"You want to capture me, human?" The moment Darkrai saw the Poké Ball, it calmed down. It knew exactly what that tool was for—binding Pokémon. For a Pokémon of its level, a Poké Ball shouldn't be able to do anything. It shouldn't be able to hold it at all.
"I help you solve your problem; you've got to give me something in return, right? You're not expecting me to work for free, are you?" Reiji couldn't help laughing inside. He wasn't afraid Darkrai wouldn't bite—only that it wouldn't react.
"Human, I'm willing to be your Pokémon. I can fight for you, too. But you must help me bring my nightmares under control." After a brief silence, Darkrai accepted Reiji's terms.
As long as this human could solve its problem, being captured didn't matter. Just like Gastly had said, food and shelter included wasn't such a bad deal.
Reiji's expression turned serious. "Your problem is easy to fix. But I have one condition. Whatever I say, you don't question it—especially in battle. You execute my orders without hesitation. If you have doubts, you can ask me afterward. Can you accept that?"
"I can." Darkrai nodded without a second thought. It had watched how well Reiji treated his other Pokémon and decided this was a human it could trust.
"Your problem will be taken care of tonight. Right now, I need you to go into this Poké Ball. This is very important to me." Reiji forced himself to stay calm and press down his excitement.
He couldn't reveal his status panel. What he needed most from Darkrai right now was trust.
"All right." Looking into Reiji's steady gaze, Darkrai slowly drifted toward the red-and-white standard Poké Ball. It extended one claw and gently tapped the button. In the next instant, a beam of red light pulled it inside.
Captured—successfully.
Watching this, Reiji's heart surged. He had actually caught the legendary Nightmare Pokémon—Darkrai.
He knew he couldn't let that excitement show. Drawing in a deep breath, he forced down the joy boiling in his chest and slowly picked up the Poké Ball now containing Darkrai.
The ball trembled slightly in his hand, as if it were filled with limitless power and possibility. Reiji silently promised himself he would treasure this hard-earned trust, face the future together with Darkrai, and help it resolve its nightmare problem.
[Darkrai]
[Type: Dark]
[Gender: None]
[Potential: 78.93%]
[Level: 44.17%]
[Ability: Bad Dreams / 15.55%]
[Known Moves: (Disable / 10.16%) (Quick Attack / 21.41%) (Hypnosis / 32.37%) (Sucker Punch / 9.71%) (Night Shade / 7.37%) (Double Team / 10.82%) (Haze / 8.36%) (Dark Void / 18.84%) (Nasty Plot / 7.52%) (Dream Eater / 9.45%) (Dark Pulse / 28.56%)]
"Holy—" Reiji swore silently. With a potential like this on the Nightmare Pokémon, who needed anything else?
He was beyond thrilled. With a potential of seventy-eight, he wouldn't need to worry about Darkrai's potential all the way up to Champion tier. They could focus on level growth and climb smoothly, without hitting any real bottlenecks.
He also noticed how low Darkrai's ability and move proficiencies were. That might be exactly why it couldn't control its nightmare power.
In theory, Pokémon abilities were controllable. Take Sharpedo's Rough Skin, for example. If it couldn't "switch that off," every time its Trainer tried to pet it they'd get scratched to pieces. Who would want to raise something like that?
It'd be like hugging a walking ball of needles. Nowhere safe to touch.
Darkrai's problem was likely the same—it couldn't rein in its nightmares because of its Bad Dreams ability. That ability subconsciously inflicted mental damage on sleeping humans and Pokémon and even drained their stamina.
Bad Dreams worked like this: at the end of each turn, any sleeping Pokémon—or any with the Comatose ability—lost one-eighth of its maximum HP.
With the root problem identified—Bad Dreams was what created the nightmares—he had a scapegoat.
That also gave him a direction for the fix. Darkrai could raise its proficiency with Bad Dreams. And if Darkrai didn't even know what an "ability" was?
That wasn't a big hurdle either. Since its move pool included Dream Eater, which also targeted sleeping foes and dealt damage, there were a lot of parallels between the Dream Eater move and the Bad Dreams ability.
Reiji couldn't help speculating. Was Darkrai failing to control Bad Dreams because its mental strength was too low to restrain the ability? Would boosting its mind help it master Bad Dreams?
And if it couldn't handle the ability directly, could he push Dream Eater's proficiency high enough to achieve the same practical control over its nightmare output?
Darkrai might not be able to directly control Bad Dreams for now, but surely it could control Dream Eater. There was no way it couldn't.
He decided to start by strengthening Darkrai's mental power, then have it drill Dream Eater over and over, raising its proficiency. His hope was that, through Dream Eater, Darkrai would learn how to release and pull back Bad Dreams at will.
The mechanisms were different, but the result was the same—damage to sleeping opponents. With enough repetition, control over Bad Dreams should follow naturally.
He had no intention of explaining any of this to Darkrai yet—at least, not for now.
Even if this method didn't work, he still had other ways to tackle the nightmare issue. He was completely confident about that. For Darkrai, this was a huge problem. For him, it was just a small one. Solving it was only a matter of time.
Bang—
After carefully checking Darkrai's status panel, Reiji released it again, then pulled out a blanket and lay down on the sofa.
All of his Pokémon stared at him, baffled by what he was doing. He deliberately kept them in suspense and called out, "Everyone, find a spot and lie down. We're going to sleep."
Once they'd all picked a place to lie down, he turned to Darkrai. "Darkrai, use Hypnosis on all of us. Put us to sleep and take us into a dream. You come along too."
"Are you sure about this?" Darkrai looked utterly confused. This was its first time seeing someone volunteer to fall asleep in front of the Nightmare Pokémon.
It couldn't understand this human's logic at all. Did he really trust it that much? This was also the first time Darkrai had ever felt what it was like to be trusted.
"I'm sure. Oh, and don't hypnotize Spinarak—it's on night watch." Reiji nodded seriously. Then his eyes were caught by the hypnotic glow shining in Darkrai's, and both he and his Pokémon slipped into sleep.
In the dream, he "woke up" in the villa's living room. His Pokémon were nowhere to be seen. Faced with a dream this vivid again, he decided to really take it in.
He hadn't even had time to check what was different about the villa before Darkrai appeared in the dream.
"Darkrai, bring the others here." Reiji wanted Darkrai to link everyone's dreams together. For Darkrai, that was child's play.
"All right." Darkrai still didn't know what Reiji had in mind, but it didn't question him. It swiftly connected the dreams of all his Pokémon—apart from Spinarak, which hadn't been put to sleep.
"Polii, polii!" Poliwhirl fell from the ceiling, hit the ground, and immediately saw Reiji and Darkrai. It jumped up at once and planted itself in front of Reiji.
"Easy. This is just a dream." Seeing that Poliwhirl still treated Darkrai like a threat, Reiji reached out and gently patted it. He understood that its reaction came from an instinct to protect him, afraid Darkrai would attack.
But Pokémon were simple, even Darkrai. Now that they'd formed a partnership, it wasn't going to turn on them.
After calming Poliwhirl, he lifted his hand again, remembering the feel just now. It was still that real—Poliwhirl's skin slick and sticky with moisture.
One by one, the rest of his Pokémon dropped from the ceiling. Meeting in a shared dream for the first time, they were both curious and excited. They scattered, touching everything around them, exploring this dream world with wide eyes.
This was also Darkrai's first time getting this close to such a friendly, in-your-face bunch—especially Ditto, which had turned itself into a perfect Darkrai lookalike.
"You…" Darkrai stared at the Ditto-Darkrai, full of questions, tempted to ask how it had done that.
"Ditto, ditto…" the transformed Ditto croaked twice, as if saying it hadn't known it could change forms in a dream either. Truth was, it could transform anywhere as long as it had seen the form before. That was its signature skill.
It could probably turn into anything—from something that couldn't fly to a fish with a huge head. Even a "mini" legendary. It might only be copying the appearance and not the moves, but still.
"You're amazing," Darkrai said, genuinely impressed by Ditto's transformation ability.
"Ditto, ditto. You're the amazing one—you can make a place like this," Ditto replied, still in Darkrai's shape. This was a dream. Darkrai had actually linked all their dreams together.
"Buu-rii, can you make honey water?" Butterfree fluttered over, poking Darkrai lightly with its tiny forelegs, curious whether it could produce something tasty.
"I can… but…" Darkrai saw how eager Butterfree was and gave in, conjuring a glass of honey water for it first.
The moment Butterfree took the cup, though, the honey water darkened, and its flavor turned foul. In a nightmare, any pleasant thing twisted into something the dreamer didn't want to face—unless it was their own happy dream.
"Buu-rii, that tastes awful…" Butterfree took a sip and immediately spat it out, making it very clear how bad it was.
"In your own happy dream, it won't change," Darkrai explained.
Two other gluttons, however, clearly didn't get the explanation and rushed over in a hurry.
"Gaaast, gaaast, where's mine? Make me something too!" Gastly floated over, tongue lolling, eyes burning with expectation.
"Woohoo, I want some too, I want something tasty!" Rhyhorn stuck out its tongue as well, clearly wanting in on the food.
Seeing that, for these three, even their dreams were nothing but food, Reiji could only rub his forehead. Then he clapped his hands lightly to get everyone's attention. "All right, everyone, listen up…"
Once the Pokémon quieted down, he turned to Darkrai. "Darkrai, brighten things up a bit in here and bring out the yard outside the villa."
"Got it." Darkrai glanced toward the villa's exterior. The sky outside instantly brightened, and the small courtyard came into view.
"You guys can do whatever you like for now. Poliwhirl, Scyther, Kingler, Croagunk, Gastly, Darkrai—you six, come with me…"
Reiji dismissed the others and led the six he'd called into the courtyard. He was going to train them in the dream.
As long as the dream felt real enough, he had double the training time other people did. That was the real way to use a dream.
A lot of things couldn't carry over into reality—his status panel, for instance, couldn't be used here. He could recreate it visually if he wanted, but that was pointless. Everything here was fake.
But muscle memory did carry over—the physical feel of battle. He could sharpen that here.
Tonight was just a test run, letting his team get used to the environment. He'd picked six to start with; he'd worry about the others later.
"Poliwhirl, Scyther—you can fight here. Go all out," Reiji told the pair. They'd been training together recently and already built solid teamwork.
"Polii, polii." Poliwhirl turned to Scyther, its fighting spirit rising.
"Sha." Scyther scraped its scythes together, itching to fight. If Reiji didn't forbid brawling, it would gladly fight every day instead of doing boring drills.
"If you're going to fight, do it somewhere else. If you get hurt, you'll wake up. After a few times, you'll get used to it." Reiji clapped again, signaling Poliwhirl and Scyther to leave the yard so they wouldn't wreck the place.
That was exactly why he let them go all out here. In dreams, the brain has a self-defense mechanism—when something truly dangerous happens, you wake up.
Poliwhirl and Scyther soon went to Darkrai and asked it to create a battlefield for them.
Darkrai quickly realized these two were complete battle junkies, so it generated an entire forest just for them to fight in.
After watching them leave, Reiji turned to Kingler and Croagunk and laid out their drills. "Kingler, you're going to teach Croagunk how to fight. Start by letting it take hits. In a dream, you don't have to hold back."
"Kuu-kah. Follow me," Kingler said, raising its huge claw and motioning for Croagunk to come along.
Once Kingler and Croagunk had gone, Reiji faced Gastly. "Gastly, can you still evolve? Show me your evolution here."
"Gaaast, gaaast." As soon as it heard it was evolving again, Gastly immediately shifted into Haunter. It had taken this form many times already and was more than comfortable with it.
But Haunter didn't stop. It went on to evolve again, changing into Gengar.
"Gengar?" Reiji blurted. He hadn't expected Gastly to evolve all the way into Gengar inside the dream.
Even more surprising, Gengar didn't stop there. Its body flared with rainbow light and it evolved again—into Mega Gengar.
(End of Chapter)
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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