Alongside the general courses, Jack was also required to attend the various eighteen specialized classes offered by the school.
The generalist curriculum was a multifunctional track with compulsory subjects, since most of the student body fell into that category. Generalists didn't specialize in any of the eighteen Pokémon types—meaning they had no glaring weaknesses, but also no particular strengths to boast of.
Math, chemistry, science, history, biology, management, and Pokémon care were all mandatory subjects that every student had to pass.
The elemental courses, on the other hand, trained their students to become top-tier trainers in service of the community, working toward the qualifications required to capture and handle stronger Pokémon.
There were also several independent departments within the academy, each with their own focus and strange sense of importance.
Jack swore that people in this world had very loose definitions of what a "high school" was supposed to be.
The Department of Support, for example, specialized in developing tools and equipment that aided trainers in their careers. Students there learned to navigate the political and logistical realities of the profession while designing custom gear for their clients. With workshops packed to the brim with specialized instruments, the department provided an unmatched environment for creativity and experimentation.
Then there was the Department of Proxy.
This one handled the business side of heroics—everything from establishing and managing trainer agencies to public relations, sponsorships, and tournament marketing. They even had hands-on lessons in venture capitalism. The younger generation liked to call themselves "Proxies," as if the title made them sound more glamorous.
A professional trainer, as the textbooks liked to say, needed four essential roles to reach true success: a medic, a breeder, a manager, and a proxy.
Thanks to the System, Jack technically didn't need a breeder—but he figured he'd hire one anyway. Breeding was a bloody chore, and half the time he was barely holding on to his attention span as it was.
Smack!
A ruler jabbed sharply into his side, making Jack silently curse under his breath. He couldn't afford another detention—no amount of sleepless nights among the female staff would stop those gossiping harpies from tattling to his mother about his "academic decline."
The shameless lot.
"Pay attention, you damn brute."
The scolding voice belonged to Mai Zenin. She was an undeniably beautiful young woman with a curvy figure, straight, chin-length dark green hair cut into a sleek bob with a fringe, and light brown eyes that shifted between obsidian and granite under the light. Her lips glimmered faintly with pink gloss.
Her usual attire consisted of a dark, royal-green, form-fitting V-neck dress with a high collar, draped with a long white fur coat. Thigh-high black boots and several strands of pearl necklaces completed the look.
She was also Jack's manager of human relations. Also his owner, assistant, and today, he is the owner of many small shops that sell water-related gear across Kanto.
Mai had once been a second-year student at Kyoto Jujutsu High in Japan, a member of the infamous Zenin Clan, and the younger twin sister of Maki Zenin.
Born into the Zenin family on January 20, 2002, as twins, Mai and Maki were considered a bad omen from the start. Their father, Ogi Zenin, made no effort to hide his disappointment—especially since both girls were born with low aura energy. Maki lacked enough to even see cursed spirits, while Mai possessed only a trace above a normal human's level but less than the average sorcerer.
Jack didn't particularly care about lineage or clan prestige—though he'd admit, the Zenin name carried weight, especially when she was the one throwing it around like a gold coin at a bar. What mattered more to him was that she kept his schedule, his grades, and his excuses all neatly stacked in a color-coded binder that looked like it could give birth to a lawsuit at any moment.
Jack didn't do much to obtain her loyalty, to be honest—mostly because he hadn't realized he was supposed to obtain anything at all. In his mind, Mai Zenin simply appeared in his orbit one day, binder in hand, expression set in that "I am tolerating you out of professional obligation and nothing more" way she did so well, and he, being himself, accepted it as naturally as he accepted breathing. The truth, of course, was far uglier, layered with clan politics, bad timing, and a single disastrously unfair contract that should have come with a skull-and-crossbones watermark.
The Zenin Clan liked their paperwork—liked it the same way a lawyer likes a loophole or a snake likes a warm rock. When they approached Jack, well more like his mother and her clan, they dressed the offer in silk: temporary partnership, mutual benefit, resource exchange, administrative support, all those polished phrases that made a mess sound like an opportunity. And Jack, half awake, hungry, already planning his next class skip, did not read a single line. Not one. He glanced at the bold header, at Mai standing behind her father with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched like she was grinding her teeth into powder, and assumed it was the usual clan crap—favors traded for favors, nothing dire.
He didn't notice the subclauses.He didn't notice the aura conditions.He didn't notice Mai had been volunteered, not chosen.
He didn't even remember the he was the reason Mai and Maki are smiling more than usual. Or the fact the his mother, put an Equilibrium Exchange Clause, which required the signee to contribute aura equal to a clan baseline before the contract's telepathic anchor settled. It was a safeguard meant to protect the Zenin representative—an anchor designed for someone who understood aura, respected contracts, and wasn't, well… Jack Sparrow.
He signed in one stroke.
The paper hummed.The ink shimmered.The binding flared alive like someone had shoved a live wire through the air.
Mai reacted first—her eyes widening, breath hitching, hand reaching instinctively toward her temple—but by the time she tried to cut the channel, Jack's aura had already surged. Not maliciously. Not intentionally. Just overwhelmingly. A tide of raw, unrefined power he never properly learned to control, flooding into a conduit meant for delicate adjustments and slow harmonization.
Mai's reserves were already low by birth.The backlash hit her like a hammer to fine glass.
She didn't fall.
Mai would rather bite off her own tongue than collapse in front of her clan.But her knees buckled, her fingers dug into her scalp, and her voice—usually so sharp and perfectly measured—broke into something ragged and terrified as the telepathic overload fried the channels she'd spent years carefully working around.
Jack, of course, had no idea what any of it meant.All he saw was a girl recoiling in pain from a signature he barely remembered making, and for one of the very few times in his life, he froze—not out of fear, but out of that awful, sinking understanding that he had done something irreversible without realizing it.
The Zenin elders shouted.Ogi cursed the both of them.The clan healers arrived too late to prevent the burnout.
When the smoke cleared, Mai Zenin—already born with barely enough aura to light a candle—was left with even less. Her telepathic sensitivity was scorched. Her ability to perceive spirits even with tools evaporated. The little energy she had clung to her in thin, stubborn threads that would not repair the way the clan expected.
Jack tried apologizing.
Mai was grinning ear to ear. Never again will she those ugly spirits ever again. But still ignored him for a week straight.
And Maki?
Oh, Maki celebrated.
She laughed openly when the elders scolded Ogi.
She smirked when Mai was excused from certain duties she'd always hated anyway.
She gladly exploited the crack in the clan's expectations, stepping into every space vacated by Mai and taking full advantage of the sudden shift in attention. For once, she wasn't the disappointment. Mai was. And while she cared for her sister in her own way, she wasn't above enjoying the benefits of watching the clan hierarchy scramble.
Jack, meanwhile, found himself with a permanent shadow—a sharp-tongued, exhausted, low-energy girl who insulted him at breakfast, corrected his schedule at lunch, and patched up his excuses before his teachers could question why their star student hadn't shown up for three days.
Not out of affection.Not at first.
But because the contract forced proximity, and proximity forced understanding, and understanding—slowly, painfully—became something that looked a lot like loyalty, even if neither of them would ever say the word aloud.
[xXx]
Jack's Home...
"Do I know you, lass?" Jack asked, squinting in the way he always did when confronted with someone who either resembled trouble or temptation — and this one, unfortunately, looked like she had been handcrafted with equal parts of both. He tried very hard not to look like a man struck dumb by curves, color, and weaponry, because at this point he really should have built some kind of immunity to beautiful, dangerous women, but the universe stubbornly refused to let him develop the appropriate resistance.
Seriously Kunia alone should have made him numb to busty tomboys at this point.
The girl standing before him had black hair streaked with a pinkish-red shine, the shade that looked like it was designed to glow under moonlight or under neon signs depending on her mood, and skin so pale it bordered on porcelain. And she wasn't just human — she was Thiren, one of those animal-adapted beastfolk whose animal traits clung to their physiology like stubborn ink. Her long shark tail swayed behind her, thick and muscular, ending in a fin marked with two stickers and a band-aid slapped over the side like a badge of honor. Someone had even spray-painted SHARK across it in white block letters, the chaotic kind teenagers put on their hoverboards, and somehow she made it look stylish.
Her outfit was deceptively casual: a crisp white button-up shirt, a navy pleated skirt marked with a single white stripe along the hem, sheer black pantyhose that caught the light, and simple black loafers that made her look like she had stepped straight out of a delinquent-flavored fashion magazine. A black choker hugged her throat, centered with a small silver fish charm that glittered with every breath she took. Her hair was clipped with silver accessories—a razor-blade clip on one side, and beneath it two more, one X-shaped and one plain—giving her the aesthetic of someone who could solve calculus or commit a stylish murder depending on the circumstances.
What really hooked Jack's attention, however—beyond the goth busty tomboy build, or the dangerously wide hips, or the absolute betrayal of Nassau, who was lying on his back like some lovestruck buffoon while she scratched behind his fins—was the pair of absurdly oversized, hydraulically powered scissors hanging from a strap across her back. They resembled garden shears if garden shears had been designed by a deranged engineer who wanted to cut through steel beams instead of hedges. Jack recognized weapon-grade insanity when he saw it.
And then she spoke—or rather, looked at him.
Ellen Joe stared at her cousin with a bored expression that suggested she was already unimpressed and had been unimpressed long before she even arrived, though a faint twitch at the corner of her mouth hinted at a private evaluation running behind those pale, sharklike eyes. This is the man that's going to be my husband? The thought passed through her mind with a curious mixture of resignation and mild surprise. At the very least, she decided, he looked nice enough—rough around the edges, chaotic in posture, inexplicably charming in that irritating Sparrow way, and carrying himself like someone who could break into a royal treasury by accident and somehow walk out with the crown jewels wrapped in a handkerchief he didn't remember having.
Ellen came from the Joe family, a branch of the sprawling Galar Joestar bloodline, and despite the Shark or Whale Thiren traits that ran strong through their veins—razor instincts, aquatic physiology, the ability to sense electromagnetic fields and blood currents—they were, by tradition and occupation, miners.
Not the small-scale pickaxe-and-lantern sort either, but deep-sea industrial excavators who worked within crushing-pressure trenches, volcanic underwater caverns, and abyssal rifts where only monstrous creatures and ancient metals existed. As such their Pokemon were either Ground, Rock, and Steel types. While not the strongest by any means the highest they were B-rank trainers. Still, the Joe family had built an empire on dredging up rare ores, tectonic gemstones, and materials so dangerous some governments outlawed them for civilian use.
Ellen, like most of her lineage, had inherited the family's trademark blend of brute endurance and effortless poise: that peculiar mix where one could wield hydraulic shears large enough to bisect a car while looking like she was dressed for a casual brunch. Her shark tail flicked once behind her, the movement slow and controlled, betraying the disciplined upbringing of someone raised to balance elegance with lethality. Their mining traditions were severe—ritual depth dives, body-hardening techniques, psychic pressure-conditioning—but the Joe family treated it not as a burden but as a birthright, a source of both pride and generational stubbornness. And Ellen, with her pale skin, cold gaze, and quiet aura of capability, carried that heritage openly.
The main reason she was even was because of poltics. Ellen knew far more about the Sparrow Family situation than Jack ever bothered to notice—not that this required much effort. Jack, in all his chaotic glory, was the only man alive who could accidentally build safehouses, bunkers, hideouts, and "personal storage dens" that were more secure than some of the most heavily protected technological compounds in the Pokémon world. The idiot had shown his fmaily pictures—actual photographs, labeled in handwriting that looked like he wrote them while falling down stairs with all the listed materials with it.
When news of Terra Shards and Gem being used to create Pokémon habits only falling short from the realms in quaility. The price said materials shot overnight and creating a new market.
Naturally, every ambitious family in the world started sending requests, envoys, samples, offers, and "friendly gifts." What began as puzzled curiosity became a quiet diplomatic frenzy, and somewhere in the middle of it, the Sparrow line—which already had enough complications to fill a library—became even more tangled.
Ellen shifted her weight, loafers scuffing softly against the stone floor of Jack's home as she took in the space with a slow, measuring sweep of her eyes. The place was a contradiction in motion: comfortable in the way of someone who lived here like a den rather than a residence, but reinforced in ways no civilian home had any right to be. Load-bearing walls disguised as decor. Vents that doubled as escape routes. Floor panels that could slide, seal, or detonate depending on which glyph Jack stepped on accidentally. It was the sort of architecture that told a story about its owner without ever asking permission.
Her gaze lingered on a reinforced door frame. Then on the ceiling. Then on a corner where the electromagnetic field hummed just a little wrong.
"…Huh," Ellen muttered.
"Lass, ye either be on my bed or ye be on my—"
Jack's sentence died halfway out of his mouth as the very attractive girl he was addressing turned, eyes sharp as hooked steel, and looked at him.
It was the sort of look sailors got just before realizing the sea was about to take something back.
Ellen's pale gaze dragged over him in a way that wasn't shy, wasn't impressed, and most certainly wasn't offended. It was a professional assessment, the kind dockmasters used when judging whether a ship was seaworthy or about to sink with all hands aboard. Her lips curled, not quite a smile.
"…Finish that sentence," she said.
Jack straightened a fraction, boots scraping against the stone as his posture shifted from lounging scoundrel to something marginally more alert. "Temptin' as it may be, love," he replied lightly, "I've learned finishin' sentences too early tends to get a man stabbed, married, or robbed blind."
Her tail flicked once behind her, slow and deliberate.
"Smart," Ellen said. "Most men don't make it past 'lass.'"
Jack's grin returned, lazy and crooked, the kind that had survived gallows, gun decks, and at least three cursed islands. "Aye, well. Most men ain't me."
He leaned against the edge of the table, eyes finally drifting—despite his better judgment—toward the absurd pair of hydraulically powered scissors strapped across her back. They were far too large to be decorative and far too clean to be ceremonial.
"…Tell me somethin', shark," Jack said, nodding toward them. "Ye plannin' to trim hedges, or is that for when negotiations go sour?"
Ellen followed his gaze, then shrugged. "Depends how loud you scream."
Nassau, traitor that he was, chose that exact moment to roll onto his side and flop his head against Ellen's shin, making a pleased rumbling sound like an engine settling into idle.
Jack stared.
Then he stared harder.
"…Ye fickle-scaled bastard," Jack muttered. "I raise ye from an egg, feed ye premium cuts, build ye a den that cost me three weeks' sleep and one minor blood sacrifice, and this is the loyalty I get?"
Ellen crouched slightly, fingers brushing along Nassau's fin with practiced ease. The Pokémon practically melted under the attention.
"I'm your cousin, dork. Auntie Kelly told me to look after you."
The words hit Jack Sparrow like a broadside to the ribs.
His grin didn't vanish so much as evacuate. His eyes widened, pupils shrinking as the name slammed straight into the part of his soul that still flinched on instinct.
"…Auntie," Jack repeated faintly.
There were very few forces in this world that could stop Jack Sparrow cold. Legendary Pokémon. Naval blockades. Ancient curses. His own bad decisions, occasionally.
And then there was his mother.
Horror bloomed across his face in stages. Kelly his mother...
That name carried storms in it. That name carried ledgers, grudges, contracts written in ink that never quite washed off your hands. That name meant he hadn't actually gotten away with anything. Not ever. Just delayed the reckoning long enough for it to grow teeth.
"…She ain't," Jack said slowly, voice dropping an octave, "still angry, is she?"
Ellen didn't answer right away. She straightened from her crouch, fingers lingering a second too long on Nassau's fin before she stood, tail swaying once behind her in a slow, deliberate arc that told him she was deciding how much damage she felt like doing today.
Jack swallowed.
"Because last time she was angry," he continued, filling the silence himself the way sailors did when the sea went too still, "a man lost a ship, another lost a kneecap, and I still don't rightly know which one deserved it more."
Her lips twitched. Not sympathy. Amusement.
"…Wait," Jack said, squinting harder now, really looking at her instead of looking at her. The posture. The stance. The way she held herself like the ground was optional. "…Related how?"
The answer snapped into place in his head a second too late.
Oh.
Oh, that was bad.
That was very bad.
Whatever idle, dangerous thoughts had been circling his brain earlier were promptly hauled out back, shot, and buried at sea. Jack Sparrow had a rule about his mother's side of the family. It wasn't written down, but it had been learned the hard way and reinforced by disowning him and fending for himself.
An accident that won't be repeated.
Probably.
"Okay—" Jack started, already preparing to backpedal with dignity.
"We're also engaged," Ellen muttered, irritation finally cracking through her composure like stress fractures in stone. "Since you apparently can't keep your trousers attached to your better judgment."
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was full. Heavy. Charged.
Jack's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"…As if—"
"I will tell Auntie Kelly—"
Jack moved.
One moment Ellen was standing there, tail flicking, eyes sharp with threat and promise both. The next, Jack had stepped in close, hooked an arm around her center of mass, and lifted her clean off the ground with the practiced ease of someone who had thrown far heavier things over his shoulder under far worse circumstances.
Ellen sucked in a breath—not in panic, but in surprise.
Then she went still.
Which, in hindsight, should have concerned him more than screaming.
"Not another word," Jack hissed, clapping a hand over her mouth as he turned, boots scraping stone. "Not one syllable about my mother in my house, lass, unless ye fancy watchin' this place implode under paperwork alone."
Her tail stiffened, muscles coiling like tensioned cables. Her fingers twitched once, twice, mapping angles, leverage, pressure points along his ribs and spine. She was calculating. Always calculating.
Nassau chirped, utterly delighted.
Jack took three steps, then stopped, breathing out hard through his nose before finally setting her back on her feet. He released her immediately, hands raised now, posture shifted again. Not flippant. Not careless.
Alert.
Ellen straightened her skirt with deliberate calm, adjusted the strap of the massive shears on her back, then looked up at him with a glare sharp enough to cut rebar.
"You ever do that again," she said evenly, "and I'll show you how miners break rock without explosives."
Jack rolled his shoulders, grimacing. "Fair warning received."
They stared at each other for a long moment, tension thick enough to taste.
"…Engaged," Jack repeated at last, like he was testing the word for poison. "That be a very large claim to drop on a man unarmed."
"You're never unarmed," Ellen shot back. "You're just irresponsible with your weapons."
She stepped closer now, voice lowering, the hostility sharpening into something colder, more controlled.
She stepped closer now, close enough that Jack could feel the faint chill radiating off her skin, the subtle hum of conditioned muscle beneath it. The hostility sharpened, not louder, not angrier, but colder, like steel being lowered into water.
"There are ground rules," she said flatly. "Pay attention, mister."
Jack's brow creased. "This be the part where I regret not leavin' through the back wall, ain't it?"
"One," Ellen continued, ignoring him entirely, "you stop behaving like you're untethered. No more disappearing for days without notice. No more scandals that force families to smooth things over behind your back."
Jack opened his mouth.
"Two," she said, eyes narrowing, "you aim higher. You don't dabble. You don't drift. You don't settle. You push for the top. Champion tier. Political weight. Influence that makes people think twice before breathing in your direction."
Jack blinked.
"…That sounds like a lot of work."
"And yet," Ellen replied coolly, "you keep accidentally doing it anyway."
She took another step in, voice dropping.
"Three," she said, "I want a Pokémon."
Jack stared at her.
"A Pokémon," he repeated slowly. "As in, one of them bitey, elemental, life-ruining companions that redefine a person's entire existence."
"Yes."
"And ye want me to fetch it."
"Yes."
"…Any particular reason," Jack asked cautiously, "or do ye just enjoy givin' orders?"
Ellen's lips twitched. She reached into her jacket and, without breaking eye contact, flicked a small, black lens onto the table between them.
It rolled once.
Stopped.
"I recorded the entire conversation," she said evenly.
Jack's soul left his body for a brief, educational trip.
"…Ye did what."
"Audio. Visual. Aura trace," Ellen continued. "Clear enough to prove intent, admission, and context."
Jack stared at the device like it might grow legs and bite him.
"…That be illegal."
She shrugged. "So is about half your existence."
Nassau chirped again, smug as sin.
Jack dragged a hand down his face, exhaling slowly, long enough to count at least three life choices that had led him here.
"…Right," he said at last. "So let me get this straight."
He looked up at her, pirate grin resurfacing, thinner now, edged with calculation.
"Ye barge into my home, declare yourself kin, announce an engagement I don't recall survivin', lay out a list of demands fit for a conquering admiral—"
"—future admiral," Ellen corrected.
"—and then threaten me with evidence like I'm a dockhand who stole rum from the wrong crate."
"Yes."
Jack tilted his head, studying her properly now. Not the tail. Not the shears. The person beneath it all.
"…And what," he asked quietly, "do I get out of this arrangement, shark?"
Ellen didn't hesitate.
"I'm a lesbian and your dick is my toy that I will use on my conquests."
Jack didn't desitate.
"Fetchin' ye a Pokémon,"