[FIN] Unpleasant Requirements

[TawnyAngel]

"Right," Aulus nodded, "you got the gist of it. When your Vulpix is hit by a fire type move its own fire type moves are about one and a half times more effective for the rest of the fight or until they're recalled unless we're talking some sort of siege situation, it wears off eventually. Not only that but your Vulpix won't take any damage so let's say Char there was powering up for an attack," he waved a hand at Char, "you might think the odds were good that it was going to be a fire type attack and order your Vulpix to jump in front of your Pikachu as that would be his logical target. If it works out you get a powered up Vulpix ready to flame down your other enemies and the brunt of the hit has passed your Pikachu by. Of course it might not turn out to be a fire type move but your Pikachu has still avoided the hit and is free to use one of its electric attacks on our flying type here with impunity."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sync's eyebrows raised a bit; he hadn't thought of that. Strategy was important too though, and that sounded like a good strategy, albeit one that obviously wouldn't come into effect more than once or twice in any given battle. He had to assume that at the very least, his opponents wouldn't be that stupid - unless they were doing it on purpose or something. "All right," he said with a nod, doing his best to commit the bit of strategy to memory, then turned to his pokemon again. Assuming the impromptu break for a small lesson was over, he gestured to Char again and ordered his pokemon, "Vulpix, Confuse Ray. Cranidos, Headbutt again. Pikachu, Thunder Shock. Don't hit each other," he added after a moment, recalling his first training mission in which some idiot had electrified half the team's pokemon.

All three pokemon voiced or nodded their acknowledgement, and once more Vulpix moved first, aiming a glowing purple ball of energy at Char. Pikachu waited until Cranidos had darted forward to attempt to deliver his attack and then moved away before aiming his own attack at their dual-type opponent.  

[TawnyAngel]

Don't hit each other? Seemed a bit obvious, though it was a good thing to do.

The session continued pretty well from there in Aulus' opinion, Sync's three pokemon followed direction well and after a while he'd declared Char 'defeated' because it would have taken a pretty long time for the inexperienced trio to actually make him faint. After that they covered a range of topics; status conditions (volatile and non-volatile), stat changes, teamwork moves such as Helping Hand, defensive moves such as protect, status curing berries and how to identify them, assigning code words or numbers to a pokemon's moves so as to be able to call them but not give away your intentions, and so on.

"So then," Aulus continued, a thoughtful frown knitting his brow, "I suppose the next thing to ask you is what department you're heading into? If you already know you might want to consider getting future pokemon to fit in with that, for example a lot of tech people like Porygon as they're able to enter computers."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

When their lesson seemingly finally reached its conclusion - or at least the pokemon-centric portion of it, at any rate - Sync waved away his pokemon to do whatever they felt like. Pikachu and Cranidos merely stood there, kind of at a loss of what to do, while Vulpix took it upon herself to fetch her ball and jump back on it again.

What department was he heading into? While he still wasn't entirely sure how to get into a particular department, he had at least looked up the different ones after speaking to whoever that guy had been, he couldn't care to remember if the guy had introduced himself or not. Someone or other that was a grunt. "I don't think as yet I'm going into a specific department, but I think I'd like to go into infiltration," Sync replied readily enough as he raised his arms and folded them behind his head, both to stretch himself out a bit and because just standing there in one posture was getting a tad boring.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Ah, infiltration hu?" Aulus asked rhetorically, his brows rising slightly with interest; not his style at all but that didn't mean he didn't see the worth of the department. "I don't know anyone in the department on a personal level but they do good work. If that's your style you might want to look into getting a Zorua, which evolves into Zoroark. They have a unique ability that'd be pretty invaluable to somebody in that field. A Zoroark can craft illusions; visual, auditory, and tactile. They're based on the pokemon's own experiences, memory, and imagination. Zorua is more limited than its evolved form, they can only disguise themselves, but in my opinion it's easier to get the end result you want by starting off with the earlier form. I've got my Zoroark on me actually, if you're interested she can give you a bit of a demonstration?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sync nodded at Aulus's rhetorical question. It was a bit disappointing that he didn't know anyone personally - it might've made it a bit easier to get into the department that way, though to be fair he didn't know how hard or easy it would be regardless - but it was his turn to show interest. His eyebrows rose a bit at the mention of a pokemon being so useful, and he didn't bother to hide how his surprised expression quickly morphed into pure skepticism. There was no way a pokemon of all things could do something like that. "Seriously - they can do that sort of thing?" No, there was no way they could. But still... "Sure, I'd like a demonstration," he responded as he lowered his arms to place his hands on his hips. There was no way -- and yet, why would an agent say such things and then offer to show him if it weren't true? Though he'd only met him a bit ago, he didn't seem like the type to try to pull someone's leg about something like that. That and he was tasked with teaching him, and trying to trick him seemed counter-productive to that end.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus didn't miss the placement of hands on hips but he supposed he didn't blame Sync, going from knowing nothing about pokemon to being told they could do weird stuff like that? Bit of a leap of faith to just nod and say 'sure'.

"Alright then." Aulus gave a nod of acknowledgement and released Foxtrot from her pokeball; the Zoroark stretched, looked around at the training room's occupants, and then turned to her trainer for direction. "Fox, we're demonstrating your Illusion ability. Let's start simple, turn me invisible." A moment later Aulus vanished. "The weakness of the ability is that if the Zoroark is struck its concentration is broken and the illusion or illusions its conjuring will vanish," said the apparently empty air. "It also takes a lot of practice to... for say synchronise sound and visual, so with an illusion of somebody standing there talking it would be hard to get the lip sync right."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

As the pokemon was released from its ball, Sync gestured to one of his pokemon - the Pikachu - and said, "Go get my pokedex," to which the electric rodent responded with a short "pi" and bounded over to the duffel bag against the wall. He fumbled with the zipper a moment before getting it open, rummaged through it to pull out the 'dex, stuffed it between his small teeth and then ran back over to his trainer.

It was at that moment that Aulus disappeared, and Sync completely forgot about his dex as he gave a visible start, his eyes widened and eyebrows rose quite high. What the actual ********> What-- he was seriously.... What the <********>. The baffled trainee immediately moved towards Aulus - or where he had been, at any rate - and paused a few feet from the spot and did the only thing any reasonable person would when presented with an invisible person: He promptly thrust his arms out and slowly waved them to see if he could find where Aulus had disappeared to. He couldn't think of any coherent response at the moment, given the situation he found himself in, but he at least was internalizing the information the invisible agent - seriously, what the hell - had given him.  

[TawnyAngel]

Ha! The invisible Aulus grinned, rather gratified by Sync's response to the obvious awesome that was Zoroark's ability. As the trainee approached him Aulus held out his metal arm so that Sync's gently waving hands would encounter it, it felt a bit less... a bit less personal than offering out his flesh arm. It was still a tool in the end he supposed, a tool that was sort of part of him but still not exactly him.

"They're pretty versatile, the only limit really being their imagination and enough experience to maintain the illusions," Aulus went on. "We've been working pretty hard on her ability together, exposing her to a lot of different stuff to give her plenty of raw material as it were."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

His fingers brushed against something metallic and the trainee paused to question whether that was something the Zoroark was making him feel, since the agent was--oh, that was right, one of his arms was metal. "Their imaginations, huh?" He echoed while he continued to admire the illusion. "So is it whatever they think of themselves, or stuff they experience themselves?" Or was that what he meant by experience?

With one hand on Aulus's arm - only a little, to ascertain its placement and that it wasn't going anywhere - Sync waved his other hand beneath where he knew the metal arm to be, to see if his arm looked any different beneath Aulus's invisible one.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Both," Aulus replied with an invisible shrug, "but direct experience makes for the best, most stable illusions and there's some things that they can't do without practical experience. The classic example is that a Zoroark who's seen a video of flame can make an illusion of fire but unless they've been burned they can't make that illusion feel like its burns when touched. They can sort of... pull together a composite of people they've seen into something they've never seen but it won't be as good as copying directly. Smaller changes are easier though, like Fox could hide the scar on my face or change my eye colour and skin tone without much trouble."

When Sync waved his hand under Aulus' invisible arm he would notice, given that he was paying close attention, that any small blemishes on his skin and other fine detail failed to appear but the illusion under the illusion was pretty good all the same.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Ah, I see," the trainee said to the invisible agent, "makes it more realistic and believable." Sync turned his arm over to study the subtle differences between his actual arm and what only looked like his arm - it was very good, very close - and once satisfied, he patted around Aulus's arm to get a feeling for which end was the elbow and which end was the wrist so he'd at least have an idea of where the agent was, which way he was facing, and how he held his arm. With that done - and really, he didn't worry about it too much anyway - the trainee began to circle where he thought Aulus to be, looking 'through' him to see how everything looked through the illusion. "I didn't think pokemon could do anything like this," he admitted as he studied the illusion. "It's actually really cool." He paused, both in his circling and in his words, and frowned a bit in thought. "If I got one of these, it could do this too?" That would be... Well, for infiltration, that sounded almost essential. A pokemon that could make you invisible? Hell yes.  

[TawnyAngel]

As the training room walls were uniform, and she was very well accustomed to them, Fox was able to pretty well perfectly replicate the view for Sync as he walked around.

Aulus nodded automatically despite the fact that it was useless; "Yes it could, with training of course. It's like... well like anything I guess, they need practice to get the techniques down and to be able to maintain them for extended periods of time. Larger and more complex illusions are more draining than simpler stuff like turning somebody invisible or putting up the illusion of... say a sign or a bush or something. If you do get one I'd be happy to work with you and it, explain how we did things. Training Illusion is a bit different again to battle training."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Yeah, okay, he had to get one of these. He moved back to his pokemon and finally accepted his pokedex from Pikachu and, with a quick tap, brought the screen to life so he could scan Aulus's pokemon. Zoroark, evolved from Zorua, illusion pokemon... Oh yes, he would definitely need one of these. He made a mental note to remember their names and look them up in more detail later, as well as how he could go about getting one.

"Makes sense," he responded at length, because it did, as much as he'd like to get one that was good at its abilities from the start. "I'll have to look into them sometime then and see about getting myself one." He canted his head to one side, then gestured to Foxtrot, "What else can yours do?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"Okay Fox, you can drop that now thanks," Aulus said, and a moment later he popped back into view. Okay, what else to show? "Right Fox, next cover yourself with an illusion of me and include textures."

Foxtrot nodded and then abruptly there were two Auluses in the room. The one that had been a Zoroark a moment before walked towards Sync and wordlessly held its hands out to him.

"As I'm sure you can imagine this makes a good decoy," said the actual Aulus with a gesture to his doppleganger. "She can make me invisible, put this up at the same time, and then lead somebody who might be following me off in the wrong direction. She can also do a large number of different kinds of pokemon, either to make herself and the team look different than they are or give the appearance of a horde of pokemon for example. She can do fires of various sizes and we're working on water effects but those are really hard to get looking just right."