Appetizer 1.2

Aaron Fulan

Mossdeep City, Hoenn Region

I knelt in my mom's office, staring at the ralts as my brain tried to reboot.

"You're… You're a girl."

'I am.' Her voice rang in my mind like a chimecho's bell. The aura of pure joy at finally being accepted had transitioned now to the yellow of fear tinged with the red of irritation and anger. 'Sorry to disappoint you.'

In my defense, feminine and masculine voices tended to be harder to tell apart when physical sound wasn't in the picture.

"Her father is Quinn," mom clarified.

"Your gallade."

"Indeed. And she has developed an incredible admiration for her father. She insists on using only physical attacks, much like he does."

"Umm, you know that you cannot become a gallade, right?" I tried.

'Yes.'

"But you're only going to learn physical attacks?"

'Yes,' she nodded resolutely. The white of willpower blazed around her. This clearly wasn't something she could be swayed from.

"You know that Quinn can use ranged attacks too, right? Like Aura Sphere, Air Slash, and Dazzling Gleam?"

I want to master the sword before I explore other options,' she said firmly.

"What… What physical attacks can a ralts learn?"

"Knock Off. Thief. Façade… potentially," mom said.

'I will not learn Thief,' the little knight told us. 'That is dishonorable.'

"At the moment, she knows Shadow Sneak, Confusion, and Growl."

I glanced at her spoon. It got me thinking. 'Shadow Sneak isn't nothing. It's pretty good, actually, assuming she can use the ghost type move well… but that's not likely at her age… A gardevoir that focuses on close combat… Is that possible? Well, a gardevoir is called "sirknight" in Japanese… And I already know where the gardevoirite is in theory…'

"I'll take her," I said.

"What?"

'Y-You will?'

"Yes." I looked down at the shocked little ralts. "I think that maybe, just maybe, it hasn't been done because no one's ever tried. We won't know until we try, right?"

I didn't know if this world followed the Adventures timeline or the Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire timeline, or perhaps some unholy mix of the anime, games, and manga, but I knew one thing: Psychics had an extraordinary affinity for spoons.

This wasn't a social construct either, nor was it a quirk exclusive to the abra line. Wild alakazam fashioned spoons for themselves out of the purest silver, traveling thousands of miles to find silver if they must. Espurr in Kalos looked for spoons to use as mirrors to groom themselves. No matter what, psychics all over the world favored the spoon shape as a generalist medium. Even hypno would forego their pendulums for spoons should they require a divination tool.

Psychics instinctively, impulsively, inexplicably sought spoons. Even here in Mossdeep, amidst a clan known for psychics since the start of written history, we didn't know exactly why this was. Our best guess was that the spoon amplified brainwaves of some sort, but as for why wild psychic pokémon instinctively knew that, we had no clue.

Still, looking at my ralts as she wielded that spoon as tall as her body like a giant sword made me think of something. Or rather, a certain bipedal, spoon-wielding bipedal cat…

Perhaps this was possible after all.

Even if nothing I knew ended up being valid, I decided then and there that the pure joy and delight on my new partner's face made this decision worth it.

"Mom, I want ralts as my partner."

She looked between us and sighed. "Very well. I… I wish you the best of luck."

X

That night, I packed everything I would need in my hammerspace backpack, one of the primary benefits of being in the pokémon world. Tomorrow, I would be taking a boat to Slateport City, where I'd begin my gym challenge.

Strictly speaking, I could begin my challenge right here. There wasn't some rule that said I had to take the same path as Brendan and May. But I knew better. Tackling mom as things stood would be asking to die. She took no shit from anyone and would probably send out pokémon rated for third or fourth badge trainers just to prove to people that she wouldn't show me any favoritism.

So, I would be starting with Wattson.

Or more specifically, I would be training around Slateport City for a few weeks until I could get my partner up to snuff.

I double-checked my bags then crawled into bed. I was about to turn out the lights but saw my little knight kneeling by the door. Her silver spoon was gripped in both hands, ready to smite any intruders. Or give them a good laugh.

"Artoria?"

'Yes, my liege?' her voice rang in my mind, crisp and clear as usual. With a personality like that, what else could I name her but the King of Knights?

"You can call me Aaron," I said, already for the eighth time that night.

'I cannot. You are my lord and master. I am your loyal knight.'

"You called yourself a squire when you first introduced yourself."

'T-That is… I shall one day become a knight!'

I didn't mention how cute she was when she got all flustered, but I was positive she could feel my emotions plain as day. Ralts were sensitive to this sort of thing anyway.

"My partner is such a chuuni," I laughed.

'I do not know what a chuuni is, my lord, but I feel that it is not a flattering moniker.'

"It's not, but it's cute so it's fine. Anyway, what are you doing?"

'I am guarding your rest. Please go to sleep knowing you are safe.'

I sighed and got out of bed. Two large strides brought me to her. I scooped up my kneeling protector with a single hand. Another second later, I was tucked back in my cozy bed.

'W-What are you doing? M-My lord?'

"Sleeping, which you will do immediately," I said dryly. "Lord's command. A knight can't disobey her lord, right?"

'Hauuuu…'

"Good night, Artoria."

'G-Good night…'

I'd make a knight of her… starting tomorrow…

X

Aaron FulanThe Sour Qwilfish, Hoenn Region

The Sour Qwilfish, despite the somewhat suspicious name, was a mid-sized passenger vessel. It wasn't a cruise ship necessarily, but nor was it a simple speedboat. It had cabins and amenities if not luxuries. Which was great news, considering I'd be on it for a full ten days while the ship circled around Sootopolis and to Slateport.

After bidding the twins goodbye and promising to call after dinner every night, I boarded the ship and dumped everything in my cabin before making a beeline towards the training area. The training area was really just the aft, sectioned off with a rope so small and mid-sized pokémon could do some training. It wasn't large, but a good twenty pokémon could use it at the same time if they weren't all throwing around ranged attacks everywhere.

That wouldn't be a problem for Artoria.

The two of us received some odd looks as I instructed Artoria in the finer points of swordsmanship.

I did put some thought into it last night. I practiced two styles of swordsmanship in my past life: HEMA and competition kendo. To be clear, competitive kendo was very different from what historical samurai would have been familiar with, a sport rather than a killing art. Even so, I settled on teaching my burgeoning King Knights kendo before anything else for one simple reason: She was far, far too weak.

Gardevoir were not known for their physical prowess, and that deficiency was made all the more clear in a ralts. If I tried to teach a foot-tall ralts the finer points of HEMA, she'd almost certainly hurt herself trying. So, basic kendo it was.

"Hah," I cried out, using a sawn off broom handle to demonstrate the proper form.

'Hah!' she echoed, her mental voice ringing in my head.

"Ralts!" everyone else heard.

She swung her spoon valiantly in a textbook overhead strike, a "men" towards the head. I occasionally stopped her to nudge her footing in proper place or to remind her to mind her grip. The grip was especially important in kendo. You could not hold the sword like a baseball bat and swing for the fences; a proper grip relied on putting a little distance between each hand to use a push-pull motion of the arms like a lever, imparting greater speed and force from a relatively small twist of the hands.

Artoria wasn't stupid; she knew this. The trouble was that she was swinging a spoon. And a spoon was a rather unbalanced weapon. It was unwieldy and top-heavy for her diminutive size. She was effectively swinging a halberd like a katana and it was a struggle for her just to keep her proper form.

I let her continue the seemingly pointless task for three reasons.

First, any school of swordsmanship, regardless of origin, required that you be able to swing a sword without tiring. She needed more muscles in other words, the right kind of muscles.

Second, and I didn't think even she noticed, she was using Confusion. She was using Confusion to reinforce her grip, probably subconsciously, such was her focus. I hoped that eventually, this would turn into something more intentional, more directed, than mere instinct. Without even realizing, she was developing physical reinforcement along the same vein as Agility.

Lastly, and just as important as the other reasons, she looked adorable.

"Umm…" came a voice to my right. Turning, I saw an older girl, about sixteen, in a sky-blue one-piece swimsuit. On her shoulder rode a wingull. "Your ralts is… What is your ralts doing?"

"Learning the way of the sword," I said glibly.

"Is he going to be a gallade? You must be really lucky to have a dawn stone."

"Nope, that's a she."

"What? Why?"

"Why not? She likes it so I'm teaching her kendo."

She looked at me before shrugging helplessly. "Suit yourself. Amanda, by the way."

"Aaron. What are you doing in Slateport?"

"Visiting family. You?"

"Gym challenge. I'm thinking of heading up to Mauville for my first badge. I hear Wattson's pretty nice to newcomers."

"Ehh? I… Um… I wouldn't have pegged you as a battler," she said hesitantly.

"Oh?"

"Like, no offense, but… You're teaching a female ralts swordsmanship. I thought you were trying out for a contest or something."

"Nah, I have a plan. Sort of."

"If you say so…"

She shook her head as she walked away. She wasn't the first to look at me like I was a loon, but Artoria and I paid them no mind.

I stopped Artoria after fifteen minutes. "Artoria, come here."

'Yes, my liege?'

"We're going to stop practicing the overhead strike for a while."

'I can keep going,' she protested.

"You probably could, but your form is getting sloppy. All you'll be doing then is reinforcing bad habits."

I held out my hand. By now, she knew that it meant I expected her to hop on. I wasn't about to wait around for her stubby little feet to catch up after all. She floated with Confusion before alighting onto my palm, all the while grumbling about the improperness of using her lord as a mount. I held her in a gentle caress with both hands, in much the same way as I was taught to hold parakeets and hamsters in my past life.

'Not proper,' she sulked.

"Just come with me," I told her. "I've got another way to train and we might as well get out of people's ways."

'What shall I be doing?'

"You're going to jump."

I took her to a small sand pit dug into one corner of the aft, mostly for baby pokémon and children to play in. There, I took up a small section and smoothed out the sand. "Okay, Artoria. The technique I'm going to teach you is called Mana Burst. It was used by Artoria, the legendary knight you're named after."

'Truly? I shall learn such a splendid technique?' Her eyes were shining. More than that, there was an almost palpable aura of excitement around her. 'My lord is the greatest! I shall serve you with my every being!'

Not for the first time, I was glad everyone else could only hear happy "Ralts! Ralts!" noises. No one else needed to know what a chuuni my partner was.

"Well, here's how it works. The goal is to reinforce your body with psychic energy. After you do that, the next step is to focus psychic power into your feet. You release that stored power just as you kick off the ground, letting you travel faster and farther. Make sense?"

'I believe so.'

"Good, do that and see how high you can jump. The goal isn't to make yourself float higher with Confusion, I know you can do that already; it's to master the technique of releasing a lot of power in a single instant without hurting yourself."

'Yes, my lord. I shall practice until it becomes second nature to me and I can travel a mile with every step!'

I rolled my eyes fondly. "Okay, while you do that, I'm going to get a bit of my own workout in." This thirteen year old body was hilariously out of shape compared to my past life and it bothered me.

X

Ten days at sea wasn't anything close to enough time to make Artoria a competent swordsman, but I was still amazed by her progress. She'd mastered Mana Burst as a gap-closer in a week and had moved on to applying the same principle to her attacks.

I didn't know if this was her own innate genius or the natural psychic affinity of the ralts line, but I could honestly say that her overhead strikes actually held some cutting power now. When she timed it right, a cut using the edge of her spoon was even more dangerous than a full-power Confusion from her at range. She had effectively learned to channel Confusion into a single, instantaneous, highly focused edge, an edge that exploded.

The trouble was getting the timing right. As with all psychic type moves, the keyword was "focus." In a vacuum, Mana Edge as we'd begun to call it, could strike with enough force to bite into stone; we knew that because a friendly traveler volunteered his graveler for the task of training dummy. After cutting deep, the psychic construct would destabilize, exploding outward in a spectacular fashion. It hadn't done too much damage to the graveler, nothing it wouldn't just heal up by eating a few rocks, but that a ralts had harmed a graveler through physical attacks at all was impressive.

Or at least, it was impressive when seen in a vacuum.

The focus required for that one attack had drained Artoria completely, leaving her staggering and panting for breath. She needed more stamina. Physically, yes, but mentally also.

Which brought me to where I was currently. Artoria and I had decided to take our meals in our room, a simple roast beef sandwich with store brand slaw and pecha berry spread. It was one of the basic meals provided by the ship since it wouldn't do to have all the trainers on board try to cook their own meals.

"Artoria," I called.

'Yes, my lord?' she responded, putting her own poffin down. Of all the varieties I'd had her try over the trip, she seemed to prefer sweet and citrusy flavors, especially those with a floral smell.

"You don't have to stop eating. It's not like you need your mouth to think at me."

'It is unknightly to not give my lord my fullest attention when I am being spoken to.'

"It's fine when I say you're excuse though?"

'Decorum is important, my lord,' she said in that adorably prim and proper tone that made me want to pinch her cheeks and give her a cookie.

I sighed and let her have this. This wouldn't be the first time she became oddly obstinate about something in the name of knightly honor, whatever that was. "Tell me, you are determined to fight only in close quarters, correct?"

'Yes, my lord.'

"I realize I should have had this conversation with you before, but why? Mom told me you really admire your father, her gallade, but I want to hear it from you."

'Father told me of the wondrous adventures he'd have at Lady Sharon's side. He once told me of how he dueled a mighty bisharp to the death to defend a town, and how he was once severely injured by a frenzied salamence. I… I admire his warrior spirit. Is… Is it so wrong for a daughter to want to follow her father's path?'

"No, of course not. I'm not saying you cannot, but you do know that even gallade know a few ranged attacks as well, right?"

She nodded. 'Yes, father's Focus Blast is amazing. I saw him down a rhyperior with one blow.'

"So why only physical attacks?"

'I… I'm…'

"You can tell me." I tried to project care and reassurance through our bond, blue and purple to offset her yellow fear. Perceiving emotions was always easier than projecting, but I thought I managed it.

'I'm afraid,' she whispered in my mind. 'I'm afraid that once I begin learning attacks suitable for a gardevoir, my lord would make me forego my chosen combat style in favor of a more effective method.'

I picked up my little knight into a hug. "I wouldn't do that," I promised her. "If this is the path you want to walk, we'll walk it together. Say, is there any reason we can't adjust other moves to be physical? We changed Confusion so you could use it with your sword, right? There's no reason we can't do that with other moves."

I wasn't an expert Move Tutor, but what was the difference between Sacred Sword and Focus Blast? Leaf Blade and Energy Ball? Shadow Claw and Shadow Ball? Why wasn't there a Lightning Blade even though so many pokémon learned Thunderbolt? It was one thing if there were clear biological limitations like an electrode not having an edge to "blade" with, but such arbitrary limitations made zero sense outside a video game context.

"I need to do some research, but I want you to learn new moves so you can incorporate them into your sword style. Would you be okay with that?"

'Yes,' she nodded resolutely. 'Yes! I will become a splendid knight for you!'

"That's great. But in the meantime, I want you to work on learning supporting moves like Double Team and Teleport. Higher mobility is just as important for a gallade as a gardevoir, right?"

'Yes, my lord. Both mother and father are masters of teleportation and could be at Lady Sharon's side in an instant to defend her. But Double Team is less honorable. It is a move good for only deceit.'

"Can your opponent use Double Team?"

'Yes.'

"And Hypnosis?"

'If they are able.'

"If a beautifly floods the field with Stun Spore, is it still honorable?"

'They are using only what the Origin gifted them. It is their primary defense so I do not hold it against them.'

"So why is it dishonorable for you to do the same?" Silence was my answer. "Well?"

'I… I suppose it would not be wrong to use Double Team.'

"Excellent. Remember, Artoria, if you want to fight up close, that's fine, but that means you should seize all other advantages open to you. It's not dishonorable to be tactically gifted."

'Yes, my lord.'

"Good. Then that's what we'll work on."

The two of us ate in silence for several minutes before I heard her voice echo in my mind. 'My lord?'

"Yes?"

'Will we ever get other teammates?'

"Afraid I'll replace you so soon?" I teased. I hugged her tight at the flicker of yellow. "You're my partner. I'm not replacing you for anything or anyone."

'I… Thank you…'

"Yes. We'll get new teammates eventually."

'All psychics?'

"No, why would you think that?"

'My apologies, my lord. I thought that you wished to prove you are a powerful psychic to Lady Sharon.'

"I do," I admitted easily. "I have mommy issues like you wouldn't believe. I'm man enough to admit that to myself. But why would that mean I can only train psychic types?"

'Umm…'

"I said I wanted to become a powerful psychic. I never said I wanted to become a psychic type trainer. My personal ambitions and my ambitions as a trainer don't have to be the same."

'So it is, my lord. Which pokémon will you seek to add to our team then?'

I shrugged. "I don't know. Whoever it is, they would need to get along well with you. Power and skill are all things that can be taught, but personality is much more difficult to work around."

'My lord is wise…'

"Your wise lord says you need a healthy diet so eat your lunch."

X

We arrived at Slateport at three in the afternoon. The Sour Qwilfish docked at Harbor Four, fifteen minute's walk from the pedestrian beach and the Slateport Beachside Trainer School.

Artoria and I marveled at the sprawling metropolis. Unlike Rustboro, Slateport was a city that built wide and flat instead of narrow and high. There were skyscrapers, but those were few and relegated mostly to the downtown business district. Everywhere else was a mix of suburbs, open-air markets, resorts, and parks.

In fact, there seemed to be a park at least every three blocks, each with a dedicated area for pokémon, trained and wild alike, to socialize. Bridges were constructed to link many of the larger parks to one another over the street, allowing landbound pokémon to travel to and fro as they pleased. It was a harmony of nature and urban cityscape that I just couldn't find back in my past life, certainly not in a city so large.

'Beautiful,' I heard her gasp. It was an odd feeling that, hearing thoughts gasp.

"It is," I agreed. "Slateport was never a city state like Mossdeep. It's one of the newest cities in the world. It's called Slateport because a lot of the harbors were built on slate imported from the Mt. Chimney area. The entire city is only twenty-four-ish years old, which is a big part of why it hasn't been provided a gym yet."

'I see. You are well-informed, my lord.'

"Comes with having a gym leader mom. I had to study Hoenn history and politics since I was six."

'Lady Sharon must have been a demanding mistress.'

"Yeah, that's one way to put it…"

Author's Note

That comment about spoons and psychics? Yea, that's not a joke or some quirk unique to this fic. That's canon.

In the Adventures manga, Mewtwo forms a giant spoon out of psychic power and kicks the ever-loving shit out of everyone with it. He then shows up several arcs later to bisect Deoxys and several buildings with his spoon-sword.

Sabrina, a human, also shows up from time to time to give the current arc's hero/heroine a spoon of destiny (I swear I'm not making this up) that bends towards whatever the wielder needs most at the time. It's been used to help find specific trainers in an abandoned train, pair off other trainers according to personality for a tournament, or even divine which movie Whitley (Rosa in Adventures) should star in.

For real, that's how Whitley/Rosa ends up becoming a movie star in Poké Star Studios in the Adventures canon, by following the will of a fucking spoon and ending up in a Brycen-Man movie.

Psychics have an instinctive affinity for spoons.

One of these days, I want to write a fanfic of Mewtwo being isekaied into the world of Demon Slayer as a prank by Hoopa then being told he will only be allowed back into the pokémon world when he becomes the greatest swordsman in the world. Mewtwo will then travel the land, developing his own sword art as the Spoon Pillar.

Breath of Spoon First Form: Big Scoop!

As for Artoria herself, any physical move she picks up will be because there is a special move counterpart. Psychic to Psycho Cut. Energy Ball to Leaf Blade. Stuff like that. If a gardevoir doesn't have access to an element, she won't learn a blade equivalent.

Aaron was thirty-eight when he died. Pokémon came out as a series back when he was twelve or so, with Fate/Stay Night coming out about a little less than a decade later.