So there I was, a high school graduate, and unable to head out on my Trainer’s Journey until mid-March. The muk am I supposed to do!?

I hung out in the library.

There was a very important reason for this. I was writing my dissertation. I’d been doing college classes since I was just under six years old. While I hadn’t officially graduated, I’d taken more than enough classes to get my doctorate in three different areas. Pokémon Breeding, Genetics, and Veterinary studies. Lesser degrees were obtainable by me in the Computer Science and Programming fields.

Yes, I’m an overachiever.

Incidentally, Sammi had enough credits to get a Master’s degree.

Why had I taken these classes? The tech ones were because I felt like it. I’d been getting a little burned out on the other stuff, so I’d taken a brief break to play with computers. That I’d also been able to learn hacking, which I then used to steal from thieves as well as steal their encrypted information leading to a series of arrests, had been the icing on the cake.

The genetics and breeding stuff were because I was interested in it. I could also do the lab work with my mother, fulfilling those requirements. I’d been involved in preparing my sister’s pokémon for her, though mom won’t let me have anything to do with the ones she’s preparing for me.

The veterinary studies was so I could work to treat pokémon without giving away the fact that I could literally heal them. I’d be able to boost their recovery as I applied the human made medicines to them.

You know that whole thing where you put injured pokémon in their balls in a machine and three seconds later they’re at full health? That’s tauros feces. Sure pokémon have higher vitality and recovery rates than humans, but they still need time to heal. Depending on the wound and how healthy the pokémon was at the time it was wounded, it takes half to a tenth as long as it would a human to heal from similar wounds.

Healing moves and medicine can boost that a few more times, but that’s it. It still takes time. I can shorten it even further since I can manipulate the energy directly, rather than relying on premade moves, though it tires me out pretty quickly.

Or did last time I tried. I’d grown a lot in the past few years. I’d have probably been able to get from the valley to civilization in a fraction of the time it took me without much trouble.

So I could probably heal others pretty easily now. If I had my degree, which I could display on my phone, I could prove that I knew how to help those in need. People could get really defensive and distrustful when their partners were injured.

So I was doing the last little bit to get everything squared away so I could get my college degree badges.

Yep, in this world, badges seemed to be everything.

---

Of course my friends didn’t let me stay buried in books the whole time. They dragged me out to parties, to see popular movies, shoved me into blind dates…

I really wanted to mess with them the first time they did it. They’d told me we were going to have dinner at a nice restaurant, so I should get all dressed up, so I did. I had mom help me with my hair. I had a style I wanted to try, but I just couldn’t get it right. Add in two more hands, and boom, done.

Mom dropped me off, since my friends claimed to have gotten delayed and we’d lose our reservation if I didn’t get there in time. I should have known then that something was up, but they were miles away, well out of range of my psychic senses, and I wasn’t the best at reading between the lines. And I’d trusted them…

So when I showed up at the restaurant, and find a guy I’d never met before waiting for me at a table for two, with a bouquet of flowers, I was extremely surprised. And angry. Especially since his surface thoughts loudly declared that he knew who I was, though we’d never met before.

But I did not explode. I calmly greeted him and proceeded to have a nice dinner and a movie. The guy wasn’t at fault. He seemed to think that I’d agreed to this. He was properly dismayed to find that I’d been the victim of a prank.

I refused to see or contact my so-called friends for a week.

I thought they’d learned their lesson… only to be set up again.

This time I got my revenge. After enjoying a pleasant evening with another guy I’d never see again, I got to work.

Putting my computer skills to use, I set up an automated system that would call them every fifteen to sixty-five minutes. I wanted it to be random intervals to better annoy them. Because I knew they’d eventually turn their phones off or on silent, I then arranged for them to receive a text from what seemed to be my mother’s number, who I knew was also involved in their betrayal, saying that I was hurt and in the hospital at sometime after two in the morning.

It was a disaster. Nay, a calamity!

They freaked out, and tried to contact anyone from my family, but I’d temporarily blocked their numbers on my family’s phones so no one, except me, knew they were getting calls. With only the text message to go on, they’d rushed down to the hospital to try and find out anything.

I’d recruited the receptionist into my revenge, having told her of how they betrayed me not once, but twice, and she’d agreed to play along. When my friends arrived, she directed them to a waiting room. That my family were in another one, but it was for families only.

An hour later, they were still there. Two hours. Three. At five hours they went to the reception desk, but the person at the desk had changed. This woman knew nothing, and couldn’t find my name in the system.

They tried yet again to call my family, before calling someone else, who wasn’t a traitor, and therefore not blocked, who contacted my mother.

The truth came out. I was fine, enjoying a pleasant day out on the town with my non-traitorous friends.

They were pissed, well so was I. I’d warned them not to pull that garbador on me again, but they went and did it anyway.

I refused to have anything to do with them for weeks. The blocks on their numbers were removed from everyone’s phones… except mine. If they tried to see me in person, I was nowhere to be found. Even when I was right in front of them. Illusions are fun like that.

Yes, I know I was being extremely petty, but they started it! They didn’t even have an excuse like April Fools day or anything. Not that that exists over here.

When I finally let them into my presence, looming over them with a scowl on my face, they apologized profusely. I made them swear on Arceus not to do that again.

You do NOT fuck with Arceus.

We went back to being friends, and they never tried to prank me again. The revenge was too horrible to bear.

Though since I’d gotten grounded for my revenge, I’d never go that far again myself.

---

I got everything done by the end of the winter semester, graduating with multiple degrees from Pallet University. I was the youngest graduate in a few decades, and then it had been with low level degrees, not PhDs.

The last three months before I turned sixteen were pretty busy. I’d had everything I needed ready for years. Literally. I was constantly adding anything I found useful to my storage since I’d first gotten to civilization. I had dozens of outfits, from useful to needlessly fancy. The camping and first aid supplies were ready for any situation. Food? I could feed a small army. And that’s only the stuff that was already prepared. Add in the stuff needing to be prepared, and I could feed even more.

Of course I also had the usual trainer stuff, pokéballs (mostly friend balls), potions, repel, food pellets for a variety of different tastes. No escape ropes. Those were a game item. I did have plenty of rope, but it couldn’t magically teleport you out of a cave. I also had weapons and handcuffs for when I got attacked in the wild.

Yep! When, not if.

It’d been quiet for a while, but I knew they were waiting for me to relax my guard. It’s not paranoia if there’s someone actually after you!

I’d like to just destroy them, but I’d never gotten any solid intel on their headquarters, since the pawns they used didn’t know where it was, and their support teams had always been mobile during their attacks on me, so I couldn’t catch them.

Eventually they’d screw up and I’d destroy them. Well, Mr Doe, or maybe Jane Chief, would. I’d be sure to have some kind of alibi when it happened. Miss Jane was another persona I’d used to handle investigating stuff when it got too dangerous to be Mr Doe in public, though he still took care of ops.

So what was I doing since I wasn’t needing to prepare stuff?

I was putting my fancy new degrees to use. I’d already done a bunch of stuff with mom, but now she was letting me work on a project of my own. She still helped, since she knew how to do stuff better than me.

Mom already had two pokémon in the works for me, though she wasn’t telling me what they were, but I wanted to work on my own. I’d overcome my distaste for being a trainer, but I would still not force any pokémon to follow me. So if the children I strengthened chose to leave, I’d be sad, but I’d take them wherever they wanted to go.

Actually, if I needed to release any into the wild, I’d do so in the valley if I could. It was a good place for newborns to grow in the wild.

I should visit it in the future, though since it’s been a decade I doubt there’s anyone there who remembers me. Hmm, the stuff I made could probably use some maintenance or repairs. Hopefully if any broke, they did so without injuring anyone.

I shook my head and turned my attention back to the genome I was altering, picking up where I left off. Let’s see, if I do this, they’ll be able to get stronger, but it will take longer… Nope, too strong, they’d self destruct.

I undid the changes and tried something else.

I’d spent most of the last two months on this, but was no closer to making it work. Mom’s friend in the Sinnoh region had sent her a sample from an extinct variant of the zorua species. But the differences were strange. First of all, I’d always wondered how one could get a genetic sample of a ghost type pokémon. It just seems weird. Anyway, the variant had been a ghost version of the species, while still maintaining, and even amplifying certain abilities of the original dark-type species.

The samples had been sent to mom to see if she could revive the variant or its enhanced abilities. I was really interested in this, since the original ability was based around illusions, and it could even use human speech with illusion. It couldn’t inflict damage with the illusions, but supposedly the enhanced version been able to.

I’d asked to give it a shot, since I thought it’d be fun to have a zorua, or it’s evolution zoroark, with the ability. And I’d had exactly zero luck with the project. It was almost as if…

It couldn’t be, could it?

Was the ability it had not a new one, not genetic like moves and abilities, but them breaking out of the box that constrained the ability and adding effects manually? Like I did?

There was only one way to test it. And for that I needed complete privacy. And test subjects.

Stopping by my mom’s lab, I told her I’d probably be home late, then popped off into the wilds via teleport.

I’d teleported to a spot a few days outside of the valley. While it’d been a decade, when I passed through here before the place was the territory of a pack of poochyena and mightyena. They were hostile to those who trespassed on their land.

Oh, I should do this the right way.

I stripped. Didn’t want to ruin my clothes.

Clad in my birthday suit, I shifted to a zorua. It always took me a moment to get used to being in a different form, so I walked around for a bit, getting familiar with the form. Then I started sniffing around for a test subject.

They were easy to find. Zorua are foxes, so they have an excellent sense of smell, so I used that to track them down. I was fortunate that the first encounter was with only two of them. It’s not that I couldn’t handle a bunch of them, but it was better to only deal with a small number.

I let them spot me, causing them to attack. They did not summon help. I looked small and weak, the kind of being that was easy prey even if alone. Then I tested the ability.

I made an illusion of a pack of zorua and made them attack. The poochyena had backed off, preparing to flee at the numbers arrayed against them, but when the attack did nothing, and they realized that there was no smell coming from the pack, they resumed their advance.

Well, I didn’t really expect it to work the first time.

I tried again, and again and again.

I’d tried to hide myself with illusions and have another one dodge attacks, but it got revealed and the pair had wised up to my games, so I had to physically dodge while trying various things, all of which failed.

What was I missing?

Was it because the variants were ghosts? What made them… I’m an idiot. Ghosts tended to be vengeful spirits. Being stuffed to the brim with negative emotions.

I hadn’t been putting any of that into my attacks, but what if I did?

The sun was nearly gone below the horizon, so I needed to make this quick. I prepared another illusion, but I poured into it all of my hate, anger, and pain, then turned it loose on the poochyena.

The previously impotent fakes gained real fangs, causing damage for the first time, bringing the two down in moments.

Dismissing the illusions, I inspected the damage. I think a real pack would have dealt more damage, but not by much. So negativity is the source of the ability’s change. There’s nothing we can do. Not without causing harm to an innocent pokémon. Enough to cause it to build up enough the strength to empower the illusions, and doing so would be to make it hate us.

I disposed of the corpses by cremation, then returned to my human form and got dressed before returning home. Not that I wore the clothes long. They, and I, stunk of smoke, so I threw the clothes into storage and took a bath before changing into my pajamas.

I knew I was tempting fate, but with my hair color, I taken to using many things mew, who I said was my favorite pokémon. It was true after all. I was my favorite! So my pajamas were a mew onesie with ears on the hood and a tail coming out the back.

I went down to dinner like that, since I hadn’t been out as late as I’d feared I would be. Plus, my stomach had started grumbling as I noticed the sun setting. It complained a lot, because I’d forgotten to eat lunch.

I took my seat and explained to mom my ‘theory’ as to why we were unlikely to succeed without compromising our morals. I didn’t explain exactly how I did it, but told her I’d poured negative emotions, into my illusions, and achieved something like what was described in the old tales.

She agreed with my assessment, so we dropped the project.

Months of work wasted.

Hopefully no one tries and tests our theory when we write it up.