A week passed in quiet, deliberate rhythm. Albert spent those days with patience and care, establishing rituals with the young Eevee.
Meals were shared—one plate on the floor, one at his desk.
Evenings brought careful brushing, soft words, and the occasional telepathic nudge of reassurance.
Nights were spent with Eevee curled up closer and closer, until by the seventh evening, the fox slept at the foot of his bed rather than the far edge of the blanket.
It was no longer merely tolerating him. The beginnings of trust had taken root.
Albert sat in his study one morning, Eevee lounging across his lap as he flipped through a leather-bound journal filled with tidy notes.
The little fox's tail flicked idly, amber eyes half-shut, when Albert spoke softly.
"There are some friends I want you to meet."
Eevee perked its ears. Suspicion replaced calm, and its body tensed.
Albert gently stroked between the fox's ears. "They're not people. They're mine, as much as you are. And they'll be yours too, if you'll have them."
With a flick of his wrist, Albert tapped a sleek black tablet lying on the desk.
The screen lit up with a faint hum, then sparked with a pulse of static.
A glowing red eye snapped open in the center of the screen.
"Roooootom!"
The fox nearly leapt from his lap, fur bristling, growling low.
Albert steadied it with one hand, projecting calm through the link. Easy. This one's an ally.
The plasma ghost burst out of the tablet in a crackle of energy, reforming into a small floating body shaped like a handheld device, its eyes cartoonishly wide, lightning sparking faintly from the corners.
"Rotom, boot sequence: Assistant Mode," Albert instructed.
"Assistant mode, engage!" the Shiny Rotom's voice was cheerful, slightly tinny.
The red ghost spun in the air, then settled, its screen lighting with bright text. "Diagnostics complete. Researcher Deford, welcome back! It's been… seven days, twenty-one hours, and thirty-two minutes since your last logged session."
"Rotom…" Albert corrected calmly, "I'm a trainer now. Trainer ID: Albert Hugo. Mark it."
Rotom's eye blinked, then widened. "Understood! Synchronizing trainer data. Congratulations on perfect licensure results, Albert!" It let out a delighted crackle. "This must be your new partner, yes?"
Albert gave the faintest of smiles.
Most trainers saw Rotom as a trickster spirit, a novelty at best, a nuisance at worst. But his Rotom was different.
His mind drifted back briefly to the quiet laboratory years when he was only eight. The IPA had given him a baseline Rotom unit and a Porygon program as companions.
Where most children would have used Rotom as a glorified lightbulb or mischievous prankster, Albert had restructured it into a scientific tool.
He remembered dismantling obsolete Pokédex models, grafting Rotom into their circuits, rewriting its program with custom scripts.
He had burned whole summers refining the software, until the ghost wasn't just inhabiting hardware—it was enhancing it.
Now, Rotom was far more than a talking device.
It was a scanner and quantifier of life.
Its detection function worked on several layers:
Identifying a Pokémon by species name and typing, detecting the very energies in its aura.
Logging in Pokémon nature and how that affected their stats.
Sensing Pokémon abilities, even implicit ones that rarely surfaced.
Recording levels, the universal measurement of growth and power, segmented into ranks from Rookie to Master.
Detecting held items, energy flows within them, and the interaction between tool and bearer.
For Pokémon it had close contact with, genetic sampling, Rotom can display full move pools—genetic inheritance, acquired skills, and TM-learned skills.
Measuring a Pokémon's potential —how many genetic moves a Pokémon has, and how far it might push the boundaries of its own body.
Potential was his greatest addition.
In Rotom's framework, it wasn't just an abstract idea but a color-coded classification tied directly to a Pokémon's genetic ceiling—its Individual Values, or IVs.
Albert had devised the scale himself, knowing how few Pokémon truly reached their limits:
Red (Rookie, only up to Level 1–15): Average IV 4–5, Total ~25. Roughly 8 out of 10 Pokémon fell here.
Orange (Adept, only up to Level 16–30): Average IV 10–11, Total ~65. About 15 in 100.
Yellow (Veteran, only up to Level 31–45): Average IV 16–17, Total ~100. Only 5 in 10,000.
Green (Gym, only up to Level 46–60): Average IV 21–22, Total ~130. Roughly 1 in a million.
Blue (Pseudo Elite to Elite, only up to Level 61–80): Average IV 25, Total ~150. Just 1 in 100 million.
Indigo (Pseudo Champion–Champion, only up to Level 81–90): Average IV 27–28, Total ~165. A mere 1 in a billion.
Violet (Pseudo Master–Master, only up to Level 91–100): Average IV 29–30, Total ~175. Perhaps 1 in five billion.
Gold (Legendary Divinehood): Perfect IV 31 across all stats, with a total of 186. So rare that Albert had marked it: 1 in ten billion, if even that.
Rotom had been coded to interpret these readings in real time, something no ordinary Pokédex could ever achieve.
It could take a glance at a Pokémon's aura and display not just its name, but its hidden ceilings, the silent mathematics of its destiny.
Later iterations of his modifications had granted it still more functions: a built-in GPS, mineral and ore detection for fieldwork, and a quantitative psychic meter able to log Albert's own growth as a psychic.
Rotom was not just an assistant. It was the culmination of years of refinement, half-machine, half-ghost, and entirely his.
"Rotom, scan," Albert ordered, pulling himself back to the present.
"On it!"
The ghost whirled around Eevee, scanning beams flicking over the fox.
Eevee hissed, snapping its small jaws in warning.
Albert touched Eevee's back gently. Let it look. It will not harm you.
Reluctantly, the fox stilled, though its amber eyes glared daggers at the red specter.
Rotom's voice clicked into a smoother tone.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Name: Partner Eevee♀ [Light Indigo]
Level: 7 (Rookie)
Type: Normal
Ability: Adaptability
Nature: Mild
Held Item: None
IV: HP (31) Atk (31) Def (20) Sp.Atk (31) Sp.Def (21) Speed (31)
Moves:
(Genetic) Curse, Double Kick, Detect, Tickle, Wish, Yawn, Rest, Calm Mind
(Learned) Covet, Growl, Helping Hand, Tackle, Tail Whip, Sand Attack
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rotom chirped proudly. "There! All neat and tidy!"
Albert's brows rose faintly as he read the data. "A partner Pokemon…with light indigo potential… way much higher than I expected, with very good genetic moves." He rubbed Eevee's head softly. "No wonder the IPA entrusted you to me."
He studied Eevee slightly. "But you have genetic moves, psychic ones at that, that doesn't seem to be within the standard….I can probably guess what happened to you now."
The fox blinked up at him, confusion flickering through the bond.
Albert projected reassurance: Don't worry. It's only the truth. You are extraordinary.
The tension in Eevee's tail eased.
Just then, another voice joined, calm and electronic.
"Correction," it said. "Extraordinary for baseline data. Yet potential is not static."
Eevee turned sharply toward the desk, where a holographic polygonal shape phased into view above the tablet's second screen.
Blue, pink, and white geometry shimmered, rearranging itself in subtle shifts of form.
"Porygon online," it announced. "Primary function: research. Subroutines indicate you have not logged field data in 21 days. Would you like to resume continuous cataloguing?"
Albert's lips curved faintly. "Yes. Register Albert Hugo as active field identity."
"Confirmed." Porygon hovered closer, angular body flickering as it regarded Eevee with unblinking eyes. "Subject: Eevee. Observation: displays heightened sensitivity to psychic output."
Eevee growled again, backing into Albert's chest.
He stroked its fur gently. "Easy. They're strange, yes, but they're mine. They've been with me since I was eight."
Through the link, he shared a memory—him as a boy, seated in a laboratory, Rotom buzzing around overhead while Porygon projected data, the comfort of familiarity in their constant presence.
Eevee blinked, head tilting, as though realizing these weren't strangers after all.
Rotom did a flip in midair. "We're family!"
Porygon added flatly, "Family is an imprecise term. But functional."
Albert chuckled softly. "Close enough."
For the first time, Eevee stepped forward—not toward Albert, but toward the floating Rotom, sniffing the strange electric hum in the air. Its fur bristled less, curiosity edging out suspicion.
Albert felt it clearly through the link: Maybe… safe.
And that, more than any scan report or data projection, was proof of the bond strengthening.
Albert leaned back in his chair, eyes glinting. "Good. Then let's work together—the four of us."
Rotom buzzed excitedly. Porygon's shape pulsed. And Eevee, after a pause, hopped back into Albert's lap and curled up, its tail brushing his arm.