96-Amorphize

Tanya squints at the empty space above her outstretched arm, focusing completely on the instructions found in the training book for protect, augmented further by every memory of seeing the move done.

Reflexively at the thought of a shield spell, mental equations stir as psychic energy buzzes just outside of her core where it’s normally converted from the wellspring of raw power. But with a little effort she draws her attention back to the strange raw energy that allows her to heal and shrink, still so familiar yet alien.

For reasons unintuitive to her, protect does not use psychic energy. It uses neutral or ‘normal’ type energy, though the latter term has been phased out of scientific literature for close to ten years now.

The training book was of… limited help. But the more technical side of things describing the method that the shield worked was interesting.

The move is, in essence, an ablative layer of crystalized energy projected from every single cell in the body, an almost perfect defence against any kinetic or energy based attack. Of particular note to Tanya, because the shield emanates from every cell in the body and distributes any force evenly across the user, it can completely negate damage from a long fall.

The math and physics behind the move is still not completely understood, according to the book new research forced several parts of the book to be rewritten as recently as last year. But the confirmed parts are fascinating. The energy shield acts like the laws of material science are flipped on their head, the instantaneous moment of energy transfer above a certain threshold makes the shield become harder yet no more brittle, with seemingly no limit.

The actual damage only occurs when the slope of the energy curve starts to tilt downward.

Personally, Tanya is skeptical of any absolute statement like that, but apparently in current scientific literature there is a very real question on if it’s possible for a shield to break, so long as the energy impacting it is always increasing.

But the same durability is its main weakness, because once generated the structure cannot be altered, even by the creator. It also takes around ten minutes to dissolve on its own, which means in any given fight the move can barely be used more than twice before the underlying structure breaks and it’s essentially forced on ‘cooldown.’

Worse still, that rigidity also means there’s not very much in the way of training it to be stronger. Training to deploy the move faster is recommended, but the actual strength of the move between a complete novice and an elite four team member is roughly equal.

Of course the moment she’d learned about the move she’d been thinking of ways to bypass it. Any ‘moves’ amplified by energy, barring a few examples that simply bypass the shield entirely, simply don't work.

The explosions of her eggs, which are essentially just pure unstable normal energy, fall squarely into the category despite the fact that she can both see and hear through the shield. But because the shield is porous to both light and sound, it leaves open the idea of entirely mundane bright lights and loud noises to disorient the opponent.

Acquiring or creating a flashbang seems… inadvisable for a variety or reasons. But many kinds of equipment are permitted in the ruleset, the restrictions are more aimed to prevent a ‘mon from bringing in something like… a repel, a tub of sleep powder, or another ‘mon in their pokeball.

Tanya does not hope very often, but she very much hopes the event that made it necessary to add that last restriction is as funny as she thinks it is.

From her reading the rules say nothing about a mundane, but very bright, flashlight. Unless it falls under the purview of the rule prohibiting equipment ‘designed to mimic or create the illusion thereof, the abilities of another Pokemon.’

The fact the most common thing a ‘mon brings onto the field are healing items feels like a bit of hypocrisy from her perspective, but debating rule interpretations are several steps down the line. She’s not even certain a flashlight would work, one of the many things that need to be tested to determine the limits of the shield.

Assuming Tanya can actually cast the damn move!

She narrows her eyes further at the lack of crystalized energy, humming an irritated growl in her throat as she tries to bypass the emotional component and succeed through brute force

Because of course the way the move is taught normally uses another emotional component. It seems to be a running theme for normal type energy. Though this time it’s even less achievable for her, because it’s asking for a very particular mixture of surprise and fear, the kind one feels when they notice something moving toward them very quickly.

That flinch, the instinctive response of someone realizing they’re about to get hit a quarter second before it happens but powerless to do anything about it is the goal here. Some lines of ‘mon find it comes naturally, mudkip for example, almost every mudkip at the nursery learned the move within the first month of her meeting them.

But Tanya doesn't really get startled like that, even before her aerial mage training she wasn't one to overreact, but afterwards she was trained to never let her mana slip from anything less than complete control no matter what. Keeping her spells up and perfectly unwavering even when dazed by shockwaves or hit by shrapnel was a matter of life and death, and she’d learned the lessons well, so she’s not going to be taking any ‘reflexive actions’ without thinking.

Especially not for the… quaint methods the book suggests to startle a ‘mon.

The training manual explicitly forbids trainers from things like throwing rocks at their partners without warning. Which apparently is a practice so popular the author felt the need to repeatedly state that the ‘damage to their bond’ is not worth it.

So the book was nearly useless, save for a few chapters near the back, an academic description of the aural structure of the move, and some accompanying diagrams which gave her a place to start from.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Because she knows what the end product is supposed to look like, and if it’s so simple some ‘mon do it reflexively, all she needs to do is…

Tanya squints at the empty space, and almost loses concentration as a ghostly blue hexagon flickers into view. But she holds on, the world fading until there’s nothing but her and this unstable chunk of energy.

She can feel it, like a rock emerging from the normally liquid nature of her energy, drinking in power as one hexagon becomes two, then three, then–

Saying she thuds against the tree that appears in front of her would be an exaggeration, more accurately, she bounces.

The ‘mon staggers back, struggling to keep from falling over backward as the nascent protect shatters into blue shards sent twirling through the air by the rapidly windmilling limb.

She doesn't fall over, but it’s a near thing, and any hope that no one else had seen that die with the sound of laughter in front of her.

Trying to salvage some amount of her dignity, Tanya looks over at the group with an unamused expression as she begins walking over like nothing happened. This manages to silence everyone but Amelia, and to a lesser extent Swellow.

The avian has the courtesy to at least pretend to no longer be laughing.

“Ahm. Ah. Any progress on protect?” Amelia asks, coughing into her fist as Tanya gets closer.

The ‘mon can only sigh.

“Marginal, but progress is progress.” She says, then twitches as she hears an irritated growl.

“Oh so you can hear her just fine.” Teddiursa complains from where she’s carrying him with one arm. “Can you put me down now?”

Tanya looks down, surprised to see the ‘mon in her grasp, then nods as she lowers him to the ground.

She’s not sure where she picked up this habit, but for some reason at least once per day she finds that she’d picked Teddiursa up without realizing it.

“Sorry.” She says, remembering at the last minute to inject a small amount of fake enthusiasm into her voice.

Tanya’s still not… quite sure how to interact with the ‘mon. She’d put on such a fake personality because she’d assumed their interactions would be brief. But now that he’s going to be here for however long it takes for Tanya to force him back to his mother, she's in a bit of a tough spot.

Especially in the first few days when he was highly suspicious of everyone else, alienating herself by just dropping the act could only cause problems. Thankfully in the few days since he’d come under their care, Teddiursa has warmed up to Amelia and, to a lesser extent, the other trainers.

Which means he’s no longer shadowing her every step with suspicious looks at everyone else like in the first day or two, a very welcome change. Because now that he’s more connected with others, she’d been able to slowly wean him off the synthetic personality.

It’s not quite done yet, but with just a little more time she’ll be able to drop this insulting mask.

“Hey Chansey?” Amelia calls, drawing Tanya out of her thoughts. “Mind helping with the map?”

Tanya blinks, then notices Tyler staring down at the map with a frustrated squint of the eyes, glancing up and down in the familiar rhythm of someone realizing their assumed position doesn't match reality.

Walking over, she already has a good idea of where they are, so it only takes a moment for her to glance at the map then look to where the matching terrain feature is to confirm…

Hm.

Tanya pauses as their assumed position doesn't match, then checks again more carefully, confirming that yes, they are of course somehow.

She narrows her eyes, pulling out a compass from her pack to get precise bearing on a few terrain features which, with some educated trigonometric guess and check, gives their position.

“We’re not on the main route.” She states, pointing at where they actually are. “We seem to have gone onto a secondary subroute about an hour ago. We’ll link back up with the main trail in another hour.”

These subroutes are the bane of the inexperienced navigator, because most routes don't have one trail, most areas have four or five subroutes branching and interweaving around a central trail. Even worse, subroutes can change year to year, and are almost always slower than the main route. Thankfully, unless someone is completely hopeless at navigation it’s still impossible to get lost. Because barring one or two exceptions, no subroute ever transfers to a different route.

Tyler, despite not actually understanding anything she said –which Tanya realizes only after finishing her explanation– clearly picks up the gist of her pointing at their location.

He groans, aggressively folding the map.

“Really!? How in the world did we miss the main route?” The trainer complains, forced to repeatedly try and refold the map properly after his frustrated first attempt. “We’re practically in picnic range of Fallarbor for crying out loud.”

“...She could be wrong this time?” Kate suggests, but her tone of voice makes it clear how unlikely she thinks that is.

The suggestion seems to trigger a thought, and after a second Sam looks at Amelia. “Actually, how is Chansey so good with maps? No offense but I’ve seen you trying to navigate, you’re way worse than her.”

Tanya squints at him while Amelia forms her response, allowing the minor flare of irritation at the assumption she’s incapable of learning without Amelia teaching her wash over the ‘mon without comment.

She’d really not had to deal with this until she’d been forced to interact with trainers Amelia’s age for extended periods, but for some reason there’s this kind of… humano-supremacist assumption that the only way a ‘mon can get good at something is if a human taught them the skill.

It’s mostly centered around human skills like cartography or basic literacy. Which, in the case of a ‘mon that has lived their entire life in the forest, it makes sense to assume they don't know. But quite literally the first thing Tanya saw when she hatched was a human face, so the assumption is both inaccurate and slightly insulting.

Amelia shrugs after a moment, tilting her head in thought.

“I dunno actually, she’s just got a knack for it I guess, I mean we both studied the same stuff and practiced the same amou– oh.” She cuts herself off, eyes flicking over to Tanya with a guilty expression.

Her obvious alarm draws attention.

“Oh? You figure something ou–”

“Nope!” Amelia cuts Sam off aggressively. “No idea! She’s just naturally talented at cartography or something. Hey Chansey, Swellow figured out how to do tailwind, but it’s really weak right now. I was thinking you can learn how to move around inside of its area of effect while we train it stronger. Swellow!”

With that the Joy starts powerwalking away, leaving Tanya blinking at the abrupt change in topic and then Amelia’s retreating back, confused at the seeming random–

Oh. Right. Amelia knows.

The ‘mon huffs at herself, then starts trudging after her partner.

It really should be harder to forget that.