Pillar II

For Altair, the new skill (Gate) is actually strange to use because he has to both imagine the place he is and the place he had been at the same time and focus and then pour energy into what he would say the middle of the images.

This is actually difficult and training this in the middle of the city was not the most intelligent place to do so he would travel to the forest not too deep and teleport from one tree to another and taking longer.

Thankfully he got the hang of it with the training he had done. Although he could only use it once every 24 hours.

What disappointed him the most was the fact that he couldn't just teleport in an instant. But then again Gate was actually something that was built to transport a lot of things and not for battle so it was understandable.

Today was the day that they were supposed to resume the adventure. Both Lucario and Yungoos were in peak performance. Altair was not going to bring the little Yungoos after all it was still weak, so he decided to leave it with one of the sisters. Yungoos was slightly disappointed but it knew the reason for not going, it just wanted to go with his Idol but oh well, life in the village was very good except for the training part.

A little 12 year old kid would go and play with the Yungoos in the latters free time or just watch it train. Altair was actually surprised by the little guy's action since no one would approach the Lucario in its first form so it was a new thing. Altair sighed there were so little pokemon in the village that the kids couldn't feel the joy in raising them. Definitely tragic. Although the kid would glare at him from time to time he just shrugged it off. What could he do? Being Handsome has its own drawbacks. That was what Altair would think when he realized the kid's expression towards himself. But again the kid wasn't in the Rebel stage so why bother.

After leaving the village both Altair and Lucario were in a carefree mode, they have traveled this path so many times that it was just a walk in the park. It is not like the species in the forest would attack you unless you actually did something to them first, so it was quite easy to move around.

Turning on a familiar tree and looking at the familiar place Altair sighed, he wouldn't categorize what happened in the pillar as a good thing, neither a bad thing after all Lucario is on another level ever since it woke up and Evolved into a mutant. But having his best friend/partner leave his side for all those years was actually quite a demanding thing that took a lot emotionally on both.

Altair shook his head and headed to the pillar and touched it but nothing. He kept his hand pressed on the pillar and somehow the dark color on the pillar began to fade as if it was getting drained by his hand. This startled Altair who just took his hand back and the draining stopped. Altair was confused but again he didn't feel like it would harm him so he just drained it all until the pillar was spotlessly white.

The moment it had became white, the pillar began to shrink and a palm sized pillar was floating in his hand before being absorbed into the crystalized Solar Eclipse in his forehead. Altair didn't feel much difference just an increase in his energy pool so he just shrugged it off like everything else.

From here he kept walking further and further since he had the Gate Skill he could just go as far as he could and then just teleport back.

After walking for an hour Altair began to hear explosions and a loud sound.

So Altair as the curious man he was decided to see what was happening forward and dashed in the direction of the commotion.

What he saw surprised him a Sandslash was fighting against a group of Zubats in front of a cave. This surprised him but then inspecting a little further he saw that the Sandslash was protecting a yellow brick patterned pokemon with almond shaped eyes looking like a bipedal armadillo and in its little hands was a white egg with yellow spots here and there. Altair was surprised but decided to inspect the pokemon.

Pokemon Name: Sandslash

Sex: Female

Level: 24

Nature: Gentle

Ability: Sand Veil

Friendship: 0

Potential: Blue

Aptitude: 2★

Moves: Crush Claw, Scratch, Defense Curl, Sand Attack, Rollout, Fury Cutter, Bulldoze, Swift

The first thing to be noted was the Aptitude a rare aptitude pokemon if Altair could say comparing with what he has seen until now and as expected of a pokemon with large claws and spike looking things on his back looking like a porcupine with big sharp claws.

Besides that nothing, much could be pointed out, although it had a decent Potential.

It had a tired look on her face and was panting hard.

The zubats didn't look that tired after all there were many of them and if you looked closely to a cave not so far away from where the fight was happening there were a couple of zubats fainted on the ground. But from the look of it, Sandslash wasn't going to be able to resist for much longer.

The zubats around her weren't that strong with most being Level 15 and the strongest peaking level 17. Most had Green Potential so the bat looking thing wasn't in his eyes.

And the Sandshrew who was holding the egg tightly on his little paws with fire in his eyes. It was a weak male fellow with the same potential as the Zubats and low aptitude with was at half a star.

Altair decided to help the poor fellows since Sandslash and Sandshrew were cute pokemon and the most important thing is the fact that they are Ground type. They could be a lot of help in the farms and again they didn't look that intimidating. If you ignored the big claws everything was cute.

Besides poor Sandslash couldn't do much to the Zubats who attacked it in the air with Supersonic and Absorb which was really bad to her.. Without further thoughts, Altair commanded decisively while pointing at a Zubat.

''Lucario you see that big one right there flying? I want you to attack it, use Laser Focus and then Quick Attack.''

Lucario looked at her owner and nodded and got to action.

It began to concentrate and a slight changed in aura came, Lucario was battle ready and locked onto her target in the next instant it disappeared to then appear in mid air beside her target and just punched it.

The strongest Zubbat who wasn't expecting this was hit and went flying onto the ground. For the unfortunate fellow Sandslash was paying attention to it since it gave her the most threat and didn't even hesitate to use her move Rollout.

She curled into a ball and began to spin while a dark Brown aura involved her then she took off to punish her enemy. It was a fast move and coupled with the fact that Zubat was in the ground obviously because the hit of Lucario dealt a lot of damage to it, and without having time to recuperate Zubat got hit and fainted.

Altair looked at the choice of the Sandslash and couldn't help but nod his head in approval. In the case of zubats who are a poison/Flying type pokemon Rock Type abilities will do double the damage to it and pokemon like Sandslash like it's name implies will prefer to just use their claws to attack their enemies. Faced with that Zubat had no chance.

The other Zubats in the air didn't stay put and immediately attacked Lucario who was still falling to the ground. Zubats have a keen sense since they don't have eyes the other senses are actually developed so although they couldn't react to the fast speed of Lucario but when it is falling things are quite different, since it didn't have any way to move or dodge.

So a couple of Zubats used the move Supersonic and did a strange sound that released sonic waves in the direction of Lucario. Supersonic was a move that had the change of placing a pokemon in a confused state.

Altair who saw this yelled without delay.

''Lucario use Screech then use Calm Mind.''

Lucario who saw the incoming waves opened her mouth and a screeching sound could be heard. Then it closed her eyes still in mid fall and completely focused on the tear drop in her mind who fell onto a water surface and caused ripples.

Actually, the idea of Altair was quite simple since pokemon like zubat had a keen sense of earing above all using Screech that made a loud sound would disturb them, and then calm mind would reduce the effects of Supersonic.

And he was right, when the Zubats heard the screech then became disorientated for a little while., and this period of time was enough for Lucario in Calm Mind to open her eyes without signs of the confusion state that could come by being hit by Supersonic.

After that, the battle became easier and easier, and both Sandslash and Lucario, mostly Lucario breezed through the remaining Zubats that didn't have much resistance and fainted.