Dinner was super awkward, with Lila glancing between me and her brother like we were a pair of wild Kangaskhan getting ready for a territorial dispute. Bedtime was nearly as bad, since I made no secret of taking extra precautions since strangers would be camping with me. Especially a headstrong boy. I'd had enough dealings with them, especially over the last few days, to not be comfortable taking chances. I zippered my tent from the inside, hung my dining kit from the inside of the roof, had everyone curl up in or on my sleeping bag, and just generally made sure that if I had unwelcome company, we'd both know about it and be ready for it.
Fortunately, either Izzy wasn't as much of a creep as most boys, didn't have the confidence to pull something, or just couldn't manage it with his sister around, because I woke only to the blinding needle of light making its way between the end of my tent's zipper and its pull tab. My slow shifting awake roused my team, and as the events of the day before slowly filtered through my consciousness, I realized what an idiot I was.
Even if I battled brilliantly, if Izzy had any sense he'd try to pit Psyduck against Spin, and I doubted any battle with a Charmander would be won without injury. I had some potions and first aid, but I'd only had enough for some patch-ups following defending ourselves from wild Pokemon; certainly not enough to replace a trip to a Pokemon Center. Definitely not enough to recover from an all-out mock Gym challenge battle. We'd either have to find one of the unofficial Pokemon Centers in the mountains after, or Dart and Spin would have to rest for a few days instead of training.
But, as it turned out after breakfast, it appeared that Izzy did not have any sense. He started with Psyduck when I sent out Dart, and the slow little duck couldn't get its bearings fast enough to land an attack on my speedy Pidgey. We just whipped it around with Gust, spinning it faster and faster until sheer dizziness dropped it.
Charmander didn't fare any better, the Embers it flung around too haphazard for Dart to do anything but weave around. Once she started kicking up Sand Attacks and blinding it, she didn't even need to adjust her flying to avoid them. We kept out of the way of its claws and just wore it down with Gusts.
Charmander finally flopped to the ground, panting and too exhausted to move. "You were amazing, Dart!" I told her as she flew over to land on my shoulder. She crowed in delight, and I scratched behind her headfeathers. As I did, her crow seemed to freeze, and she started to glow. I felt the feathers under my fingers lengthen and thicken, the flight muscles in her back tighten, her shoulders grow taller. A few seconds later, when the glow faded, Dart felt much heavier on my shoulder, and I echoed her delighted cry with my own. A Pidgeotto!
"Look at you!" I said, pride bubbling up in my chest, "You're so much bigger and stronger! And these gorgeous feathers! I'm so happy for you, Dart!" She opened her wings wide and launched herself into the air, giving me a temporary fateful of feathers, but I was too excited to be bothered by that as she dove into a complex series of aerobatics that I doubted her flappy little Pidgey wings could have pulled her through. I was also too excited to pay much attention to the sullen way Izzy recalled his Charmander.
He brought my attention to it, though, when he said, "It doesn't make sense! All we do is battle. Win or lose, you can't tell me that some stupid game can take the place of real battle experience. That Pidgey was already close to evolving. It was probably the other battles you've had with it that let it win."
I smirked at him. "You mean the one battle she's had, against Erika? The one where she got confused almost off the bat and I recalled her in defeat before she could dive straight into the ground and get rocks dropped on her? Sure."
"Then it was probably already strong when you caught it from battles in the wild. You can't get better at battling unless you actually do it."
"Have you thought that maybe that attitude is why you couldn't win a Badge until you found a Gym you had a type-advantage over? Let me guess, your Charmander swept Oddish and Tangela? Or did she throw you an even softer pitch and let you fight Bellsprout and Paras?" I shrugged at him.
"There's more to a battle than just throwing attacks at each other until one of you can't anymore. It's not just a trainer's job to figure out what attack will be the most effective, or if a Pokemon can defend against one. It's our job to help our Pokemon decide when it's just better to dodge, how to properly dodge, how to best utilize their attacks. We can come up with strategies, but our Pokemon have to be able to carry them out. All I do is make practicing all those things more fun for them, so they enjoy practicing, instead of just throwing them at other trainers' teams and trying to glean something useful from an otherwise pointless match."
"Hmph," he grunted. Then he stalked over to his and Lila's camp to start breaking it down to travel, muttering to himself.
I looked over to where Vola and Bubbles were timing attacks to Lila's calls. They were only releasing short bursts, and it looked like they were aiming to intersect them. When they timed it right, it left a frozen sculpture quickly losing momentum, then falling to the ground to shatter into tiny ice chips. They must have paused to watch Izzy and my confrontation, because it looked like Lila and Bubbles had lost whatever rhythm they'd fallen into.
Vola quickly picked it up for them, though; I noticed her watching Bubbles closely for a few calls, ears perked to hear Lila. Even though she looked as prepared as could be, she didn't even try to time them. She must have found what she was looking for, though, because soon she was releasing her attacks a split-second after Bubbles did. Bubbles' aim still meant that there were quite a few attacks that ended in a splash of water on the grass and some frozen leaves in a tree, but even as I watched, the timing was getting better.
I called Dart down from her excited flight, and let out a "yowch!" as she landed on my forearm.
"Your talons are longer," I told her. "Can you go a little easier on my arm?" She cooed in dismay, immediately loosening her grip. I smiled at her. "No problem, I'm okay," I assured her.
"Now, how would you like to join in their training? See if you can grab the shard of ice before it hits the ground."
Dart gave all three of them a start when she swooped in and nabbed a piece of frozen spray, but they quickly got over it, and the training continued.
When I left to continue my hike after lunch, the siblings came with me. The next few days got me used to a new routine; Lila and I would spend an hour or so training after breakfast, then we'd set out for the day. She didn't always understand what I was trying to do with a particular training, but she and Bubbles worked hard. Since she only had one Pokemon, I tried to stick to individual challenges like building or balancing. I tried to get her to come up with another that would suit Bubbles, but she didn't have any new ideas.
Since we hadn't really hurt Izzy's Pokemon, just tired them out, he decided to battle any wild Pokemon we happened across. He still wasn't having any of my methods, and I decided against risking any of my team again while we were still so far from a Pokemon Center. I promised him a rematch when we got to Cerulean, but that was the most I'd commit to.
We would set up camp for the night well before sunset to get another training session in before dinner. Izzy never complained that he was always stuck setting up and breaking down their camp. After the first day, while he wouldn't train with us, he seemed to support Lila's newfound determination and avoided getting in the way of her progress. My opinion of him rose quite a bit, though his battle strategies against the wild Pokemon weren't nearly as efficient as I thought he could be if he got his head out of the sand.
I Lila as much during one of his battles, and she let out a small giggle that was slowly becoming more common than the hiding and squeaks as we spent more time together. "Even if it knows Confusion, making Psyduck deal with all these Oddish is silly. Isn't Charmander his starter? Why force one Pokemon to tire itself out when he's got another who's perfectly capable?"
"Izzy loves water Pokemon," she explained, " He wants to be the next Cerulean Gym Leader. He absolutely idolizes Misty. We were going to Cerulean anyway when we came after you; I think it's part of the reason he agreed to it. He's hoping she'll take him on as a student."
She leaned in close, smirking, "Or so he says. He's had a secret crush on her forever. I think it's part of the reason he likes water Pokemon so much. He'll never admit to it, though."
I sighed. I knew every Gym had different qualifications they required to train there, but somehow I doubted that Misty would accept 'schoolboy crush' on an application.
"He'll have to step up his game, then," I said, then looked back at her quizzically. "If he loves water Pokemon so much, how did he end up with a Charmander?"
"I got Bubbles last year," Lila said, "but didn't feel comfortable leaving on my own. Izzy was planning to get a Squirtle, too, but when we got to Professor Oak's lab, he could only choose Bulbasaur or Charmander." She looked down at her shoes, so I could barely hear the next part. "I feel really bad about it. We were late because I forgot my backpack and we had to go back for it. I even offered to trade him Bubbles, but he said he wouldn't want to split us up."
My estimation of Izzy rose a little more. Stubborn and not especially sharp, but he seemed to have a good heart. At least when it came to his sister; I wasn't sure how I felt about wanting to be someone's student because of a crush. I was about to say something to that effect, then thought better of it. He'd probably find out sooner or later. If he wasn't going to even consider what I had to say regarding Pokemon training, I wasn't going to bother with plans he'd been making since childhood.
Instead, I said, "What about you? Are you going to train there, too?"
"I don't know," she said, suddenly small. "I love Pokemon, but I don't think I could be a Gym trainer. And even though I chose Squirtle, it's not that I like water Pokemon specifically. On top of all that, I don't really like battling."
She looked over at me, and her voice heated, "Everyone treats it like this natural thing, making our friends fight. But it's not! Aside from territorial fights or hunting, Pokemon don't really battle in the wild. We made it about pushing limits and seeing who's best," she turned away again, as if surprised by her own vehemence.
"I love Bubbles. I love playing with him, and seeing new things with him, and just talking to him. I don't want to make him do something where he'll get hurt," she finished with a whisper.
We were mostly quiet for the rest of the day. Izzy was constantly on the lookout for Pokemon to battle. I think Lila was embarrassed by her earlier outburst. I was thinking about what she'd said.
It was pretty obvious why Izzy's training methods didn't work for her. But why even become a trainer in the first place? I mulled it over, until it occurred to me that it didn't really matter.
So when we settled down for what would probably be our last night before heading out of the mountains to the relative ease of Route 4, I told my trainees, "Let's try something different today. We've done a bunch of head-to-head training and individual training, but there's always been some competition to it. Tonight, I just want you all to work together to build something tall. It doesn't matter how it looks, only how high you can get it. The only rule is that it has to be a single thing with its full weight on the ground- no sticking something on a tree. Okay? Get to it!"
They went to it.
Vola and Bubbles used their teamwork from Lila's training to make big, solid chunks of ice, which Dart and Spin used their claws to shape. After a few collapses, Spin dug a foundation to put some chunks into for support. Soon Lila piped in, "Dart, can you hold a stick there? Now Bubbles, focus on the bottom of the stick- yes, like that! See? You have a little more to keep it stable if there's something inside…"
They continued on like that, no longer even really strictly using attacks. Lila had given up all pretense of being a bystander and began actively holding pieces in place, picking Bubbles to put him in a tree for a better angle, and otherwise participating. Did that make her more or less cut out to be a trainer? I couldn't decide. She was having as much fun as the Pokemon, though, so I wasn't sure it mattered.