Aww Nuts (and Bolts!) - A Pokémon SI

[Jom Ghost]

I had never believed in reincarnation. Don't get me wrong, I would've loved to; and it was a comforting thought. The belief that death is not the end, that loved ones were still there, just in a different form. Maybe as a child, or maybe as an animal or bird. I don't think becoming a pokemon was part of the normal package though.

Can I just add, being born out of an egg like most pokemon would've been odd enough. However, Magnemite- what I now appear to be- instead reproduce through mitosis. As in, my first new memory of this life was halfway through being formed out of the side of another Magnemite. Any screams I may have made during that time were instead filtered out as high-pitched whines and beeps.

That was about five or so minutes ago. Before exploring, I first made sure this wasn't a dream or nightmare. I knew it wasn't a nightmare due to the fact that I learned to wake myself up during nightmares as a kid. As soon as I realized I was in one I could open my eyes, and the disconnect between the two sets of stimuli would kick me out of the dream.

The dream thing was harder, as what I would like to have done was either pinch myself or look at my hands. Fun fact, if you look at your hands in a dream they don't look like hands, just vaguely hand shaped instead. Also a fun fact, Magnemites don't have hands, so that knowledge was useless at the moment.

Instead I totally 100% purposefully fell and tumbled a bunch as I learnt to move in this new body. The impact of my body against the ground was enough to tell me that no, this wasn't a dream. It was very odd to go from four limbs and a neck, to an orb with two magnets whose biggest actions are spinning.

On the bright side, I could fly. Sort of. From what I distantly remember reading, Magnemite and other floating electric types do so by repelling themselves from the natural gravitational energy field around the earth. I could fly, but the further I got away from the ground the more energy it took from my part. Moving forwards or backwards was done by expelling energy in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. However, due to the floatation effects of repelling gravity, constant thrust wasn't needed. One could simply expel energy to start the movement and then coast along off that initial boost.

Complicated words for not saying all that much, but that was my understanding of how I moved. Looking around now that I was confident about not face planting, first of all I saw that I was on a mountainside. Secondly, there were a lot of not only Magnemites, but Magnetons as well. The closer you got to the peak, it seemed the higher level the pokemon were. Magnetons were the most prominent, but I could see some herds of the Mareep line, as well as some other Electric types.

Looking up to the top of the peak, all I could see were storm clouds alive with electricity. A true thunderstorm if I ever saw one. The lightning seemed to strike roughly the same place every time, but that was about all I could see. The only thing I could think of would be a legendary pokemon. Zapdos? Thundurus? Who else was an electric type? I think there was one of the legendary cats too. Was it Entei?

Either way, I'm not messing with that. Looking around again, I saw the ground littered with the remains of battles. Scorch marks and grooves carved into the ground, marring the landscape to better fit the wasteland-ish aesthetic it seemed to be caught in. Also on the ground were magnets and metal scraps of fallen Magneton and Magnemite, as the scraps from fleshy pokemon were likely already eaten.

Floating around, it seemed like the Magnemite line was dominant by far. Not that we were the strongest, just very much so the most prominent. Magnemites feed on electrical energy, and also release some passively. However, grouped together in numbers like this it seemed to have a perpetual effect of generating an electric storm, which in turn fed the Magnemite that caused it. Those Magnemite and Magneton then gain enough energy to either reproduce and create more, or evolve.

Magneton can actually evolve further, into its final form. Magnezone. However, this needs to be done in some place with high gravitational energy or distortions. If memory serves, the Pokedex says that no Magnezone have been seen to naturally evolve in the wild, which makes sense. The conditions needed to evolve a Magnezone are normally seen underground in the games, which is far away from where Magneton are found. It just didn't naturally happen.

Which meant if I wanted to become one, I had to first become strong enough to travel. I could also let a trainer take me there, but most trainers are inexperienced teens, and the older trainers normally already have a full team and then some. I could always hope that I got dropped into the anime, and could get picked up by Ash. Or if it was the one of the games to be caught by Red or something.

A loud crash quickly drew my attention, the crash in question being caused by a brawl between two Electabuzz. The furry humanoids were actually pretty large compared to me, about three to four times my size. What I didn't remember from the anime or games was their beefy arms. They were packed with surprising amounts of muscle for a non-Fighting type pokemon. A stray punch from one of them sent a small flash of electricity to hit a nearby Magnemite, and then all hell broke loose.

The hit Magnemite took a few seconds to take stock of themselves, before their magnet-like arms began to spin. Bolts of electricity ran between the prongs, gathering in a glowing orb in between the two 'arms' of the pokemon, before it was released with the telltale boom of a thunderclap.

A great plume of smoke had erupted when the move was fired, but now the winds of the mountainside blew it away. Smoke rose from one of the Electabuzz's chests, yet despite tanking the impact of a move that would have likely killed me outright, the struck pokemon steadily rose to their feet. Also rising, was the slightly charred form of another few Magnemite.

The Electabuzz started to form a pulsating orb of yellow electricity, while the Magnemites began charging up their own combination of pulsing electrical energy, and a glowing silver. It was a war zone, moves being flung all over and hitting more pokemon, only for them to be drawn into the brawl. It was chaos, and it didn't seem to have an end in sight, the battle only growing in size and power. Then a stray bolt lashed out and up the mountain. From my position tactically hiding behind an upturned shard of stone, I could see it hit a large Magneton. Then the Magneton turned around, and the fighting stopped.

All animals, even pokemon it seemed, had a sort of sixth sense. Humans did too, all the tiny little details the brain noticed but didn't register would all come together to tell you one message: Run.

The Magneton that was hit was an easy two times larger than the surrounding ones, who themselves were a fair margin larger than any other Magneton that I could see. It was the equivalent of prepubescent teens throwing stones at each other, and accidentally hitting a roided up bodybuilder. The Magneton's three bodies seemed to vibrate and twitch as the distance between them grew. Between the orbs of metal, thick veins of blinding electricity built, slowly steadying into the same technique I had seen most other Magneton use- if several times larger and visibly more powerful. Electro Ball.

Then the eye of the top body opened. It traced the fight to it's center, where the wild melee was first started.

And then everything went white.

 

[Jom Ghost]

It's been a couple days since the big fight, thankfully it seems like that's an uncommon occurrence. Based on the pock marks littering the ground it wasn't uncommon either, but maybe every week or two. However, smaller fights break out all the time, and over the days get bigger and bigger; like teachers telling kids to quiet down, only for them to slowly get louder again to the point of being yelled at again.

Kids wasn't… a bad description. Everything- especially on the lower levels of the mountainside- was simple. I'm bigger than you, I get this spot. You're smaller than me, I can win against you for experience.

Yeah that's another thing. Experience was real. Hard numbers. It wasn't really in your face about it, but like a memory at the back of your head. I could call up the information whenever I wanted, but there was no screen or display or anything like that, just something that I knew. Steak tastes good, I don't like tomatoes, I'm level 19.

Speaking of Pokémon facts, did you know Magnemite gives an EV stat of 1 Special Attack? Also fun fact, I can tell what my IV's and EV's are! Thankfully, on top of being transported to Pokémon, I have perfect IV's. That's right baby, 31's across the board. I don't know what the probability on that is but thank god- or Arceus I guess- for that. Man, I gotta learn the local terminology so I can swear better.

Now, not everyone is probably gonna know what IV's and EV's are, so let me tell you. They stand for Inherent Values and Effort Values. An Inherent Value is what you're born with, and they cannot be changed from what I know. They go from 0 to 31, and if you're born with something you're stuck with it. Effort Values are based on what you defeat, or maybe if you train hard enough? In games it was typically just what you beat. Grind up levels on Ponyta? Bunch of Speed EV's. Magnemite? Special Attack EV's. And you could get as much as 252 EV in one stat, and up to 510 total.

Anyways, back on track. Perfect IV's and 22 Special Attack EV. Not bad, not bad. I can also call up my movepool! Which, I don't think I should be able to do. I know and can reference every possible move that I can learn. All of them.

Did you know that a Magnemite has no breeding moves? Since it can only breed with itself or a Ditto there's no way for any other movesets or lineages to be bred in. Just base moves, TM's, and Move Tutors. Being way out here, one would expect to only have the base moves… except not quite. I have Thunder Shock, Tackle, Supersonic, Thunder Wave, Electro Ball and Gyro Ball from leveling up, and that's all I should have.

However, I also had Electric Terrain, Steel Beam, and Thunder. Which were only learnable by TM's. Not only that, I had Gravity and Heat Wave from Move Tutors. And to be honest… I don't know why.

Every other Magnemite and Magneton I could see displayed at least a couple TM moves, which meant that we all probably got them, and likely for the same reason too. I just didn't have enough information to get that one reason. Something to ponder on I guess.

I also found more types of Pokémon! I had thought that only Magnemites- or other types of Pokémon that didn't technically need to eat- could exist up here, but lo and behold; balls!

The Voltorb line, or at least some version of it. Hisuian or Alolan, I wasn't too sure, but the important part here is their dual typing of electric and grass. Likely formed from the metallic spheroid remnants of Magnemite, these little guys were the backbone of the mountain's diverse ecosystem.

They only needed to feed on electricity, something found in abundance, but their main move was to blow up- not that great for continued survival- and on top of that they were typically quite weak. So they teamed up with the Mareep line- further up I could even see the odd Ampharos- to form a symbiotic relationship. The Voltorb got protection, while the Mareep got food; grass produced through the Voltorb move set. Pretty cool.

Of course, this meant that there was sustainable food for carnivorous Pokémon.

Prides of Shinx and Luxray, and packs of Boltund or Manectric were common. Every once-in-a-while I could also see herds of Zebstrika, but they tended to stay further up the mountain.

The only other thing I could note about the mountain, is that there seemed to be an unusually high amount of shinies. Not like every other Pokémon was a shiny, but they popped up quite often. I vaguely remember hearing about a Shiny Stone, did that increase the odds of finding shinies? If so, did that mean this mountain had an abundance of Shiny Stones? Food for thought.

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I actually had this update completely ready and typed out like 3 months or so after my first post, I just forgot to upload it. My bad?
In other news, I do that a lot. Type things out and never post them, so I'm going to be creating a snippets thread soon after posting this and will link it here once it's created. Most snippets are 1k words or less, this is more just to have them out there rather than sitting and collecting dust in my Google Docs folder.

https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/the-ghosts-graveyard-snippet-thread.26080/