A rounded red and black helmet-like head, fitted with a silver ax-looking blade extending from the front. Steel spikes protrude from its torso and red arms, much sharper than any normal knife.
A Pawniard appeared.
"Pawn…," the pokemon slowly opened its yellow eyes, staring at Nova callously, it pointed one of its blade-like hands at him, "...iard."
Nova immediately raised his hands to surrender, taking Sol's words to heart. He didn't know how exactly Pawniards submitted to each other, but he assumed his open hands would be a universal sign of non-aggression.
He was wrong.
Nova didn't even get to open his mouth before Pawniard assumed he was retaliating, jumping into action. Sprinting at him, it took a swing of its blade hand while presumably using the move Scratch. With his sense of danger, Nova could immediately tell he was going to be attacked the moment he raised his hands. As such, he jumped the slash and rolled into the middle of the room.
"W-wait! Listen to me, Paw-" Nova began to say but was interrupted again.
It seemed even the idea of listening to Nova annoyed Pawniard as it didn't let up for a second. Bouncing off the door after missing their Scratch, it glared at him, following up with another Scratch.
Nova was already moving. Ignoring the glare, he pulled off a quick kip-up while holding the Pokeball in front of him as a warning.
The room froze.
Pawniard was merely staring at Nova as if trying to kill him moments ago was a normal occurrence. Nova, on the other hand, was panting a bit. His body still wasn't used to random bursts of physical exertion.
That entire exchange only lasted two seconds, but Nova wasn't expecting it to get to this point so quickly.
"...Okay, please calm down. I just want to make a deal with you." Nova began, speaking slowly and carefully to make sure his words didn't seem demanding. While being able to tame Pawniard with pure might would've been much easier, he wasn't that strong and Pawniard would kick his ass nine times out of ten.
In response, the Pawniard only narrowed its eyes before relaxing its stance. Nova let out a breath in relief but still kept his eye on Pawniard just in case.
His vigilance was rewarded as Pawniard suddenly burst into action; its ax head blade aimed at Nova. Expecting this, Nova only moved slightly to the left, much smoother than before now that he knew it was coming.
Surprised but not deterred, Pawniard jumped at him again but this time infusing Steel energy into its ax head, making it even sharper. Nova ducked without missing a beat, as Pawniard slammed into the metal door to Nova's room.
Nova only glanced at Pawniard as he noticed its head was stuck in the door. He was already considering just giving up and trying again tomorrow in better circumstances, but his eyes widened as he realized this was an opportunity.
Walking to the side of Pawniard, he began. "So, I could leave you here, letting you rot in this door…" Pawniard's eyes narrowed and stared at Nova, calmly attempting to slash him with his right arm. "Or you could listen to me and I'll get you out." Pawniard was now glaring, obviously not amused.
Slowly, it stopped its fruitless slashing and attempting to push off the door, but only managed to scrape the metal door with its blade-like hands. Resigned to its fate, it slumped. Stuck in a door.
"Alright! So, now that you've calmed down, I have a proposition. I need to defeat a few powerful enemies soon. However, as you can tell, I'm fairly weak." Pawniard snorted. "That's why I'll train you. I'll make you as strong as possible, and if I fail, then I'll release you into the wild. If not, you become my permanent follower. How's that?"
Pawniard stared at him for a moment before closing its eyes. Nova thought it looked ridiculous, seriously contemplating like that while its head was stuck in a door. Despite that, he decided to not say anything and draw something in his notebook.
A few minutes later, it snapped its eyes open and made a small grunt sound to catch Nova's attention. It only stared at Nova, so he pulled up the notebook which had four different circles.
Pointing at each one, Nova explained, "This one means you accept wholeheartedly. This one means you accept, but you want something from me. This one means no, and you just want to leave. And this one means you'd rather die than accept."
Pawniard didn't seem surprised at the last option and just raised its hand, pointing at the second option.
Nova was happy it decided to accept but was dreading it picking that option. He didn't even know if Pawniard was a girl or a boy, how was he supposed to communicate with it effectively? "Got it. Don't be alarmed by the way, this is just to get you out of the door."
That said, he put Pawniard in its Pokeball before instantly letting it out in the middle of the room again. It glared at his Pokeball, and Nova now had an idea of what Pawniard wanted. Despite that, he raised the notebook again.
"Let's use this again. Choose this one if what you want is related to your previous home, this one for the Pokeball, this one for our opponents in a month, and this one for something else." Pawniard wasted no time and pointed at both the second and third choices.
Internally, he was relieved. Having to find out his previous living arrangements would've been a pain and a half considering missions that weren't simple chores were supposed to be anonymous. Finding out who caught him and from where would've been near impossible without breaking a ton of unspoken rules.
"So… no Pokeball?" Pawniard nodded vehemently. "And I'm assuming you want to know who our opponents will be? How strong they'll be?" Pawniard nodded once more without any feeling. "Ah. Well, I know one of them might be a Skorupi or a Zorua, but they should be more experienced than you." Pawniard looked confused but nodded anyway.
With that ordeal over, Nova let out a much-needed sigh of relief.
He severely underestimated the ruthlessness of Pokemon, knowing it'd be aggressive and seeing it for yourself were two entirely different things after all. Sol's credibility was raised in his heart.
Over the next half hour, he made sure Pawniard understood his instructions when using a move- teaching him what moves Pawniard knows correspond with the names Nova gave them. As far as he could tell, Pawniard knew Scratch, Leer, and Iron Head.
Then, Nova decided to write down the multitude of things that he'd need to find out to properly train his Pokemon. Based on his findings of the anatomy of Pokemon, physical training wouldn't cut it. After all, if their bodies are literally made of energy, omitting the skeleton, physical training wouldn't do much if anything at all.
On that train of thought, Nova wondered if diets even mattered for Pokemon since they didn't even take nutrients like you think they would. On the other hand, it wasn't unheard of for Pokemon to starve, so that theory can't be entirely correct.
Nova was in a whirlwind of thoughts before he made a decision.
Nova dearly wanted to find out the difference between Pokemon and People. To find the line between the two, and attempt to become powerful enough to cross it. Rather than attempting to become a Pokemon, he wanted to see how far he could follow the path of a Pokemon before his humanity dragged him down.
In other words, he wanted strength. He wanted power.
Not for any particular reason, but simply because he can. Everyone wants a better life, after all. At the end of the day, he would still be himself; He would still be human, so why not strive for greatness?
And in his mind, the only way to become as strong or even surpass a Pokemon was to understand them inside and out. Literally.
So, that's what he decided to do. Standing up abruptly, Pawniard woke up from its nap with a start. Unbeknownst to Nova, he had spent over two hours thinking and periodically writing down any theories he thought of while doing so.
"Come on, I need research material." If Pawniard was confused, it didn't show it. Most likely this was due to the nature of its species, as they tend to be obedient to a fault once they recognize someone as their leader.
Walking out and ignoring any looks he got, he stepped into the city. Reaversand wasn't the worst city to live in, but it wasn't a good one. Although he lived in the city for a long time, it was still fairly unknown to him since he only spent a good portion of it inside the orphanage and the other portion near the guild base.
He looked at Pawniard to see its impression of the city, but all he got was a bland stare. 'Gotta get them to lighten up somehow…' Nova internally decided. The duo started to walk to the edges of the city, Nova hoping to find certain alleyways yet also avoid people.
"If you see a Pokemon, tell me immediately. I'm sure I could find one myself but it doesn't hurt to have both of us being on the lookout. Got it?" Pawniard only nodded and changed no visible behavior, likely already being in constant vigilance.
It was not long before Nova saw a green blob shuffling around in a dumpster. 'Target Acquired.'
"See that, Pawniard? Use Leer on it as many times as possible while it's not looking. When it finally notices, get ready to jump into action,"
Leer, he discovered, didn't actually alert the target that it was happening. At most, it would make the enemy shudder while a blue glow emanated, indicating that it successfully lowered their defense. He didn't understand how it worked exactly, but it would make one's body temporarily brittle. Multiple uses would make it even worse.
It would seem this Pokemon, however, was extremely lax. It only noticed it was being Leer'd at after Pawniard managed to Leer at it four times. Upon noticing, it jumped out of the dumpster and onto the ground- seemingly pained just by that small jump.
Nova observed that it was a Gulpin. Interesting, but he didn't care at the moment. "Don't let it retaliate, use Iron Head,"
The Gulpin let out a burp of purple gas at Pawniard and backed up a bit, unable to move any further due to it being at the end of the alleyway. Pawniard ignored the obviously poisonous gas due to its steel typing, slamming into Gulpin as he heard the sound of glass shattering.
Nova wouldn't have noticed that sound if he wasn't intently paying attention to the entire fight meticulously, making sure to catch every little detail. Due to the gas, he couldn't see exactly what happened, but he could definitely hear it.
"If it's fainted, kick it out here or something. If not, finish it off with another Iron Head." Nova didn't want to be cruel, but he wasn't going to pick it up by walking into the gas and Pawniard had swords for hands.
A few seconds later a fainted Gulpin flew out of the gas and landed right in front of Nova, Pawniard following it behind. Nova took a deep breath and took out the glasses he found before. In the two weeks of chores he did, he found out that they weren't real 'Black Glasses' and that the real ones are very distinctive. Apparently, you could feel the pressure that Held Items give off compared to just normal objects.
Popping the lenses out, he put on the frames and his entire demeanor changed. Nova realized that for him to accomplish his goals, he would need to become much more ruthless and cold than he currently was. At the same time, he didn't want to be an asshole 24/7.
So, he came up with the idea to turn these previously useless glasses into his own 'magic feather', consciously suppressing his empathy when he puts them on. He hoped that eventually, he would just subconsciously only be that merciless when wearing the glasses.
In any case, "Alright, cut it open." Pawniard didn't even hesitate, slashing it open immediately. Nova crouched to see inside of it, and the results were… not what he expected.
Contrary to the swirling energy he expected from a Pokemon's insides as stated by the anatomy book, it seemed like what you'd expect after cutting a living creature open. Organs, muscle tissue, bones, etc.
"Hm… maybe…" he muttered under his breath. Grabbing a piece of the Gulpin's insides, he gave it a squeeze. The Leer must've still been in effect because it broke apart into dust with barely any resistance.
Nova observed how the dust, however, slowly started to dissipate into the air. Looking back at Gulpin's body, he noticed that it was starting to dissolve as well, just at a much slower pace.
There was significance in this, but it took a few minutes for him to comprehend as he squinted at its body thoughtfully. It was only when he saw Pawniard looking at the Pokeball on his belt distastefully that all his theories began to click, and his eyes widened slightly.
"Pokemon… are life itself given form," he muttered out loud.
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AN: Hi :)