Chapter 31

The last few weeks have been interesting as well as productive for us, managing to get a good amount of training down and letting the Pokémon work on their various moves has been a world of good.

Cinder, Gastly and Abra have progressed very well in their proficiency and I'm seeing a clear improvement in the efficacy of their moves. Being used faster and in various ways that have been differing from the games or anime that I remember.

It really puts into perspective the differing worlds and the versatility of the typing energy. I have found that they are really only limited when they first learn the move, or it shows up on their status. The newness of the move itself leads into a very basic usage and quite simply it works the way you expect it to, nothing more, nothing less.

Then as they use the moves and work on their usage it has started changing, Cinder's 'fire fang' saw him being able to change the temperature of the fire slightly and it started off with the move initially impacting at the start and dealing some additional damage from the fire.

Then with the increase in proficiency and control over the temperature, he started leaving flames behind more frequently after the initial impact from the move. This made me think that maybe along with the temperature control of the move, the increased proficiency will also increase the chance of inflicting the recipient with the status effect 'burn'.

That has been the major change for Cinder, no clear sign that he is learning a new move yet, firstly due to us focusing on his proficiency with his existing moves, and secondly, I'm not too sure I want to proceed much further until he can use 'Dragon Breath'.

Finding a way to use another type energy that he doesn't normally have an affinity with is challenging without any dragon Pokémon to work with. I just get the feeling that having the use of that different type energy sorted out before he eventually evolves into Charizard would be extremely beneficial.

With how quick the team has improved their affinity to their various type energies it made me think that possibly the younger they are the easier it is to do so. Kind of like it is easier to teach a younger child a new language than an adult. They haven't had a long life to get used to a certain system and something new feeling too foreign.

This has led to Abra being the outlier in that without training for the move specifically, just from what I'm assuming working on her psychic type energy affinity and use of 'confusion' she had managed to learn 'Psychic'. Now it is only at the (Beginner) level and doesn't show too much improvement, from what I'm guessing her being just an Abra. Maybe when she evolves into Kadabra we will see an exponential increase in her psionic ability.

Gastly has been getting very close to the normal level he would evolve to Haunter, hence focusing on his affinity with Ghost type energy is important as I believe the better affinity the easier it is to complete that final push.

Just like with Cinder and his evolution to Charmeleon, he didn't have a massive battle or incident that caused him to evolve. Which led me to think that the increased affinity assisted the evolution.

Gastly's 'payback' has been a very interesting move to see improved. Or not improved per se but utilised in a different way. For some of his more physically inclined moves that require contact like 'lick' he does make himself relatively solid letting him interact with other people or animals.

What he has worked out is that by utilising his surroundings he has been able to use other objects to inflict the initial damage while using 'payback' this has then charged him up after storing the initial hit and use the energy to hit the target.

Now this doesn't have the same amount of damage as normal due to the move doubling the attack when you use 'payback' against the same thing that did the damage, but being able to charge yourself up and then unleash energy that is beyond a normal attack has been extremely useful.

The only downside to this though is that he is still damaging himself by certain objects, now Gastly has been able to gradually mitigate the damage with the increased proficiency, however, is it still a work in progress.

Finally, the Egg has been showing some changes, nothing major I have just been starting to feel some kind of energy start to radiate out from within. It doesn't resemble any of the types that my team currently has, it feels much lighter and... free..er I suppose, it's hard to put it into words but that's all I can feel.

We are just going to have to see what comes out of the shell, I can only just hope that we don't have any problems. Which leads into the other area I've been focusing on recently, the gangs… I cannot believe just how widespread it is, from all the canvasing we've been doing and investigating it has really put into perspective just how much of a problem it is.

It is an extremely daunting task and from the numbers I'm seeing, I think that my current team may not be at a level where we can take them down with enough haste to stop them covering their tracks and popping up in another area away from where I operate.

I hate to say this but if I want to effectively put them down, I may have to enlist some aid outside of my current team. I am confident however that if I was targeted by some of the government agencies that are currently tracking me down, I can protect myself and escape if needed.

I just don't want to put myself in a position that will draw too much attention until I have a fully evolved team and system in place to prevent any leaks mentally and digitally.

Though from what I remember the main group targeting me would be the best to work with, they have shown time and time again in the various media that they are the good guys; and let's face it, Black Widow is very easy on the eyes so there's that.