Day two of the voyage to Kanto. Clear skies.
The weather was decent, but the day still dragged. Reiji sat by the rail, watching the sea, flipping a few pages now and then, and getting bored all over again.
The ship did have battle courts and little event matches, even a gym room trainers could rent to work their Pokémon. He didn't touch any of it. If this was a Team Rocket ship, showing his hand was the last thing he wanted.
Private training rooms also made him uneasy for a different reason. Places like that loved collecting trainer data on the sly. In his old world, fancy hotels were infamous for hidden cameras—he didn't feel like giving anyone a full dossier on his team.
Once the ocean view stopped being entertaining, he put the book away, finished his cold drink, and went back inside. He turned on the air-conditioning and let the room cool him down; outside, even with shade, the heat was miserable.
He lay down and drifted off again. With no safe way to train properly these past few days, he'd been having his Pokémon spar inside dreams—running drills in Darkrai's nightmare world.
That place was strange in the best and worst ways. Everything felt real, and he stayed aware that he was dreaming the entire time. The downside hit in the morning: his body had slept, but his mind hadn't, so he woke up with that hollow, wrung-out kind of tired.
To be clear, not that kind of "tired." More like his brain had been scooped out and rinsed.
If he did nothing in the dream and just rested, it was fine. The exhaustion came from treating sleep like a second training session.
Darkrai was also getting better at controlling itself. Whether it was levels, stronger psychic power, or simply getting more practiced with Dream Eater, the difference showed: it could keep its Bad Dreams aura from leaking everywhere, compressing it into a tight radius.
The steadier Darkrai's mood, the smaller the nightmare's reach. Some nights, it barely touched anyone beyond Reiji and his team. In a way, that solved the problem by solving the cause—less panic, less spillover.
If its mood, power, and control kept climbing like this, Darkrai would eventually be able to open and close that ability at will.
Reiji also kept finding new uses for the nightmare world. It wasn't just for sharpening combat instincts or getting used to evolutions early—he could command battles there and build real rhythm with his Pokémon, the kind that only comes from repetition.
And there was something else. Darkrai could pull other people in—link to their dreams and drag their awareness over for a conversation. It was like an unlimited hologram space.
Range was the big question. That depended on Darkrai's strength: the wider it could spread its nightmare field, the farther those "dream calls" could reach.
At the core, the whole world ran on Darkrai. After that, the sleeping Pokémon mattered too—the more sleeping minds feeding the space, the bigger it grew. With only Darkrai, the world stayed limited; add more sleepers, add more "participants," and the space expanded.
It was all consciousness mechanics, and he only half understood it. Still, this world treated souls as real. Ghost-type Pokémon were proof enough.
He even remembered a scene from the anime: Lavender Town, Pokémon Tower, and Ash collapsing—then a Haunter yanking his soul right out, Pikachu's too. Ridiculous, sure, but it fit the rules here.
And the movies were even worse. In one of them, Ash got reduced to ash—then Ho-Oh brought him back like it was nothing.
Apparently the writers' favourite child came with unlimited extra lives.
Reiji caught himself spiralling and pulled back. Thinking about gods and creation-level Pokémon didn't help him today. Legendary Pokémon were already hard enough to meet; the truly top-tier ones were a different universe entirely, only for trainers they acknowledged.
And that Silver Wing he'd gotten? That was just proof he'd seen a feather, not proof he belonged in that league. Besides, it probably wasn't meant for him anyway—it was for Poliwhirl and the others. No need to get ahead of himself.
With nothing else to do on the ocean, he spent the days near Marshtomp, watching Poliwhirl coach it through Waterfall training.
Scyther, meanwhile, had lost its favourite sparring partner and started pestering the others instead. Everyone knew it was a fight addict, so most of the team avoided it.
That left Gyarados.
Scyther walked right up and insisted on sparring. Gyarados tried to act tough at first—snorting, roaring down its nose like size alone settled the argument—then Scyther taught it a quick lesson in humility.
Scyther was even faster than Poliwhirl. If Gyarados thought it could win a speed check, it was dreaming.
After getting dismantled, Gyarados slunk over to Reiji to complain. Reiji ignored the whining at first, then paused. This wasn't just Scyther being annoying—it exposed a real weakness.
Gyarados hit hard, no question. But if it couldn't touch the target, power meant nothing.
He checked Gyarados's move set and noticed the problem immediately: nothing that interfered with speed. It did have Bulldoze, but it wasn't as reliable as Rock Tomb, and Gyarados couldn't learn Rock Tomb anyway.
Other options existed—Scary Face, Icy Wind—moves that lowered Speed rather than outright trapping someone. Still, if he couldn't lock an opponent down, cutting their Speed worked. And if he couldn't do that, boosting his own Speed worked too.
He had Gyarados learn Scary Face first. It picked it up fast, and honestly, it was built for it. The entire move was intimidation turned into technique.
With that down, he pushed Gyarados a step further: fold Scary Face into Intimidate itself. If the opponent hesitated at Gyarados's entrance—if fear landed—then the opening exchange got nasty: Intimidate dropped Attack, Scary Face crushed Speed, and then Leer shaved Defence on top.
He hadn't thought of that before. Intimidate wasn't just a passive perk—it could be the start of a whole sequence.
After that, he had Gyarados learn Leer. With Kingler as a reference, Gyarados got the hang of it quickly.
To test the new "opening package," Reiji used a few of the smaller ones as guinea pigs: Marshtomp, Zapdos, Shelmet, and Ditto. The moment Gyarados came out and roared, the little ones froze, then started crying. Running wasn't even on the table—they couldn't move.
So the combo worked.
If Gyarados hit the field and the opponent didn't steel themselves, they started the match down: -1 Attack, -1 Defence, -2 Speed.
Then, if Gyarados scored a knockout, it gained +1 Attack. Add a single Dragon Dance and now it had +1 Attack and +1 Speed on top of everything else. At that point, if the opponent stayed in, the fight was basically over.
Switching could break the spiral, but switching had its own cost. With limited swaps, the first person to blink often handed control over to the other side. If you kept trading swaps until neither of you had any left, you eventually circled back to the same problem: you still had to face Gyarados.
As an opener, Gyarados was suddenly perfect. If the opponent refused to switch, he could steal the first exchange; if they switched, he got momentum anyway.
He'd originally considered leading with Pelipper, but that came with a risk. If he set Rain Dance and the opponent opened with an Electric-type, Thunder became perfectly accurate, and one mistake could cost him Poliwhirl outright.
Gyarados didn't have that issue. If someone tried to counter-lead with an Electric-type because they expected Gyarados, he could pivot to Hanhan instead and punish the prediction.
Heh. Classic mind games.
Lead Gyarados the first time someone met him. Next time, flip it. Third time, flip it back again.
The more he thought about it, the dirtier it sounded. He sat on the sofa and laughed until his stomach hurt, while the rest of the team stared like he'd lost his mind.
Even Darkrai slipped out quietly, and he still didn't notice.
"I found something interesting," Darkrai said when Reiji finally stopped laughing. "Do you want to see?"
"What, more interesting than my disgusting opener plan?" Reiji wiped at the tears in the corners of his eyes and looked over.
"I can't explain it well," Darkrai said. "You'll understand when you see it."
A door opened in the air.
"Alright," Reiji said, waving the team back to training. "Let's go."
It was a dream. If something killed him here, he'd just wake up—his mind had safeguards for that.
He stepped through the door with Darkrai and emerged into a city.
A huge, empty city.
"No people," he muttered, walking into the street. The place had everything—buildings, sky, sun, wind, even drifting leaves. Just no life. "Whose mind is this? How is it this big?"
"This isn't my nightmare world," Darkrai said, scanning the air. "Something else built it. The psychic force here is so strong that nightmares can't invade. I only sensed it when the ship entered this area."
Reiji frowned. "So where are we?"
A small voice cut in.
"Who are you?"
Reiji snapped around and took a step back, his hand reaching for a Poké Ball—then he realised he didn't have any. The world felt too real; for a second, he'd forgotten it was a dream.
The one who'd spoken was a little girl with blue hair, wearing a white dress. Around her stood Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur—and behind them, silent and imposing, Mewtwo.
Reiji swallowed hard. "Mew—"
The word stuck.
Then it clicked. The ship was passing near New Island.
Darkrai had likely felt Mewtwo's psychic waves. Even sealed in a tank, a Pokémon built to rival Mew wasn't something you ignored.
Which meant this door hadn't led to some random dream. It had led straight into Amber and Mewtwo's mind.
Reiji forced a smile that probably looked guilty anyway. "Sorry. I didn't mean to barge in. I'm not scaring you, am I, kid?"
He knew who she was—Dr. Fuji's daughter, or rather the preserved copy of her consciousness. The real Amber had died long ago.
Scientists really were insane.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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