Quest for Knowledge

Alexander ran his ID card through the device, causing the automated doors to slide open with a ding. Stepping through, Alexander found himself surrounded by scientists bouncing left in right. The environment was sterile and white, and felt incredibly alien to him, as it rightly should. No human was meant to live in such a plastic place. Pressing onwards, he followed the main corridor down until he reached an elevator. Stepping into it, he pressed the button for the sixth floor, and was whisked away to another part of the research centre. It took him a few minutes to find his Uncle's office among the labyrinth, but eventually he did, and after taking a moment to read the brass plague on the door that stated "Dionysus Brennenburg; Head of Development" he pushed the door open.

His uncle sat there at this desk surrounded by paperwork, and didn't raise his head as Alexander entered. "Can you get me a coffee, Jenny?" he said, assuming it was his assistant. "How about no." At Alexander's response, Dionysus raised his head. "Oh, hey Alex. You brought that vial you told me about I assume?" Alexander nodded and handed it over to his uncle, who lead him out of the room after staring at it longingly for a few seconds, leading him towards an empty laboratory. He would set about identifying this thing once and for all...

Dionysis popped the vial open. He took a whiff of the fumes before cringing his nose. With a shrug he walked over to a computer, he opened what seemed like a petri dish out of a computer drive. With a cautiously slow movement he tipped the Vial just enough for a small droplet to fall onto the dish drive. the computer sucked it in relentlessly, green text began to appear on a black background, yet most of it came on as unintelligible numbers or coding. The text vanished off of the screen, soon enough a highly pixilated image before to scan into vision. A red stone appeared on the computer, a small flame looked as if it was engraved on the inside of the gem.
"Huh." Dionysus said, he typed something into the computer before the text appeared again shortly followed by the same picture.
"The computer seems to think this is a fire stone.. but its not solid, at all." He said somewhat amazed.

A...liquidized fire stone? There was an easy way to test that. Removing a pokeball from his belt, Alexander released Andiron, his young Growlithe puppy from her pokeball. Pouring a drop of the liquid onto his bare skin in what could only be described as an act of a naive child, he felt it give off a warm, comforting heat. Lowering his hand to Andiron, she smelled it for a second before licking it off the palm of his hand with an excited yap. She glowed for a moment, then returned to normal. "Just like if you expose a pokemon to a stone but take it away before they can evolve... it looks like your machine is right." Andiron released a loud whimper and tried to paw at the vial, but was quickly placed back inside her pokeball.

"So... let's see what happens if the liquid mass is given enough room to solidize." Alexander thought aloud as he withdrew a large glass beaker from a cabinet. The base of the beaker was easily large enough to contain several firestones, and as such the liquid should solidize if indeed it's capable of doing so of it's own volition. Carefully, Alexander poured the formula into the container. Once the entire contents of the bottle was inside the larger container, it began to release a light steam, which they prevented from escaping by sealing the top of the beaker. Soon, the steam became so thick that they were unable to see what was happening. It remained this way for several moments before a bright light was released from the container. When the light faded, the liquid and the steam had vanished, leaving a fire stone sitting in the bottom of the beaker. Unlike most fire stones, however, this stone was perfectly spherical, and was a blood red as opposed to a fire red.

Pocketing the stone, Alexander thanked his uncle before leaving the facility. He'd be able to evolve Andiron whenever he wanted now, but she wasn't big enough. Not yet...