IC Contact

[offtracks]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, NOBORI.

FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 17.128.903.472

*** NOBORI has joined 17.128.903.472

<NOBORI> Hello! This is Ingo!
<NOBORI> How may I help you?

Other Handles: Wayward [anon]

Comments

[familyproblem]

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.

[offtracks]

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.]

[familyproblem]

[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.]

[offtracks]

[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!

[familyproblem]

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.]

[offtracks]

...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!