Chapter 62
Virah raised her hand, "to start, Nitro, String Shot."
"Beedrill!" Her Pokemon yelled in response before spitting out a ball of thick, viscous string that shot out towards the trunk of a nearby tree.
"Whitney, what's the time?" Virah turned to Whitney
he pinkette raised her Pokewatch to show Virah that with the travel speed of the ball, it took around 4 seconds for it fly across 6 meters and hit the tree.
"The travel speed definitely increased…" Virah murmured while jotting down 1.20 meters per second on her notes in regards to Nitro's string shot, she then grabbed a ruler and measured the radius of the string upon impact.
She neared the now whitened tree trunk and with her ruler, counted how many feet Nitro's webbing spanned, "hm, five… point four feet," Virah walked away from the tree and jotted that number down, she wrote it next to Nitro's previous record, "that's two feet more than before,"
Virah nodded in approval and picked up a rock, "good job," she complimented her Beedrill, who called out his name excitedly in response, "next we're going to test your Fury Attack and Sniper ability have improved, after that, we'll go ahead and see how potent your Poison Sting has become by testing it on a plant,"
Nitro nodded and Virah went forward with the testing, like always, she started gathering rocks and piling them up on one spot.
She occasionally checked on her friends, who they themselves were training, to see how they were reacting to her "physically straining" herself and saw that they didn't seem to mind.
Once enough rocks were piled up, Virah continued on and started throwing them Nitro's way, who expectedly hit them with precise strikes directly at the center using his Fury Attack, his drills went on and proved their name sake true by splitting the rocks in half as if they were made of tissue paper.
The test went on until Virah ran out of rocks, afterwards she went forward to check the rocks that had been splt- which was all of them, - to see just how accurately Nitro broke them and to her shock, they were all cleanly split in half.
The only inconsistency were the areas where Nitro had struck his drills with, which resulted in the rocks having this odd circular dent, most of them were on odd areas but Virah chalked it up to the rock's position in the air rather than any flaw on Nitro's part.
Nodding, she moved backward and smiled, "good job, you did pretty well and honestly better than I expected," her words made her Beedrill tilt his head, she smiled sheepishly, "I honestly thought you'd only accurately hit around 80% of them after your random growth spurt but apparently not,"
"Beedrill." Nitro said seriously.
"Yeah… apparently you two got a massive boost after we got sick, which is why I'm testing both you and Jet to see what changed and what improved, so far, things are looking up," Virah patted her Beedrill's head.
Virah leaned away, "now, how about you use Poison Sting on that shrub over there and I'll start throwing these rocks away while we wait for the effects of your Poison to show?"
"Beeee-" Nitro's drills turned purple before shooting out two spikes that darted towards the shrub.
"Good," Virah turned to Jet, "well, you don't really have any poison moves right now don't you Jet?" The Zubat shook his head, Virah smiled, "it's fine, I'll teach you one at some point,"
"Zubat!" Jet flapped his wings excitedly.
"And since you don't have that yet, how about you fly around as fast as you can for now? Tire yourself out before using Leech Life?" Virah suggested to Jet's agreement.
And immediately, the Zubat took to the skies and started circling them, his flight path going wider and wider as the seconds go on until eventually, he was circling the entirety of National Park.
Virah hummed and watched her Zubat zip around for a few seconds to observe how his speed has increased, and even to her un-aided eyes, she could tell that the boost in his speed was noticeable by a wide margin.
Smiling, she turned away from her Pokemon to start working on clearing the grass of rocks. The work was slow, tedious, and exhausting but she managed to eventually rid of the place of debris.
She was panting for breath when she was finally done but regardless of her state, she walked over to the shrub that Nitro shot and checked the effects of his poison towards it.
And the effects were certainly notable since after just 10 - 15 minutes of being under the effects of Nitro's poison, the plant's leaves turned yellow and withered out, the trunk had scrunched up and was now full of wrinkles and upon damaging it with a rock, thick black sludge oozed out of the resulting gash.
Virah walked backward and scanned the plant for more signs of the damage, the most obvious of them was the dehydrated state of the plant which might have been the result of the flora's physiology trying to fight back against the poison or that Nitro's poison had somehow caused its cells to get squeezed out of moisture, thus making it shrink.
The black ooze seeping out of the wound that she made though made Virah consider that the plant just fought back against the effects of the poison and was using everything at its disposal.
Virah reached out to snap a branch next, and it was as brittle as a piece of chalk. That made her tilt her head.
She grabbed her notebook and wrote things down, 'Nitro's improved poison causes a dehydrated state, which can possibly cause his opponent's to tire out more during battle,' she bit the tip of her pen and hummed.
'The effects go down to the cellular level, proof of this is the first tested plant, which after being under his poison for just a few minutes, had branches brittle enough to be snapped effortlessly,'
The branches being brittle enough to be snapped was an interesting since it meant that the plant did, in fact, had its cells dehydrated, and not just because its immune system went on overdrive since typically, dehydrated shrubs would be more rubbery, and also gooey.
Virah picked up the branch she snapped off and checked the break. She put her thumb against it and hummed when it felt dry, "huh,"
'Branch is dry, plant is dehydrated, clear effects of poison,' Virah wrote that part down and underlined it two times for emphasis.
Virah closed her notebook and was about to check more of the after effects of Nitro's poison when a shadow loomed over her. She turned backward and faced the… professor?
"Uh? Hi?" Virah said, confused, what was this guy doing here?
"Hello," the man waved, "what is this?" He pointed to the shrub, "it looked interesting so I thought I'd check it out,"
"Oh, it's just a plant I caused my Pokemon to poison, it's not that big of a deal," Virah waved the guy off, she rubbed the back of her neck, "really,"
"I feel it's interesting," the man said, leaning forward to pluck a leaf from the plant, "did you use toxic on it?"
"No, just regular Poison Sting," Virah replied before deciding to get to the point, "are you a professor that specializes in Poison Types?"
"Not really," he said, "I'm more of an aid," he corrected with a shrug, "and as for what my specialty is… well it's related to poison but mostly, I work on Pokemon cures as well as evolution rocks,"
"How's that work?" Virah asked, putting her focus on the shrub once more.
She collected a small amount of ooze with her index finger while waiting for the aid to reply, she rubbed the viscous liquid between her index and thumb, noting that it was slippery.
"What's it feel like?" The aid asked.
"Hm? Slippery, this might've been resin I think," Virah answered.
"Anti bacterial?" The aid asked.
"Yep, I think this was the plant's last ditch effort to save itself, by pumping its body full of these things to flush out the poison," Virah theorized, "I'm not really sure though since it's oddly black, and that usually doesn't happen to plant resin, even when they're poisoned,"
"You're right," the aid said, "it's unlike them to actually create puss, isn't it?"
"Plants don't have pus though don't they?" Vira mentioned.
"No, they don't, which is why it's so weird to see that this one has black resin," the aid said to Virah's nod of agreement.
"Exactly," Virah said, "there's something going on here that I haven't figured out yet, and most likely won't, at least not until I get a microscope,"
"A microscope huh?" The aid said, humming, "well, I think I'll leave you to it, I have somewhere to get to," the man smiled before walking away, "see you kid,"
"Bye," Virah waved, glad that someone so suspicious left her vicinity. She didn't know if he was part of Team Rocket or not but the possibility is there.
She's just glad she didn't die by his hands.