Welcome to Gaia! ::

The two Pokemon would spend a fair amount of time getting down how to manifest Bug energy but by the time they were done Houri was able to freely pull out the green colored energy and cloak her fur in it, the Galarian Zigzagoon realizing it was far easier to do than she had previously been making it. With that step out of the way the next step was to concentrate it into her individual hairs and then send them flying at a target.

At this point Drapion had stood back and Sub created a single target with the room's controls, both trainer and Pokemon then waiting to see what Houri could do. The Zigzagoon would summon forth the Bug energy, concentrate it into her back fur, and condense it down into a small patch of fur, not quit down to individual strands of hair though. She would then attempt to launch the fur and to their surprise did get it off her back...though with only enough force to create a 'poof' of loose fur and not enough to send a 'pin' flying. Legrand would speak up with some words of advice and Houri would try again.

After several more tries Houri managed to concentrate the Bug energy down to the hairs, the glowing of the Bug energy far less spread out but highly condensed. With that done she would attempt to launch one of the five hairs she concentrated the energy into but again she just couldn't get enough force behind the attack to send it flying, the 'pin' blowing away harmlessly. At this point Sub stepped up as he thought of an idea. "Get a running start." He told the Zigzagoon, both her and Legrand looking at her confused. "Try to do something similar to Tackle, concentrate the energy as you run then when you're ready to launch stop and send that momentum into your hairs and launch them. Can't hurt to try, right?"

Figuring it wouldn't hurt Houri took walked far away from the clifftop and once there was enough space she would begin to run towards the edge at full speed, summoning forth a bunch of energy to surround her body like Tackle, ensuring it was Bug energy, then concentrated it into her back and finally into five individual hairs. Once she got close to the edge she stopped suddenly, arched her back and...launched a single Pin Missile! The Bug energy empowered hair missed the target but it was sent flying with enough force to actually hurt something had it hit! Both Sub and Legrand jumped in surprise and cheered for Houri, the Zigzagoon immediately beginning to run around in circles, happy and pleased with herself.

"Good job Houri! Now don't stop there! Let's try that again and see if we can't work on that aim, you're doing so good!" He praised the girl, not wanting her to settle for this just yet. With a nod the Pokemon would walk away from the edge and begin again. She was going to hit that target.

Over the course of one year, Deo and his machop would be practing and slowly curing him of his shadow. The bonding between them would be enough to try to, if not, successfully cause the machop to remove his hatred and shadow.
As it was not an adventure for both, without some hiccups and some trials and tribulations. Hopefully Deo would not have a shadow machop for a while. (this might not age well)

Over the course of months, Deo suffered from the Machop several injuries. A broken arm and a broken nose Both suffered as the Machop threw him into the wall and caused the machop to be held down and Doc Owl having a not so nice day fixing and setting back Deos arm. Not just physical injuries either. He mentally suffered. Often he would be wondering why and what could make a pokemon turn against his master. This would trouble him visibly read up on what the shadow virus does to pokemon.

While Deo suffered, he also learned. What was the shadow virus, and how it affected pokemon. Reading up on it he learned of its contagious style on how pokemon can get it just from an attack. He also learned medicines that can cure a shadow virus. After talking to Sub and Doc Owl, he got his hands on a vaccine and will use it later. As for right now, he was happy that his Machop was back in his hands, safe and sound.

Machop : Purified

In the time after the trip in Kitakami and everyone got settled back into the headquarters, for better for worse, structure changes started to go about to make this a functioning headquarters and if nothing else to show that Team Snagem wasn’t just a bunch of rag tag loose cannons that cause more damage than it does good. One of the things that got implemented in the headquarters was Sub ended up assigning people to start dealing with Shadow Pokémon, effectively to track, hunt, and contain to prevent further pandemics. Including but not limited to breaking up Shadow Pokémon illicit battling rings that started to crop up in light of it, throwing other trainers, let alone the trainers instigating it, at risk. Members would rotate out to take point in the matter, following up on leads, reports, and so ons and if they come back with Shadow Pokémon, be left responsible for trying to getting them purified. Effectively a on-call Snagem, for lack of a better term. It wasn’t perfect mind. At times it felt like for every one Shadow Pokémon that gets taken out of the mix, two more crops up, either because of the Shadow Pokémon they captured or a completely unrelated issue. Tracing sources and such becomes borderline impossible due to just how long the Shadow Virus concocted by Ein has been in circulation and in spite efforts between regions raising awareness and trying to combat the virus in any way they could, the ‘blaze’ that Ein started didn’t seem to have any end to it. Ein’s final solution, as it were.

Freth would be one of those Snagems that was on-call. And she had an idea like most Snagems would at this point. Since there was nothing doing other than focusing on the Shadow Pokémon, why not try to take care of the Shadow Pokémon that was already had. In Freth’s particular case, she had a Grovile that she captured from a trainer in Hoenn, in a bunch of utility tunnels underneath Mauville City. Freth figured a grass type would probably do her party some justice. While she would have still preferred ice types herself, she long since came to adopting a similar mentality to her significant other. So as long as she was in Snagem, she was going to need all the help she could get. And if she wanted to, she could teach ice attacks if the Pokémon was capable of it. Though, considering her dabbling in the ways of Psychic typing, she’s starting to warm up more to that all the more lately. She wasn’t too sure what to think about that, actually.

Training the Grovile to break it out of its shadowfied condition was pretty much to be expected. That was to say, a complete pain in the hide. Freth at first would try to do a similar regimen to when she purified the Hakamo-o; just pure pedal to the metal, hard, fast, frantic grind to work the virus out of the Grovile’s system. Freth quickly realized that it was not going to work out all that hot, however, when unlike Hakamo-o, Grovvile didn’t not have that kind of endurance in spite of the Shadow virus making it think otherwise. Never mind Hyper Mode wasn’t making things any easier. Eris, watching from the depths of Freth’s inner palace, started to realize that apparently that in spite of how Shadow Pokémon are, still are needing to be tended to all differently.

Freth would then try to take a gentler approach with the Grovile, just gradually get tougher to keep the Grovile ‘interested’ in its own twisted way. However, Hyper Mode would throw a wrench into the works. It left Freth to wonder just if triggering Hyper Mode wasn’t just something random. Granted, it seemed to happen more when Shadow attacks get used more often than not, even though she was trying to feed into that Shadow Pokémon nature to counter-intuitively work the virus out of the Pokémon, but it then left her to wonder if there was more to it than that. For all the information they had about Shadow Pokémon, from its history, to what goes on with it now, it made it all around troublesome to deal with. Once again, Ein’s final solution. It wasn’t meant to be easy to overcome. In fact, it should have been effectively impossible between a Shadow Pokémon’s imbued nature and how such a thing can become wide spread. It was to inflict hopelessness.

For the Grovile, it took more than a single trip to actually try to get this Grovile out of its condition in recent history. Though, then again, it wasn’t like she actually lead up with say a trip to a random Safari to allow it to fight random Pokémon that might come about. Never mind the fact that she still had other Shadow Pokémon to contend with as they started to crop up here and there in the regions. And oddly some of those Pokémon she would eventually end up taking in to purify wouldn’t be as stubborn to purify as this Grovile. All the same, she was using the resources she had on hand. And as she continued on through her training regimen in the training room, Hyper Mode started to rear its proverbial ugly head more often. It was a sign that purification was starting to be seen over the horizon. Though that also meant more of an issue keeping it under control. Freth ended up having to defend herself more than once with her own telekinetic power; at one point actually Freezing Glare attacked Grovile to hold it still. Though at the time, she only managed to hold it in place for all of about five seconds. Her psychic power, in spite of her training, still immature for the time being, could only resist the likes of a Shadow Pokémon for so long.

Once Freth started to realize things were at its worst with Hyper Mode, Freth decided to once again kick the regimen into high gear again. She wanted to give Grovile that push over the edge, practically break the grass type with the various regimens the training room had to offer. Some of the hardest stuff, but more so just so that she wasn’t taking a Shadow attack herself. She needed to push Grovile as hard as she could in one final hurrah to finally get it towards purification. She didn’t like the fact that this was borderline torture to the Pokémon, rather it or anyone else thought so or not, as she tried to get the Grovile to work the virus out of its system, but unfortunately the virus had to go. Make that final solution irrelevant.

After that final training session, and finally off call, she would go on to get the Grovile for examination to check on if she was right about it being ready for purification. To her relief, Grovile was. The vaccination would be administered and now it was time to wait. It was about a day or so before the vaccination managed to work its magic and Grovile was finally back to normal, no longer afflicted by the blight that Ein had inflicted on it and may others like it. Groggy from being finally free from the grip of the Shadow virus, Freth spent time with the Grovile, trying to reassure the now purified Pokémon that the nightmare was finally over. She would take care of this grass type from here on, asking for his help in trying to get after others that had the Shadow affliction like it did. No Pokémon deserved to be like this.

Monique was relieved to see that Poloka had finally listened. Fighting-types, being very different to her and her weakness, took a bit of time to get used to.

But Monique had been around ChiChi at the dance studio back in Paldea. It had been tremendously helpful, given everything. Fighting-types liked to get themselves worked up. They needed motivation. They fed off it. It generated a certain type of chi that they craved. Put a few of them in a room and it was bound to happen at some point if they weren't rivalrous. If it was strong enough, even Pokémon of other types could pick up on it and join in.

"Hey! Poloka! Silly frog. You barely hit me!" Monique called out, her voice comparatively unrestrained, a bit of its natural accent showing through. "Come on now!" She pounded the heavy metal pads against each other, showing Poloka that the pad had barely been hit.

Poloka seemed to register the insult correctly. She jumped back and ran from a distance toward Monique, trying to build enough momentum to amplify her Low Kick.

Boom!

This time, the Croagunk made more of a connection, pushing Monique back and leaving a distinct dent in the lower left shin pad. The sheriff looked down at the pad, her body strained by the weight of all the "goalie equipment", and saw the damage, her gaze meeting Poloka's eyes approvingly. "That's it!" she called out to the Toxic Mouth Pokémon.

"Gunk guuuunk!" it called back. So that's how this works, Monique thought.

[Evo Points: 15 -> 18]

((For free Purification during time skip))

“Alright, Carnation, let’s do this! You’ve almost got the virus under control.” Wren called out to his Sunkern. The tiny Grass-type hopped from side to side, shaking her leaves aggressively at the training dummy before her. Wren had found she wasn’t strong enough to battle another Pokemon but her aggression seemed to be higher than the average Pokemon of her level of power so she was entirely willing to just wail on training dummies for as long as he would allow her. He’d taken a break from working on Lentimas Town’s fungal purification to come back for a bit and train up some of his weaker Pokemon while things were calming down. They’d been in the STR for three days in a row now with Carnation spending several hours a day absolutely wailing on training dummies with her various Seed attacks, mainly, but throwing in occasional Tackle and Double Edge attacks. And the extremely rare Shadow move Wren was uncomfortable with every time he saw it happen.

“Alright, Carnation, use Bullet Seed!” He called to the Sunkern. She quickly hopped around the training dummy, spitting seeds like a machine gun at it in short bursts after each hop.

“And now Seed Bomb!” Hopping into the air, Carnation formed a large ball of Grass energy above her head and threw it down at the training dummy. The force of the attack’s explosion launched her higher and further back, causing her to land flat on her face.

“Sun…KERN!” She screamed as she hopped back up, unleashing a Shadow Blitz upon the training dummy. A shadowy aura enveloped her as she rapidly hopped forward, slamming her whole body into the dummy and leaving a sickening, twisted “burn” on the dummy where the Shadow Energy burned at it on contact.

“Not a fan of that… That energy still feels wrong… And the rage is just unsettling for such a small and normally delightful creature.” Wren commented to himself.

After that attack, however, something seemed different. Carnation seemed calmer, sort of. She was still aggressive but not actively trying to destroy him or the dummy. Just growling, sort of.

“Is that it?!” He asked GRAY, who he’d asked to monitor her Shadow energy levels and help him track when she’d finally achieved homeostasis.

”It looks like it. You should be able to give her the Shadow Vaccine at this point and it should fully purge the virus within a few hours at most. In most cases it’s almost instantaneous, however.” GRAY responded.

Wren pulled the vial of vaccine from his pocket and loaded it into the vaccination gun he’d borrowed from the Med Bay for this each of the last three days, just in case that was the day it happened. Approaching carefully, he held out a hand, finding that Carnation didn’t immediately attempt to tackle it as she had done since he’d caught her, which what why it had taken so long to purify her in the first place. “Hold still and we’ll get rid of this nasty bug you’ve had for so long.” He assured the Seed Pokemon. Quickly injecting the vaccine, he stepped back as Carnation thrashed for a few seconds afterward.

THAT HURT! She thrashed for a bit, aggressively shaking her leaves and throwing Razor Leaves into the air a few times before suddenly stopping, blinking and then staring up at Wren.

“Feel like yourself again?” He asked her quietly.

“Sun sun.” She agreed, nodding and smiling at him for the first time.

“Well… I have a surprise for you if you want it?” He told her, reaching into his other pocket and pulling out a Sun Stone. “How would you like to evolve?” He asked, holding the Stone out toward her. “The choice is yours after fighting the virus for so long, of course. I won’t blame you if you want to spend some more time as you are first.”

Carnation didn’t hesitate to tackle Wren’s hand, though it wasn’t with the aggression she’d done so with before. This time it seemed to be excitement. As a bright light enveloped her, she quickly more than doubled in height, sprouting a body complete with legs and two beautiful leaves for arms. The Seed Pokemon bloomed into her as-currently-known, final stage and the Sun Pokemon that stood in her place moments later, waved her arms and cheered happily as she danced in place. “Sun sunflora! Flora flora! Sunflora!”

“I’m so happy for you!” Wren assured the sunflower Pokemon, picking her up and setting her on his shoulders as they headed out of the super training room. On their way out, they passed Clare on their way in. “Best of luck if you’re working on purifying a Pokemon. I’m learning it’s a challenge, myself.” He told them sincerely.

Clobbopus backed up slightly, watching the Pincurchin spark in place for a moment. The moment it stopped, Clobbopus waved one of its tentacles at the Pincurchin, daring him to fight it directly. Eidolon fell for the taunt, his rage mounting.

“Be careful, Eidolon! Wait for it to come at you again and use Zing Zap!” Clare directed. Clobbopus was proving to be an aggressive training partner so they were sure it wouldn’t give Eidolon long before trying to strike again. They’d be proven right only a few moments later as Clobbopus ran at the Pincurchin once again, tentacles blazing with Fighitng energy. This time, however, the Sea Urchin Pokemon was ready. His spikes sparked violently as he tilted forward, causing Clobbopus to quickly dash around him and try striking with another Rock Smash from his other side.

Clobbopus didn’t account for Eidolon’s reaction speed, however, as the Electric -type spun around, spikes still sparking, and slammed them into the cephalopod’s chest. As the spikes made contact, an electric current was unleashed that shot straight through the Pokemon. It would travel only a short distance before it reversed course and returned to crash into Eidolon again, passing right through Clobbopus a second time. Clobbopus stumbled backward, clenching at its chest and gasping, clearly pained by that attack .

“It flinched! Let’s get another attack in!” Clare called to their partner, cheering for him. Use Poison Jab this time!” The Pincurchin’s spikes began to glow a sickening purple as they were infused with it’s natural toxins before Eidolon hopped toward Clobbopus, jabbing it in the torso once more.

Clobbopus staggered backward again as the spikes made contact. The cephalopod’s face showed it wasn’t faring well after that, looking like it might be sick. “I think it’s poisoned!” Clare announced.

Eidolon’s expression filled with a wicked mirth at that, its spikes glowing purple again. “No! Don’t use Poison Jab again! We’ve got a good chance to hit it with-” Clare was cut off as the purple glow from all of Eidolon’s spikes converged into its frontmost “horn” spike, shooting out in an electric spark-like jolt toward Clobbopus. The doubled-over octopus Pokemon failed to dodge the purple jolt and as it struck, the Pokemon reacted as if it had been electrified before falling flat on its back, twitching a bit. “Venoshock? When did you learn to use that?” Clare asked, recognizing that move from one of Ms. Dendra’s battle classes. The Pincurchin just foamed at the mouth a bit as he laughed at the Tantrum Pokemon’s suffering.

“I think we’re done, Eidolon. I know it’s a hologram but I can’t put it through any more punishment.” Clare announced, covering their mouth at the sound of Clobbopus’ begging.

Eidolon, however, didn’t seem to care, crawling closer to the barely conscious octopus brawler. “Eidolon, no.” Clare insisted, watching as the Pincurchin crawled closer, evil in its gaze. Eidolon, yes, the Pincurchin thought. Crawling up to Clobbopus, the Electric-type used his front most spike to lift Clobbpus’ head to look at him. “Pin… pincurchin. Pin pin cur.” With a quick move, the cephalopod’s head was released and the horn was jabbed into its throat, cutting off its airway and silencing its begging.

Clobbopus gasped with raspy breaths as it tried once more to beg for mercy. “Die in silence, weakling.” Had been Eidolon’s final words before attacking. Clare gasped as the Throat Chop was executed, grabbing for Eidolon’s ball and trying to recall him but fumbling and dropping it. As a result, the Pincurchin was able to deliver its final blow. Clare felt tears welling up in their eyes as Clobbopus slowly stopped gasping. And moving.

“Eidolon… How could you?!” They asked, recalling the Electric-type as it laughed over the body of its fallen foe.