The air was cool and refreshing, and the breeze that blew in from the nearby bay was tinted with salt and tickled the nose of the large Char that was sleeping soundly. The smell of the salt-tainted air woke him up at this time, however. He blinked slowly, getting a bearing on his surroundings and yawned loudly as he raised himself up off the ground. He glanced around to take in the view. It was already well into morning, and the others were not immediately within sight. Upon further inspection however, he spotted a large snake-like shadow moving carefully beneath the waves in the deeper part of the water. He turned his head to the left and saw the human who he had come to call friend a ways down the beach. The Charizard stood up and walked in her direction.
She was wearing kaki colored cargo pants with a black tank top and had her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She didn't have on any shoes or socks, but instead let her toes feel their way in the finely ground sand beneath her feet. He stopped to watch her for a while, for she was deep in concentration while practicing some martial arts moves. The human would slowly raise her straitened leg while staring hard at her foot, breathing in deeply and out in short puffs. She slowly brought her leg around and then quickly changed position to fiercely jab with the base of both hands and kick with her other foot. The Char did not want to disturb her, but at this moment she stopped, smiled, and waved him over.
"Hey, Abadon," the human girl said, catching her breath. "Took you long enough to wake up."
"Hey, Erin," Abadon replied. "What's that you were doing?" He noticed that Chasm was sitting on a rock nearby and had been observing Erin while she trained.
"I was practicing. I haven't practiced at all since I left the academy and I didn't want to start getting rusty," she said in return. " I also thought that today would be the perfect day for you guys to train as well."
Abadon looked at her slyly. "What do you mean: train? I'm strong enough."
"Well of course you have brute strength down; no one could argue with you on that. I'm talking about strategy," Erin added in defense. "You said you wanted to travel with me to become stronger, and strategy is just the way to do this. Don't worry," she said, noting the fire pokemon's skeptical look. "Chasm will be joining us as well."
Abadon smiled in Chasm's direction. "Ha ha, you got dragged into this too."
Chasm simply glared. "I volunteered to train with Erin. I thought it would be interesting to see what tips that the human could give me. I certainly didn't think that it would hinder me, that I didn't."
Abadon's earlier smirk turned into a scowl, irritated at he fact that he was unable to frustrate the umbreon.
Erin rolled her eyes. "Here's the way it is," she began. "It doesn't matter how strong a pokemon is if they don't have any strategy to incorporate into the battle and their opponent does. You can't rely on brute strength alone. The most basic thing that you learn in any martial arts class is that you always have to keep moving. No matter what, don't let your opponent catch you flat footed. Then you're an easy target to hit." To demonstrate this, Erin spread her legs and swayed back and forth on the balls of her feet. "That way, if they come from this direction," she said, motioning with her arm and swaying farther to the right, "you can just go to opposite direction with almost no effort on your part. You can move your feet around sometimes too, like this, so you're not completely immobile, and it still doesn't really take that much energy, yet it keeps your opponent guessing. You try now." While she continued her 'dance', she motioned for Abadon to begin.
The Char glanced down at his feet and positioned them accordingly. Chars didn't usually rely on speed while they were on the ground, since their bulky bodies didn't allow for speed like that of a scizor, but it certainly couldn't hurt to practice. That way, like Erin said, he could take his opponents by surprise. A speedy Char wasn't something you saw everyday. But then again, not many people saw a Char at all. He began to sway back and forth as he had seen Erin do, while keeping his arms up in a defensive position to block from any possible attacks, or for him to attack after slipping out of the way of an enemy.
Chasm's take on this procedure would differ slightly. As a feline-like pokemon, she was able to tense up the muscles in her legs to leap out of the way at a seconds notice. She certainly had better reaction time than Abadon, but that's why they were training.
Next, Erin had them try some of the steps and motions that she had been practicing earlier. Chasm picked up the movements strait off and adapted them to her own, since the center balance of her body was different from that of Erin and Abadon. She was used to focusing her mind on a certain thought and carrying it out, since that was what is required of her when she attempts a dark-type attack. Abadon was having a bit more trouble, but was catching on quickly enough. It would take a few more practice sessions before he fully understood the complete focus that it would take, but he picked up the movements fast enough. In the end, Erin would teach him how to focus on a single attack while being aware of his opponent's plans and movements. As a pokemon, he already had this as an innate nature to some extent, but Erin, as a trainer, would help him to bring this out in a dynamic manner.
Erin didn't know how long it would take them to get to the next town or city, but that was mostly because she didn't know where a city was around here. There wasn't a path near their camp, so the only way to find out would be to go back to the port town they had left the day before. Erin didn't want to do that, but she didn't care how long the three; no, sorry, four of them, had to travel, because they could train along the way. This was what Erin had always dreamed of while she was at the academy: trekking through a forest or field (or what was left of the two) and training her pokemon. She had always told herself that she would train them her way, not the Academy's way. She would take the good points that she learned from them, but then she would re-create and mold them to fit her style. So far, it seemed to be working.
"Good job," she was telling Abadon. "Your stance is already improving. You're a quick learner. Now let's focus on more advanced movements."
Abadon stood still while Erin moved his arms and showed him the best ways to defend should certain scenarios occur. Most of the time she would stand by and show him how to carry out a move or block, but sometimes she would test how much Abadon remembered and would act as an adversary in mock attack. She would begin slow but then increase her speed when she thought he could keep up. He truly was a fast learner and quickly adapted the moves to his bulk so he would be able to use them efficiently. Either that, or Erin was simply a good teacher. Chasm would have voted with the latter, rather than admit that Abadon was worth anything in battle.
Sooner than was expected, it was time for lunch and a well-deserved break. Erin, followed closely by Abadon and Chasm, walked with heavy feet over to their camp, which was on the edge of the forest where the grass met the sand. She sat down with a huff and stretched out on the ground. They were tired, but they all felt content, like they had all accomplished something worthwhile and had bettered themselves. Suddenly, Erin sat up with a thought.
"Hey, my birthday's in a few days!" she said. In the depressing and then exciting turn of events that had begun ever since she left the academy, she had completely forgotten! "I'll be seventeen four days from now. At school, that would be the legal age that I would be allowed to carry a Trainers License, saying that I had graduated from a respectable Academy and therefore knew more about pokemon than other trainers that simply happened to find a pokemon that was weak enough to be captured." She stated this last part sarcastically.
"Does going to that school really let you know more about pokemon than those who do not attend?" asked Chasm.
"Technically, I guess they do. Because of the classes, students know about pokemon types and the strengths and weaknesses that go along with them. Some are obvious of course, but there are those that are complicated. But we don't just learn about the types, we are taught how and why they work the way they do. It's the same way with the other classes. When studying about certain pokemon, we learn their history and the main points that have happened to the species throughout the ages. There's so much more to learn about pokemon that no one would ever learn by simply traveling.
"But then the opposite is true as well. There's much more to learn about pokemon than what I would discover just sitting in a classroom all day. There's people and experiences and friends that I would never come across if I never got out into the world." She hesitated for a second. "I want to thank you guys for traveling with me. I would never have made it this far without your support, even if I'm not your trainer." Chasm nodded her head and Abadon smiled in return.
"Why do you use that red device, the pokedex, if you already know about pokemon?" the umbreon asked, raising her head.
"Professor Chronal created this pokedex from one that he found, or was given by an associate," she said, taking the item in question from her bag to examine it. "He downloaded the information from that one to this, and then got it to stabilize after many tweaks to it's hard drive. He told me that there was so much information gathered on that one machine that he wondered how it could contain it all on its limited hard drive. This one is much more advanced. He said that the person who had that pokedex saw more pokemon than the average person. I know a lot about pokemon, but there's so much knowledge that has been lost as well." Erin put the pokedex back in her bag and rested her head on the soft grass, watching the clouds move across the sky. "Many have become extinct or are simply never seen anymore. Some died out so long ago that we don't have any surviving records of them, so their information is gone forever. But this pokedex might have some of that lost information, so it would be a goldmine to any researcher. I guess I should look through the database and see if there are any recorded that I don't know about."
Then she yawned and rolled on her side. "I'll do it later though. Now it's time to take a nap."
Because of the intensive training they had all endured, Abadon and Chasm joined Erin in her afternoon nap, and all quickly fell asleep.
Erin yawned without fully waking, and didn't open her eyes. She was conscious enough however, to realize that a breeze had picked up during the time she had been wandering dreamland. But there was something unnerving about the wind; it didn't move as normal wind did. This breeze she felt blowing against her face for no more than five seconds, and then it stopped, only to pick up again five seconds later to repeat the cycle. Erin finally opened her eyes, if only out of curiosity. What she saw startled her, but she quickly broke into a grin and laughed. Celeste had snaked her way onto the shore and was resting her massive head on the ground directly in front of Erin's. It was the milotic's breath that Erin had took for a breeze. The pokemon was so huge that it was almost uneasy to be so near to her, but Erin didn't mind.
"What's up, Celeste?" Erin asked, still on the ground.
Without lifting her head, Celeste looked toward the sky. "There appears to be clouds, but not much else," was her answer, though not the one Erin was looking for.
Erin chuckled and sat up, fixing her hair and waking up Abadon. Chasm had awoken during their conversation, short though it was. "We're off again guys," Erin said cheerily. She patted Celeste's head while reaching for her pokeball, which the milotic obviously enjoyed. Though Milotic could survive on land for a time, moving their body as would an arbok or seviper, they were much more at home in the water and would not enjoy slithering through a forest. "Ready?" she asked her. Celeste nodded and was then pulled into the pokeball by a tiny red laser. Erin placed the ball in her pocket, put on her shoes, and walked into the woods, followed closely by her other companions.
After about a hundred meters the grass and trees became scarcer, much like the forest Erin had traveled through when she first met Abadon, though she had not known his name at the time. The green of leaves and bushes became slightly less green and slightly grayer, and did not hold the life that they once did. They were not dead, but were sickly, and had been that way for close to a century.
Later that day, and in the days that followed, Erin and her team frequently stopped to train and practice. Abadon learned to have a quick eye and was therefore able to spot an attack and react faster than one would normally think such a bulky pokemon would be capable of. Chasm learned new skills as well, and gave Erin slightly more respect because of her skill knowledge of fighting. On the night of the third day, they could see light shining through the night, and realized that a city, a large one by the looks of things, was close by, and that they would most likely reach it the next day. Things seemed promising, but then again, things are not always what they seem…
A/N - This chapter took a bit longer than the last two, but that's because school just started and I haven't had much free time. Five AP courses will zap all your free time right out of you. TT
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I please review! A major plot twist will make itself known shortly… Mwahaha