" Your Charmander will be learning Draco Meteor from my Garchomp, who will see to it if your unique Charmander can be made to learn something apart from what it can already do." Cynthia declared. "I admit I don't know the true scope of your Fearow's strength but with its training with Braviary I suppose he'll find something to impart to the two."

Austin shrugged. There was always more to learn. If not, at least it would be good practice battling against a Champion-level pokémon.

"As for your Squirtle, I believe he has the ice beam perfected. You should get him to learn Blizzard from Milotic, or Ice punch, both of them are rather effective. Though… I'd suggest having him learn a bit on the fighting end from Medicham. It will be useful."

" Bulbasaur can learn from my roserade after I swap her out with Spiritomb."

" Scyther can start his training with medicham but I have to ask do you plan to evolve him into a Scizor ?"

" I don't know, I have discussed it with Scyther ."

" Well then you can talk to Scyther about it and if it agrees then it can start training with Lucario."

" Clefairy can meanwhile learn a lot from Rhypherior ."

" Butterfree, Munna, Nincada, and Pikachu can train under multiple of my Pokémon. I have some moves in mind that can help them like nasty plot, solar beam e.t.c."

" Wow !"

"Well?" Cynthia put her hands on her waist, staring at the ten-year-old trainer from pallet, in an interrogative fashion. "That sorts everything out, and your pokémon will stick to that routine for the remainder of the week. So why don't you bring Charmander over here and start telling me what's the matter with him?"

Austin and Charmander blinked at each other, the former simply resigning himself to follow the orders of the girl standing in front of him. The fire-lizard on the other hand, simply kept on glancing from his trainer to the girl and then back, wondering how in hell he became the point of discussion out of nowhere.

Or at least that was what Austin thought the lizard thought, as he opened his maw and let out a confused squeak.

"Chaar?"

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

" This is…" Cynthia had an unreadable expression on her face, as she shifted the papers, glaring at the content printed on them. "You do understand right what this means?"

With the rest of his pokémon gone ahead with Cynthia's own for their training, Austin had gotten out, albeit a little reluctantly, the material that Bill had independently handed him for study. Understanding that someone like her would better understand it than him, Austin had shown her the material to make her judgment.

"That Charmander was bred in captivity and by experimentation?" He tried.

Cynthia gave him an odd look, glancing at Charmander now and then. The little fire-lizard was chatting away with Cynthia's Garchomp, who had been giving the little dragon a lot of pointers.

"Even Garchomp feels it." She muttered, before facing Austin "This is not just experimentation, Austin. This is… mutating pokémon to create something new, something alien."

The image of a metallic, armor-clad psychic came to mind. Austin quickly rejected the mental image and focussed on the issue. "So you are saying that Charmander is not… a Charmander?"

"No, he isn't. He just appears to be one. More importantly, he thinks himself to be one."

It reminded him strangely of Bill Montgomery. "But he looks like-"

"Have you ever seen a Charmander with a dragon-typing?" Cynthia challenged. "Yes, I agree that Charizard has several latent draconic traits within them, but they are inherent in a fire/flying type. That Charmander… is as close to Gible as you can get."

"The baby stage of Garchomp." The Sinnoh girl replied offhandedly. "Charmander's DNA samples… they are in a state of mutation. You never know how he's gonna look like when he evolves."

"But he looks like a Charmander right now." Austin challenged.

"Sure, he does. But Evolution has a way of pushing up traits and pulling others back. With such a… unstable DNA sequence, there is no end to what might happen when Charmander might evolve? For all we know, it could have adverse effects on him as well."

What? Austin stood up, taking a step back. "No, that can't possibly happen."

Cynthia observed his glare and sighed.

' It looks like losing Raticate has formed the seed of fear and anxiety in his heart. Let's take this slowly.' "I'm not telling you that it will happen. I'm just saying that anything can happen. Positives, negatives…"

"Bill said that I'd be up for a surprise when he evolves," Austin admitted, his face hard.

"Bill as in Bill Montgomery, right?"

The trainer from Pallet nodded.

"You sure have a lot of contacts up your sleeve." Cynthia teased. "Either way, these… these papers, they are proof that hybridization of pokémon is being conducted."

"Hybridized pokémon," Austin repeated.

"Yes, think of it this way. They managed to fuse draconic DNA with the Charizard line, which has latent draconian genetics inside it, to create… well to create your Charmander, though I'm not sure if he is simply one of many, or just one of the… aberrations produced when the experiment was made on a large scale."

Austin felt bile in his throat at the very thought of it. Someone from either team rocket or some other organization might have regarded Charmander as a scrap, and thrown him away, and then that Damien guy had done the same? No wonder Charmander suffered from so many psychological issues.

"What I am afraid of is the fact that someone might just be doing this on a much larger scale on pokémon populations."

But wouldn't that be a… you know, illegal? The league would come after them." Austin countered.

"Yes, they would, and it is obvious that whoever is doing this, must indeed collect huge samples of a particular kind of pokémon to"

Both of them glanced at each other.

" You don't think that Team Rocket has something to do with this," Austin said as deep in his heart he knew that Team rocket was definitely behind this.

" It may or may not be."