Nurtured by Nero [Refresh]

The tutorial battle had gone... badly. Not only because they had lost too: any battle that ended with Nero punching the opposing trainer could hardly be considered a success. At the time, he'd raged about the whole thing being 'unfair', how it was an 'impossible' battle just put in the game to scare off new players, to intimidate them into giving up early while simultaneously embarrassing them too much to return the game. It was probably some clique-y thing to make sure that only a particular type of player persevered, and Nero had been on the fence as to whether he wanted to keep playing in a community like that.

After cooling off and thinking about it though, it became very clear that that wasn't the case at all. Tutorials taught you how to play the game, and while that often involved hand-holding you through simple problems, that wasn't always the case. Sometimes they taught you about systems by simply forcing you to engage with them when you might not have done so otherwise. Like the upgrade systems of UNOVR. Would Nero have actually bothered to look at them this early if he hadn't been pushed towards them by failing an 'easy' battle? Probably not, and by the time he faced a real challenge, he might have forgotten how they'd worked. It was actually a very clever solution, making the tutorial battle unwinnable without access that system first. Anyone who'd stumbled upon it naturally or knew about it in advance would fly through the battle with ease, while everyone else would be introduced to it organically.

It was still a lot of information to take in though, even if he was doing it at the 'right' moment. Nero had found himself somewhere quiet again, away from any other players who might judge him, or worse, offer to help him. Cyndaquil was sat beside him, healed and happy, since Nero wanted to see if each upgrade had any visual effect on the Pokemon in question. With everything prepared, he pulled up the upgrade screen and found himself murmuring to the fire type beside him as he clicked through various options. "Health definitely, you need more HP. That zebra had fucking loads, that was the only problem. And stronger attacks, yeah, that too. Maybe we don't use this so often though, yeah? Some of those... what were they, 'basic' attacks? Yeah we should have used those more." Cyndaquil nodded along as Nero spoke, tiny fragments of strategy starting to form without him being really conscious of them. That tutorial really did do it's job well, didn't it?

With the first two upgrades purchased, he paused as he felt something move, and looked down to see Cyndaquil crawling into his lap to try and see what Nero was looking at. With a snort of amusement, his left hand dropped to pet the Pokemon in an effort to keep him entertained while his right continued to scroll. "What else... Oh, we can give you new moves? Does that do anything?" He looked down at the fire type expectantly but got nothing useful in return, so after glancing at his current wallet and seeing that he had more than enough for the upgrade he clicked it anyway with a shrug.

Another box showed up then though, directly over Cyndaquil in the sidebar, a single floating word that was very familiar in this context: EVOLVE?

Looking down at the Pokemon in his lap, a tinge of excitement reignited in him as he asked, "You wanna evolve, Cyndaquil?" Damn, he still needed a name for him - it actually felt strange using his full species name when talking to him like this. Cyndaquil was nodding though, so pushing that thought aside for now, he clicked the button and watched the familiar words from all the old games flash up brightly over the rest of the overlay.

What's this? Cyndaquil is evolving!
Congratulations! Your Cyndaquil has evolved into Quilava!

The Pokemon now in his lap was much larger than before, stretched out so that his back legs hung off of Nero entirely, and when it barked a noise at him in greeting, the sound was much deeper than before. "Awesome," he replied, a laugh working its way into his voice as he spoke. "That should do us, right Q-..." He paused, the idea of speaking a newly evolved species as a name feeling even weirder than the last option. "How about just Quill for now?" It was consistent between the two species technically, so it wasn't like a wholly new name, and it was simple enough that if he did decide to come up with some proper nicknames in the future, it wouldn't feel weird to change it. Probably. Whatever, it was an easy adaptation for Nero to get used to, and Quilava seemed to like it too judging by the happy chirp from the fire type. He rubbed the Pokemon's head once more as he closed up the upgrade screens and stood up once again. "Alright, let's go find someone to try these upgrades out again then, hey?"

Quilava went from Rare (+10) to Very Rare (+15)