Unfortunately, Sinbad had to accept the Lurish as his starter Pokémon. The fact that he now possessed a pseudo-legendary Pokémon that was also a brand-new species just made the start of his journey all that more wonderful in the most sarcastic sense possible.
According to the information card, the Lurish line were lightning bruisers. They transitioned from Water/Steel into Water/Ice after evolving and could branch into three distinct build paths depending on ability, training focus, gender, and items. Since Sinbad had played every single Pokémon game that ever existed back on Earth, he planned to use the games as a template for raising it, mostly as guidelines rather than strict rules. Real life didn't have PP, or that you can retry again with a Revive.
They also evolved into whales for some reason and developed Snorlax-tier food consumption as they matured. The middle stage reminded him of a narwhal crossed with a sperm whale, which then evolved into a damn killer whale that hunted giant Tentacruel on the sea floor or tore through entire schools of Gyarados like an underwater massacre reel.
Stat-wise, the line had relatively low HP, but its best stats were Defense and Special Defense, paired with a base Speed around eighty. The raw Attack stat wasn't insane on paper, but thanks to Huge Power it effectively pushed close to the two-hundreds in practical output, and its high Special Attack made Mega Launcher builds with Choice Specs, Wise Glasses, Assault Vest, or Loaded Dice completely cracked. It could be built physical, special, hybrid, or attrition depending on what kind of violence you wanted to specialize in.
The downside was that it had one of the slowest experience growth curves among pseudo-legendary Pokémon, rivaled only by the Deino line. They shared more than a few similarities with the infamous Dark/Dragon monsters.
The Deino line were considered some of the most violent Pokémon in the world, rivaled only by Sharpedo and Gyarados. Their evolutions, Zweilous and Hydreigon, were known as the Two-Headed Demon and the Three-Headed Gatekeeper of Hell. They embodied everything terrifying about dragons, regal, destructive, intelligent, except taken to an absurd extreme.
The Lurish line behaved the same way after their first evolution.
Which meant that if anyone found out what he was raising, the Pokémon would almost certainly be confiscated, not to mention quietly placed into a breeding program to mass-produce more pseudo-legendaries for the Haitian Empire.
And that was not paranoia.
By all accounts, the Haitian Empire was the military backbone of the Caribbean Alliances, having defended France and Kalos during the conflicts that followed the dimensional merges, cementing itself as the first former slave nation to truly secure its independence through force. The Alliance itself didn't possess many truly strong Pokémon in its standing forces, making any emerging pseudo-legendary line a strategic asset bordering on national obsession.
To make it worse, the Caribbean Alliance didn't even have official starter Pokémon programs. No standardized distribution, no regulated breeding pipelines, no safety nets for new trainers. Power was inherited, bought, stolen, or negotiated behind closed doors.
The Alliance itself was ruled by the Haitian King and the Eight Heavenly Kings. Eight individuals who controlled fleets, territories, elite trainer corps, or specialized forces depending on their domain. If any of them learned a brand-new pseudo-legendary existed inside Alliance territory, it wouldn't stay private for long.
"I'm getting annoyed with this," Sinbad muttered at the sudden politics invading his life. As a prince, he knew he'd have to deal with this kind of nonsense someday, but he'd honestly been hoping the half-sisters he'd never even met would handle it for him.
He really wasn't built for royal stress.
Shifting his focus, Sinbad looked back at the Pokémon inside the containment cradle and activated the Pryogon Lenses, a pair of augmented-reality contact lenses manufactured by Yamamoto Solutions in Jamaica. The lenses projected a translucent optical user interface directly into his vision, interconnecting every registered user on the network and allowing real-time text, audio, and visual communication without the need for handheld devices.
In practice, they replaced phones, tablets, and half the equipment people used to lug around.
A soft shimmer passed over Sinbad's eyes as the interface came online, the display color tinting his pupils faintly.
Feature icons unfolded across his peripheral vision:
Sample analyzer
Subject identifier
Telescopic view
Night vision
Vital signs reader
X-ray imaging
Mini-drone live feed
Facial distortion masking for camera capture
Keypad decoder
Instant messaging
Language translator
Speech recognition
Sorting arsenal
Pokémon information
Environmental scanning
…and about a hundred other utilities most people never bothered learning.
Each connected user appeared as a floating icon on the interface. Files could be transferred between users simply by dragging data packets into their assigned icons, and entire teams could be nested into layered groups for command coordination, security partitioning, or information control. When fully active, the system subtly altered the user's eye coloration to match their interface theme, a side effect that made covert usage mildly annoying in public.
Sinbad didn't care.
He flicked his gaze toward the containment field and initiated a deep scan.
Data bloomed into existence in front of him.
Lurish, the Tether Fish Pokémon
Type: Water / Steel
Category: Piranha
Height: 0.6 m (2'0")
Weight: 18.4 kg (40.5 lbs)
Gender: ♀
Egg Groups: Water 2 / Mineral
Ability: Mega Launcher
Qualification Level: Master
Battle Level: Ordinary
Moves:
Tackle
Bubble Beam
Aura Sphere (Egg Move)
Dragon Dance (Egg Move)
Iron Head (Egg Move)
Sinbad's eyes widened when he saw the Qualification Level of his starter.
Instead of simple numbers like in the games, Pokémon in real life had Qualifications, which were way too similar to cultivation-tier nonsense from those ridiculous wuxia novels. Unfortunately, since this was reality, Sinbad had learned to live with it.
Qualification Levels:
Ordinary → Rare → Elite → Lord → Quasi-King → King → Overlord → Champion → Master → Legend
The goal was King.
A Pokémon with King-level potential would almost guaranteed reach that tier with normal training. The King of Haiti, his grandfather, already possessed multiple King-level Pokémon that were casually used as battlefield anchors. Each one could unleash destruction on the scale of monsterverse kaiju for ten straight hours before finally going down.
Sinbad hadn't expected his Pokémon to have the second-highest potential ranking right out of the gate.
Lord above, this was going to cost a fortune to raise.
"Welcome to my world, girl," Sinbad said dryly as the Lurish stared back at him with a faintly confused expression.
He pulled out the Poké Ball that came with the package.
A Dive Ball.
He pressed it gently against Lurish's body. The capture completed instantly, light folding inward as the containment field collapsed. A faint mental pressure followed.
A connection formed.
This was the telepathic link effect of Poké Balls, a built-in feature that allowed trainers and Pokémon to communicate directly through thought exchange, bypassing language barriers and strengthening Pokémon through the Bond Phenomenon.
The Bond Phenomenon was completely busted.
It made the affection system from the Sinnoh remakes look cute by comparison. The stronger the bond, the more efficiently Pokémon converted intent into execution, pushing reaction speed, control precision, and adaptive growth far beyond baseline limits. The downside was that it took years to build properly and could shatter easily if mishandled.
Using the connection, Sinbad sent his first message.
Hey. Name's Prince Sinbad Mar. I'm your trainer. I'm going to make you strong.
The response wasn't words.
It was curiosity.
Warmth.
A faint pulse of agreement.
Sinbad exhaled slowly.
"Well," he muttered, "guess we're doing this."