victory_road | Reminiscing

Good to meet you, Yayoi. I'm Annie Leonhart.

Ah, seems like the season to be tackling ghosts of all kinds. What secondaries did he have, versus yours? I've been doing more research on what they functionally act like these days.

And thank you.

Nice to meet you. Did you just arrive?

He had Drifblim and Spiritomb, Dusknoir, Mismagius, Gengar and Chandelure which have assorted secondary types such as Flying, Poison, Dark and Fire. I had to brute force electric attacks with some of those since I didn't have type advantage, used a Psychic Pokemon as a matchup for some, the Flying I shocked it down with Thunderbolt and Golem to withstand it's power, and then with Chandelure I waged a battle of endurance with Fire Blast.

It's been three weeks, going on four since I arrived. So not just, but new enough to be still getting a better understanding of things here.

A few of those were familiar names. Clearly I've got my reading cut out for me. Did you end up having to rely on supplements of any kind to keep your team going strong, or were you able to make it work through brute force and playing to advantages when you had them?

You were facing his elite team then? Congratulations on your success either way.

That's a good pacing intro then, you can learn a lot in your first month here or so.

Yeah, I gave them a couple of vitamins in between battles and healed my Pokemon. My Mega Evolved Ampharos soloed two of his Pokemon so we had to keep topped off since we had no type advantage and had to rely on speed, stamina and all out attrition.

Yes, I was. I didn't want to make it easy on myself since my entire team of six Pokemon are all level 100. Thank you.

You do. It's easier to get used to things like the sun rising and setting opposite to what I'm used to, direction wise, and starting to train out assumptions about how things work based only on home.

Sometimes those are the only skills you can rely on. Enduring longer than your opponent can be enough to get you through, and when you need to win, you don't need it to be by a landslide. Though when you say Mega Evolved... I've heard mention of mega something in passing, but haven't had a chance to ask anyone about that. What exactly is a mega evolution for a pokemon?

One of the peculiarities, that there's a ceiling to any pokemon's capabilities and growth. At that point it does become a measure of picking your way forward with care.

Yeah, I'm from Japan and as far as I can tell, this place is similar to my home region as well. It's based on the Kanto Region of Japan landscape wise, with a little bit of Kansai in it. So it's familiar territory.

Sometimes yeah. I try to be more diverse but I realized no amount of diversity was going to get me through the rough patch that was Morty, so I just bullied on through. And Mega Evolution is a phenomenon that happens in battle, between a trainer and a Pokemon. It utilizes a Mega Stone and a deep bond, a connection with a Pokemon who has forged a deep connection with their trainer, their friend. And then they evolve in battle to a higher state.

And yeah it does, sometimes. The rest is up to customization of powers through Technical Machines or TMs and HMs, Hidden Machines.

Edited 2018-10-13 04:37 (UTC)

This is the first I've heard of the territory reminding anyone of home. The Japan you're from also has people living beyond the boundaries of your nation?

Making the most with what you have and getting through anyway... it's not as if you're doing it alone, in that sense. The way these tinctures and foods work to help pokemon recover so swiftly is useful.

I see, so it's one of those changes that comes about due to the strength of a relationship. How does one even measure such things... I suppose they prove themselves true eventually, or never at all.

TMs and HMs, both the ones sold and the ones that can be won from certain gyms? I'd heard there's a few like that, but not the specifics on where they were, or what they were, with who.

Yeah, it's just a country based in a world with a large population of several million people. There's more than 7 billion people in our world right now, and it keeps growing.

That's right, and people work together in harmony to keep this world going. It's really quite amazing.

Yeah. I'm not an expert in Mega Evolution, nor am I a scholar but I can tell you one thing: Pokemon respond to our emotions and friendship with them. The better you treat people and others, the more they respond to us.

That's right, a lot of the TMs can be found or purchased, and HMs can be rewarded and found as well.

I can't even imagine a world with that many people in it.

Treating people decently isn't necessary an assessment of character. Even the most selfish could care for their pokemon, if not out of love, then out of self-interest. Are pokemon more capable of seeing through those attachments than people are?

... Found?

The number has gone up since then, since that was the number in 2018 for me.

Quite a bit I'd imagine, although Pokemon stay loyal for different reasons. Every Pokemon has their own personalities and get attached for different reasons and different needs. I know Mimikyu is attached to my history as a hero rather than my current state as a artist.

Found, like a scavenger hunt. They're called Hidden Machines for a reason, and are found in various places.

How is there even enough space or resources for that many people? I'm not asking that as a question, just remarking on how difficult a number that is to grasp.

For once, something reasonably logical. That's almost remarkable enough to be worth noting. Though I don't know quite what you mean by a history as a hero--back in Japan?

... Right back to making less sense. Unless it's more instructional, so finding a site of instruction means accessing that HM?

We make due. There's a lot of environmental conservation going on, and there's a lot of people working together to make the world a better place, even now.

Ah, I'm guessing you don't know about superheroes then. It's a thing found in various worlds.

Some Hidden Machines are able to affect the world outside of the battlefield, like Cut is able to cut down small bushes and stuff while Surf can transport people across bodies of water.

Sounds like an impressive amount of cooperation.

I've heard the word mentioned in passing. It doesn't mean anything to me in particular, no.

Ah... I was curious about those kinds of things. Pokemon don't seem as prone to reshaping the world around them to their convenience as people are. Hidden Machines allow pokemon to learn skills they can apply in everyday life, not just when fighting, that kind of a thing? Am I understanding that correctly?

It is. We have to get along to function in society more or less. It's not perfect but we do the best we can.

Yeah it's basically people who go out into the world and do good, on a scale of fighting evil that is too big for the ordinary person to handle.

That's right, a lot of these skills are useful in day to day life and travel.

That ideal can be very difficult to achieve when leaders are too short sighted... it's good that not the challenge your world faces.

Ah, so special people.

Understood. Still curious it takes extras measures to have practical use for some of these skills.

Tell me about it. It's not perfect, but it's all we've got.

Sort of? I mean, Superheroes are normal people who may or may not be blessed with powers, but in the end, it's people who stand up who do what's right, for the right thing, not for anything else but for the good of the people they protect.

Well, with some practical use, skills such as a electric types Magnet Rise can float any Pokemon with electricity and what not. And that's not a HM. But overall HMs are more useful overall in long term distances and overall uses.

Edited 2018-10-18 23:51 (UTC)

I should probably clarify that when I say special people, I'm referring to attitudes. Like those who can face an overwhelming problem and still try to fight, no matter how futile that effort might be. It's not what most people can do, just a few. I respect that, and can admire it, but I'd never call it common. "Superheroes" and "special" to me may as well be similar words in definition.

That makes me wonder, though. You say it's those who stand up for what's right, but that righteousness is from their perspective alone, isn't it? In ways that can be even more dangerous than people who accept the corruptions already in place... more can be undone and sacrificed in fighting for such righteous things that these people believe in. Who they choose to protect, and how they choose to define that protection... well, there isn't much I can say. Those mentalities aren't ones I share.

I wonder... is it partly because so few pokemon naturally learn certain moves, as well? Being capable of learning something when taught versus having a natural talent for it that comes along as you gain more experiences and further your training. For pokemon, that is. I don't think there's anything else I'll ever see that works in quite this unique way.

[ Rick's comment about it feeling game-like comes to mind again. ]

Yeah that about sums it up. I mean, sometimes it takes people time and effort to grow into those attitudes, but they all derive from the base core of what makes a hero, a hero.

Yeah, it depends. I mean, people fight for different reasons. At least in my world, most of the time people fight for justice. And hope and all those good things. Very few times do we have anyone who fights for the sake of fighting.

It might be. Pokemon have such a different ability set than I'm used to, so they're much different than anything I've ever experienced before. They're certainly not like the fairies I've dealt with once before.

Fairies?

Fairies. Small little animal-like fairies, who completely deny they're animals when you exclaim they're such and such. They're citizens of another world, and often are partnered to a human girl, or boy or robot or whatever, and become a Precure Fairy. More on that later. They're adorable and often end their sentences in affixes like kuru.

I was wondering how similar they might have been the fairy type here. I thought it might be closer to the "fae creatures" someone else mentioned, but this sounds more similar to how pokemon-human relationships are here.

They're closer to people than Pokemon to be perfectly honest. They talk and feel like normal people, they're just smaller and more animal-like. But when they're stronger with magic, they can take on human form.

Edited 2018-10-19 22:00 (UTC)

I see. With magic being what, in specific?

Magic is magic. It's a power that comes from the strength of the heart and the power of a fairy and a Precure together.

So... combined energies between these different things.

[ This sounds like a load of nonsense and that is sadly not unusual in pokemon land, even for worlds that are not this one. But hey, she has titans. Nonsense is life. ]

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