Cobalt in Red - Chapter 9

Got most of the next Godhood chapter done, just need to find time to edit it.

This one is a bit of a builder. Planning for a training montage type thing next - on the way to Pewter.

__________

“Hup!” Cobalt gave one final tug, pulling the knocked-out quillfish off the side of the gyarados’s corpse. Its barbs were stuck deep in the large, blue eel, and had taken a bit more force than expected to remove. 

He definitely hadn’t accidentally stabbed himself with the quills. No sir. He was munching on a pecha berry because he liked the flavor, not because it cured poison. Nope. 

Cobalt frowned down at the fish, turning it over in his hands, and twisted off a few of its quills. Specifically the ones that looked loose. Quillfish were a pokemon that were absolutely not suited for combat - having few offensive options, and were typically passive. Their poisonous quills made sure that they didn’t have many predators, so they mostly just wandered around in the water, looking for food.

It was incredibly strange to find one this far inland, in Kanto - but Cobalt wasn’t going to ask questions. For all he knew, Easton prayed to Dialga, reached into an alternate timeline, and pulled out a random “throwable object” just to see how he would react.

Cobalt would not give him the pleasure. 

Of course the thing could have just gotten lost. They weren’t that far from its natural habitat.

Occam’s Razor could suck it, though. The simplest solution was boring. If it came down to it, he would call on Giratina and curse himself to live in interesting times. Then he would beat up Giratina and take over the Distortion World. 

Hear that, Satan?! Cobalt’s coming for your throne, you wiggly, stupid looking fuck!

“Wow,” Easton said with a clinical amazement. Like he had just made a fascinating discovery. “And I thought the half-possessed girl had a creepy smile.” 

Cobalt turned to his current teacher, who had dragged his new magikarp friend over by its tail fin. He spared a glance down at the pathetic fish - which had passed out at some point in the past five minutes - then back up to Easton. 

“So Valerie’s possessed, then?” He asked. Cobalt was almost positive that there was no other ghost pokemon on her team besides the sableye, nor were there any rogues that he could detect in her shadow. He was leaning towards over-exposure to ghost type energy from her time in Mt. Pyre, or maybe some nascent aura shenanigans. Possession seemed unlikely, but Easton was saying it, so…

“Unimportant!” The boy grinned and held up the magikarp. “You have a new friend to torture!” 

Well. He did just promise to usurp the throne of Pokemon Hell. He couldn’t exactly sue Easton for being thematic. It would be hypocritical. 

He looked over to where Valerie sat on the other side of the clearing - or more accurately, starfished on the muddy grass, utterly waterlogged. Her black, ruffled dress fanned out on the ground in a weirdly perfect circle, courtesy of Sabie, who had been adjusting it carefully. 

As much as she creeped him out, something was definitely wrong with her. And he was (unfortunately) one of the few people that might be able to help. Even if it was just to introduce her to his mom.

Cobalt dropped the unconscious quillfish and pocketed the barbs he managed to pilfer, then leaned in to study the magikarp. “What’s so special about this one?” He asked. “You know, besides how stupid it is?”

The thing was trying to fight a gyarados, for fuck’s sake. If it had any sense of self preservation, it should have tried to swim away. Please ignore the fact that Cobalt, the ten-year-old, had charged at the blue noodle, and called it a dildo to its face. 

Why, the fuck, were children allowed to screw around with nature - completely unsupervised?

“Determined,” Easton corrected, and shook the unconscious fish. “This one has the attitude and potential to defy fate. Quickly, use one of those balls to capture this pitiful creature. Its future will be less bleak under your guidance.” 

This motherfucker was definitely in the wrong timeline. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it until now, but the singular pokeball on Easton’s belt looked a lot like the craftable ones from Legends Arceus. Only it seemed much more worn, and obviously hand made. It wasn’t a perfect sphere, the metal bits were misshapen, and it had a large crack down the side of it that was obviously glued together. 

Cobalt frowned at it, while pulling out one of his extra, modern pokeballs. He tapped the unconscious fish with the ball, and watched it get sucked in. It didn’t even bother to shake before a dull, electronic tone sounded the completed capture. 

“Did you make your magikarp’s pokeball?” He asked.

“I did not!” Easton replied with a beaming smile. “A man riding on an Entei gave it to me a few years ago. I must say, they’re quite convenient!” 

Uh huh, sure. An Entei hadn’t been sighted in over fifteen years. The last time being just after the war, somewhere outside of Olivine City.

“Did he teach you how to make them?” He asked. He kind of wanted to learn, then go to Kurt down in Azalea Town, and learn more. 

Pokeballs were kind of bonkers. Originally, they were made with hollowed out apricots, which triggered an apparently innate ability in all pokemon to use the move minimize. 

This was an utterly stupid thing to not take advantage of in Cobalt’s opinion. There were not a lot of pokemon that learn minimize naturally, nor was there a TM for it, but it was objectively one of the better defensive moves. He really wanted to get Kong to learn it. Paired with his speed, the punch-monkey would be nigh untouchable. 

Modern pokeballs, on the other hand, were a bit more than that. They still triggered the minimization, but then they converted the pokemon into data, and stored them in suspended animation. In a general sense, anyway. He was skipping over a lot of details and science that he couldn’t even begin to understand. For instance, ‘data’ did not exactly mean the same thing in this world as it did in his previous home. It was not just a collection of ones and zeros put together in a specific order. ‘Data’ had existential weight, here. 

A good example of it was that ‘stored’ pokemon couldn’t be edited. Attempting to edit any of the pokemon’s ‘code’ resulted in absolutely nothing. It was the equivalent of poking them with a stick, more than anything. Their files couldn’t be opened, literally showing up on screen as a little sprite of themselves, with some basic information if clicked on. 

Cobalt had a theory about it all - dedicating a corner of his room’s sticky-note space to it. It started and ended with the existence of porygon. They were described as a man-made pokemon, but Cobalt was skeptical. In his eyes, it was more likely that there was an entire dimension, similar to the Distortion World, that was made up of data. Computer logic in this world was far too irregular, and had too many exceptions for it to be purely technology. 

Though he did admit that he watched too much Digimon as a kid. The conspiracies might have gotten away from him, but in his defense, computer logic was basically magic, here. If you knew anything about it, you were a freaking wizard that could bend the rules of reality, and had just as many eccentricities, and shifted priorities as Dumbledore. 

They hadn’t invented cell phones yet, for fuck’s sake. Bill’s research into the storage box from the games was real, and currently being used - but his PC was still a giant, heavy box on his desk. 

To be fair though, the storage box’s usage was very much limited. Both in size, and who could use it. Every trainer with a licence was given exactly one ‘slot’ that was primarily used for long distance trading, though it could hold a pokemon in stasis forever, if the trainer so chose. 

You either had to work for the league, or be stupendously rich to get more slots. Red was, in fact, the only trainer ever to get direct access to Bill’s PC as the QA tester. He was the only one to ever be able to store multiple boxes worth of pokemon. 

Regardless, the modern technology he was used to was just around the corner - only a few years away - but he just couldn’t wrap his head around the tech tree. Whatever Arceus was smoking when he decided the logic of the universe, Cobalt wanted some. 

“He did not teach me how to make them, no.” Easton turned the ball around in his hand. “I suppose it would be prudent to learn, though. I only have the one.”

“There’s a guy in Johto that can make them, if you want to learn.” Cobalt nodded, then paused. “Or if you find yourself in Hisui, the Galaxy Expedition Team also knows how as well. I can give you a few modern balls, though.”

Cobalt had twenty extra pokeballs, so he didn’t mind handing a few over. It wasn’t like he expected to use nearly that many, anyway. He wasn’t interested in a rotating roster. 

“Oh that would be fantastic!” Easton eagerly let Cobalt drop a few into his hands, and studied them closely. “The craftsmanship is phenomenal!” 

“Gotta love machine tooling, and mass production. Standards just get higher.” Cobalt replied. “Anyway. The fish.” 

“Right!” Easton’s eyes gleamed, and he quickly shoved his new pokeballs into his backpack. “Any immediate questions? We should seek medical attention first, before we start the torture! Anything done now will be counter productive!” 

“This one’s cute. Can we keep him?” 

Cobalt turned slightly, seeing Valerie and Sabie wander over. She was still soaked, but that didn’t seem to deter her cheshire grin. Sabie was still trying to dry out her trainer’s dress, bunching up and wringing out the little bits of cloth that her hands could grab on to. 

“We?” He asked, pointedly.

Her smile widened, and she giggled as she turned to him fully. “Oh yes. He’ll be a wonderful influence for our children.”

The ten-year-old gave her a narrowed-eyed glare. “Cease, demon. May the power of Christ compel you.” 

She grasped her heart and winced dramatically, smile untouched. “Oh Cobalt, you wound me so.” 

Something about the way she said his name sent a violent shiver down his spine. Like a severely uncomfortable burst of ASMR, and his skin felt like unlubed latex all of a sudden. Uncompromising, restrictive, and impermeable.

He felt like he needed to jump in a tub of Vaseline, then light himself on fire. But that would probably just excite the maniacal, ‘half-possessed’ ghost specialist. 

He barely registered his own actions, pulling out a spray bottle from his bag, and firing a burst of water into Valerie’s face. “No. Bad. Down, girl. Stop it.” He had bought the bottle to screw with Kong, and honestly didn’t foresee himself using it here. His body just moved on its own.

The girl sputtered at the water, but seeing as she was already soaked through, it wasn’t all that effective. 

“Is this what people call a ‘degradation kink?’” Easton wondered.

Cobalt mechanically turned to the other boy. “No.” 

“It’s not?” The boy tilted his head. “Then pet-play?” 

“What is wrong with you?” 

“I think it’s both.” Valerie said after wiping her face with her sleeve, then peered up to him with her swirly eyes. “Don’t worry. I think I can learn to enjoy it.” 

“Holy shit,” Cobalt breathed in utter bafflement. “Kong! I need you to kill them, then me. Emergency sextuple suicide. Go.” 

The manky peaked up from where he had been laying on the ground, utterly spent. “~Key-mank, mankey.” He replied in obvious dismissal. Too tired to stand up, and too amused at his trainer’s distress. 

Easton looked around and started counting out the people present on his fingers.

“Sextuple?” Valerie gasped in mock surprise. “You want to include our pokemon, too?” 

Easton blinked, and looked at Cobalt in disgust. “That’s nasty.” 

Cobalt let out a strangled death-warble. “I’m letting the next gyarados kill us all, by the way. Hope you guys know that.” 

__________

In case you were wondering, dead pokemon could not be stored inside of a pokeball. The apparently fundamental use of minimize required the ‘mon to be alive. 

That particular limitation did not extend to his magical dimensional storage bag, though. 

He had been going off on how technology was weirdly developed in some areas, and barely at all in others - but he had been ignoring the fuck out of whatever utter bullshit went into creating the bags that everyone carried around. 

He did not know how they worked. He would absolutely not be figuring it out any time soon. And the fact that he knew how to use it had zero bearing on his understanding of the phenomenon. He had met one of the scientists that were responsible for the technology - an old friend of his father’s, and the man was off his rocker. 

“I have seen into the starry fabric of the dirt, and partaken in the flesh of god. Your puny understanding is a blessing, child. Bask in ignorance, and you shall sing the simple song of life.”

His father had laughed, and slapped his friend on the back. But the man’s dead-eyed stare had haunted Cobalt more than any of his mother’s pokemon. 

The dead gyarados fit perfectly well inside the bag. That’s all he would ever care about. He had to cut it up a bit, but the mouth of the bag could open up deceptively wide, thanks to a zipper that wrapped around the top a few times. There was even a pocket made specifically for housing ‘hunted’ food, with a waterproof lining to prevent the blood from soaking in. 

Cobalt had no idea what his team would end up looking like. Best be prepared for anything, so he didn’t cheap out when looking for a bag. He was pretty happy about that decision now.

“The best sustenance for a growing magikarp is the meat of their own line,” Easton lectured. “It’s why wild gyarados don’t destroy every ecosystem they encounter. Their primary diet consists of their own pods. It’s only the ones that are newly evolved, or are defending their territories that are known to attack others.” 

Easton said that as if it were a rare occurrence, but magikarp were by far the most common pokemon on the planet, and gyarados were easily the most common hazard in the open ocean. There were too many shipwrecks - too many lost at sea to count it as rare. 

Cobalt was also sure that he should be taking notes. There was some public research available over the ‘Pokenet,’ this world’s version of the internet, but it was decidedly limited and disjointed. Much of that would change when Oak finally put out his pokedex, but even then, Cobalt didn’t think Easton’s informational nuggets were known at all. 

Who cares about the diet of a magikarp? It was pretty much just Easton, as far as Cobalt knew. 

It was weird though, that magikarp were fully carnivorous. That such a weak pokemon would require a food supply that would fight back. They weren’t even scavengers, primarily. No, they would eat as a pod - meaning that they would gang up on any ‘prey’ like a shoal of piranhas. 

They could, of course, still eat berries, but they hated the taste of them all. In game terms, all of the flavors were disliked. And that seemed to come with the implied disadvantages.

“Does that change when they evolve?” Cobalt asked, eyes on his notepad as he listened to Easton lecture. 

“How should I know?” The other boy looked at him like he was an idiot.

Cobalt blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a magikarp trainer,” he sighed, “not a gyarados trainer.”

Cobalt blinked again, and just stared numbly at the eldritch, potentially time-displaced, child. 

“Really now, Cobalt,” he continued, “Why would I waste my time on a gyarados, when magikarp is right there?” 

Cobalt blinked for a third time, and felt his brain start to shut down slowly - completely missing the rest of the other boy’s lecture. 

Easton was stupendously knowledgeable when it came to magikarp. That much was not in question. But it was dawning on Cobalt that he had assumed far too much about the boy’s competence just because his magikarp was an absolute unit. 

He was taking lessons from an idiot. Did that make him the bigger idiot? 

Goddammit.