Tom’s pokemon team up today!‘You are challenged by Lead Engineer Thomas! The good do

Tom’s pokemon team up today!

‘You are challenged by Lead Engineer Thomas! The good doctor leads a team of augmented aids and repaired rescues widely considered among the most difficult league challenges. His team of clones, cyborgs, and computers are laser-precise and hit like a bullet train!’

Lead Engineer Thomas
Specialty: Psychic, Steel

Prepare to be blinded…. by SCIENCE! Dr. Thomas Destastiel is the regional Challenge of Brindlington, and you’ll match wits in the city’s futuristic tech district. Cyborgnetic reconstruction engineer by trade, the good doctor leads a team of augmented aids and repaired rescues widely considered to be one of the most difficult challenges in the league. His team of clones, cyborgs, and computers are laser-accurate and hit like a bullet train!

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Gemini
Mewtwo | Relaxed | Highly Curious
Synchronize | Future Sight | Wise Glasses

It’s a surprise to many that both mew and failed-experiment mewtwo’s genetic sequences are public information. Both have some redacted code to prevent illicit cloning… but one young genius developed a workaround. During his doctorate research into the pokemons’ regenerative capabilities, Tom realized he was probably capable of constructing his own mewtwo. This massive distraction became his first critical success and rocketed the new doctor into the public eye. Gemini is significantly less powerful than the original mewtwo, on purpose. It contains far more of mew’s genetic underpinnings, giving it a light nature and imbuing it with mew’s adaptability. Most importantly, it was lovingly raised as a house pokemon, not a weapon. Preferring to float upside down and purr at its master while he’s trying to work than to train, Gemini’s sheer innate power and ability to spit out potentially any move at you still makes it a formidable foe. Challengers assume Gemini will be their toughest opponent, but that would actually be…

Avogadro
Metagross | Calm | Enduring
Clear Body | Protect | Zoom Lens

While they might seem modern, synthetic pokemon date back over 20,000 years ago to primitive clay constructs the likes of baltoy and golett, brought to 'life’ by forgotten means. Modern synthetics utilize plastics and metals and are animated by advanced AI. Most all synthetic pokemon are proprietary and purchased from manufacturers. Base models such as beldum and klink are within the price range of many trainers, while fully-featured models are price-restrictive and usually only within the purchasing power of major companies. Metagross are particularly pricey, developed as living super computers and of immense valuable to any technical team.

Tom’s well-to-do family bought him a base model beldum as a child, one of his first serious childhood projects was its modification. It’s been taken apart many times, most parts replaced, and as an adult Tom fabricated everything he needed to upgrade it into a full custom metagross model. His team tease that he could have just BOUGHT one, but Avogadro has sentimental value, and, beyond that, while most synthetic pokemon are devoid of emotion, Avogadro’s long life and many hours of attention from its master have made the metagross surprisingly 'alive’, recognizing emotions and almost seeming to exhibit them. An extremely powerful pokemon, although Avogadro rarely trains it has analyzed every single recorded pokemon battle hundreds of thousands of times. Its custom programming has expanded its moveset beyond the factory model, making this fight both a mystery and a brain-teaser. You’ll need to come prepared with strategic trickery just for this guy or your challenge terminates here.

Ms. Ingno
??? | Quirky | Highly Persistent
Download | Double-Edge | Cell Battery

Pokemon containment methods began in prehistory using the innate properties of certain carved berries. With advancements in metal working, the ancients encased these in copper and iron. During the industrial revolution they were refined into elegant spring-powered clockwork spheres. And today they are ubiquitous as the digital modern pokeball. Arguably the second greatest breakthrough in pokemon tech was expanding this digitizing process to devices beyond the pokeball, and pokemon have been mass-stored in specialized computers since the 1990s. Although today’s trainer might toss their beloved pikachu into digital storage with as much thought as their pokeball, in the early days this system was far from perfect and many were hesitant to adopt it. A tragic number of trainers experienced the nightmare of withdrawing their pokemon from the system to find their beloved pokemon scrambled into brainless code… corrupted irreparably.

Years ago Tom was given one such hopeless case for study, the remains of what appeared to have once been a Kantonese bird pokemon. He was able to extract… some kind of data. It was never the same, but it was definitely some kind of pokemon again. The information coding Miss Ingno’s body is lost so it cannot leave a computer… not unlike Tom. The doctor developed a robotic body for it as he once did for himself. It speaks human language through translation software, though it suffers from stutters and outbursts. Ingno sounds like a hamster and acts like a parrot. It’s high energy and loooooves to battle, during which it is a complete loose cannon, coming at you with a bizarre array of moves (many are odd… ever been poisoned by blizzard before?), unknown stats, and enjoy that ??? typing. The only reason the unique pokemon is allowed in Tom’s challenge team is because it’s not that hard to beat. Also, it cried pathetically when it was rejected and Tom pressured the league into approving it.

JOY
Rotom | Mild | Alert
Levitate | Thunder Wave | Scope Lens

JOY is a rotom possessing a piece of advanced multi-functional diagnostic equipment. Once a pest drawn to Tom’s lab by all the fun machines to possess (including Tom’s central computer and very life support…), the rare pokemon threatened the lab’s existence with its tricks. But joke was on it when it possessed a specially-made computer, which Tom had prepped with command lines that forbade the now program-brained rotom from leaving the device. Also loaded on the machine were thousands of hours of medical training and a few firm directives about respecting and preserving life and order. Transformed instantly into an avid nursing assistant, the perky rotom assists Tom’s surgery team with everything from vitals to blood collection to support during procedures. JOY behaves very much like a computer and requires clear instructions. It has electric/steel typing, a (almost too) cheerful personality, and enjoys battles for observational and instructional purposes. After all, the best way to understand any creature… is to take it apart. :)

Raphael
Gardevoir | Quiet | Contemplative
Telepathy | Life Dew | Safety Goggles

Tom owes his life to the team of computer engineers, prosthetists, and medical experts he leads, who helped the young doctor out of his decaying body and into the permanent life support system he now inhabits. A painful and confusing process much eased by Raphael, whose psychic and healing abilities both alleviated the phantom pains of not having a flesh and blood body and allowed him to communicate telepathically with the team before they were able to properly couple his mind with the system that now allows him to speak. Raphael himself speaks softly and rarely, and usually only to Tom. Like most of Tom’s team, he is a gentle soul who is more about healing than battling, but appreciates skermishes to heighten his abilities.

Merriweather
Sylveon | Gentle | Somewhat Silly
Cute Charm | Dazzling Gleam | Choice Spectacles

Ah, the eevee family. Everyone wants an adorable little eevee pal, but eevee ownership involves one inevitable decision… when your eevee hits adulthood and is flush with evolution hormones, which form will you guide it to take? Perhaps a hyper-energetic jolteon to run marathons with you? A wave-riding vaporeon to hit the beach with? Maybe an ultra-cool, super-edgy macho umbreon to impress your mates and thrash your enemies? Or maybe instead your dumb eevee screwed up and turned into a stupid worthless girly-boy sylveon so you abandoned it in an alley where it got mauled by trubbish and grimer before being rescued and brought to a clinic where its poisoned wounds required amputation.

Fairy pokemon are often subject to a level of abuse and unfortunately have the temperaments least equipped to deal with it. Similar requisites for umbreon and sylveon evolution, conflated by the types of trainers who are expecting an umbreon, makes Merriweather’s story not uncommon, especially for males. The tragedy is that an eevee only becomes a sylveon out of deep love for its owner. This complete betrayal makes abandoned and abused sylveon rarely salvageable creatures. While Merriweather (formerly ‘Crusher’) recovered from surgery, Tom and the team fell in love with him and challenged themselves to build him custom prosthetics. True to his line, Merriweather has adapted to his prothetic limbs like a pro, and with his new family in the lab has shaken off his rough start, becoming a strong, confident, and beautiful sylveon.  

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Got all that? Study up, and factor the unexpected into your calculus. Know that this crew will be rooting for you all the way if you give them your all! And, win or lose, they’re happy to put your team back together afterwards.