Spoon: 6.3 Palate Cleanser (Patreon)

Aaron’s Pokemon

- Artoria (Kirlia)- Jeanne (Flaaffy)- Durvasa (Primeape)- Magellan (Chikorita)- Bearded Dragon Nuggies (Larvesta)

Palate Cleanser 6.3

Aaron FulanAmbertown

The next morning, I got up early to make good on my promise to the nurse. My team and I chopped wood, spread mulch in a nearby garden, and pitched hay bales with borrowed pitchforks. It was honestly pretty fun, a nice bit of novelty to mix up our regular morning training.

“You know, I didn’t think those martial arts movies were real,” Lyle, the nurse on-call in the mornings, said.

“Why? Psychics, mediums, and other aura users are well-documented,” I pointed out. I brought my sword down, its aura-honed edge slicing through a log. Next to me Artoria did the same. “There have been several such orders in history, even just in Hoenn.”

“Maybe, but Ambertown isn’t anything special. We don’t get fancy folks like you out here very often.”

“Fair enough. Feel free to boss around the rest of my team. They can use the workout.”

“Haha, thanks. It’s nice to give our own pokemon a break and there’s always plenty to do in a rural place like this.”

We finished by mid-morning. For my trouble, I got a small, four pound wheel of smoked cheese and a basket full of eggs. This was that kind of place, the sort where favors and neighborly conduct were as valid a legal tender as League credits.

I was thrilled. Smoked cheese was delicious, though far harder to get a hold of in the average supermarket. Lyle’s brother owned one of the ranches nearby and smoked cheese from both regular cow and miltank milk. The result was something that reminded me of cheddar but wasn’t as sharp because it’d been smoked rather than allowed to age normally.

‘This is far too many eggs, my lord,’ Artoria observed. 

‘You might be right. But he looked so earnest. I didn’t want to say no,’ I said sheepishly. Lyle gave us six pounds of eggs, which was about four dozen of them. ‘I mean, we definitely can eat all these before they spoil even with Jeanne abstaining.’

‘Yes, but they’re a little inconvenient to carry, even with a hammerspace bag. Should we crack them all into a few bottles?’

‘That’s not a bad idea. We could have omelets for days by just dripping a bit onto a pan. We already do this with pancake batter.’

She licked her lips as our shared link filled with a myriad of omelet toppings. ‘There shall be a feast of eggs. They will pair perfectly with the smoked cheese.’

‘Maybe with half of these. I can make some ajitama as well. They’re basically just soft-boiled eggs marinated in soy sauce and mirin.’

‘Yes, my lord, that sounds excellent. They taste better the longer they marinate so we will not feel pressured to eat them all at once.’

As we were considering what to do with the eggs, Durvasa grabbed one and popped it whole into his mouth. The brittle crunch of eggshells followed a wet, slurping noise. He swished the contents around in his mouth before raising both thumbs up. They had the sage’s seal of approval.

A thread of string shot out, latching onto a brown egg. Larvesta reeled it in like a fishing line. Emulating her big brother, she took a big bite. Her mandibles crunched into the egg, boring twin holes through the shell. Then, tilting her head back, she drank from it like a frat boy shotgunning a can of Bud Light, with a good third of it splashing around her.

“Lar? Larvesta!” she chirped as she swayed back and forth on her abdomen and hind legs. Her aura blazed with joy, especially when she got to the yolk.

“Huh… You really like the flavor?” I asked in surprise.

Durvasa could eat anything; he grew up in the wild and wasn’t picky about where his nutrition came from. Larvesta, on the other hand, was born to me. So far, she’d only ever consumed the highest quality baby formula I could get my hands on and the occasional berry.

It was a sweet, nectar-based formula designed specifically for young bug types. There was a bit of royal jelly in there as well, derived from a number of vespiquen hives the company kept. It was supposed to contain everything a young bug type needed to mature quickly.

Given Larvesta’s love of sweets, I hadn’t expected her to like the flavor of egg yolks so much. Then again, maybe this was a sign that she was ready for a more varied diet. It was about that time anyway, every expert guide on bug types said I should ween my baby pokemon off the formula after a few weeks so as to not develop an unnecessary dependence. 

I wondered if this was because egg yolks were also meant for babies. I remembered reading that the egg yolk was nature’s perfect superfood, containing every amino acid and vitamin a growing chick needed. Maybe that was true, maybe not, I was just happy to have stumbled on a food Larvesta ate so readily. And, it also happened to be dirt-cheap.

We’d opted to eat outside. Next to us was my portable stove, with Larvesta’s bed-wok cleaned and full of water. She was happy to sit beneath the wok and get the fire going.

I set a timer to soft-boil the eggs for six minutes and thirty seconds while we ate from the pokemon center’s cafeteria. Larvesta had been very excited to learn that cooked eggs tasted even better, at least to a point. She was especially fond of jammy yolk.

When I told her that ajitama was my favorite egg dish, she planted her fuzzy butt in front of the timer and stared it down like it owed her money. She was very determined to make sure she could taste those soft-boiled eggs at their most perfect.

While we were eating, we were joined by the rotund monk. “Morning, Aaron. You weren’t kidding about your swordsmanship.”

“Hello, Junjie,” I greeted through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “You saw that, huh?”

He gestured up towards a second floor window that overlooked the yard. “I did. You were making quite the racket early in the morning.”

“Ah, sorry if that woke you.”

“Don’t mind that. I wake up early to meditate anyway. Reminded me of my time in the Sprout Tower, actually. The acolytes all had morning meditation, then chores before breakfast.”

“Sounds very disciplined. Does that mean every monk knows how to use aura to make themselves stronger? Can you?”

He laughed boisterously. “Bah! Of course not! Do you think psychics like you grow on trees? On top of that, blending the mental and martial arts isn’t easy. I’ve met several practitioners, but you’re an odd duck even among aura users.”

“O-Oh, that’s a pity,” I said, disappointed. I was wondering if there was some secret martial art these guys knew. Then again, maybe it was a bit much to hope for.

He must have seen my disappointment and said with a wise nod, “Aura is the discourse of all things, Aaron. It is power. It is martial splendor and psychic might. But to see it in a strictly martial pursuit is to do it a grave disservice.”

“I know, I guess I thought an order as old as Sprout Tower would have a few secrets.”

“Oh, we do. We have a fantastic soup dumpling recipe, special teas we grow to fund the tower, and meditation techniques that fortify the mind against outside influence.”

“One is not like the others,” I said dryly. “Is that how you’ve avoided being influenced by the spiritomb’s aura?”

“Yes. I can suppress most of their ghostly aura, keeping them from throwing nearby people and pokemon into a panic.”

“That explains why I can barely sense their presence, even with you right across from me. I thought it was just the spiritomb’s dark type, but you were also doing something.”

“I was.” He studied me as I removed the eggs from the wok. I handed one to Larvesta knowing the heat wouldn’t bother her. “Would you care to learn? Teaching others can also be considered a good deed, and I can tell that you are a good kid by how you treat your pokemon.”

I smiled eagerly. I was hoping I could get him to teach my team; lessons for myself was an unexpected bonus. “I’d be delighted. Do you think your pokemon can teach mine at the same time?”

“That works for me. I’ll warn you now: This won’t be easy or quick. I am not a natural psychic. While your bloodline gives you an advantage in certain methods of aura manipulation, what you are learning may be different from what you have been taught.”

“That’s okay. Where are you going, Junjie? I am headed to Fallarbor Town. If you don’t have a specific destination, can you travel with me for a while?”

“I think I will. You did say you were the ranger-designated cacturne bait, yes? Perhaps I will gain more chances to save lives if I walk by your side,” he said with a teasing laugh.

And so, I gained a master. Go Junjie hated being called “sifu,” but he had much to teach me nonetheless.

X

We didn’t remain long in Ambertown after that. A part of me wanted to go see the bouffalant herd, but I decided to reach Fallarbor a day earlier instead. Chaz had grown; I was eager to see exactly how much.

My new master saw my team train on the move and decided this suited him fine. Given his frame, he preferred a slower pace of walking, anyway. As it turned out, he hasn’t been messing with me; every one of his pokemon were really named after food. 

Other than Pork and Chive Soup Dumpling, there was Beedrill Chowder the victreebel, Pumpkin Taffy the hitmonlee, Cherry Blossom Mochi the machamp, and the zen mode variant of darmanitan called Rage Candy Bar.

Only the spiritomb lacked a name on account of their inability to decide on a collective favorite food. Currently, they were in a deadlock between mind-numbing depression, blinding rage, and ginger pork.

“How did you end up with a darmanitan? And a rare, zen mode variant at that?” I asked him as we strolled along the road.

“Haha, funny story, that. I happened to be in Goldenrod City when they were having an antique auction. I am somewhat familiar with the history of Johto so I was asked to become a guest appraiser. Turned out, I was just one of several people who were tapped. The organizers brought in some relics from other regions as well.”

I eyed the monkey-like pokemon that floated alongside us. He looked like an egg, limbs atrophied and curled against his body as he floated along. His fur had matted and turned gray, petrifying into a stone-like texture. “Don’t tell me. Did someone mistake him for a statue?”

“That’s right. Some rich fellow imported one for his collection from Unova. Cherry Blossom Mochi was eating a rage candy bar and well, the smell must have woken him from his slumber.”

“That’s hilarious. The name doesn’t really fit him, though. Rage Candy Bar? A zen mode darmanitan is very, well, zen.”

“Maybe, but he likes it well enough. He says that it is a reminder that temperance can be sweet. What about you? Have you thought of a name for your larvesta?”

So, I told him about each of my pokemons’ dreams. A psychic who followed the path of the sword. A lamb who wanted to shine like the sun. A monkey who sought nirvana. A dinosaur who wanted to see his ancestral forest. They received names that described their passions. Until Larvesta found a dream worth pursuing, she’d remain just “Larvesta.”

That was how we spent the next few days. As we walked, our pokemon naturally paired off, his more experienced team telling mine about their many adventures. Such lessons were one part moral philosophy and one part combat training rolled into one.

Durvasa gained the most from this by far. In a way, Rage Candy Bar was everything he wanted to be, a powerful, aggressive pokemon who found inner peace. The darmanitan had even unlocked a secondary type because of it.

Yet, in another way, the darmanitan was everything he didn’t want. Rage Candy Bar, contrary to his name, was utterly passive, happy to let the world pass on by. In fact, that was exactly what he’d done for countless years before an archeological team discovered him in Unova.

I couldn’t see Durvasa ever living that kind of life. The life of an ascetic, closed off from the world, wasn’t at all like him. He wanted enlightenment and adventure. His would be a self-actualization achieved through experiencing all that the world had to offer, not self-imposed isolation.

Even so, talking with someone who’d chosen his own path so many years ago did him a lot of good. Until now, “enlightenment” was a nebulous thing. It was tied to evolution, but he didn’t really know what it looked like. By seeing an example of “zen,” Durvasa was beginning to prune the tree of possibilities. One day, he’d arrive at an answer that suited him.

Artoria gravitated towards Cherry Blossom Mochi, Junjie’s machamp. At first, I thought she’d also prefer to speak with the darmanitan, seeing how he too had deviated from what most expected of his species, but that was the only similarity they shared. Their actual fighting styles and outlooks were far too different.

Instead, she spent most of our travel time testing her new moonstone sword against the machamp.

He was a master of punching techniques who could use a number of elements simultaneously. There were the elemental punches of course, but Mochi also knew Bullet Punch, Poison Jab, and even the rare Dual Chop. By clashing against various aura types, she began to understand what exactly a “fae sword” could do.

Watching them made me feel so proud. As expected of my fellow sword-idiot. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have attestations from other trainers, or even dad’s clefable, Astro; this stuff just “clicked” better when she was bashing something with a stick.

In short, we learned that Artoria’s sword imposed the fairy type’s “mystery” onto the world. She found that fairy type energy was especially effective at dispersing other elements. Whether it was Fire Punch or Ice Punch, that elemental energy became more ethereal, for lack of a better word. 

This didn’t prevent Mochi from simply using the move again and the effect seemed to be completely absent on steel type aura. Still, each exchange made it more difficult for Mochi to focus elemental energy into his fists. It was a persistent effect that drove Artoria’s opponents to engage on her terms.

A bit more experimentation comparing Jeanne’s Thunder Shock and Thunder Punch showed us that distance mattered. Dispersing aura into the air taxed the opponent’s control. Naturally, most pokemon had a much easier time overcoming this effect up close than at range. I wondered if this was why, in the game, many fairy type pokemon had high special defense. Moonblast also lowered special attack, if I recalled.

Meanwhile, Magellan learned from Beedrill Chowder, Junjie’s victreebel and starter. The large victreebel hitched a ride on my chikorita’s back as they talked. Once in a while, he would demonstrate a technique and Magellan would dutifully stop to replicate it. There must have been something to it because my little dino was enraptured.

What Magellan needed wasn’t yet another move on his plate. He needed guidance from an older grass type to firm up his foundations, tricks of the trade that could only be learned from experience. Over the days, I noticed that his Synthesis became more efficient. He could also imbue more aura into his seeds, whether for Stim Shot or Seed Bomb.

That left me, Jeanne, and Larvesta.

As much as I wanted to learn to suppress ghost types with my aura, that turned out to be a tall order. Junjie wasn’t actually a bad monk, at least where it counted. Sure, he scarfed down red meat like a mightyena and puffed on his pipe often enough to send smoke signals to torkoal, but he knew his stuff.

He made it look easy, but what he was doing with the spiritomb was the result of decades of spiritual discipline. I was a competent psychic and a master swordsman. But I wasn’t a monk. The core of his monastic tradition, to “sway like a bellsprout, yet remain rooted in one’s truth,” wasn’t something I could pick up over night, or even in a week.

I hated to admit it, but I was forced to give up on learning his tricks. I picked up a new breathing exercise, but that was as much as I could hope to learn in so short a time. It might turn into something eventually, but not right now. Instead, I spent my time training with Larvesta and Jeanne.

Jeanne was delighted to spend so much time with her youngest sister. It wasn’t often that she got the uninterrupted opportunity to corrupt the Larvesta to her adorkable, attention-whoring ways. At first, I worried that she’d be distracted and wouldn’t practice as hard, but it was the opposite: She had an audience, so she had to give two hundred percent effort.

Once I got done practicing our contest routine with Jeanne, she and I took Larvesta and began target practice. Larvesta didn’t know many moves, just Ember, String Shot, Flame Charge, and what the dex told me was the beginnings of what would eventually become Morning Sun, so we worked with what we had.

“Let’s go, Larvesta. We’re going to play a game, okay?” I said. She was young enough that I had to coax her into training like this.

“Lar? Larvesta?” she chirped.

“Yup, a game. Jeanne is going to call something out as we walk by. Then, she’s going to hit it with Thunder Shock. You then have to hit it with Ember. We’ll see if you’re as accurate as your big sister.”

“Lar… Larvesta?” she tilted her head. She gave it due consideration before rolling on her back and wiggling her legs in the air. “Vesta.”

“Really? Hmm… If you’re perfectly accurate, you get to have an egg.”

“Vesta? Larvesta.”

“And yes, I’ll swing you around.”

“Flaaffy,” Jeanne bleated judgingly.

“Hey, it’s not my fault she likes being swung around like a rope dart,” I said defensively.

“Flaaf.”

“I only did it once! Besides, she’d be fine even if I dropped her. Sure, she’s not a metapod, but she’s still a pokemon.”

“Flaaffy, flaafy-flaaf.”

Whatever she said, I denied all wrongdoing. It wasn’t my fault the moth-to-be liked catching some air.

It happened the night we left Ambertown. After I finished using Larvesta’s wok, I’d yet to wash it and she decided to burrow into the middle of my still-wrapped sleeping bag like a fuzzy croissant. I didn’t notice, so I returned and unfurled the sleeping bag with a sharp shake. It sent the little bug flying through the air, only to be caught by Magellan’s vines.

For a moment, I forgot how durable pokemon could be and almost had a heart attack. Then, she decided she loved getting flung around and attached a String Shot to my hand so I could swing her like a yoyo. That was how I ended up with a secondary weapon, a meteor hammer.

Did I know how to use one? No.

Was spinning a flaming bug on a rope hilarious? Yes.

I jokingly considered doing this for my appeal round at the Fallarbor contest. Alas, it didn’t demonstrate anything beyond Larvesta’s immunity to motion sickness.

What really mattered was that Larvesta seemed somewhat interested in contests. Having seen Jeanne and I perform in Lavaridge, she thought it could be fun, even if she lacked a proper appeal. For now, that interest was more than enough.

Author’s Note

Kind of a training chapter. I figured I’d take the chance to list out the bread and butter moves Aaron’s team knows according to my spreadsheet. This isn’t everything, but more or less encapsulates their fighting styles.

Artoria

Standard Moves: Protect, Shadow Sneak, Teleport, Double Team, Reflect, Light Screen

Custom Moves: Mana Burst, Mana Step, Sword Aura (Psychic, Fae, Fire, Ghost)

Currently Training: Life Dew, Excali-Spoon(?)

Jeanne

Standard Moves: Thunder Wave, Shock Wave, Electro Ball, Thunderbolt, Thunder Punch, Fire Punch, Charge, Electric Terrain (egg move), Cotton Spore, Agility, Protect

Custom Moves: Rasengan(?), Baa-douken?

Currently Training: Iron Tail & Thoramin

Durvasa

Standard Moves: Encore, Taunt, Focus Energy, Detect, Karate Chop, Low Kick, Cross Chop, Fire Punch, Assurance, Swift, Boxing

Custom Moves: NA

Currently Training: Focus Blast

Magellan

Standard Moves: Razor Leaf, Vine Whip, Protect, Synthesis, Leech Seed, Poison Powder, Ancient Power (egg move)

Custom Moves: Stim Shot

Currently Training: Reflect, Light Screen, Seed Bomb

Larvesta

Standard Moves: String Shot, Ember, Flame Charge, Morning Sun (egg move)

Custom Moves: Wok Preparation (It’s an important life skill.)

Currently Training: Being a yoyo.

Animal Fact: What happens when we dive too deep?

Well, at a certain pressure, our lungs would shrink. All the oxygen in those air sacs would be forcibly squeezed out and into the bloodstream. This would oxygenate our blood to toxic levels.

So… How do whales do it? They’re also mammals, which means they have lungs, right?

Whales have a flexible ribcage. Rather than trying to withstand the immense pressure as-is, their ribs can fold in alongside their lungs. Their lungs will deflate and collapse. Except, unlike us, this is by design.

All that oxygen has to go somewhere. And yes, it does go into the bloodstream. To handle this influx, whale cells can contain anywhere from ten to thirty times more myoglobin, the protein that stores oxygen, than a human cell.