Chapter 141: The Sufferer of Directional Blindness

Mewtwo's face stiffened into a rigid mask: [Why do I need to take a bath?]

"Are you possessed of a pristine, undefiled body, or a golden form impervious to dust and the landing of mosquitoes?"

[None of the things you mentioned apply to me. That sounds like it involves a normal operational mode for ultra-high-level energy.]

"There you have it. If you can't do any of those things, why aren't you taking a bath?"

Bamboo Suichan finished his soda in one go, tossed the bottle into the trash can, and beckoned to Mewtwo.

"Come on, just in time for you to get used to how to take a bath. I'm afraid you might not even be able to tell shampoo and body wash apart."

Mewtwo instinctively glanced at his family members.

[It seems you are the only one in the house who uses shampoo.]

"Never mind that. Just tell me whether I've prepared all the toiletries and bath supplies or not."

Bamboo Suichan turned and walked into the bathroom: "Relax, it's just taking a bath, not dragging you off to fight a Legendary Pokémon. What are you afraid of?"

Lapras and Milcery huddled together, nodding vigorously.

Exactly, what is there to be afraid of!

It's just that their Trainer has a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder and likes to scrub every single inch of you carefully during a bath!

Mewtwo: ?

"You two stop trying to scare him."

Bamboo Suichan poked his head out: "Lapras, go check the stock of elemental resources in your pool. Milcery, go see if there are any issues with the fruit wine I buried recently."

"Wuu-wuu!"

"Mil-mil!"

Lapras and Milcery went off to attend to their tasks. After a moment of hesitation, Mewtwo walked into the bathroom with the grim resolve of someone marching to their execution.

Bamboo Suichan draped a towel around his neck: "Relax, just think of it as hiring a professional exfoliating bath attendant."

[It seems there is such an exfoliating service in Goldenrod City, though it's generally aimed at Pokémon with lots of fur or exceptionally hard bodies.]

Bamboo Suichan sprayed Mewtwo down with the showerhead. Fortunately, the bathroom was quite large; otherwise, Mewtwo's long tail might not even have been able to stretch out properly.

"I've heard of that too. I'm told there are fitness coaches with an exceptionally heavy grip who specially use sledgehammers to massage Pokémon like Golem and Durant."

Onix?

That'll cost extra!

[I taught Gyarados about his own battle style, but I haven't asked about your system and lineup yet.]

Bamboo Suichan rubbed his hands together, applied shampoo to Mewtwo's head, and massaged the top of his head using a technique straight out of his memories.

[Actually, I don't need to wash my hair, because I don't have any.]

"What if washing it makes some grow? Right?"

Bamboo Suichan said: "I'm not interested in any of those systems and lineups you mentioned, because my partners are chosen by me, and you chose yourselves as well."

"If you really want to know, our family's battle style is simply 'force equals miracles'."

As long as my level is high enough, I can afford to make countless mistakes, but you cannot afford to make even a single one.

Wild battles are even simpler; the Trainer can jump straight into the fray without even needing to warm up.

[Doing that might cause some problems when encountering powerful enemies, such as Pokémon in the backyard whose personal strength reaches the Champion tier.]

Bamboo Suichan turned the showerhead on, rinsed the lather from Mewtwo's head, and carefully avoided the Pokémon's eyes.

"I've seen Typhlosion. His strength is indeed formidable, but he's not unbeatable, because I have items specifically designed to counter him."

[That frying pan? I heard from Lapras and the others that it seems to be a gift from Entei.]

"You can't really look at it that way."

Bamboo Suichan switched to body wash. As he scrubbed Mewtwo's tail, he curiously gave it a squeeze and found the texture completely unique and full of elasticity.

Mewtwo closed his eyes, suppressing the micro-expressions on his face: [...]

"I don't know what logic governs that timeline, but I brought the frying pan in with me to begin with."

Bamboo Suichan glanced at Mewtwo, who remained silent, a smile blooming on his face.

He quickly and meticulously scrubbed Mewtwo's body from head to toe, then turned on the showerhead once more.

"We can try visiting hot springs in the future. I know a place in the Hoenn region famous for its hot springs."

[Hot springs? Is that the kind of activity where you just soak in water and do nothing?]

"Right, it's also a form of relaxation, or rather, an expression of emotion."

Bamboo Suichan patted Mewtwo's shoulder: "For example, the shyness and tension you displayed while taking a bath—these are all forms of emotion, and they help enrich your inner world."

[I was not shy.]

"Then it was tension."

Mewtwo took the new towel from Bamboo Suichan to dry himself off: [Still, this whole process constantly gives me the feeling of undergoing aversion therapy.]

Bamboo Suichan fell silent for a moment: "Aversion therapy usually involves using slightly out-of-spec methods that touch upon bottom lines. Are you implying that me just standing here achieves the effect of aversion therapy?"

Mewtwo hung the towel on the rack: [No, I didn't say you were insane. It's just that your thought process is a bit too lively.]

"Thanks for the review. It would have been even better without the first half of that sentence."

The next day, Bamboo Suichan stood on Lapras's back, looking around without spotting any sign of Gyarados.

"That's strange, where's the big guy?"

A blue flash flickered in Mewtwo's eyes: [At the bottom of the lake. He probably won't come up for the next few days, not until this storm blows over.]

Ah, the silent treatment, huh? The kid is quite proficient in these matters.

If he had continued to poke his head out these past two days, "a stationary Gyarados hovering above the great lake" would have become yet another urban legend.

With the big guy absent, Lapras and Milcery couldn't be bothered to train in the large lake either, deciding instead to tag along with their Trainer to class.

Well, the Trainer and little Mew-mew would attend class, while the two of them caught up on sleep.

It was a standard-spec classroom, but the curriculum content rarely repeated—or to be precise, the case studies used in the lessons never repeated.

Today, the teacher was lecturing on "Magnetic Field Reconstruction and Directional Reset."

Sounds incomprehensible, right? If you couldn't understand it, that meant it was right on target. Bamboo Suichan instantly thought of those things that sounded high-falutin and grand, but whose core content was actually extremely simple.

True to form, once the lecture began, it was just like that.

This was a class on how to treat "directional disorientation syndrome."

This symptom was common among Electric-type Pokémon, or those inherently endowed with magnetism.

For instance, the Magnemite family line, or Nosepass.

As living directional needles, if a Nosepass family accidentally strayed into an area with chaotic magnetic fields, or simply experienced wind, rain, thunder, and lightning in the wild alongside their Trainer, they could easily become utterly disoriented.

Magnemite and its evolutions were similar; in such cases, their sense of direction and internal magnetic fields essentially went haywire.

If you tried using Thunderbolt then, the most likely outcome was aiming east and hitting west.

If it were merely a confusion status, that would be easier to deal with, since some Pokémon could still maintain a shred of sobriety, or rookies could simply rely on sheer beginner's luck.

Internal magnetic field disorders, however, touched upon much deeper levels. They weren't as easily cured as a simple confusion status; they required human technology to fix.

Generally speaking, Trainers were helpless against this kind of problem unless they had prior experience or someone had taught them the solution.

Next came Nurse Joy's job: first, place the Nosepass into a treatment apparatus to stabilize its physical condition, and then activate the magnetic field reconstruction function.

Because magnetic field disorders varied in severity, a logical program had to be run before using this function. The simplest step was asking where the malfunction had occurred.

If it happened nearby, the local meteorological data for that period had to be inputted into the system, combined with the actual condition of the sick Pokémon to analyze and adjust the output intensity of the magnetic field reconstruction.

This treatment protocol was rather explosive because it also required Nurse Joy to master knowledge in meteorology and geography, with even a baseline requirement demanding proficiency in both.

Bamboo Suichan could easily handle the magnetic field reconstruction part, but the meteorological aspect left him feeling somewhat irritated—he hated geography.

Because he could never fully master the required material, a lingering debt from his past life.

[It doesn't matter if you don't like it; I can do it.]

Rubbing the Counter-Attack Ball stored in his desk, Bamboo Suichan entered the synchronization state and transmitted his thoughts over.

No way, I refuse to believe it. Geography can't possibly stump me now.

If worse comes to worst, I'll just grind experience and add points!

Bamboo Suichan followed the teacher's steps with dogged determination, while making sure not to accidentally trigger his Presence Concealment.

Aside from the teacher starting to feel a bit unnerved by his intense stare, the class finally came to an end.

[You can master even those profound and advanced branches of knowledge, yet you can't master geography and meteorology?]

On their way out, Mewtwo looked at Bamboo Suichan, honestly finding it rather hard to understand.

While it wasn't as simple as basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, any single piece of knowledge Bamboo Suichan had transmitted to him was far more difficult than what was taught in this class.

"Look on the bright side. Maybe during the next examination, I won't be ranked first anymore, right?"

Bamboo Suichan rubbed his temples: "Yet I always feel like it conflicts with my intuition, though I can't quite pinpoint where the conflict lies."

"It's as if I feel these climate patterns shouldn't be the way I'm seeing them."

"I feel like the content taught in class is inaccurate."

Blue light flickered in Mewtwo's eyes: [Would you like me to take a look for you?]

"No, it must be some sort of cognitive conflict, or else there's another reason."

Which was: "I" felt that these weather patterns were fundamentally wrong, or at least vastly different from his own internal cognition.

"Forget it, let's do this."

Bamboo Suichan handed the three Poké Balls at his waist to Mewtwo.

"I'm going to the library to look up some information. You guys figure out lunch yourselves. Before class this afternoon, ask Lapras and Milcery where they want to go, and then come find me."

Mewtwo glanced at Bamboo Suichan: [You said it yourself, we are a family.]

[Besides, using my psychic powers can help you find the information you want much faster, right?]

The Poké Balls containing Lapras and Milcery wobbled twice as they entered the synchronization state and joined the party voice channel.

That's right, we are a family!

Even though we don't understand geography, we can still provide spiritual encouragement!

"Libraries require quiet. You aren't allowed to make loud noises."

Bamboo Suichan smiled and clipped the Poké Balls back onto his waist.

"The two of them can't come out in the library, but as for you, can you use your psychic powers to conceal yourself?"

[It wouldn't be a problem for them to come out either.]

Lapras and Milcery resolutely shook their heads.

They could only offer spiritual encouragement; seeing so many books in the library would make them keel over and fall asleep on the spot.

Keep it up, white-haired monkey who smashes people with a frying pan!

Bamboo Suichan pondered for a moment, took out his phone to add another note to Sabrina's tab, and decided to find an excuse to "conveniently" visit Saffron City next time.