed and was sure she'd have them in top shape in no time.
"This is the team, Cynthia." Ash proudly announced. Cynthia knelt down to pick up the little gible that ran towards her.
"Well, hello again." She cooed, holding the little dragon like a baby.
"Sorry about that." Ash apologised.
"No need to apologise. Isn't that right, little guy?" Needless to say, Garchomp was not impressed. "Now, time to meet my team!" Taking eleven pokeballs from her belt, she also threw them into the air. "Garchomp, battle dance!
Glaceon, guerilla tactics! Milotic, flood the field!
Togekiss, fly fast! Lucario, strike hard! Spiritomb, emerge from darkness!
Braviary, crush them! Gastrodon, stand firm! Umbreon, hunt from the shadows!
Roserade, pierce their hide! Armaldo, ready your claws! Eelektross, electrocute all!" Say what you will about Cynthia Shirona, but the young woman certainly had a flair for the dramatic.
Most of Ash's pokemon visibly flinched from the aura of pure power coming from the twelve beasts in front of them. (Comrades, these are the new troops that we will train!)
(I must say sister, they don't look like much, do they?) The umbreon spoke.
(I don't know, sister, they could be fun to play with...) The glaceon replied.
(My siblings-in-arms, we have been entrusted by our lady to take these humble creatures and mold them into great beasts of war, and I, Lucario, shall not disappoint our mistress! For it is the duty of a noble knight of the Aura to aid his leader in all her endeavours! ) Lucario announced grandly.
(I'm Armaldo! But my friends call me Whiskers, because I'm curious like a zigzagoon!)
(Nobody call him that.) Charizard muttered.
After some introductions, Cynthia decided that it was time to get to the tower. "How far away is it?" Ash asked.
"It's about three miles that way." Cynthia said, pointing to the west. "This is your first test, Ash. I want you and your pokemon to make it to the tower in less than an hour."
"An hour? Okay..."
"And to add some incentive... Everyone, charge Hyper Beam!" Twelve mouths formed an orange ball of concentrated, highly destructive energy.
"Didn't you say that training didn't start until tomorrow?!" Ash shouted.
"First lesson, my apprentice, expect the unexpected! FIRE!"
Ash, Pikachu and the rest made a beeline in the vague direction that Cynthia pointed at earlier, as the landscape was ripped to pieces and eleven of Cynthia's pokemon took chase.
(Mistress?)
"Yes, Spiritomb?"
(Do you believe that you may have gone a bit overboard at all?)
"Hmm... Nope. Let's just call this an introduction to evasion." Cynthia stated happily, before walking off in the exact opposite direction of where she had pointed. "I wonder how long it will take them to realise they're going the wrong way?". She asked to no-one in particular.
(And people call us evil...)