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But his monster type is another physically strong one. [DON'T WORRY INGO HE HAS AN OUT FOR YOU.] Easier than finding a good boulder to hit around here, and a lot more options for materials. That's what Silvally and I did to figure out the extent of its strength, back at the very beginning. That and logs.

[...]

But, you know.

[He is becoming a little protective of their woods and wanton log destruction would be extremely annoying.]

Ah. That is a good idea. We have wrestled once or twice, but of course we did not do anything in earnest!

[Just, you know, it happens sometimes when you are siblings and also hunting monsters! And yes, he knows about Gladion's feelings regarding the trees....he always goes pretty far away when the urge to scratch becomes too powerful.

Ingo considers his claws for a moment, slowly extending them.]

I've never been in a real fight at all, like this.

[But it seems likely that it'll happen eventually.]

I've gotten some sparring in. [With Chie.] But it doesn't cover all the bases.

[He'll hit to knock her off her feet or drive her back, but he won't test the far end of his vines' grip strength on her. And that's really the only potentially-deadly-to-monsters attribute he has at his disposal - his venom doesn't work well on them, his claws are sharp but not all that sturdy, and the plain strength of his limbs is easily outclassed by most other types.

With ripping claws, or a gargoyle's searing touch, it would be a different story.]

[Ingo nods.]

If...if we are preparing for a fight with another monster, I ought to practice with my venom. But that is not something I would risk outside of a life-or-death situation! If I am much like a Gliscor, I think I could learn to administer different doses, but there is really no way to test how much would be non-lethal.

[Outside of, you know. Just risking killing someone? Another person might experiment on their prey, but Ingo won't risk killing a person slowly. Really, he doesn't much like the idea of fighting someone at all...but he remembers the red haze. Sooner or later, something will go wrong.]

But of course, it is foolish to rely on a single powerful move. Some more claw practice would not go amiss! It's quite different from fighting with a knife!

[don't worry about his knife fight history]

[Moon would have some idea about how to handle that whole...venom situation. And thinking of that makes him wistful about another thing or two about her, and wondering if there's really nobody from home he'd rather tell about what's happened to him here than some girl he's met fewer than ten times. Genius hero or not.

Oh well.]

I want to think... [Hm. He's not sure how to come at what he's thinking - as something he hopes, or something he's planning out, or something he wants advice on? Gladion crosses his arms and watches the tiger for another second or two, rethinking. And then giving up on that specific train of thought, vague as it was. He shakes his head. Instead: something a few steps to the right.]

Silvally was the second Pokemon I ever trained. First was a Porygon. Lycanroc is all I have to compare them against firsthand, but I'm under the impression that both of them were a little different from the "average" [literally one-handed airquotes this] experience.

[this is going somewhere]

[Ingo tilts his head in agreement.]

You are the expert on Silvally, of course! But I have trained with a Porygon in the past! Only briefly - it was a wild one I befriended shortly after it arrived in Hisui, and it did not ultimately decide to remain with me, but I did help it adjust in return for some demonstration of its abilities. It was certainly a unique experience for me! Though of course, that may simply come down to a lack of familiarity.

[He's told Gladion about how alien the creature appeared to everyone in Hisui, after all. Ingo's good at reading Pokemon who aren't what one might call "normally" expressive. He'd feel like rather a hypocrite if he weren't! And of course, he even has an unknown futuristic Pokemon as a part of his primary team. But Magnezone and Probopass had not quite prepared him for Porygon.

Was that because it was created by humans in the future? But that's true of Silvally as well, and it's never really struck him as unusual. Maybe it's just because he still doesn't really get computers.]

[Yeah...]

They have a lot of their own quirks, even in the future. The main one is the way their capabilities change over time. Obviously they do change, but a lot of what they can do was programmed into them, and practice doesn't improve those specific things the way it does for most Pokemon, or you or me.

Like, accuracy. [One of the first systems he figured out the nuances and limits of.] If I practiced shooting arrows, over time I'd get more accurate, both from getting used to the motions and because doing it over and over sharpened my understanding of how aiming works.

Porygon use algorithms to aim at moving targets. In any one situation, they can tighten the accuracy of their next move by spending time collecting data on a target's movements, as long as they have the spare processing power for it. But they can't change or update the algorithms they use without evolving.

...In practice, a Porygon can improve its overall accuracy - by improving other functions, freeing up processing power. But those differences mean it doesn't benefit from aiming drills the same way a more biological Pokemon does.

[Ingo listens, brows arching slightly.]

I wish I had understood that at the time! I practiced with it much as I would have any other Pokemon! But in retrospect...I suppose I can see what you mean. It did improve overall, but in some areas there was a certain...rote quality.

[He doesn't sound frustrated or anything by that! Once Ingo realized that things were simply going to be that way, he'd let it go - but he could see it frustrating another trainer. One who both didn't understand how Porygon worked and didn't know what it was to be unable to do things that seemed to come naturally to others. Like, say, making proper facial expressions.]

Right. There's a lot of aspects like that, where they don't get more efficient, just more powerful. Or they learn by collecting more data, but the way they make decisions is a lot slower to change...

[And there's so much he could explain about Porygon (and can't just refer someone to user manual for all the theoretical nuts and bolts, anymore), and it scratches one of those lingering itches, but he had a point and needs to follow it. Some other time, he'll explain the soft stuff - how people don't usually catch Porygon by accident, and what's expected of them, or maybe how he got along with his first Pokemon.]

Anyways. [Uncrosses his arms, sticks his hands in his pockets.] Where Silvally was different wasn't because it doesn't learn. It was...the other way around from Porygon, actually. It learns fast. It had to learn a lot about accuracy, and...about everything. But I've never seen it improve in overall power - like it was made to be as strong and fast and sturdy as it could possibly be, from the beginning. It didn't have to grow into that power over time. So we had to start with control. And that was most of the rest of it, too.

That must have been very difficult! And quite dangerous.

[Ingo's tone is very serious. He's seen Pokemon grow from the egg; he spoke at their very first meeting about the baby Sneasel, and how often he ended up poisoned by them. Of course they never meant it. They just didn't have the control required to not use their venom, when they scratched him. But they were only babies, so while it could be unpleasant, they weren't strong enough to do him lasting damage.

If they hatched with Lady Sneasler's power, it'd be a very different story.]

[It was absolutely dangerous. In a way that's, weirdly, a lot harder to admit to Ingo than it ever has been just to think about; looking at Silvally's clawmarks on his sleeves has made him feel proud and sturdy since the first of them, but for all that he's sure Ingo The Mountain Man wouldn't actually wring his hands and fret over it, Gladion's stomach twists a little at the thought of bringing up any of their closest calls, here and now. The discomfort is vague, and hard to pin down, because it's not the familiar burn of shame. It's just...uncomfortable?

Instead:]

Sometimes it was too easy. I might have gotten a little too used to having the strongest Pokemon in the region on my side. [And that's when you start displaying Idiot Behavior.] Definitely dangerous. And it took a little while to actually...understand what was going on, what to do with it. One of the first little breakthroughs was finding somewhere it could show me the absolute upper end of its strength. Then, working back stepwise from there. Cut back on a lot of nasty surprises.

[The number of times before then that Null startled him somehow - and if he got startled, things got messy. He's sure it was after that point that they both got a lot less jumpy, around each other and in general.]

[Ingo nods knowingly at the first bit. He's never trained the strongest Pokemon in the region - at least, he never had the temerity to challenge a Noble - but he's spent most of his life as the strongest trainer in the region by far. It can breed complacency!]

You must have been quite a new trainer, still. It would be a challenge for anyone!

[He was young too, though in Ingo's mind that's a little less relevant than a lack of hands-on training experience. In a perfect world there would have been someone else on hand to help teach the both of them...but he knows why there wasn't.]

So - you believe that we should seek the outer limits of our monster abilities, first? That does make sense! We have stories from other monsters, but each one of us is so unique...it is difficult to know exactly what we are capable of!

It's just an idea. [Not totally a humility thing here! He's genuinely sorta uncertain about it, and not afraid to say so, because he does want Ingo's input. If he were to treat this like Pokemon training - step past that hurdle that Gladion expects is there because it's certainly there for him too - surely he'd have a lot of insights.] It's what makes sense to me, and it probably can't hurt. We seem so...malleable, though.

[His real concern is what if finding our limits, itself, makes us more dangerous, but at that point you might as well just stay very still and do nothing. So he'll leave it at that, make it a what do you even focus on thing.]

...I do not know how it could be any worse than what we have already done.

[Ingo feels different, after having hunted and killed someone. Of course he does. But he hasn't felt any more violent urges than usual - which is a terrifying form for that thought to take, but it's true! Surely if anything were going to make him worse, it'd be that?]

The idea of fighting other monsters frightens me. But it seems likely to happen at some point, no matter what any of us want. And I...I lost control of myself, when I...during that hunt. I would not like to find out the extent of my abilities in a similar situation.

[It'll definitely be a lot less traumatic to find out precisely what he's capable of against a junked car than a person! Anyway:]

And perhaps practice will help us maintain control!

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