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Well, this was not good, Tristen thought. With him being out for the past couple of weeks, he missed out on a lot of practice with sewing. In fact, the only thing he really did here was sew together a couple of pieces of fabric and that happened roughly before he got attacked by Team Star a day or so later the first time. He missed the sewing on buttons part for that matter. It looked as if he was going to have to try to wing it. Matteo went on to get the stuff out from under the table, being asked to go get the fabrics, though it had to make it something cool. Not sure what Mr. Sanguaro would have had that Matteo would favor, but might as well see what he had. He’d get up from the table to go get the fabrics, starting to look around them.

There were mostly solid color fabrics. The ones with any sort of pattern were few and far between. Maybe a plaid pattern here, a checkered pattern there, there was a camouflage one as well that was snatched up immediately right as soon as Tristen arrived to see what was there. All the same, nothing that Tristen would think Matteo would think was ‘cool’. Tristen realized he couldn’t have expected too much from Mr. Sanguaro. He had other classes to think about and provide for too, so he couldn’t just go nuts on making sure there was a wide assortment of fabrics. It was about teaching the lesson after all and making sure the students could do it. The only way they could have made anything ‘cool’ was if they had the time and know-how to get creative with what little they have, and Tristen knew that was well beyond his skillset currently. Tristen ended up settling for a solid dark, navy-blue fabric. A lot of the times he saw that sort of color, while it might not have looked special, people tend to wear it with a little bit of class. Style. One of those ‘gentlemen’s’ colors. It probably wasn’t ‘cool’ but it did have the air of refinement. Maybe something cool could come of it. Provided Matteo was open to the idea, at least. He’d take the fabric back to the table and to Matteo. “Eh, not that much variety over there.” Tristen said to the Growlithe hybrid.

Tristen would get the fabric tape ruler, rolling it out to get the dimensions of the zipper, and then started to line it up on the fabrics. A inch longer than the zipper itself? Sounded simple enough. Just probably had to make sure everything was straight. As Tristen started to mark the spots the two hybrids would need to get to, he'd perk up a little at Matteo's question and he gave a soft chuckle. "She tried. Though every time she just about tried to weasel a question in, she got stopped, usually by Penny." Tristen said as he was trying to measure the shapes out, trying to make sure that everything was equal as it should be. "I would be lying though if I didn't think about doing it every once and a while though. While I am here, I don't really want to be resting on my laurels that much while I do school work. I don't think any of my Pokemon would care for that too much. Not to mention, there are some that I would like to work on like Wimpod, Litten, and Rookidee. And well, Sprigatito now too since he's my most recent add." Tristen said. "Though...gotta admit, not sure how constructive it'd be fighting a brick wall that is Nemona's Pokemon. There...how's that?" He said. He checked and double checked...this looked as perfect as it could get on the fabric.

Tristen handed him the scissors, allowing Matteo to do his work with the fabric. Well, my main teams, I haven't really gone anywhere as of yet. Haven't had any opportunity to look around too much short of south of here towards Los Platos and then Cortondo, but that was more to work on Fela and my science projects and getting a Scatterbug to evolve into the Vivillion it is now." Tristen admitted. "I did notice all of that though, even my unevolved Pokemon didn't have too much difficulty with all of that near Los Platos, or at least the Pokemon that we came across there earlier this week when I got back. Other than for Sprigatito, that is. I just got him..."

When the topic of the sewing machine, Tristen shook his head. "Can't say that I have." he said. "The most sewing I did ever was that one day I tried it while you were gone a while and it was just with a needle and thread. So, I'm getting a crash course in it right now." Tristen admitted. "I probably should learn more though...Academy uniforms are not exactly as sturdy as what I typically wear..."

Something to do? This weekend? That wasn’t school work? And there was social interaction that wasn’t a just a Pokémon battle? “Sure.” Tristen said, taking to Matteo’s invitation to go training off another part of the region. “Gives me an excuse to explore more of the region, too, which would be great.” Though Persian and Sawsbuck? He might need to bring something a bit tougher fare than Rookidee or Litten, incidentally. Magmar might be good to go, though. Thoughts for later. He then perked up as he then offered Tristen to work the sewing machine. He needed to learn at some point. Who knows, there may be another situation where he needed to fly solo and he didn’t want to be caught unprepared. “Yea, I’ll try it.” He got up from his seat and sat down at the station. “So, machine on the pedal, not too hard…just sew together the two pieces. That doesn’t sound so hard…” he said. He tried to make sure that the fabric was straight in the machine. He double checked the floor to find the pedal then gave it a slight press, it started slow, but then giving it a bit more pressure, it started to speed up. He didn’t want to go too fast, part of him a little scared to in fear of sowing his own thumb into the fabric as well. More so just to try make sure the fabric stayed the way it should be. “Like…this?”

Tristen listened to Matteo’s advice, trying to get a bit more pressure still on the pedal still. Ribbing Tristen’s apprehension did still raise a point; he didn’t want a incomplete assignment to turn in. He would try to keep the fabric as even and straight as possible, trying to achieve perfection on it, even though especially in his case it was not that likely. Never mind the possibility of having a thumb meet rapid-fire needle. Tristen finally would get done with the machine, Matteo would take over once again with the bag, handing over anything that Matteo needed. Tristen felt like they were trying to do a surgical operation as opposed to putting together a bag.

Matteo went on the topic again of the Pokémon training and even then, he started to realize just where he was at. “…I don’t know.” He said. “I’d imagine Wimpod should be close to evolving, or even Litten, but I am not sure if he could take on anything like Sawsbuck or Persian yet. I take it that the Pokémon over that way are kinda strong. I have a Magmar that could probably stand to get some work in. Also maybe Zebstrika.” Tristen had a realization, crossing his arms, remembering something. “Ugh…that actually reminds me. I wish I had some way here to do it, but I think I am going to have to go back home for it…I also have a Electabuzz that needs help, but the problem is that its…actually a Shadow Pokémon that I managed to capture a while back ago. I haven’t gotten it purified yet and I don’t want to single-handedly cause another pandemic. And I can’t do anything really until its purified first.” He said. “I need to get it under control under more…confined conditions.”

Tristen had to take a breath, blowing out a little bit. Shadow Pokémon in and of themselves are a story, he knew and many could tell stories about what they have to deal with. “Nothing good.” Tristen said, thinking as to how to explain it. “At one time, to what I am told, it just simply amounted to brainwashing. But the man responsible behind them I guess…found it not fast enough to do. Not efficient enough. So, he created the Shadow Virus…where when a Pokémon becomes infected, it could be sent back to wherever it came from, maybe a trainer catch it, stuff like that. One infected Pokémon becomes two. Two becomes entire trainer parties, other trainers’ parties, entire Pokémon nests in the wild…there was an entire pandemic in the Hoenn region. What happens is that regardless of how its done, if you thought Shelgon was hard to deal with now? It would have really been awful as a Shadow Pokémon, let alone any Pokémon.”

“What happens is that Pokémon end up in a whole other state. On the surface, you wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference, they’re effectively the same as any other Pokémon. But the devil is in the details. Humans wouldn’t be able to tell them short of some mannerisms they have if they know better enough. They become both physically and emotionally numb. They get ‘programmed’ to fight, and nothing more. And fight. And fight. And fight. They don’t really feel any pain, nor do they feel anything for others. Everything amounts to nothing, and will be treated as such, even their own lives. Your life, mine. It doesn’t matter. Completely nothing. The only way beyond that a human can tell is if they have devices to see a tell-tale aura they tend to put off passively or the flared up aura that does become visible should they use Shadow attacks. Hybrids and actual Pokémon got it a little better…sort of. While they might not see the aura save for the flared up ones on attack, Blizz tells me that their whole pressure feels off, probably because all of their body functions are overclocked in a way. They’re pushing themselves far too hard to accomplish what they are out to do. Again, everything is nothing. You might be able to tell like I can…they got a weird smell about them. Smells awful…like boiling blood or something like that. For as all I know, that might not be too far from the truth. They’d effectively kill themselves without a second thought, and probably their trainer if it just so happens.”

Tristen sat up, crossing his arms, thinking back to the times dealing with Shadow Pokémon first hand, having to purify Zebstrika and Magmar. The countless fights in that few years; the strain that it had on every last Snagem and the ones that got in their way like HAZARD. Then a thought… “Shadow attacks on a related note aren’t great either. In that ‘overclocked’ state, they put off various attacks based around their shadowification and sometimes, it’s probably one of the rare times you’ll ever see them exhibit any sort of pain because it’s a lot to put out. Shadow attacks tend to be super effective against non-Shadow Pokémon and nowadays put the non-Shadow Pokémon at risk of being infected themselves, provided they don’t already just being close enough to the Shadow Pokémon, though it does next to nothing to against another Shadow Pokémon. If two Shadow Pokémon fought each other, they’d just constantly beat each other senseless until probably both of them aren’t able to continue fighting even though they’d probably want to. Mind willing, body not strong enough sort of thing.”

“Purifying them is no easy task either. Because when you try to purify them, its…how to explain it. Its like you’re trying to fight against the nature that was imprinted on it. You’re trying to work the virus out of them and break them psychologically to get them back to normal. They’ll try to fight it, just as any virus would, and doing so puts them in more and more risk to go into hyper mode, where some of its true nature shows up and starts fighting with itself. It’ll fight, it’ll thrash, it’ll use Shadow attacks without command, puts you and anyone around you at risk until you manage to get it out of Hyper Mode. It takes a while to…eh…’burn’ the virus out of them. And then you have to give it the vaccination to get it purified once it seems ready. Its…probably one thing I’ll give Paldea for and that was the measures they seem to have taken to make sure all that in Hoenn doesn’t come here.”

“Even though we stopped the man responsible, nearly at the cost of a lot of Snagem’s lives, mine included, the damage had already been done. There’s really no telling if things are going to go fully back to normal. Freth told me that in Hoenn, where this all started, some people have been taking up Shadow Pokémon and had been trying to keep the virus roaming around in some way to ‘help’ some down-on-their-luck trainers looking for an edge. Some real black-market stuff. The good news is after purification and they are back to normal, they shouldn’t be able to be infected and become shadow Pokémon again. At least like that, anyways. We end up having to use purified Pokémon to fight Shadow Pokémon…but its…a lot.”

Tristen would notice that he had Matteo’s full attention at this point in this story then noticed the bag. “Uh…you done?” Tristen asked the Growlithe hybrid. That kinda got a little serious there…

“Huh? Oh! Thanks!” Tristen said, giving the bag a close inspection, both in and out of the bag. Matteo actually did apparently a good job with this, which astonished him. Something that he definitely had to learn to do. He probably would have marveled at it a bit until Matteo popped the question of what Team Snagem does now. He would neatly sit the bag in front of him as he spoke. “For the most part. Though honestly? A lot of us are still trying to recover from that final fight with him.” Tristen said to Matteo. “This was a man that just did what he did only to prove some sort of point. What that point was, I don’t really understand it really. Somewhere in the range of ‘because he could’ and ‘his way was better’. Sub, the leader of Snagem, can maybe try to explain it better because if anyone that had the biggest hatred for each other, it was between those two. But…yea, the physical damage was taken care of…but that stuff he did…it just…sticks with you. Stuff of nightmares. Makes you question why there are people around that are like that. It was why a lot of Snagems came to Paldea at first; it was supposed to be a vacation, a moment to actually…breathe before we spent who knows how long on the next issue that might come up, rather it be Shadow Pokémon or someone else that wants to ruin things for everyone in the world.”

“But then, an accident got us here enrolled into this school. Some ended up having to help Ms. Raifort with a bunch of Herba Mystica stuff which was why she wasn’t really teaching in the way she was wanting to that week and a half, others had to deal with Team Star to find out what they were doing, some went off to go take on the gym leaders here in Paldea, and for some of us, have to go through taking a bunch of classes just to appease bureaucrats back home. At the time I was the only one who was actually happy to come here to take classes because I never really got that back at home; I’ve been with Snagem, let alone with Blizz, ever since he took me and both he and Freth had been wanting me to get in a school proper in some way but couldn’t really get in any spot to arrange getting me into one. It was one problem after the next. Between never really knowing what it was like to be in a place like this and after all of that stuff with that evil man, I was more than ready to just be here, learn stuff, make friends…”

Tristen would watch Matteo working meticulously on the next bag, handing him the tools and helping him out with the bag just to make sure he stayed busy under the watchful, passing eye of Mr. Sanguaro. “You know some of the rest of that story, though…you know, Team Star did their thing over a couple of weeks ago which ended up with me getting taken out of school for those couple of weeks to recover from that.”