Chapter 6: Chapter 6 – She Who Professed Herself The Move Tutor

Now that we were settled down, and I wasn’t either injured or in major danger, I finally got to do the one thing I wanted to accomplish the moment I ended up in another world. Learn moves! Use Magic-Like attacks! Break the System! 

 

After finishing my meal, I opened my mouth as I urged Iris for water, rehydrating myself before bowing down to Iris. “Sensei!!!” 

 

Iris, startled by my shouting and enthusiasm turned to look at me from her spot on the ground. “...me?” 

 

“Yes… Please, teach me how to acquire moves.” I stood back up as my bare legs did not enjoy being pushed into the hard ground by the rest of my body. I flicked my hair backwards as it was annoyingly going over my shoulder and in front of my chest.

 

“Hmm… It just randomly happens I guess?.” 

 

“...” 

 

While that was the most unhelpful thing I could’ve heard from her, I can’t really refute her… methods since I’m a prime example of that method working. Ms Learning Leafage mid-battle and then Razor Leaf. And while I have no idea how I managed to get ‘Leafage’ nor do I know the move in general since I don’t recall a crappier Razor Leaf, I suspect that maybe I got Razor Leaf because I used the weaker version of it multiple times, a natural step in the skill tree or something like that. Not that this theory helped with getting new, different moves. 

 

“You said earlier you learnt to water in a month? How’d you do that?”

 

“I was taught by Alessia's Lapras, I spent all my time trying to shoot out water quickly, it was really annoying. And while I technically did learn it in a month it wasn’t really usable until I did more training.” 

 

How was my first question, How did a Petilil shoot water out of her mouth? How did I never notice the lack of said mouth? Why did I only notice this just now? 

 

Back to my first theory about moves, it kind of matches here. She tried imitating a weaker version of it and slowly built up to actually using the move itself. All you'd need is knowledge of what that move actually did or have someone teach it to you, thankfully I had that knowledge from up to Gen 6... learning Leafage was a move really took me for a loop. That begged the question., What makes it a ‘move’, who’s naming these things, who creates them, who decides they are a ‘move.’ 

 

“So… you just do it over and over again until it works? Will I take as long as you did?” I asked, Ignoring my current brain implosion. 

 

“It should be much shorter for you, I wouldn’t be surprised if it took less than a day, though how well it’d work in battle is a different story, it also depends on the move. It only took me so long because it was water gun.” 

 

That was good news. I had FOUR moves I wanted to learn immediately. Grass Knot, Magical Leaf, Leaf Blade and Energy Ball. Particularly in that order. Over the course of my time down here I’ve come to love Iris’s usage of Grass Knot and I want to replicate the success she has with it. ‘So how do I make a root sprout from the ground…’ 

 

“Iris, how’d you learn Grass Knot?” 

 

“I had from when I was first born.” What a pain, Why wasn’t I reborn into a Pokemon… actually that would suck big time. Mentally removing Grass Knot from the list, I thankfully had 3 other moves I wanted, with the next in line being Magical Leaf. ‘...how do you… make a leaf magical?’ 

 

“Iris, how’d you learn Magical Leaf?” 

 

“Hmm… I got it after battling against some Pokemon, I didn’t do anything special so I was confused about it at the time.” 

 

“...”  

 

Ruling out Magical Leaf as well, the next in line was… Leaf Blade. A staple in any fantasy, who wouldn’t want to wield a magic-ish sword? Plus if I’m ever caught in melee range I can use it to compensate for my shortened reach. 

 

I looked at Iris, opening my mouth ready to ask again before stopping myself. Maybe asking her again wasn’t a good idea... Luckily, as someone who watched a bit of Pokemon, I have a fairly good idea about how I might acquire Leaf Blade. Meet the predecessor of finger guns, the finger blade. Sceptile replaced that leaf thing on their wrist and it becomes Leaf Blade so by also using a body part it should work… hopefully. 

 

And thus I went to work, firstly I used [Leafage] purely to get a grasp on this aura stuff, I never really paid attention to how this all works, it just happens. Though from the feeling of it, it seems like I’m just expelling out aura, how it turns into a leaf is beyond me. 

 

Iris, distracted from whatever she was preoccupied with, looked towards me with a frown. “Ayla.” 

 

“I’m not shooting at rocks again I promise.” Now with a decent grasp of the feeling of aura, I focused on my middle finger. Why the middle? F you! But also because it was the longest finger. Thus with a single desire to make my finger turn into a leaf, I stared at my hand, everything else in my view becoming a blur. 

 

“...”

 

With limited success, I channeled whatever aura into my right-hand middle finger, spending an undefined amount of time before I felt like I had a decent amount in my finger, however, nothing appeared to have happened. Odd, what else do I have to do… If I recall it was less like a leaf and more like a green glowing sickle. 

 

And so I did the next best thing, Imagination. I tried pumping even more aura into my finger, making an attempt to coat the whole thing instead of just pushing everything into the finger. While doing so I held an image of both the Sceptile’s leaf blade and a regular blade in my mind, hoping for some result. 

 

“...”

 

Time itself became a blur, I closed my eyes to focus all my senses on feeling out my finger, the energy and the image of a sword. I mentally repeated ‘sharp’ in my head over and over again, and then it felt like something clicked. 

 

Breaking my trance, I opened my eyes as I was met with the same tunnel we’d been in for the past hour, an irate and worried Petilil was standing on her [Grass Knot] at eye level, but what really took my attention was my now-missing middle finger replaced by a bright glowing sickle. 

 

“YES!! Iris I–”

 

“What is wrong with you?!? I’ve been calling out your name for the past 30 minutes now, do you know how worried I was?!” There went my happy mood, though I guess if she wasn’t responding like I was I’d be pretty worried as well… not that I wouldn’t do it again, it felt nice being in that trance.

 

“Ahhh– but look. Leaf Blade!!” I waved my 4 finger hand in front of her to assess. She stopped her lecture before looking at my hand, she made a weird but impressed face before snorting. “I told you you’d get it within a day. But… isn’t this too small to function in battle?” 

 

“I–I’ll have you know 3 INCHES IS PLENTY!!” That was one… upside about the sex change, size forever disclosed. The prospect of doing it was never something I even remotely considered, especially not now.

 

“Um… ok…but, your fingers aren’t even close to 3 inches?” She rebutted, weirded out by my outburst.

 

“Ahh… sorry about that. You’re right that this doesn’t really help in battle, but at least I have it now.” My future plans were to obviously extend the range but also instead of my finger being replaced I’d like to actually hold it, kind of like Lucario Bone Rush or BS-Greninja’s Cut or the shuriken thing.

 

Suddenly, my senses picked up on an aura-related object flying over towards my direction. Looking down into the tunnel was a rock flying towards me, a Geodude stood… menacingly behind it from the darkness. The rock itself was much smaller than the ones the other Geodude threw at us, smaller than a soccer ball and so I made the smartest decision I’ve thought of ever since I woke up down here. 

 

Iris, who had also noticed the sneak attack began charging up whatever attack she had prepared before I raised my right arm in front of her as if to block her off. 

 

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“?”

 

“I got this.” She looked at me worryingly but stopped her attack, seeing as this attack seemed much weaker, giving me the go-ahead to do my ingenious idea. On my right hand with my middle finger still not a finger, I rushed towards the incoming before doing the hand sign to flip someone off. As the rock and I came closer I swung my right arm in a hook, the rock and my [Leaf Blade] collided with each other, which resulted in the rock having a large cut that almost went through it, the force of the swing batting it away. 

 

“Kuu–” I clutched my right hand in pain, my ingenious idea very quickly backfired. Iris, who was at my side before I knew it, looked up at me, ignoring the fact that there was an opponent ahead of us. “W-What happened Ayla?!” 

 

“Ah.. nothing’s broken… it’s just my wrist in pain…” While my idea had been to very skillfully cut it down the middle, having the rocks split before going past me from separate sides, looking very cool. I panicked when the rock was in my face and swung my arm horizontally. Regardless of the angle, it wouldn’t have worked, the blade itself was the length of an 11-year-old girl’s finger and swinging your finger to hit a hard object flying at you isn’t very practical and was a quick way to screw over your wrist. Thankfully, nothing broke. 

 

Iris, seeing that I was relatively okay, looked up towards the Geodude who took the time to slowly hop towards us. ‘The difference between the two is night and day…’ 

 

The plant shot out [Magical Leaf] at the rock and through some sheer level of luck managed to avoid the incoming leaves. Seeing through the plan, I shot out my own [Razor Leaf] at the rock, dozens of leaves targeting the rock. Geodude made an attempt to dodge before roots from below held his arms in place, stopping his hop entirely. 

 

Unfortunately for him, his lack of knowledge failed him as the leaves from earlier had circled back around to try and hit him again, at the same time my leaves from the front had all but reached his location. The [Grass Knot] was let go last second to avoid obstructing the attacks as both [Magical Leaf] and [Razor Leaf] slammed into him at the same time from different sides, dozens if not a hundred leaves all at once drilling into the rock. 

 

The poor thing had no chance of surviving that combination of moves and had fainted by the time the attack had let up. ‘Wow… 2v1s are dirty.’ Tough luck for him as this wasn’t a gym-affiliated battle and I’d take any advantage down here. Not that we couldn’t have beaten him 1 on 1… After waiting for a moment, the addicting rush of energy permeated my body and I basked in the feeling for a minute.

 

Something from my earlier hesitation with Iris’ water gun was on my mind. “Iris, you said before when I wanted water in a leaf cup that you couldn’t use two moves at once, how’d you use Grass Knot while using Magical Leaf?” Did she find the idea of feeding me in that way enjoyable? 

 

“Ah, that. Try using Leafage or Razor Leaf right now.” I nodded and raised my palm. Shooting out maybe 2-3 leaves of [Leafage] as the energy left my body. Seeing me completing her task, she promoted further, “Did you notice anything?” 

 

I shook my head, what was the point of all this? “Okay, next use Leaf Blade.” Not sure where this was going, I still compiled but this time using my index finger as the basis for my [Leaf Blade]. Aura constantly circulated to the hand as I waved it around. I still didn’t get it. I turned towards Iris who looked at me expectantly. ‘Don’t look at me with those sparkly eyes, I really don’t understand.’ 

 

“...”

 

Seeing as she wasn’t going to say anything, it was up to me to not make this silence any more awkward. Is this her fanatical nature towards Ayla making her like this?  

 

This whole fiasco was because of using two moves at once… I cancelled my Leaf Blade before shooting out another [Leafage], feeling the changes in my body as the energy left in the direction I prompted the attack to go out. I again used [Leaf Blade], the aura coming in as I focused on my finger for as long as I held the attack. Controlling the attack has something to do with aura, probably… technically when I stopped shooting out leaves from [Leafage] the attack ended… but it still continues flying?

 

“After you used Magical Leaf, you didn’t have to worry about it and focused on creating the Grass Knot?” 

 

“That’s correct! I knew you’d get it… eventually.” I ignored that last part and just accepted the praise for what it was. 

 

“It’s definitely got benefits but it also means that the attack itself flies in the last direction you wanted it to and you can’t shoot out more. For example, I saw this Torterra trapping people in cyclones created by [Razor Leaf], they definitely needed to control that.” I now had a very good idea of how I could acquire Magical Leaf. 

 

Still…With an attack like Magical Leaf which supposedly cannot miss, there’s some insane stuff you could pull off. “Couldn’t you just do the attack without me and shoot Razor Leaf yourself?”

 

“Maybe, but he’d probably get away from my Razor Leaf. It takes time to build up an attack, had I used Grass Knot after Razor Leaf it’d probably hop away before I could grab him. Though I definitely could do it with just Magical Leaf.”

 

That settles it, this plant is broken beyond belief, is what I would like to say but the first Geodude almost took her down. Seriously, this world is full of monsters and these guys are still only first-stage evolutions… maybe meeting a Garchomp is something I’m removing from my bucket list. 

 

Walking over to the downed Geodude, I looked down at it with a bit of fear. Regardless of how weak this one was, the first will always leave a lasting impression. “What do you want to do with the Geodude?  Technically he didn’t target you, though I still want to finish him for hurting you.”

 

I raised my arm, [Leaf Blade] in… finger before bringing it down. Once, Twice, then the third signalled the end as a smaller rush of energy was felt. I sighed in relief as it was completed. 

 

“You… really don’t like Geodudes…” 

 

“... Let’s continue down the path, I wanna see the end of it before we go back up.” 

 

---

 

Surprisingly for us, it didn’t take long. A mere 15-ish minutes later and we had reached our destination, only encountering two other Pokemon who both decided we weren’t worth the effort. A Woobat who stared at us from the ceiling, stating we could pass and a Drilbur who immediately dug away when he saw us, to my dismay. 

 

The bad news didn’t end there as technically, the tunnel didn’t end. It merely continued in a direction we couldn’t follow, Straight Down. The once straight and wide tunnel abruptly turned directly downwards, the abyss staring at us as we stared down, unable to see the bottom. 

 

“How confident are you with using Grass Knot as stairs?” 

 

She didn’t respond but instead used [Grass Knot] to grab a pebble, before dropping it in the middle of the hole. I watched as it fell further and further down before disappearing from our field of view. 

 

We waited… and waited… and waited… until nothing, there was no sound of the rock hitting the ground after what felt like a minute. The idea of trying to scaffold downwards was quickly ruled out. 

 

“...Plan?”

 

“We walk back up now.”

 

I quickly realized what that meant for me, my earlier comment on how much more stamina this body had as I could easily walk for an hour came back to haunt me as I forgot one thing…

 

I was walking downwards. The Petilil in my despair hopped onto my shoulder and urged me to start walking back up. 

 

“C’mon, I want to get back up so I can heal your hair… and maybe your hand.”

 

“Haaa—”

 

This was going to be a long trip back up. 

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