After finding out how well the Nature Division Leader of his Supply Core had done, filling up five ceramic beer barrels of fancy-ass coffee he knew a certain somepony liked, and filling up twelve more ceramic beer barrels of Sparkle Cola Black(Standard high-sugar Sparkle Cola mixed with black coffee made with a fine Ligma Bean Roast. Restores a decent amount of MP when consumed It was technically a coffee flavour, after all, which meant that the machine could give it to him!) before eventually exhausting the coffee machine and breaking it, meaning somepony would have to come up and repair it and soon, and pressing a wall button labelled Call Repair Pony to summon that somepony, he was done up here. Sunrise knew where he had to go next, but it wasn't a place he was fond of visiting. It wasn't on a floor he was fond of visiting, either.

He went back to the elevator, entered it, and went down.

Down, down, down, to floor one hundred and six.

A mid-to-low-level floor that had been taken over by miniature drug cartels, ruthless mobsters with armies of well-paid and somewhat-well-trained gunners and grenade-throwers on their side, addiction and debt serving as the two shadowy hands on stretchy shadow arms that grabbed ponies and enslaved them. Homeless ponies from other floors desperate for work and with little else to offer gravitated towards this floor. Debt slaves and homeless wage slaves smuggled up from lower floors farmed, guards stood with guns to make sure the slaves didn't eat or smoke or snort what they farmed, and chemists looking to make some extra cash got taken into the world of drugs, never again allowed to leave.

Then, everything changed when the Dark Star gang attacked.

Only the Chosen One, master of all fifty elements, could stop them. And when the world needed him most, he vanquished.

About five years had passed since his gang – "Certainly" not on his orders, of course! Nope, not at all! …Okay, yes, entirely on his orders – had carried out a surprise attack on the two biggest gang families at once, taking out the leadership and telling the remaining grunts that they could obey the Black Stars and help them dominate the other families, or die like their bosses.

Things went pretty well for a while, as the other families settled into their new roles in the power structure on this floor. And then, because backstabbing types can't get off or sleep with a smile unless they're tricking somepony or planning on backstabbing somepony, they tried to pull a coup on the Black Stars, which didn't go well for them.

The Black Stars were now the unofficial owners of this floor, something that didn't sit right with Sunrise at all. He didn't like drugs. He didn't like alcohol. He didn't like any of that shit. It had no place existing in Equestria. He didn't like how drugs seduced you, lured you away from the fulfilment you got after an honest day's hard work and tempted you with promises of incredible, unearned highs you'd never experience after a hundred days of hard work or a thousand hours of non-stop fucking.

And yet, he knew that if he shut this makeshift agricultural floor down and shifted it to food production, he'd only create another drug farm elsewhere in the Vault, with its own cartels, its own enslaved addicts put to work in the fields, and its own army of killers to deal with.

But that wasn't it. That wasn't enough to make him compromise on his morality. He didn't care how 'Convenient' it was to let this drug-farming place go unchanged.

The desire to not start a war against a gang that would be prepared for any surprise attack was a big thing that held him back when it came to changing this floor's purpose, as he wanted to save his army's strength for The Big Day. But the biggest thing that stopped him from going all "Thou shalt not suffer a bitch to live" on this floor?

Drugs can be traded for goods and services. A pony might pay some water tokens for some food he needs to survive, and a pony with seven water bottles might trade away one for a good meal now. But while some foods can get old, rotten, and mouldy over time (okay, not that last one because our Vault's air talisman erased all mould spores a long time ago), water will last forever.

Some drugs will last forever, some won't, but a pony willing to trade away several days of food or water or some nice clothes or batteries or a day's hard work or hoof-made crap that can be sold on other floors for even better goods or services won't save his or her drugs for a rainy day. They'll be eaten, snorted, smoked, or traded away or whatever as soon as possible. After all, Stable Security might show up, take the drugs, and use them. And then execute the druggie.

Drugs can be sold for a high price. Drugs can even be traded to a number of secret rich assholes with drug problems, a number that was entirely unexpected. And by unexpected, I mean completely expected!

Still, Sunrise made sure that he only had his floor farm the ingredients for drugs that were beneficial. Well, to the extent that the drug plants, when brewed into useful pills and potions and powders in capsules called 'Chems' through the magic of equine science, could be.

He would not permit any explicitly poisonous drugs, such as tobacco, to be farmed on his floors.

But the plants you used to make Med-X, Sleeper, Party-Time Mint-Als, X-Cell, and some of the lesser-known stuff used in the best drug cocktails? The stuff you used to make the mostly-benevolent Chems, whose only downsides were the addictions one might develop after taking them? Those were acceptable on this floor.

And so were the magically-altered ultra-high-energy experimental wheat plants known as Royal Grain he was farming. He'd given them that name after the marvellously golden colour they developed. Not golden as in yellow, brownish-yellow, or yellowy brown, but golden as in "Are you sure nopony painted some gold paint onto the best part of these wheat stalks in some strange, arcane prank?". He wished he could honestly say he'd invented or created those plants, but honestly, he had simply hired Evergreen Sage to invent the stuff for him, while offering himself and a few other ponies as test subjects for her different strains of the stuff. The experiments were secret, and Sunrise slapped his own name on the product, claiming he'd invented it to keep Evergreen's identity and affiliation with the gang a secret. He'd checked the idea to do this over with her ahead of time (He was going to do it anyway, he simply wanted to know her thoughts on the matter), and she'd loved the idea. After all, her high-ish position in the Vault's upper levels made her useful for gathering information on what the Elites and Crèmes were doing, and why. Even if she could only really get information others had decided to share as gossip.

A week or two of diarrhoea and unexpected magically-caused health problems that removed Sunrise's guilt over the matter and made him feel he'd quite earned the right to take credit for this plant later, Evergreen Sage had finally created a sufficiently powerful strain of wheat that didn't turn the imbiber's anus into the nozzle for a boiling liquid shit pistol, and that was the strain that received the cool name from Sunrise.

Ah, Royal Grain. He was pretty sure it would have replaced the Vault's own magically-altered unnamed strain of wheat if his Black Stars gang didn't brag about inventing it. Stupid political bullshit. He could have probably lessened the food shortages in severity if he'd gotten the whole Vault farming this shit!

In any case, Royal Grain… That stuff was great to eat raw. It was surprisingly tasty, and it restored a lot of MP. And something about eating long strands of plant matter strongly appealed to a strange, animalistic, long-forgotten part of Sunrise's brain that loved acting like ponies did before they developed the tech to invent chocolate bars. But when you added some Trail Mix, some peanut butter, some dried chunks of other fruit, and turned the whole thing into a nice cereal bar, you ended up with something special. Something special that restored even more MP. And those bars were tastier, more nutritious, and easier to carry around, too.

They also made for nice things to sell, and when you wanted to outfit every rebellious teenager and adult you could get your hooves on with a gun or two, a melee weapon, and a bunch of Stimpaks, and a Pip-Buck if he or she didn't already have one, you needed funds and you needed things you could reasonably sell for multiple weapons at any gun store who understood the value of restoring one's own magical reserves. After all, one Sunrise Sunshine Cereal Bar could give a Unicorn at least three more uses of a Repair Spell, Reforge Metal or Reshape Metal spell, or Heat Object spell.

They also accelerated the refractory period exclusively in Unicorns, and exclusively for horngasms. Sunrise and his mare's main hole, which often ended up glowing in the dark after riding his horn for a while, could definitely attest to that.

Finally, the door opened to a world of green. Disgustingly sweet scents and scents his genetic memory screamed at him to avoid hung heavy and humid in the air, as ceiling-mounted solar lamps kept the many planters of strange drug plants fed. Many planters were stacked atop each other, and mirrors had been arranged for their benefit, bouncing light that would normally go unused over to some plants that would normally waste away in the shade of other plants.

However, some drugs on this floor preferred darkness, he knew, and they were typically grown in rooms that were once bedrooms.

Only a few rooms on this floor were still bedrooms, and he was heading towards one of those today. Forwards, right, straight ahead, left, straight ahead for two more intersections, second door on the right…

He took in a deep breath. A very, very deep breath, because he knew how badly the room he was about to enter smelled. He knew it from experience, and he hated coming in here, but the checks he had to make today were too important to leave up to a courier.

The part where he trusted a courier with an incredibly important task would come later. For now…

For now, it was time to fucking barter.

And with a heavy heart and determined stare, he hit the button that swooshed the blast door open, and he took a few steps back as the warmth rushed out of the room, carrying with it a scent so powerful you could almost taste it and feel it with your skin. Stale, strong piss. Shit. Burned sugar. Sweat in weeks-old clothing. Alcohol. And the distinctive sugar-water scent of Sparkle Cola, as if it had been spilled on the black carpet floor at one point and forgotten about. "Drugguy!", he called, and waited for a few seconds, waiting for the worst of the scent to leave the room until he felt it was safe for him to walk in.

The walls were like shrines to a long-forgotten foalhood, but the floor seemed to scream that its owner's foalhood had never ended. Empty glass bottles of Sparkle Cola and empty aluminium cans of SparKill(TM) Sparkling Power Drink(TM) energy drink littered the floor, along with unwashed clothes, some of which had differing levels of particularly vile stenches coming from something inside each one. Twelve plastic gallon jugs with lids firmly screwed on tight, each one full of dark yellow pony urine, were placed around the bed, equidistant from one another like sentries standing guard over the bed and the distracted body of their owner atop it. A thirteenth gallon jug was separate from the rest of the jugs, half-full with its lid unscrewed and resting bottom-up beside it like a shot glass, with a long tube of plastic – like the one a beer bong might use – waiting in its lid. The tube of plastic reached up onto the bed and around the neck of its owner, before eventually ending in a wide plastic cone for a head, one its owner's sad, comparatively small, deflated, and uninterested cock was currently flopping into. A fourteenth half-full gallon jug of clear water was on the floor, thankfully far away from the piss bottle, open and waiting to be lifted up and sipped from when its owner got thirsty.

The owner of this room was currently playing some game on his Pip-Buck, oblivious to the world.

Over in another corner, there was a chest of drawers, and the scent of drugs wafted strongly from it. A table next to it had a bunch of separate chemistry sets, empty needles, beakers, and other sciencey shit. And some beakers of piss, just… left there.

Sunrise's horn sparked to life, eager to burn the uncleanliness away, but he willed the magic away, and his glow dissipated. He couldn't lose it, not now, and he forced himself to look elsewhere.

The walls. He decided to look at the walls. He didn't see any shit on the walls.

The walls, however, told a different story of the room's owner. Every foot or three of space, a framed certificate, or a picture of the room's occupant with some kind of trophy on his back. After all, who could buy a trophy for use in a tournament and then give it away to the winner, permanently, when it would mean never getting to give that trophy to another pony again? When you won a trophy in this Vault, unless you were seriously rich, or the tournament organizer was seriously rich, you simply earned the right to call yourself a winner and have a picture taken with the trophy as proof. Some pictures were of this room's owner with first place trophies, some pictures were of second or third place trophies, just as some certificates were Participation Certificates for regional and Stable-wide Duel Monsters tournaments and others were First Place or Runner Up certificates.

The sound of forceful liquid splashing against plastic caught Sunrise's attention and made his ears twitch.

Sunrise turned his head towards the source of the noise, and saw that the distracted, zombie-like pony was pissing into his cock-funnel, its attached transparent plastic beer bong tube having turned a solid yellow as it looped around its attached jar before pouring straight into the rim.

In addition, the pissing pony hadn't noticed him open the door or come in.

His seventh sense of luck told him to say nothing and wait until the pony was done, but something about the display of the unwashed slob urinating into a bottle with the aid of a beer bong, the sound of it echoing through the room as the scent of stale horse piss in the room's battalion of vile smells got even worse… something about this situation pissed him off.

Sunrise forced his eyes away from the sad display, and his eyes drifted to one picture at the center of the room he was looking at. A young indigo Earth Pony just eleven years old had turned his side towards the camera he was grinning at. He had a short, messy forest-green mane and bright honey-brown eyes. On his back, there was a gold cup trophy bigger than he was. The text engraved upon the cup's stand's metal plate proudly boasted that this was the Vault-Wide Championship Cup, and when Sunrise used a bit of math to determine when this picture had been taken, he knew the pony in this room, one twenty six years old, hadn't taken this photo that long ago, in the grand scheme of things.

Fifteen years ago… That was a good year for Duel Monsters.

It wasn't a good year for Sunrise Stardust. He remembered being young, hated, stressed-out, and eager to die. He remembered powering through long nights and longer training sessions with a sad, quiet, treacherous part of his own mind hoping he'd die trying to achieve his goals, so that he could say he'd died better than the other ponies of his Vault whenever he went to wherever souls damned by the sins of their fathers and mothers go.

He remembered suffering to get where he was right now, and there was no way in fuck he'd waste his opportunity by losing control here, in the room of his most important Chemist.

Sunrise's eyes drifted towards some empty cans of SparKill Sparkling Power Drink near the chemistry table.

He rather liked that stuff. Twilight had invented it. Well, sort of.

Once upon a time, after some long nights spent studying and not of an entirely sound mind, Twilight Sparkle decided the delicious taste and refreshing mana-restoringly high sugar content of Sparkle Cola just wasn't enough, so she hired some friend the history books avoided speaking of – for some reason. Sunrise had no idea why - to make an energy drink with a more aggressive kick, a more aggressive flavour, and a more aggressive marketing campaign to make everypony buy this and help fund the Ministries, instead of the fickle private energy drink companies, many of which outsourced their labour overseas to Zebrica, putting thousands of ponies out of work and pumping out liquid shit so quickly, small businesses couldn't compete. However, a benevolent government-backed mystery pony believed he could compete quite easily, if Twilight gave him money. The energy drink known as SparKill Sparkling Power Drink was born, and it came in six flavours: Standard, Mighty Mana, Mighty Muscles, Mighty Memory, Mighty Midnight, and Mighty Meaty. Each one boasted that it was dosed with a Masterwork-Level Mana Restoration potion made with real equine science.

Standard tastes like you took some Sparkle Cola and added some artificial flavouring to make its taste stronger, to cover up the other crap that went into it. Mighty Mana contains no sugar and a pleasant grape-like taste, and is dosed with three additional and different kinds of pony-made energy-restorative potions, to give you energy, not flab. Mighty Muscles came with multiple shots of protein powder. Chocolate protein powder, enough to turn the liquid chocolatey. Mighty Memory contained a refreshing citrus flavour and mind-enhancing herbs, plus a hint of some experimental magically-modified plant supposedly designed to keep the mind focused on what matters. Mighty Midnight tastes of cinnamon, and contains a transformative potion that, when imbibed, transforms the user into a sleepless being that gets stronger and smarter in the darkness, though the effect only lasted a few hours and was too expensive to produce for it to be simply sold to the military at an affordable price. Mighty Meaty was designed to attract Griffons and their wallets, granting them energy, protein, and a dose of the mind-enhancing chemicals used in Mighty Memory in the form of a canned drink any Griffon can open and knock back in public, without having to worry about the judgement from ponies they'd normally get if they ate steak, hamburgers, or a whole well-cooked chicken in public. Each 500ml can of the stuff contains savoury chicken broth and liquid beef blended into a smoothie and added to the energy drink.

The stuff was massively successful, even if it was too strong and aggressively flavourful for most ponies. Mighty Mana was quite a success among college students and the workforce. And Mighty Meaty proved to be a colossal success in Griffon lands, though it couldn't be sold in vending machines or Griffons would raid them. Something about the drink just made them go wild for it, and they couldn't get enough of the stuff. SparKill Sparkling Power Drink: Mighty Meaty Flavour could only be sold in pony-owned stores around Griffonstone and the other Griffon kingdoms, and only pony-owned stores with heavily-armed pony guards. After all, Griffon guards… You didn't need a gun to beat them, only your wallet. Wave it around and they'd turn on their employers, hoping you'd have more money to offer them than you. And if you didn't, well… Sure, they'd attack you, but Griffons aren't exactly Pegasi in terms of speed. Griffons can't dodge bullets.

Finally, the sound of piss splashing against plastic and piss stopped. It was time for Sunrise to shine. Well, at least as much as he could, in such a dung-heap.

"Green Star," Sunrise greeted with a big smile, and he considered it a testament to the incredible charisma he had, and had worked so hard to obtain, that he could still remain friendly while every cell in his body screamed at him to burn the impurities away before somepony got infected and came down with something. "How's it hanging?"

"Into a tube," The owner of the room grinned dopily, eyes flickering down to his cock for a moment. He was an indigo pony with a green mane, though his mane wasn't vaguely star-shaped any more. He had a long, uncut and unkempt head of hair that lacked any sort of hairstyle or consistency. It was greasy, tangled, and unbrushed. His eyes were still brown, but they looked like shit, and you know why. His name was Green Star

And what Green Star said took Sunrise by surprise. The Unicorn struggled not to laugh at the awfulness of that joke, because the less of this disgusting air he had to breathe, the better.

Gods, this place was disgusting. This pony was disgusting. He was once a genius at chemistry and card games for foals everypony cared way too much about alike, but now, he had fallen so far…

"Did you get enough Silly Sugar for the Lucky Penny family?" Sunrise asked, referring to one of the few mafia-like families Sunrise was actually willing to work with. They'd feuded with a certain other family for generations, and they'd killed it completely, aside from one filly, which fell in love with one of their colts before the genocide happened. Anyway, they promised the Black Stars plenty of high-powered guns and shields, and a lot of scrap for the robot-builders, if they got enough Silly Sugar. It was an alright deal, Sunrise supposed, but he still hated that he had to sell a drug so easily abused. Hell, even when administered safely and legally, it was supposed to be given out by trained doctors only, and only to those who needed the stuff to survive.

"Yeah," He dazedly smiled.

Silly Sugar… That stuff's one hell of a drug. Pinkie Pie helped make it when she went through her "Maybe other drugs can help me see the future! Maybe I won't have to choose between abandoning Equestria and losing what's left of my mind! Maybe I can invent a new drug!" phase. Take some Poison Joke, and magically fuck with it. Take some Sugar Cane, and magically fuck with it. I don't know how it goes, but you fuck with both. Eventually, you end up with a sugar cane plant that makes Silly Sugar.

While it grows like ordinary cane sugar, its effect on ponies is anything but ordinary. You're supposed to take a tablespoon of it per day to improve your overall mood, making the bad parts of life seem less terrible while also making the good parts of life seem better. But if you sprinkle a lot more of it on something you eat, and when the drug takes hold of you, everything starts seeming funny. Your life, your sorrows, your pain, how much you care about this or that, it all starts to morph into something hilarious. Things stop mattering, and while you don't stop feeling pain, you do stop feeling pain from experiencing pain. It's like… You know how, when you're high on Med-X, or its stronger brother Med-XXX, which was designed for dragons and those too tough for Med-X, you can feel it when dentists drill holes through your teeth but you don't feel pain from it? It's like that, but for pain itself. You still feel pain, but it doesn't bother you, or even register as an unpleasant thing. Everything becomes such a hilarious novelty on Silly Sugar, even pain becomes hilarious. And if the ponies around you judge you, or laugh at you, or stare at you in confusion, that just makes it better, because laughter becomes the most wonderful and hilarious sound in the world, and confusion becomes the most hilarious thing in the world. Right up until the next stimuli you experience becomes the most hilarious thing in the world, at least. Followed by the next one, and the next one…

It's like being drunk on a special kind of alcohol that won't let you get depressed or angry or anything other than amused, and when you're on it, you won't even care that you won't be able to remember anything but your own laughter when it's over.

If you want a stronger high, you take more of it, and you laugh harder. You start doing stupid things, for stupid reasons. You'll shoot your guns and swing your melee weapons just to experience the feeling of using them, you'll break your own limbs for the fun of it, and you might even try to molest somepony, not caring whether you succeed or not because life is fun for you either way. It makes a popular date-rape drug for its ability to make the victim enjoy it, and many mares in the Vault with "The Oldest Profession" as their jobs down some of the stuff before they fuck whoever they're being forced to fuck today, to make things more enjoyable for everypony involved. And if you don't mind the risk of death, you can snort the stuff straight up your nose with the aid of a straw, and end up laughing yourself into unconsciousness or even death. I hear you have some really fucked-up and utterly amazing, life-changing dreams that'll reveal the secrets of the universe to you if you pass out while on enough Silly Sugar, but I've never touched the stuff. I've seen too many powder-nosed ponies laugh about the supposed hilarious pointlessness of life before shooting themselves to even try that shit.

Of course, the aftertaste is a bitch. And the comedown… When the drug fades away, you laugh less, and you start coming down, and everything feels wrong. Your ability to laugh and smile and enjoy life is fading away, and it'll never come back to the high you just experienced. It's like you spent hours laughing at a hilarious joke you've finally gotten sick of, and you feel a sense of sadness in your heart because you know that joke will never seem funny to you again. At that point, you can either spend your life chasing that high while your mind rots and your diaphragm decays and you steadily lose the ability to care about things and view anything as any more than a curious and amusing novelty, or you can quit for good and try very hard to continue enjoying life when you know you've already experienced what felt like the truest happiness possible, and could never be experienced again without that evil powder.

Sunrise noticed that his drug-making friend here was playing some game on his Pip-Buck again. "Are playing Faulty Recall right now?" Sunrise asked.

"Nope, I'm into stronger stuff," Green Star bragged.

Sunrise idly wondered if Green Star was actually this stallion's name, or if he'd chosen that at some point in his life. He much preferred to speak to Ivory Blaze when it came to getting chemicals that had assorted effects on the equine body and mind. He actually liked that pony. That pony was awesome, a living testament to the greatness of ponykind. He was also a fucking riot when he was blitzed.

And then, Sunrise heard something he didn't expect.

"I'm into Pokémon now," Green Star said. "And I'm chaining shinies right now."

"Nice!" Sunrise beamed in approval. What the fuck was 'Chaining Shinies' supposed to mean? He wasn't about to ask that question and look less knowledgeable in front of this pony, though. "I love that game. How many gyms have you beaten?"

"All of them."

"Yeah, me too," Sunrise lied. Hey, so what if he still hadn't beaten the sixth gym? He didn't exactly have much time for those stupid video games that required a lot of time to be invested in the system before your numbers got big enough to compete with other Trainers! So what if he still hadn't completed the main story of any regions? He could crush any gym he wanted with the level one hundred Pokémon he'd hacked into his Pip-Buck. It would barely take half an hour, and nopony could defeat him at Pokémon. So who cared how little time he'd actually spent with that game open?

Also, why did so many Pokémon fans get mad over hacked Pokémon? The game was stupid.

Okay, the game was awesome, thanks to its awesome part. But still, it had one very stupid part.

What was the awesome part? Everything except the stupid part!

Pokémon was a game had three hundred and sixty-something Pokémon to battle, capture with Pokeballs, and trade with friends. Wait, was it three hundred and sixty-something, six hundred and ninety-whatever, or twelve hundred and who the fuck knows? Ah, whatever. Every game was a portable eight-megabyte file on the Pip-Buck that stored its save data in a separate ".SAV" save file. Long ago, this game had been played on rudimentary Personal Computer systems, but technology had allowed these awesome eight-bit barely-in-colour games to be ported over to the Pip-Buck Operating System.

It was a game where you were a new Pokémon trainer, just ten years old. You started in your region of choice, and got one of three Pokémon of your choice. The region's Starter Pokémon. Typically, there would be a Fire Pokémon, a Water Pokémon, and a Grass Pokémon. All Pokémon have one or two of eighteen types. Fire, Water, Grass, Ghost, Poison, Steel, Fairy, Electric, Normal, Fighting, Flying, Ground, Rock, Bug, Psychic, Ice, Dragon, and Dark. Pokémon had Types, their Moves had types, and if a Water-type Pokémon used a Water-type move, it would be stronger than a Fire move getting used by a Water-type Pokémon. 1.5x stronger, to be precise. That's the STAB, the Same-Type Attack Bonus.

And there's a very complex system that determines which types beat which types, gaining a 2x damage boost on that type. This system also determines what types deal 0.5x the usual damage on certain types, and what types deal 0x the usual damage on certain types. Water-type attacks deal bonus damage to fire-type Pokémon, Fire-type attacks deal bonus damage to grass-type Pokémon, and grass-type attacks deal bonus damage to water-type Pokémon. Ice beats Grass, Grass beats Rock and Ground, Ground does nothing to Flying types but Rock beats Flying types, Flying types beat Fighting Types. Dark beats Psychic, Psychic does zero times the usual damage on Dark, meaning it does no damage at all, but it beats Fighting, and Fighting beats Dark. Dark beats Ghost types, which take no damage from Fighting or Normal types. Normal types take double the damage from Fighting types. Dragon takes half damage from Fire, Grass, Water, and Electric, but double the damage from Fairy, which takes double the damage from Poison and Steel. Steel is immune to Poison, and…

This is getting too long, but trust me, there are a lot of type interactions. And a Pokémon can be a Dual-Typed Pokémon. For example, Wingull, a Pokémon-ified Seagull, is a Water and Flying type Pokémon. It will get STAB, the Same Type Attack Bonus, when using Water moves and Flying moves. It counts as both types at once for the purposes of damage calculation, so it takes no damage from Ground attacks like a Flying Pokémon, takes less damage from Fire attacks like a water Pokémon, and takes double damage from Electric-type attacks due to its Water and Flying types, which means it takes 4x the usual damage. It would also take Neutral, or 1x, damage from Grass type attacks, because Grass does double damage on Water types and half the damage on Flying types.

There are also Weather Conditions. Moves like Sunny Day and Hail set them up, instead of dealing damage to the opponent. Fire-type moves deal more damage when it's sunny, and the move Solarbeam charges in one turn instead of two. In the Hail weather, all non-Ice type Pokémon lose a small chunk of their health at the end of every turn. Something similar happens in the Sandstorm weather, where all Pokémon besides Rock, Ground, and Steel Pokémon lose a bit of their HP at the end of every turn. There's also this glitchy weather condition fans have nicknamed Acid Rain. No comment on that for now.

Speaking of moves not dealing damage directly, there are moves like Calm Mind, Growth, and Stockpile. They raise your stats instead of dealing damage. Then there are moves like Growl and Leer, they lower the stats of your enemy instead of dealing damage. Then there are moves like Will-O-Wisp, Thunder Wave, Poison Powder, and Toxic, they inflict Status Conditions like Burned, Paralyzed, Poisoned, and Badly Poisoned. Getting Burned halves your attack, and you lose one sixteenth of your Hit Points at the end of every turn. Getting Paralyzed halves your Speed, and every time you want to use a move, you have a chance to miss your turn instead. Getting Poisoned means you lose an eighth of your Hit Points every turn. Getting Badly Poisoned means you lose one sixteenth of your Hit Points at the end of the first turn you spend Badly Poisoned, two sixteenths at the end of your second turn, three sixteenths at the end of your third turn, and so on. The damage inflicted by the poison gets worse over time.

Anyway, you ran around in the tall grass, surfed over oceans, fished in ponds, ran around in caves, and did some other stuff to find Wild Pokémon. When you found them, you'd send out your own Pokémon and fight them in a turn-based RPG system where whoever's HP reached zero first lost.

You could also throw a Pokeball at a Pokémon to catch him or her, and add that Pokémon to your team or collection. However, if you threw a Pokeball at a healthy Pokémon, it was likely to escape. You had to whittle an opponent's HP down low, but not to zero, if you wanted to make an attempt at capturing that Pokémon more likely to end in success. There are regular Pokeballs, and then there are better balls, like Great Balls. They're more likely to succeed in catching Pokémon when thrown at them. They're also more expensive. Then there are Ultra Balls, which are better and more reliable than Great Balls, but they're more expensive, too. You get money in the game by beating enemy Trainers. Then there are gimmicky balls, like the Heavy Ball, which works better on heavier Pokémon, and the Timer Ball, which starts off crappy but its success rate goes higher with each passing turn, up to a maximum of 4.0 or something. I think that's a success rate equal to the Ultra Ball, but I don't remember. Personally, I prefer the Dark Balls. They're like crappy regular Pokeballs during the day, but in caves and at night, they're as good as Ultra Balls for a small fraction of the price. I don't exactly do well during the night, however, so I like to mess with my Pip-Buck's internal clock to get its Pokémon game to think it's midnight when it isn't. I turn my clock back to normal afterwards, when I'm done catching Pokémon, but as I said before, I don't play this game often.

Rumors say there's this thing called a Master Ball, a Pokeball that can catch any Pokémon, but that's probably bullshit. However, I did find code for it in the game while hacking it.

You could have up to six Pokémon in your team at once, and any extras you caught went in "Your PC", a big collection of all the Pokémon you caught magically stored onto your in-game character's PC, which could be accessed from the PCs in any Pokémon Center, a special building you can visit to fully heal your Pokémon for free.

You can also battle other Trainers, ponies with Pokémon in the game. NPCs, Non-Player Characters, who will attack you with their Pokémon on sight. Every time one of your Pokémon wins a match, you gain EXP, Experience Points, and when you have enough, you Level Up, increasing your stats and potentially learning a new move. It depends on what level your chosen Pokémon is programmed to learn moves at.

Speaking of moves, there are these in-game objects called TMs and HMs. Technique Machines, and Hidden Machines. Both can be used as many times as you want, but only on certain Pokémon who were programmed to be able to learn certain moves from certain TMs and HMs. You can't teach Ice Beam to a Fire-Type, for example.

Having six Pokémon in your team, that's where the strategy comes in. Your foes will also have up to six Pokémon, so it's up to you to win by using the right Pokémon for the job in every situation, and make sure that Pokémon has the right moves. All Pokémon can have up to four moves at once, by the way. If you want your Pokémon to learn a new move, but your Pokémon already knows four moves, you have to throw away an old move of your choice.

All Pokémon can hold one Held Item, something useful like a Berry, or a Life Orb, or a Choice Scarf. Your Pokémon will eat a berry he or she is holding when he or she runs low on HP, but doesn't run out of HP and faint. Some berries heal the user, some berries boost the user's stats, and some berries confuse the user. Fuck that last one. Life Orbs boost the power of your Pokémon's moves by 30%, but your Pokémon loses 10% of its maximum HP after using a damage-dealing while holding a Life Orb. Choice Scarves boost the holder's speed by 50%, but only allow you to use the first move you chose after sending the Pokémon out.

If you want to be a sneaky little fucker, you can use this one move called Trick to swap your held item with your opponent's. This can be a great way to take your opponent's usually-useful item away and replace it with a Choice Scarf. If your opponent uses a stat-raising move while holding a Choice Scarf, he's fucked! All your opponent can do is either repeatedly use that stat-raising move, despite not being able to attack or do anything with those stats, or Switch that Pokémon out for one of the other Pokémon in his team, throwing away the boosts to his stats and resetting the "Choice Scarf is locking the holder into X move" flag. And Switching a Pokémon out for another one uses up one turn, which means you'll get a free hit in on whatever your foe sends out.

You can also make your Pokémon hold something useless, like some mail or a Pokeball, something your Pokémon can't use. Or even something detrimental to the Pokémon, like a Poison Orb, which Poisons the holder. That's good for Trick strategies and Pokémon with the Ability known as Poison Heal, which turns health that would normally be lost due to Poison damage at the end of every turn into health gained.

Speaking of Abilities, all Pokémon have one. Some abilities, such as Own Tempo, which stops the user from suffering the unofficial status effect known as Confusion, and Clear Body, which stops the opponent from lowering the user's stats, are only useful in a few situations. Then there are more useful abilities, like Water Absorb and Flash Fire. Water Absorb makes water attacks heal you, instead of hurting you. Flash Fire makes Fire-type attacks do nothing to you, and this ability also boosts your Attack or Special Attack by 50%. Some abilities, like Run Away, which guarantees that you'll succeed when you attempt to run away from a battle with a Wild Pokémon, aren't useful against NPC trainers or other players of the Pokémon game at all. Some abilities have downsides, like Dry Skin, which makes water attacks heal you, but it also makes you 2x weak to Fire attacks. And some abilities are fucking broken bullshit, like Contrary. It turns what would be lowered stat effects into raised stat effects, and raised stat effects into lowered stat effects. Which means if your opponent sends out a Pokémon with the ability Intimidate, which lowers the Attack of your opponent's Pokémon when you send out the Mon with Intimidate, your Attack stat will get bigger instead of smaller. It also means that if you use a powerful move with "The user's Special Attack drops by 2 stages after using this" as its only downside, such as Overheat or Leaf Storm, your Special Attack will rise instead of being lowered. Yes, this means you can repeatedly use that attack, and it'll get stronger every time it's used. Like I said, it's fucking broken bullshit.

Stats-wise, the Attack and Special Attack stats boost your damage output. Attack makes you do more damage with Physical moves, and Special Attack makes you do more damage with Special (Long-Range, usually) moves. Typically, a Physical Fire move will be something like "Flame Charge: Wreathe the user in flames and crash into the opponent! Raises speed by 1 stage", and a Special Fire move will be something like "Flamethrower: Breathe fire at the opponent!". HP gives you more Health Points, an indicator of your Pokémon's current health and how much pain he or she can take before running out of HP and getting Knocked Out. The Defence and Special Defence stats adjust how much damage your Pokémon takes from incoming attacks. Defence lowers the damage taken from Physical attacks, and Special Defence lowers the damage taken from Special attacks. Whether a move is Physical or Special depends on what little icon it was programmed to have in the Moves tab of the Pokémon Status Screen. Finally, there is the Speed stat. If my Pokémon's Speed stat is higher than your Pokémon's speed stat, even though we'll both select our chosen moves from our own respective menus at the same time, my Pokémon will use his move first.

Stats are raised in stages. A stat can be raised or lowered by up to 6 or -6 stages above or below zero, the standard stage. Each stage is worth 0.5, so a Pokémon with a +2 modifier to Special Attack and a +1 modifier to Defence will have his Special Attack multiplied by 2 and his Defence multiplied by 1.5x. I think negative numbers that lower the user's stats matter less. What were the exact numbers, again? Oh, right. At -1 Attack, your Attack stat is at two thirds of its usual number. At -2 Attack, your Attack stat is at two quarters of its usual number, and it goes down to -6, where your Attack stat ends up at two eighths of its usual number.

Also, there are no stat-raising or stat-lowering moves that alter how much HP you have. There are moves like Recover and Softboiled that heal the user's HP, however.

So, that's how Pokémon battling works. Pretty cool, eh?

In the game, you choose a Region, and play through that region. You'll run around, catch local Pokémon, talk to some NPCs and fight enemy trainer NPCs, raise your Pokémon, and go from town to town in search of eight Gyms. Gyms have stronger Pokémon Trainers in them, and they're ruled by a Gym Leader, a master of a certain type. A Gym Leader will usually only use Pokémon of a certain type, and it's a type the whole Gym is themed around in some way, so they test your knowledge of type matchups. Gyms will usually also have simple puzzles in them, often based around switches you have to press to move platforms, open doors, or remove obstacles, and those switches tend to be placed in areas you can only get to if you beat the game's NPC trainers in the way, so you'll have to beat all of a Gym's trainers before you can get to the Gym Leader. Beat a Gym Leader, and you get a Gym Badge.

Oh, and along your Badge-hunting route, you'll run into some evil team who wants to do crimes, or destroy the world, or do some good-sounding thing that'll actually end in disaster, or whatever. The important thing is, you have to stop those evil bad guys who are up to no good! Defeat them with your Pokémon, and save the world!

When you get eight Gym Badges, you can head for Victory Road, a very tough route that travels through a cave full of strong trainers and strong Pokémon. If you get through that, you can get to the big end-game area where the Elite Four are, along with the Champion. You have to beat all four members of the Elite Four in a row, followed by the Champion, and they're some of the toughest battles you'll ever face. Usually.

When you're done with that, you'll do whatever "Post-Game" stuff is in the area, then you'll move on to some other Region. A Patch File to update your game and add some new regions and Pokémon to it is distributed for a steep fourty-bit price every few years. But if you don 't have any bits, you can trade food or water or clothes or whatever for the equivalent price to the pony releasing the patch, or anypony who bought the patch and knows how to copy it over to other Pip-Bucks, either for free or for a smaller fee.

Remember how the game allowed you to choose a Region to start in, at the start of the game? Well, you can go through the other regions afterwards, and the Wild Pokémon and enemy Trainers in those regions will scale to your level! So if you go in with Pokémon around the Level 40 to Level 50 mark, the weak early-game trainers and early-game Wild Pokémon will start off at around level thirty-ish, and get stronger from there. After going through that region, beating all eight of its Gym Leaders and getting their Gym Badges, beating the Elite Four, Champion, and local evil team, you move on to another region. Or re-visit a region you already beat, and it'll scale to your level every time you visit it.

So if two friends start off in different regions, and upon beating their regions, switch over to the region their friend already went through, they'll find that the region they're going through now is tougher than the one their friend went through.

The true goals of Pokémon? To catch all the Pokémon! Or to go through every region and beat every trainer, Gym, evil team member, Elite Four member, and Champion in them. Or to make a great team and battle people in reality with them. It depends on the player.

And yes, you heard me right. This game can let your Pip-Buck connect to other Pip-Bucks wirelessly, letting you Trade Pokémon with other players, and battle your opponent's Pokémon team with your own team! There's also a "Mix Records" option, but I have no idea what that does.

Anyway, Pokémon is a pretty popular game in this Vault. Which makes sense, because almost everything about it is brilliant!

Almost.

The game isn't exactly balanced. Some Pokémon, like Salamence, are just objectively better than Pokémon like Butterfree. Some Pokémon are unfairly overpowered. Some groups of friends have unofficial rules where they agree not to use certain moves, certain Pokémon, or even any Pokémon above a certain "Tier".

Some groups of friends use hacked versions of the Pokémon game, to add new Pokémon and new Regions, or just adjust and enhance existing Pokémon while weakening some Pokémon that are just too good, like Mega Lucario and Toxapex. Some groups of friends even use modified versions of the game that adjust main game mechanics, such as allowing you to use more than six Pokémon in your team, or letting your Pokémon's nickname edit your Pokémon's current type, or letting any Pokémon use any Pokémon's Mega Stone.

Shit, I forgot to tell you about those. Well, most Pokémon in the game can evolve once or twice. Some Pokémon can evolve into one of two, three, or even sixteen different things. Bulbasaur will evolve into Ivysaur at level 16, and Ivysaur will evolve into Venusaur at level 32. Tyrogue will evolve into Hitmonchan, Hitmontop, or Hitmonlee whether its Attack stat is greater than its Defence, equal to its Defence, or lower than its Defence, respectively. Wurmple can evolve into Silcoon or Cascoon depending on who-the-fuck-knows-what. Silcoon will evolve into Beautifly, and Cascoon will evolve into Dustox. Eevee will evolve into Flareon, Jolteon, or Vaporeon if it's given a Fire Stone, Thunder Stone, or Water Stone respectively. Or, if it's sufficiently happy, it'll evolve into an Umbreon during the night, or an Espeon during the day. Or it'll evolve into the Fairy type Sylveon if it levels up while sufficiently happy and while also knowing at least one Fairy-type move. Or it'll evolve into a Glaceon if you level it up near some special chunk of ice. Or it'll evolve into a Leafeon if you level it up near some special mossy rock.

Some Pokémon have these things called Mega Stones, which allow a Pokémon to Mega Evolve when held. That's a temporary evolution that temporarily evolves your Pokémon to be 100 Base Stat points stronger, though you don't get to control what stats those points are added to. When you Mega Evolve a Pokémon, it stays Mega Evolved until the end of the battle. It turns back to normal afterwards.

Mega Evolution changes your Pokémon's appearance, and will also often change your Pokémon's Ability to be something more useful. Personally, I like Mega Evolutions, even though a lot of people hate them. I feel they were a good way to make some weak Pokémon stronger. I just wish they decided on a specific Base Stat Total number for Megas, instead of giving all Pokémon with Mega Evolutions a flat +100 upgrade, because some weakling like Mawile with its Base Stat Total of 380 won't be able to compete with some behemoth like Salamence, who has a Base Stat Total of 600. Add 100 to 380, and you get 480. Sure, it's still higher than 380, but it isn't any higher than 600, which just got buffed by Mega Evolution to 700. Sure, Mega Mawile gets Pure Power, which doubles its mediocre Attack stat, but Mega Salamence gets Aerialate, which boosts the power of all Normal-type moves by 1.2x and turns them into Flying-Type moves. This is more useful than it sounds, trust me.

Also, there's one really stupid thing about Pokémon.

One really, really, really fucking stupid thing.

The stupid part? Well, there are these things called EVs and IVs.

When you encounter a Pokémon, whether it's through hatching a Pokémon egg, finding it in the Wild, or having it traded to you by an in-game NPC, the game uses stupid calculations to determine a number that affects each of the Pokémon's main stats: HP, Attack, Defence, Special Attack, Special Defence, and Speed. Six numbers in total, and they could be anywhere from one to thirty-one. Wait, could they also be zero? I have no idea. Anyway, those six numbers were your Pokémon's Individual Values, or IVs.

There is no way to look at, or edit, your Pokémon's IVs. If your Pokémon has crappy IVs, your Pokémon will always be crappier than another Pokémon with better IVs.

There are also EVs. Six numbers, for boosting your Pokémon's HP, Attack, Defence, Special Attack, Special Defence, and Speed. They start at zero, and your Pokémon can earn up to five hundred and ten EV points before being unable to get any more.

Vitamins and Wings can raise one of your Pokémon's EVs by 10, until it reaches 100, or 1, until it reaches 252, respectively. Different Vitamins, like Calcium and Zinc, and different Wings, like the Muscle Wing and Resist Wing, are programmed to raise different Stats when consumed by Pokémon. There are also certain Berries that increase your Pokémon's happiness, while reducing their assigned stat's EVs by 10, until they reach zero.

You can also raise a Pokémon's EV by 1, 2, or 3 points by having that Pokémon defeat an enemy Pokémon with a high statistic. If your Pokémon defeats an enemy Pokémon whose base Attack is its highest stat, you'll gain one IV. Or two, if its base Attack is pretty high. Or three, if its base Attack is very high. I'm pretty sure that's how that works, anyway.

A Pokémon can have up to 252 EVs in any one stat, and for every 4 EVs a Pokémon has in a certain stat, that stat is raised by 1 point. This means 63 is the maximum number of extra points your EVs can add to a certain stat. A Pokémon's stats and whatever adjustments the EVs should do to them are Recalculated upon levelling up, so make sure you max out the EVs you want maxed out and distribute those points however you want before hitting level 99, so you can finish your EV training by hitting level 100.

You get Vitamins by buying them in a store in the game, and you get Berries by getting at least one and growing them in-game. These things aren't exactly cheap. I forgot how you got Wings.

There's also this place in Alola, the least fun region in the game, where some guy will use "Hyper Training" on your Pokémon in return for a Bottle Cap. This won't properly adjust your Pokémon's IVs, it'll just replace one IV of your choice with a perfect IV of 31 per bottle cap. And yes, getting a Bottle Cap isn't exactly quick and easy.

Anyway, at no point in the games are these systems ever properly explained to the player, so many players will have absolutely no idea about them or how they work.

Same goes for Natures. Your Pokémon can have one of many natures. Lonely, Brave, Adamant, Modest, and a few others. Five natures are Neutral, and the rest will slightly boost one stat at the cost of another. There is no way to change a Pokémon's Nature, which is generated randomly.

Personally, I think it would be better if there was some kind of facility in-game where you could directly alter your Pokémon's EVs and IVs, because you don't really want Attack IVs on a Special Attacker.

Because IVs are randomly generated and a pain to set to the maximum, and EVs require you to keep track of how many of a certain Pokémon you've beaten and keep track of numbers you can't even see without hacking your save file to check, a lot of people will pay ponies with the right programs and know-how to hack their Pokémon save file, getting Pokémon that would normally be locked behind "Special Events planned by the company that made Pokémon, Neightendo. These were usually massive tournaments where the winner got a certain level 100 Pokémon added to their save file for free, and all non-winners and audience members got a level 1 Pokémon added to their save file for free. Or one of those massive parties designed to celebrate the release of the most recent Pokémon movie, which existed to advertise the most recently-released Event Pokémon, which you could only have added to your game by a Neightendo employee at the party for the movie, or at certain selected major cinemas around Equestria that showed the movies.

For obvious reasons, there hasn't been a single Special Event planned by Neightendo since the Megaspells fell.

Which means that if you want to legitimately get certain "Legendary Pokémon", ultra-strong hard-to-find Pokémon considered too strong for regular friendly battles against peers unless your opponents were also using Legendary Pokémon, or Mythical Pokémon, exclusive Pokémon you can only get from certain Events, you were screwed.

Of course, if you didn't mind cheating in a manner that isn't really cheating at all, when you think about it, you could pay somepony to hack a Pokémon you can't normally get into your game. And if anypony asked, you could say it was a family heirloom one of your many-times-great grandparents got legitimately, before the Megaspells fell. Or that it was a family heirloom somepony else owned, before you won it as part of a wager you made on some match. Or that this method was how one of your parents legitimately obtained it, before trading it to you.

You could hack any Pokémon into the game, with any move, any ability, any level from 1-100, and any number of EVs and IVs. Sunrise just wished you could also hack a Pokémon's typing. That would be cool.

In any case, there were two schools of thought when it came to Pokémon hacking. The school of thought that said you should avoid triggering the game's hack-detection systems, avoid cheating, and avoid giving yourself an unfair advantage over your opponent, only using hacking to minimize the unfair advantage over you any opponent with more free time on his hooves and more time to catch and breed Pokémon in search of one with the perfect nature and IVs could get, and one that said FUCK SUBTLETY, because the game's hack detection doesn't trigger when battling against Pip-Bucks added to your Pip-Buck's friend list. Which means there ain't no reason to go all-in, balls-out, cock-out, flapping in the breeze or rock-hard, it doesn't even fucking matter!

In addition, the Vault only has laws against cheating against ponies above your class. Which, in effect, means the Vault only has laws against low-class ponies cheating in games against high-class ponies who lost and were willing to admit they lost, even if cheating did factor into the loss. After all, for every one honest rich pony who'd tell the truth on whether he or she thought cheating had happened, there would be a hundred more dishonest ones who'd throw the rich pony under the bus in any court of Vault law to try and minimize his or her number of rivals.

Green Star believed in the latter school of thought, which meant he wanted hacked Pokémon.

Bullshit, cheaty, obviously-hacked Pokémon.

And for the price of a fucktons of Silly Sugar he could trade away for guns and robotic scrap, Sunrise Stardust was ready to deliver.

"I'm ready," Sunrise Stardust said as he brought up his own Pip-Buck, moved over to the Misc tab, selected the Pokémon game(The Pip-Buck believed it was an item that Couldn't Be Dropped Or Traded, rather than a file, but that didn't really matter), and loaded the game up.

Low-quality eight-bit instruments played, and he couldn't tell what the instruments were, but it was like they were different instruments in an orchestra starting to play their bits, first apart, and then together.

Doot doot doot, doot doot doot,

DIDDLY DOOT DOOT!

Doot doot doot doot,

Bom bom bom

BWAAM BAAM BAAM BAAAAAAM

Ba na na naaa!

DIDDLY DOOT-DOOT!

Ba na na naaa! Ba na na naaa!

Dananana,

And then, the fucking trumpets. The only instrument in the game's MIDI soundfont the game developers felt like using proper Soundfont technology for, instead of "Traditional" eight-bit beeps, bleeps, boops, sine waves, square waves, and other shit.

Pa-papa-da, pa, pa-papa-daaa!

PA-PA-PAPAPAAAAAA!

Doot doot doot DOOT doot doot doot,

PAPA-PAPA-PA-PAAAAA-AA!

Did-diddly deedly diddly diddly

BAAAAA, NA NA NA NAAAA NAAA NAAA NAAA, PAAAA, BANANA NAAA!

Aaand that was enough of that. He tapped the touch-screen, it registered that as an emulated input, and the game skipped the rest of its intro and jumped to the title screen. Once upon a time, the Pip-Buck's emulator for old games had shown an L and R button on the left and right respectively, two face buttons on the right below that labelled A and B respectively, an eight-directional direction pad on the left below that, and two grey rectangles labelled Select and Start respectively below the A and B buttons. However, he'd gotten used to where the directional pad and buttons were, so he felt confident enough to turn off the visibility of the on-screen buttons, like all other adults who regularly played emulated formerly-for-PC-only Pip-Buck games like this one.

Pokémon's Title Screen just barely managed to get out the first BAAAAAA, BANANAAAAA, BANANAAAAA, BADADA DADADA DADA DOOT DADADA BWOOOOM BANAAAAAM, BAAAAAA NANANAAAAM-ing notes of the main title screen before Sunrise pressed A, going to the Main Menu, which was beautifully and artistically silent and simple. When you moved from one of the tasteful minimalist options to another, there would be a faint, slightly-echoing "Bling!", the same sound that would play if you selected an option.

From the top down, his current options were: The details of his current save file, a rectangle labelled New Game beneath it, and a rectangle labelled Options beneath that.

He selected his current save file, and the game truly began as he appeared in the bottom floor of Lilycove's Pokémon Center, a tiny 8-bit rendition of a red Unicorn with purple eyes and a fully-purple mane in an 8-bit rendition of Twilight Sparkle's manestyle, because the game's character customization system was still pretty lacking.

"Are you ready to trade?" Sunrise Stardust asked Green Star.

"Yeah, just let me run back…" He said, tapping his screen to make his character run, probably. Sunrise didn't exactly have a good view of the guy's screen from where he was standing.

He assumed that the guy was somewhere near a Pokémon Center, because he didn't simply use the Hidden Machine-granted move known as Fly to basically teleport back to the Pokémon Center in any town of his choice, provided it was one he'd already visited.

"Alright, I'm at the Pokémon Center," Green Star said.

"Right, let's do this," Sunrise said, walking his little red Unicorn left, towards the escalator stairs that activated when he stepped upon them, sliding him up. The screen faded to black, and the next room faded in as he went up the escalator on the left, and stepped off it.

That had always bugged him, to be honest, and he'd never told anypony about this, but… Fuck! You go into a Pokémon center, and you're presumably facing north. Then you walk left, to an escalator facing left, towards a wall. You walk onto the escalator, and it takes you left. You then appear on the next floor up, stepping off an escalator that's still on the left, but facing towards the right, just like the escalator! What the fuck was up with that? Did the in-game map's almost-top-down perspective change every time you went up a floor, or did that only happen on some floors?

"Wait!" The guy yelped out as if a gun was pointed at his balls, surprising Sunrise. "I still need to change out my team," The guy dazedly finished.

"Alright," Sunrise shrugged neutrally. "Go to the Pokémon Trading Pip-Club mare, and choose Trade Center."

The pleasant tunes of the Pokémon Center music came from Sunrise's Pip-Boy, and he was glad Green Star didn't have his music on, or the two versions of the Pokémon Center music playing at different points in the melody would sound like shit.

The pleasant tunes helped him stay patient as Green Star (Presumably) slowly switched out the Pokémon in his team for some random crappy caught Pokémon he wouldn't mind never seeing again in return for getting the greatest hacked Pokémon team Sunrise could think of. Sunrise went up to the in-game clerk NPC that handled trades, talked to her, told her he wanted to trade, saved the game, and waited. And then he chose to Make A Trade Room.

"I'm ready," Green Star said.

"Great, get ready to join the room," Sunrise said as he waited.

"Wait, I just made the room." Green Star said.

"Then back out of it, talk to the mare again, and tell her you want to join a Trade Room."

"Okay."

After a few seconds of waiting, Green Star did so, Sunrise guessed, and finally, somepony joined his Trade Room, which meant he could see GreenStr - xXxGreenStarBlazeIt420XxX appear as one of the names in a box that could display up to four names at once. Sunrise selected that sequential Trainer and Pip-Buck name, and the trade menu appeared.

At the same time, on both screens, Sunrise's character and a green Unicorn with a green Rainbow Dash-ish mane and green eyes appeared, side by side. They appeared in a grey-floored room with greyish-blue walls and one big green screen on the wall at the top of the screen, furthest from the entrance on the bottom of the screen. A slightly vertically-stretched red octagon was painted on the center of the floor, around a machine that was like two armchairs, back to back, only mostly painted a pale plastic white. The right side had its center painted red, the left side had its center painted blue, and green screens could be seen on both machines.

Both Pip-Buck Screens were synchronized perfectly as they both made their way to their respective sides of the Trading Machine.

Sunrise always found this incredibly cool. Two Pokémon players, moving around on the same map! This setup would be perfect for a Wireless Multiplayer Mode that forced two or more Trainers to work together to beat different super-strong enemy Pokémon Trainers and try and make it to the end of whatever randomly-generated dungeon the game made up for the players! He knew it would be perfect, because he'd helped make that by working with 23 other programmers who'd honestly done the bulk of the work.

Finally, the Trade Screen appeared. On the left and right side of the screen, the Pokémon currently in either player's team could be seen. Sunrise had a very complicated and hard-to-describe team you'll see in more detail shortly, and Green Star had a team of six level one Eevees.

Sunrise guessed the guy must have been trying to 'Breed a Shiny'. If you leave two Pokémon of the same Egg Group alone in this one area called a Day Care and leave the building without them, they would eventually mate (Offscreen, of course, but mods for the game exist to make this an on-screen affair) and produce an Egg. Unless one or both Pokémon were in the Undiscovered Egg Group, the group of Pokémon that cannot produce Eggs. This egg, when hatched, would produce a level 1 Pokémon of the mother's species, with any moves the father learned from TMs or HMs, plus a random selection of any Egg Moves from the father's species the baby Pokémon was programmed to be able to learn. Or, if you put a male or female Pokémon in with a Ditto, that Ditto would become an oppositely-sexed version of the Pokémon to breed with it and produce an Egg of that species.

Anyway, every time the game generates a Pokémon, whether it's a Pokémon currently in an egg, a Pokémon found in the wild, or a Pokémon generated by the game and given to you/traded to you by an NPC through some event flag programming bullshit he still, even now, understood about 80% of and couldn't decipher without a file full of notes to say what hexadecimal numbers and letters meant what in terms of what Pokémon or item was where, the game would calculate the Pokémon's individual Weight and Height, and whether that Pokémon was Shiny or not.

A specific Pokémon's Height and Weight could be up to 40% greater or smaller than the Pokémon species's default height and weight, which were always used exactly by the Pokémon of NPCs. No in-game Trainers would ever have Pokémon larger or smaller, or heavier or lighter, than the average instance of any given Pokémon would be. However, Wild Pokémon, in-game trades, hatched eggs, and so on could still result in unusually large, small, light, or heavy Pokémon, and the percentage multiplier a Pokémon started life with would stick with it through its Evolutions. Rumors said there was a way to breed larger Pokémon together with larger Pokémon while holding certain held items to ensure the resulting Pokémon egg would always hatch into a Pokémon at least as big as their parents or bigger, but they were bullshit, just like the identical rumours about ways to guarantee that a Pokémon's egg would hatch as small as their parents, or smaller.

A Pokémon's height and weight had no real effect on battle. They were purely cosmetic, and anypony who says the lightest Pokémon is more likely to move first in the event of a speed tie is lying to you. Speaking of which, when two Pokémon are equally fast, and either neither are using a Priority Move or they're both using moves with the same Priority, a Speed Tie happens, and which Pokémon moves first is selected randomly.

Moves like Low Kick, which do more damage on heavier Pokémon, calculated damage using the target Pokémon's Species's average weight, not the actual Pokémon's individual weight. The same would go for moves that did more damage against tall opponents, if such a move existed, because the game already had unsued coding in the game for it.

As for Shininess… Every time the game generates a Pokémon not owned by an enemy NPC in-battle, there is a One in Eight Thousand, One Hundred and Ninety Two chance that the Pokémon will be "Shiny". This means that the Pokémon's Pallete will be different, changing the colours used to draw it. Bulbasaurs become a pale shade of green instead of pale blue and their evolutions get yellow flowers instead of pink ones Charmanders become yellow and evolve into yellow Charmeleons, which evolve into black Charizards with the inner blue parts of their wings turned a dark wine-red, Squirtle become a slightly lighter shade of blue and evolve into a light purple Wartortle, which evolves into a light purple Blastoise, and so on.

Sunrise was quite proud of the shiny Treecko he'd gotten when he started his Pokémon adventure in Hoenn, but he was even more proud of his Shiny 7.34-feet-tall Gardevoir, one he'd caught as an unusually-tall and +23% Weight shiny Ralts long ago. Sure, he'd "Legally hacked" her to boost her straight to level 100 after getting tired of grinding EXP with her around the level 60ish mark, and to give her the EVs and IVs he wanted her to have, without giving her anything impossible and cheat-y such as moves or abilities she wasn't meant to have, but she was still a legitimate maximum-size Pokémon AND a legitimate Shiny Pokémon when he'd caught her.

Sometimes, he was surprised Stable-Tec Vigor Testers didn't burst into flames when he walked on past them, because sometimes, he didn't just get lucky, he got stupid lucky.

Gardevoirs were tall, thin Pokémon with pale-green skin, green hair that curled around to form a frontal upper diagonal downwards-pointing hair spike and one lower forwards-pointing hair spike on each left and right side respectively, white dresses, and long and very thin arms. Two whisker-like spikes emerge from the left and right sides of their faces, four in total, as if their faces are face-plates mounted on the green hair. They have beautiful red eyes. A reddish-pink fin-like spike emerges from their chests, stretching from the top of where their breasts would begin if they had any down to the top of where their belly button begins. Which isn't visible, due to their dress starting around that area, below the spike. Their spike-fin-thing is sort of like a Guitar Pick with its point facing backwards. The insides of their dresses are green. Three long splits form from the bottoms of their white dresses, one on the left, one on the right, and one on the back. A longer frontal split rises up towards the crotch, but in such a way that suggests these Pokémon don't have legs, crotches, or hips, judging by how they look in-game and how their flowing dress covers them. But when you look at them in versions of Pokémon that support 3d models, and you turn the camera around, you can see that they do indeed have hips, crotches, and legs. Incredibly thin, dainty white hips and shockingly thin stick-like white legs that end in rounded points. But judging from how the sticks bend in two during animations, it can be deduced that Gardevoirs have knees and feet, they just walk around on pointed toes like their pre-evolution, Kirlia.

Oh, and from the armpits of the Gardevoir down, there are rounded segments of visible green skin, like stretched ovals of fabric are missing from the dress. They stretch down to the thinnest point of the hips, before a curved section stretches around her belly to meet each other. And their necks are shockingly pencil-thin.

A Shiny Gardevoir? The exact same thing, except instead of pale green arms, and hair, and a pale green dress interior, that colour has been changed to a slightly more saturated, but still pale, blue.

But when they Mega Evolve, the differences between them become a bit more prominent.

A Mega Gardevoir's body doesn't change in size, but it turns almost completely white, and its hair is the only part of it that remains green. Its beautiful red eyes remain the same, and its dress gets longer, wider, and bigger. The frontal seam vanishes, and the dress gains seven equally long seams in total. The dress starts to puff outwards, like a bell. It's as if some sort of stretched-semi-spherical crinoline is keeping the dress in that shape, but her legs remain as thin and dainty as ever. The whisker-like facial spikes on the sides of its head grow larger and begin to curl upwards. Its hair is slightly shorter and its rear spiked curls curl a bit tighter, around its facial spikes. Finally, the frontal part of the spike-like pinkish-red fin opens up, extending to the sides like a pair of scalene triangles, only rounder, almost like butterfly wings, but just the top bits of them.

A Shiny Mega Gardevoir? The same thing, except the green hair is as blue as the regular Gardevoir hair, and the white dress turns black, like the kind of dress you wear at funerals.

Green Star finally decided on one of his Eevees to select, and Sunrise selected the first of the six hacked Pokémon he was going to give away today. He had with him a team of six Pokémon, each with a maxed-out 252 in every EV and a maxed-out 31 in all IVs.

First and foremost, there was the first one to be given away, a Pokémon he'd ripped off after it was used to almost beat him in a match where some rich bastard cheated, the star of the show…

A Chansey. A Normal type Pokémon. A stupid little pink thing with an egg-like body and tiny, stubby limbs. What made this useless little piece of crap useful? She had quite a bit of HP, even though her stats were terrible, and she could hold an Eviolite, an item that doubled your defences if it was held by a Pokémon that could evolve, but had not yet evolved. This doubled its defences, and its ability had been hacked, to change it over to Impostor. Impostor was usually an ability only seen on Dittos, little blobs of pink slime, as it forced the user to instantly transform into the opposing Pokémon. Normally, a Ditto would have to survive one turn against that opposing Pokémon, use its chosen move last because it was slow and shitty, and use its only move: Transform, which turns the user into a copy of the opponent, granting the user all of the opponent's moves all of the opponent's base stats, aside from the user's max HP. Of course, a Ditto would usually just become a weaker version of whatever it turned into. But a Chansey with Impostor? It would turn into a better version of whatever it was up against, as soon as it was sent out. It would have more HP than pretty much anything it was likely to turn into, and it would have double the defences of the opponent.

Transform and Impostor also copied any stat-boosts the opponent currently had, so it made for a great ace up your sleeve to pull out against a "Setup Sweeper", an enemy Pokémon using the classic tactic of "Raise my stats, and then KO as many Pokémon as possible with them".

There was a variant of this strategy that used Pikachu, the "Light Ball" items a Pikachu could carry to double its offensive stats, but Sunrise considered it inferior to the Chansey.

The only downside of this strategy? You can't use Transform on a Pokémon behind a Substitute, a Pokémon that had already used Transform, and a Pokémon currently using the ability Illusion to seem like the Pokémon in the back of your Pokémon team.

Some might say moves don't matter on a Pokémon with Impostor, as they'll only get replaced anyway, but Sunrise disagreed. The Chansey's moves were Whirlwind to get rid of whatever it couldn't transform into, Parting Shot to escape when Whirlwind isn't an option, Fake Out to stun whatever it fought for a turn if it couldn't transform into anything, and Final Gambit to kill itself and make the opposing Pokémon lose HP equal to how much HP Chansey lost when it killed itself.

Then, there was something far more visually intimidating.

Mega Rayquaza. Yes, some idiot at Neightendo decided that Mega Evolution, the thing designed to be given to popular but weak Pokémon to help them compete with the best Pokémon, should be a thing the mighty Legendary Pokémon known as Rayquaza can do.

And because the Rayquaza is hacked to always be in its Mega state, it could hold other held items, in addition to having impossible abilities and moves.

Mega Rayquaza with 252 EVs in all stats, including Speed and Special Attack, plus the 50% Special Attack bonus from holding Choice Specs, using Draco Meteor…

Plus the +2 Stat Boost Stages you would get after each time you used Draco Meteor, due to having Contrary, an ability that turned all positive stat adjustments into negative stat adjustments and turned all negative stat adjustments into positive stat adjustments…

Well, it was going to fuck somepony up.

Also, it was faster than Base Gengar, but not Mega Gengar. Which meant if your opponent was one of those filthy, disgusting cheaters who loved sending out a Gengar with the ability Normalize, using Skill Swap or Entrainment to give your Pokémon the ability Normalize, and then Mega Evolve into Mega Gengar, who'd always have his ability replaced with Shadow Tag, which prevents you from switching out – and this was an infuriating strategy because Normalize turns all of your moves into Normal-Type Moves and Normal moves have no effect at all on Ghost type Pokémon, meaning you're stuck using a Pokémon that can't hurt your opponent unless you planned ahead and predicted this situation while hacking your Pokémon into existence – Your Mega Rayquaza could out-speed an opposing Normal Gengar and likely kill it in one hit before it could Mega Evolve or give you Normalize and pull this bullshit.

Mega Rayquaza's other moves? Overheat, V-Create, and Core Enforcer.

Draco Meteor has 130 base power, 90 accuracy points, and a negative effect: Your Special Attack stat is reduced by 2 stages after using it.

Overheat has 130 base power, 90 accuracy points, and a negative effect: Your Special Attack stat is reduced by 2 stages after using it.

V-Create has 180 base power, 95 accuracy points, and a negative effect: Your Defence, Special Defence, and Speed stats are reduced by 1 stage after using it.

Core Enforcer has 130 base power, 100 accuracy points, and a unique effect: If this attack is used on a Pokémon that has already used at least one of their moves in the turn it's hit with this move, that Pokémon's ability is Surpressed, negated, for as long as that Pokémon remains in battle.

Then, there was a Mega Gengar. After all, the game only lets you Mega Evolve one Pokémon per match, but it doesn't have anything in place to stop you from using multiple Pokémon edited to permanently remain in their Mega forms!

Held item? Choice Scarf, for the 50% speed boost, which made its speed stat higher than most Pokémon in the game, even when hacking entered the picture. EVs? 252 all around. IVs? 31 all around. Ability? Adaptability, which takes your STAB, your Same Type Attack Bonus, and turns it from a 1.5x multiplier to a 2x multiplier.

Its moves? Moongeist Beam, a Ghost-type attack. It hits hard with a base 100 power, a base 100 accuracy, and the added effect of IGNORING YOUR OPPONENT'S ABILITY COMPLETELY, which is a useful trick against gimmicky Pokémon like Shedinja. Normally, Shedinja have just 1HP and the ability Wonder Guard, which makes the Shedinja invincible to all attacks upon it that are not Super Effective or better. This move can beat those Shedinjas. It can even beat a Shedinja hacked to have Sturdy, an ability that makes the Pokémon immune to One-Hit KO Moves, and ensures the Pokémon will always survive with at least 1HP if it would be knocked out in one hit. Of course, Shedinja only has 1HP, so instead of simply granting you an extra turn alive like Sturdy does for most Pokémon designed to get Sturdy, Sturdy makes Shedinja normally immune to literally everything, ever. Well, except for weather damage, Stealth Rocks/Spikes damage, Toxic Spikes poison, damage taken from Status Effects like Burns and Poisoning, and a few other tricks. And moves like Moongeist Beam, which ignore abilities.

Secondly, there was Volt Switch, an Electric-type move with 70 Power and 100% Accuracy. Sure, 100% accuracy was a bit of a misnomer for Pokémon, since even supposedly 100% Accurate moves could miss, and only moves like Aerial Ace, which were specifically programmed to never miss, wouldn't have a chance of missing. Anyway, Pokémon moves that say they have less than 100% Accuracy, such as 90% or 70%, have an even bigger chance of missing. Sunrise preferred to think of the Accuracy Number as how many Accuracy Points the move had. Anyway, Volt Switch dealt electric-type damage to the opponent, and it would switch the user's Pokémon with a Pokémon of the user's trainer's choice afterwards, and that different Pokémon would be sent in to get hit by whatever move the Opponent had chosen, if Volt Switch went first. If Volt Switch went last, it would switch the user's Pokémon with a Pokémon of the user's trainer's choice after

Thirdly, there was Sludge Wave, a Poison move with 95 base power and 100 Accuracy points. Not as strong as Moongeist Beam? Sure, but it hits all Pokémon in Double Battles, where the two Trainers send out two Pokémon at a time, all adjacent Pokémon in Triple Battles, where the two trainers send out Three Pokémon at a time, and it has a 10% chance to poison the opponent.

Finally, there was Simple Beam, because fuck anyone with a gimmicky ability that deserved to be Simple instead. Simple doubles the effectiveness of positive and negative stat boosts on the holder of this ability, which makes it perfect for ruining the day of any Pokémon with Contrary and a set of moves designed to rely on it and work better for having it.

The third Pokémon? Deoxys-S, the Psychic-Type Pokémon known as Deoxys, in its Speed Forme. Forme is what Pokémon's idiot creator thought was the fancy way of spelling Form. Anyway, Deoxys-S with Safety Goggles for a Held Item, the ability Mold Breaker, and four moves. Light Screen, Reflect, Sticky Web, and Spore.

Spore to put whatever your opponent sends in to sleep. The ability Mold Breaker lets you ignore things like the ability Vital Spirit making Pokémon unable to be put to sleep, the ability Magic Bounce forcing all gimmicky bullshit stat-affecting and status-granting moves to affect the opponent instead of the user when the user is targeted, and a few other things, which means a Deoxys-S with Spore is the ultimate cheap piece of shit to rub in your opponent's face if you're the type of bastard who deserves to be tortured to death on live TV. Seriously, fuck Deoxys-S with Spore and Mold Breaker. The Pokémon's other moves include Sticky Web, to apply an Entry Hazard to your opponent's side of the battlefield that reduces the Speed of all incoming enemy Pokémon by one stage, Light Screen, to half the damage your team takes from Special moves for five turns, and Reflect, which halves the damage your team takes from Physical moves for five turns.

The fourth Pokémon? Well, there's this Pokémon called Wishiwashi. It's a Water type Pokémon, and it's shit. But its ability, Schooling, activates at the start of the battle and at the end of every turn where its HP is above 25% of its max HP, as long as its level is also above 20. This changes its forme from its mediocre initial "Solo Form" to its much cooler and far stronger School Form, which means it goes from one tiny little fish to a massive fish made out of tiny fishes! Pretty cool, eh?

It has a downside, however. If the Pokémon is in School Form, it checks if its HP has fallen below 25% at the end of every turn, and if it has, it changes Wishiwashi back to its shitty Solo Forme unless you heal it.

Other Pokémon can't get this ability normally, and if you hack it onto them, nothing happens to it.

However, if you hack a Wishiwashi to be in its massive School Form already, and then you take away its ability, it stays in that form permanently. Or until you edit the ability back onto it or hack it to change it back, I suppose. Anyway! Moving on! Guess what ability is best on a Wishiwashi.

No, not Wonder Guard, even though I'm well aware of that one strategy where you use Soak on a Shedinja to change it from a Ghost and Bug type to a pure Water type, reducing its number of weaknesses (And the number of types it can be hit with) to just two: Grass and Electric.

You give the Wishiwashi Water Bubble, the ability of Araquanid. This is a Bug and Water Pokémon, and its ability reduces the damage it takes from Fire-type moves by 50%, prevents the user from getting a burn, and DOUBLES THE BASE POWER OF WATER TYPE MOVES USED BY ARAQUANID.

You give the Wishiwashi Water Bubble, and this big blue behemoth with 600 BST spread in the form of fourty five base HP, ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTY base Attack, one hundred and thirty base Defence, ONE HUNDRED AND FUCKING FOURTY BASE SPECIAL ATTACK, one hundred and thirty five base special defence, and 30 speed. Which, notably, is 10 points lower than the otherwise-shit Wishiwashi's 40 speed stat.

Anyway, fuck its speed stat, you don't need speed when you're slapping your opponent in the face with a thousand fish cocks at once hard enough to kill him.

And then you give this rapefish swarm a Life Orb, for even more damage.

The moves of this storm of fish penis? Water Shuriken, Bouncy Bubble, Water Spout, and Oceanic Operetta. Each of these four attacks are Water type moves, which means Water Bubble will double their power.

Water Shuriken has +1 Priority, meaning it'll ignore the opponent's speed and go first unless another Pokémon is using a move with +2 or more Priority. It has 15 base power and 100 accuracy points, and it'll hit the opponent between two and five times in a row whenever it's used. There is a 33.3% chance that it will hit only 2 times, a 33.3% chance it will hit 3 times, a 16.7% chance it will hit 4 times, and a 16.7% chance it will hit 5 times. Provided that the move does not miss, it will hit 3.167 times on average, giving the move an average power of 47.5. Each strike made has an equal chance to be a Critical Hit, too.

Of course, that's the average power the move has BEFORE Water Bubble doubles its power.

Bouncy Bubble has 90 base power, 100 accuracy, and it heals the user's HP equal to 50% of the damage this move deals every time it's used. The only Water type HP-Draining move, and my Wishiwashi has it. Or rather, what would soon be Green Star's Wishiwashi had it.

Oceanic Operetta, a Water type move with – for its Accuracy, 1PP, and 195 base power. Normally, only a Primarina holding a Primarium Z could use it, and only if the Trainer activated that Primarium Z with the Trainer's own Z-Ring, which the trainer had to have, to upgrade Sparkling Aria, which the Primarina had to know, into Oceanic Operatta. Z-Moves can only be used once per battle, and it doesn't matter whether you're using a specific Signature Z-Move like this one or a more general Z-Move like Fightinium Z, which would upgrade any chosen Fighting-type damage-dealing move into All-Out Pummelling, or add a bonus effect to any chosen fighting-type status move to a Z-Status move. The power of those general "Typed Z-Moves", such as All-Out Pummelling and Tectonic Rage, and whether those moves become Physical or Special moves, depends on the move upgraded for one use per battle by the typed Z-Crystal the Pokémon had to hold.

When you hacked a general typed Z-Move directly onto a Pokémon… Well, I don't know what would happen if you did that, because I've never tried it. But if you hacked a Signature Z-Move directly into a Pokémon's four moves, you'd end up with that move in your Pokémon's movepool without needing to give your Pokémon a Z-Crystal to hold, or needing to use up your one Z-Move per battle, or anything! The move would only have 1PP, sure, which means you would only be able to use it once, but still, a 195 water move that will always hit isn't exactly bad. Plus, if your Pokémon held a Leppa Berry, your Pokémon could eat that berry after using that move to restore 10PP, Power Points, to all of its moves.

PP or "Power Points" is this system in the game that usually doesn't matter. All moves have PP, and using the move once uses up 1PP. Or two, if the opposing Pokémon has the ability Pressure. When your move runs out of PP, you can't use it any more until you restore that PP with an item, or by going to a Pokémon Center. You can't do either of those things during battle, so a move without PP is useless. When all of your moves run out of PP, your Pokémon is forced to use a normally-inaccessible move called Struggle. It deals ?-Type Damage, which hits everything neutrally and takes 25% of the user's max health away as Recoil Damage.

Its fourth and final move is Water Spout. Water Spout has 100 accuracy points and a base power somewhere between 1 and 150 depending on how much of the user's health has been lost. The higher the user's current percentage of health is, the higher the Base Power of this move will be. At 100% health, the move's base power will be 150.

And then there's Buzzwole. A hideously exaggerated artist's rendition of what the mythical "Human Male" supposedly once looked like, only now, it seemed less like a tribute to the anthropomorphic form and more of a parody of it. Its torso seems humanoid enough, albeit crimson and with fists clad in markings that resemble white fingerless gloves, a yellowing gradient on the inner sides of its pectorals, a spike on each elbow, and two spikes on the top of each shoulder, the inner spike taller than the outer spike. Its head is like a small semicircle with two antennae and one long sword-like mosquito spike thing for drinking your blood. Two translucent orange wings are on either side of its back, and it has four pairs of legs that end in spikes instead of hooves or feet. At some point when looking over this hideous abomination, you notice that is muscles seem more like bulging blobs filled with blood, and when it drinks your blood, that's why its muscles get bigger.

Its ability? Triage. Its held item? The Scope Lens. Its moves? Focus Energy, Leech Life, Drain Punch, and Horn Leech.

Horn Leech, a Grass type move with 75 base power, 100 accuracy points, and the effect of healing the user for half of the damage dealt.

Drain Punch, a Fighting type move with 75 base power, 100 accuracy points, and the effect of healing the user for half of the damage dealt.

Leech Life, a Bug type move with 80 base power, 100 accuracy points, and the effect of healing the user for half of the damage dealt.

Why the theme for three of these moves? Because Triage is an ability that gives +3 Priority to all "Healing Moves". The game wanted this ability to go to Pokémon that would use Healing Wave on teammates, but moves that restore the user's health equal to half the damage dealt count as healing moves! This means you get to out-speed moves with +1 Priority like Water Shuriken, and moves like Quick Attack and Extremespeed with +2 Priority! Brilliant, eh?

The fourth move is the reason why Buzzwole holds a Scope Lens. The Scope Lens adds +1 stage to the user's Critical Hit Ratio, which gives all of your moves a one in eight chance to become a Critical Hit.

The fourth move, Focus Energy, adds +2 stages to the user's Critical Hit Ratio. Normally, this would give you a 1 in 2 (also known as a 50%) chance to score a Critical Hit. However, two plus one is three (There's some quick maths for you!) and a +3 Critical Hit Modifier results in every move having a 100% chance to be a Critical Hit!

An attack that becomes a Critical Hit deals 2x the damage the attack would normally deal, and it ignores all defence-boosting effects the opponent might be using, such as a +2 stat boost to defense, the damage-halving effects of Light Screen and Barrier, and the damage-lowering effect of any penalties to Attack or Special Attack you might have when you score a Critical Hit. The halved attack effect you get from being Burned is also ignored, and any positive stat boosts to Attack or Special Attack you have are not ignored.

With this setup, you can either roll the dice and attack right away with your +3 priority physical attack moves that heal you and have a 50% chance to crit, or you can use Focus Energy first for some guaranteed high-impact critical violence.

You've got a Chansey, you've got a Mega Gengar, you've got a Mega Rayquaza, you've got a Wishiwashi, you've got a Buzzwole, and finally, there was a Mega Mewtwo, and finally, there was a Kyurem-White, a Dragon and Ice type Pokémon.

Kyurem-White looks like what comes out of an Egg after a white swan fucks a grey dragon, and then covers its right arm from the elbow down in ice armour, gives long ice claws to that armour, forms a shoulderless and sleeveless jacket of ice around the chest, forms tiny pieces of armour on the thighs out of ice, and forms a longer and sharper upwards-swirling hooked claw on the central second toe of its three-toed feet. Its tail is like a fancy golden chalice with four decorative blades running along its sides, but the chalice is grey, two white circles run around its perimeter, equidistant from one another and near the rim, and the chalice just keeps the wildly-jagged white fur of Kyurem-White's tail back.

But this isn't just any Kyurem-White. This is a Kyurem-White with Choice Specs for a Held Item and Refrigerate for an ability, and Refrigerate is ability that turns Normal type moves into Ice type moves and multiplies their power by 1.2x.

Boomburst is a normal type attack, it has 140 base power, which is boosted to 168 by Refrigerate, 100 accuracy points, and no special effects. Actually, I think this one can hit Pokémon hiding behind a Substitute, but I'm not sure. Substitute is this one move that sacrifices 25% of the user's maximum health and puts a Substitute in front of the user with that much health, making the user immune to status effects and other gimmicky stuff until you deplete the Substitute's HP, destroying it and letting you attack the Substitute user next turn. Coming off a base 170 Special Attack stat, before the effects of 252 EVs in everything, being at the maximum level of 100 like all other Pokémon in this team, and the effects of the held item, the held Choice Specs.

Fusion Flare is a Fire type attack, it has 100 base power, 100 accuracy points, and an effect that raises its base power to 200 if Fusion Bolt was used just before this move was used.

Moongeist Beam is there to ruin the day of Shedinja, especially Sturdy Shedinja, even though a Moongeist Beam user was already in the party. Like I said before, 100 base power.

And finally, the Kyurem-Black's final move was Switcheroo, which is there to trade the user's Choice Specs for whatever the opponent's Pokémon is carrying. A handy trick to use on stat-boosters, as the effects of holding Choice Specs don't go away when switching out, and all that's lost is whatever the game does to remember the move Choice Specs is supposed to lock the user into. Switcheroo is basically identical to the move known as Trick in every way that matters, Sunrise just liked this move's name more. And it had more PP. At least, he was pretty sure it had more PP.

Each of these six Pokémon, Sunrise Stardust sent to Green Star, getting back a crappy level 1 Eevee each time.

And when all six amazing hacked Pokémon had been given over to the druggie, and Sunrise's own team was full of level one Eevees, Sunrise left the Trade Menu, left the Trading Room, and left the Pokémon Center altogether for the hell of it before saving his game and closing it down.

"Alright, six hacked Pokémon, good to go!" Sunrise cheerfully exclaimed with a grin.

"Holy shit…" Green Star said in stunned awe more suited to some young colt as he presumably went through the Status Menu for each Pokémon, checking them out. "All of these Pokémon look great, but why the Chansey? Their stats suck."

Sunrise talked like he was trying to sell him something, even though he'd already sold it. "Out of all Pokémon that are not fully evolved, Chanseys have the highest max HP stat in the game, and the second highest HP of all Pokémon overall. Base 250. Evolving to Blissey just gives her Base 255 HP, which doesn't matter much. Not being fully-evolved means she can hold an Eviolite, get the boost to her Defense and Special Defense, and keep it and her great HP when the ability I gave her, Impostor, activates as soon as she's sent out. Impostor instantly turns Chansey into whatever you send it out against, Ditto-style, and her high HP, combined with her Eviolite defense and Spuh'Deff boost, means she becomes a tougher and healthier version of whatever she's sent out against, before any moves can hit her."

"Nice!" Green Star grinned.

"And if the opponent has any stat boosts going on, she copies them," Sunrise boasted. "So you're going to send the Silly Sugar where it needs to go, right? Over to the Lucky Penny mafia family?"

"Yeah, I know. And don't worry about me bailing on you. I remember what you did to the last guy who fucked with you."

Sunrise grinned cheerfully, even though he wasn't really a fan of violence at all. The act weighed heavy on his heart, and even when the violence was righteous, necessary, and just, he would still wish there could be another way for a day or two, then he'd get over it. Mostly. Only when Green Star looked back to his game did Sunrise stop grinning.

"Have you also got those Med-Xes, PuriFires, Stimpaks, Firestormers, Menterrors, Party-Time Mint-Als, Brain Refrains, Buffouts, Ghost Jumpers, Shitstorms, and Zoom Booms I ordered?"

"Sure. I hid them somewhere, but your Alicorn Princess courier can have them."

She wasn't a fucking… Ah, forget it, Sunrise decided. He supposed, when there was no official, real Equestrian monarchy or diarchy in place, anypony who looked like a Princess or called themselves a princess of something, somewhere could count as a princess. After all, with no official Princesses out there, what makes one unofficial Princess more official than another one?

Sunrise turned around, and got ready to leave. "Well, it was nice seeing you again. Take care."

And then, Sunrise felt lucky, so he started to move slower.

"Hey, wait. Want some Mysdick?"

"Some what?" Sunrise asked, stopping and turning around.

"Me and the boys invented a new drug called Mysdick. Like Mystic, but dick. Pills that make your magic stronger, and lets Unicorns channel magic through their dicks and cast spells with them!"

"Bullshit," Sunrise smirked.

"No bull, this is legit. I'd take it myself and show you, but it just gives other types of ponies massive boners for a few hours. Magic Smoke says it makes sex feel better for Unicorns, too, but he says that about everything."

"Huh," Sunrise said, deciding to seem like he was thinking of something besides wondering if he had ever, in his life, encountered a Unicorn actually named Magic Smoke. Nope, he decided, he didn't remember that pony at all. Come to think of it, he supposed it would make sense for a dick to feel better when it had magic running through it. After all, a Unicorn's horn only became the hyper-sensitive magical mayonnaise dispenser it was when a Unicorn had his or her magic running through it. Though that raised the question of why Earth Pony mares and stallions could outlast Unicorns and Pegasi in the bedroom. "Alright, I'll take some."

"Nice," Green Star grinned and pointed at a drawer in his chest of drawers. "Third shelf down, little purple tablets with tiny Ms on them. Take one and let the magic flow through you. But I'm still testing this shit, so don't go overboard. And tell me how it works for you! You've got fire and the sun on your ass, Magic Smoke has a lit blunt on his ass, so fuck knows how that messes with things. I need more scientific testing. On the drugs."

"Fair enough. So I should just take one?" Sunrise asked.

"Yeah, it's strong stuff. I don't know if you'd make your dick explode if you took more, or whatever... But you like magic drugs, and my other clients like sex drugs, so I made something for both of you."

"Huh. So do you want me to take one and eat it when I need it, or take a couple so I can test it for you better?"

He thought for a moment. "Sure, take ninety. One for every day of the week."

"Nice!" Sunrise grinned, deciding that he'd only swallow one when he was in a controlled and sterile medical environment, and only after he'd gotten the chance to magically analyse these things and find out if they were safe for anypony to consume. Sure, he'd once survived having a drink spiked with some really bad homemade Party-Time Mint-Als once during some rich-pony party, even though his doctor was certain the dose and improper ingredient ratios should have resulted in a lethal poison, but he didn't want to risk taking a potentially bad drug that advertised its own genitalia-based effects. His dick had to repopulate Equestria with strong, smart, healthy Ponies once his whole Vault moved out and into the greater world, after all!

Sunrise mov