Friday, January 12th, 2018

I jogged around the edge of the largest training facility in Minneapolis, slightly uncomfortable with the amount of attention Shadow and I were receiving. Following Doctor Larson's advice, I'd started exercising with Shadow once we'd gotten back from Rochester, though I wasn't thrilled about where we had to do it. My preference would have been to train outside, but it was too cold and icy for that to be a good idea. Shadow was still a bit unsteady on her feet, and I didn't want to risk her slipping on a patch of ice.

With outside not being an option, we'd been forced to use the only training center that had a track, which was also the largest and most popular one. The good news was that Shadow seemed immune to all of the attention that other trainers were giving her, and she was significantly less bothered by the attention than I was. The other upside was that after only three days of this practice, she was noticeably more sure on her legs. With her not having to focus on her footing as much, Shadow had started examining her surroundings more as we moved around the training center. I thought that I should probably continue this method of training for another day or two, and then we should be able to move on to teaching her first move.

My thoughts on Shadow's training plan were interrupted when I heard a young girl exclaim, "Woah! What's that Ponyta?"

I barely suppressed a sigh as I slowed down and stepped off of the track towards the voice. Though the occasional interruptions were annoying, I'd found that it was easier to address them so we would be left alone afterward. With Shadow dutifully following me, I turned to find a man about my age standing next to a girl who was predictably pointing at the Pokemon at my side.

"She's from Galar, so she's a different type," I explained in what I hoped was a kind tone. I had never been great at dealing with younger kids, and my time in Aitkin had proven that hadn't changed in this world.

The girl's eyes widened in wonder while the man that I assumed was her brother looked apologetic. "Sorry, we didn't mean to interrupt your training."

"It's fine," I replied with a shrug. "We could use the break anyway." The interruptions from people with questions about Shadow had meant that we hadn't needed to take a single planned break over the three days that we'd been training.

"Can I pet her?" The girl excitedly asked her brother while lightly tugging on his sweater. He gave me a questioning look, and I looked at Shadow to gauge her response.

Predictably, Shadow didn't react to the question, so I shrugged and said, "That's fine."

The girl bounced with excitement and practically darted to Shadow's side, prompting her brother to quickly call out, "Be gentle!"

Thankfully, she was very careful upon reaching Shadow and slowly started stroking the Pokemon's mane. "She's so fluffy!" The girl exclaimed as she continued petting Shadow, who leaned in slightly to the girl's attention despite maintaining her neutral expression.

With his sister's attention fully captured, the man moved a bit closer to me, "Thanks. And sorry again for the interruption."

"Nah, it's fine. Really," I assured him. Any annoyance that I'd initially had dissipated watching the girl fawn over Shadow.

Nodding gratefully, he said, "I'm Soren, and this is my cousin Marie. Our moms got the idea over Christmas that I should show her what it's like to be a trainer."

Marie had apparently been listening since she proudly said, "I'm going to be a trainer when I'm big!" With her announcement finished, she returned her full attention back to Shadow.

Soren chuckled softly then asked, "So what league are you in?"

"I'm still a novice but planning on going for my fourth badge soon. What about you? Oh, and I'm Thomas by the way."

"Cool," Soren replied. "I'm at six badges so maybe we'll face each other in the Brawl soon."

The two of us talked for a bit while Marie continued petting Shadow. At one point, Soren revealed that his starter was a Slowpoke, which prompted me to ask if he had any suggestions for training psychic types.

Soren laughed good-naturedly at the question, "I don't think there's a lot of overlap between training a Slowpoke and a Ponyta, even a psychic one. Jokes aside, the most important thing for training young psychic types is to build a rapport with them. As their trainer, you'll be the first thing that they make a connection to. Once you have that connection, the world is your Cloyster." Soren paused and glanced over at Shadow before adding, "It looks like you're off to a good start there."

Eventually, Marie tired of petting Shadow and declared that she wanted to go see more Pokemon. After both of them thanked me, they started moving to a different area of the training center. Before they got out of the range of my hearing, I heard Soren gently remind Marie that she was supposed to be learning what it was like being a trainer and not just looking at Pokemon.

Smiling slightly, I looked down at Shadow and asked, "You ready to get back to it?" A moment later, she gave an almost imperceptible nod and the two of us returned to the track. While jogging alongside Shadow, I considered Soren's advice and decided that the first move that we would focus on should be Tackle instead of Confusion like I'd originally planned.

If Soren was correct and I was going to be the first thing that she would mentally connect to, starting with Confusion suddenly seemed like a very poor idea.


Sunday, January 14th, 2018

"Well, moment of truth," I muttered before sliding the small disc containing Fire Fang into the back of Nin's Pokeball. For several tense seconds, I closely watched the ball in my hand before a soft green light finally appeared around the Pokeball's central button.

"Well shit," John blandly commented a moment later and then dug into his pocket to retrieve his wallet. He handed Cait a ten-dollar bill, then looked back at me and shrugged, "No offense."

I didn't dignify that with a response beyond snorting while I kneeled down to more easily access my backpack. As I dug through its many contents, I started to wonder if I was overusing the massive storage capacity that it had. After pushing aside my camping gear, four Pokeballs, two potions, two bottles of pills, three books, and several receipts that I'd saved for some unknown reason, I finally found the Water Pulse TM that I'd been searching for.

Cait had put away her bet winnings while I'd been looking through my backpack and took the TM from me with a grateful nod. She slid the disc into one of her Pokeballs, which predictably lit up green as well.

While we waited for the TMs to do their job, I looked back at John and asked, "So how's your new room treating you?" The day after we had returned from Rochester, he'd moved out of the room adjacent to me and into one in the Mightyena building along with the rest of the amateur trainers.

"It's pretty great, but I'm really looking forward to my first Brawl match tomorrow," John answered with a grin. "I finally found out this morning that it'll be a random field battle. I was hoping for a more interesting one like reverse draft or move-limited."

Cait wrinkled her nose, "I have no idea how you can like those pointless formats. I liked things better before the break."

"So there's a different format for each battle?" I asked. I'd attended both of Cait's Brawl matches since the new year, with the first being a double battle and the second being a best of three. Despite her apparent dislike of the changes, so far they hadn't negatively affected her record as she'd won both matches.

"Yeah," Cait confirmed with a sigh. "After New Year's, they start throwing in weird formats into all of the amateur and higher matches. Supposedly it's to keep things interesting, but I think they just get in the way of a good battle."

"Eh, I like them," John said. "I think the extra strategy that they force you to have is great. Like for tomorrow, I'll have to be sure to hold Wooper in reserve in case the pool stage is rolled."

The Pokeball that Cait was holding dinged and she retrieved the disc while answering, "Double and even triple battles are fine; I'm just not a fan of all of the extra mind games that come with some of the others." She pressed the button on the Pokeball to send Poli out and then handed me the TM back before asking, "What do you think about them?"

I hummed thoughtfully as I dropped the TM into my backpack, promising myself that I would sort it later. After a few seconds, I admitted, "Not sure, but I'm leaning towards agreeing with John. I'll have to see how it goes once I've promoted, I guess." I frowned slightly when I noticed that the green light on Nin's ball was still lit up, "Do you guys know how long this'll take?"

"Not sure, but it might be a while since it's such a non-standard move," Cait replied before glancing at John. "You want to get some practice while we wait? Poli versus someone other than Wooper so she can get up to speed with Water Pulse while your Pokemon can get some practice going against water types?"

John stretched, "Sure, that sounds good. Nidorino could use a rematch." With that, the two of them moved a bit away and the aforementioned Pokemon were soon trading moves. I stayed where I was, watching their practice while also keeping one eye on Nin's Pokeball. After a few minutes, the ball finally dinged as Nidorino jumped through a Water Pulse to approach Poli. Before sending Nin out, I carefully removed the Fire Fang TM and placed it on top of my backpack where it would be safe until Cait came over to retrieve it.

With that taken care of, I pressed the button on Nin's Pokeball and he materialized in front of me, looking no different than normal. "So, uh, how do you feel?" I asked, and I was pretty sure that Nin would have shrugged if he had shoulders. Instead, he slowly closed and then reopened his eyes. "Fair enough. Well, let's see what a Fire Fang looks like."

Nin opened his mouth and concentrated for a few seconds before his fangs began to glow a dull red. While he was definitely using Fire Fang, it wasn't even close to the bright orange that I'd seen from Rockruff, let alone the blazing flames that had appeared when Houndy had used the move. Granted, I was pretty sure that Houndy had been using Ember at the same time but still.

"It's a good starting point," I said and Nin nodded after letting his fangs slowly fade back to their normal color. I was sure that it would take plenty of practice, and probably some more calcium supplements, but having the foundation for the move was the key factor here. While the few weeks that we had spent trying to learn the move on our own had allowed us to use the TM, they had been disappointing because there was no visible change from day to day.

Now that we had that, we could really get to work.


Tuesday, January 16th, 2018

I watched closely as Scout did her best to shock the electrical measuring device that I'd managed to track down in one of the training centers. The needle slowly rose as she continued using Thunder Shock until it finally dropped back down to zero when she wore herself out after several seconds of continual output.

"That's looking great," I quickly praised her, and Scout bounced up and down slightly in excitement over her progress. A few days after we'd returned to Minneapolis, I'd received a letter from Doctor Larson containing a target electrical output for Scout along with an analysis of the Worry Seed sample that Peren had created. Scout wasn't quite at the target voltage yet, but she'd already made great progress over the last couple of days. Once she'd calmed down somewhat, I asked, "You good to keep going, or do you want a break?"

As an answer, Scout picked the two wires that she'd dropped a minute ago and once again started running electricity through the device. She ended up barely matching the previous test, but neither of us was disappointed by the result. Our previous day-to-day improvements had made it so that we weren't let down by a single lackluster test.

That said, I wondered if it would be worthwhile to change tracks to something else for a while. Other than continuing to give her calcium supplements and having her practice with the measuring device, I wasn't sure what I could do to help her improve. Somehow the topic of improving the electrical output of squirrels had never come up in my college classes. However, one thing that I had learned was that spending too much time on a single topic tended to slow progress.

"Hey, what do you think about trying something else for a bit?" I asked before Scout could start yet another test. She looked up at me and tilted her head curiously, making me realize that I hadn't actually given any thought as to what we could switch to. I considered for a second, then said, "How about we go back to Protect? I want to see if your progress here has helped with that one as well."

Scout seemed suitably enthused by the idea, so we moved a bit away from the electrical testing machine in case anyone else wanted to use it. Since it had been a while since we'd last worked on Protect, I figured a refresher was in order and squatted down next to her. "So you know the walls at the edge of the field when we battle in the stadium?" The squirrel Pokemon thought for a moment before she nodded and I continued, "Those are really big Protects created by a team of Pokemon using psychic energy. Since you don't have any psychic powers, you need to use electricity to make the barrier instead."

This time she nodded somewhat impatiently at the explanation, which I figured was fair given that I'd more or less said the same thing the first time she'd tried to learn the move. Without anything else meaningful to add, I stood back up and took a few steps away so that she would have plenty of room to work without running the risk of shocking me. Scout watched as I stepped away and even took a few more steps away from me before closing her eyes and starting to concentrate.

After a few seconds of focus, Scout snapped her eyes back open and unleashed a torrent of electricity at the same time. I had no idea how the physics of it worked, but she managed to stop the expelled electricity from moving further than a few inches past her body where it hung in the air. I carefully stepped around her to get a better look at the barrier that she created, and I could instantly tell that there were major improvements from her last attempt. Before, Protect had been a jumbled mess of yellow lines, but now it looked closer to a layered lattice mesh.

While the Protect's form was a big step up, Scout still wasn't able to maintain the move for very long, and she had to stop feeding it electricity after only a couple of seconds. Almost immediately after new energy stopped being fed into it, the barrier destabilized and disappeared with a loud 'zzzt' noise. Scout took a deep breath to recenter herself after the effort and then looked up at me expectantly.

"That looked great!" I enthused and began scratching Scout's head and back, which made her chirp gleefully. After about a minute, I figured that she'd recovered her electrical reserves and paused my petting to ask, "You think you're up for trying again?"

Scout nodded eagerly and started scampering away to put some distance between us. Before she could start building up the electricity for the move, I called out, "Hold on a second!" I wanted to try to gauge the Protect's efficacy this time, but we would need something that we could safely use to test it. When a brief glance around didn't reveal any suitable objects, I remembered the mass of receipts in my backpack and dug one out. Once it had been crumpled into a ball, I told Scout, "Alright, try now."

She repeated the process of closing her eyes to concentrate, something we would have to work on later, and then a yellow barrier of electricity appeared in front of her. Before it could fizzle out, I experimentally tossed the receipt at the Protect. The lightly tossed paper bounced right off with a brief sizzle and landed back on the ground with light wisps of smoke coming off of it.

"Well done!" I said while Scout let her Protect dissipate and took a second to catch her breath. While she was recovering, I took a brief moment to examine the receipt and thought that the slight damage that had been done to it was very promising. While I doubted that Scout's Protect would be able to block all moves, especially water-type attacks, there were some benefits as a tradeoff. I could definitely foresee some uses to a Protect that would shock anyone that tried to get past it with a physical move.


Wednesday, January 17th, 2018

I kneeled down to carefully inspect the clay targets in front of me, checking to see how deep the cracks and indents were for each of them. Once I'd finished my examination, I stood back up and turned around to face Blitz who was visibly impatient to hear the results. "It looks great, and I think the move is almost battle-ready," I said, and Blitz nodded self-assuredly. "I'm going to go grab a few more targets, and then we can go ahead and do another run."

Once I'd retrieved a few more clay targets and placed them on the much sturdier metal stands, I waved at Blitz to give him the go-ahead for another pass. He immediately took off from his perch with a loud chirp and then began circling in the air to build up energy for the attack. His circles grew faster and faster as Gale Wings kicked in until he abruptly broke off and dove down towards one of the targets.

When he was a few feet away from the target he'd chosen, Blitz jerked his head slightly and then broke off his dive. While he regained height, a small glowing image that looked like a beak continued his previous trajectory and flew into the target with a satisfying crunch.

I watched as Blitz prepared for his next strafing run and marveled at how much improvement he had made with the move since we'd gotten back. When I had purchased the calcium supplements for Nin and Scout, I'd decided on a whim to get some protein for Blitz which definitely appeared to have made a difference. Thankfully, the vitamins weren't nearly as expensive as they were in the Pokemon games, but I was still glad for the money that I had now that I was challenging gyms again. The extra that I would get from the Brawl after promoting would be a welcome addition as well.

A loud shattering sound interrupted my musings as Blitz managed to destroy the third clay target on his final pass. "Great job!" I called out, and Blitz turned back around to land on the stand that the target had been placed on. While he proudly inspected the pieces of the target, I decided that we were just about done with the Peck variant. Increasing its rate of fire so that he could attack twice in a single swoop was my last goal before deeming the attack battle-ready.


Saturday, January 20th, 2018

I watched as Peren Stomped a small stack of targets and noted that I'd become very accustomed to the noise of shattering clay targets over the previous few days. Peren had reached the point where he could easily destroy three of the clay targets in one go, leaving me wondering what I should have him work on next. While he hadn't received any supplements like most of his teammates, Peren's progress over the last week matched my other Pokemon.

In fact, the only difference I made in Peren's training was that I'd made it a habit to use the healing machines at least every other day instead of only after Brawl matches. With that being the only change on my end, I suspected that he'd undersold how much discomfort his hooves had been causing him. Whether it was because they were sturdier now or because he no longer had to hold himself back, Stomp had become as effective as any of his other moves.

Worry Seed was in the same situation in that I considered the move battle-ready. The analysis that we'd gotten said that while the inside of Peren's move was consistent with a usual Worry Seed, the outside layer was much thicker than normal. That had led to what should have been an obvious correction, which was simply to make the seed's shell thinner. It had only taken Peren a day to fix that aspect of the move, and now his Worry Seeds burst on impact, releasing their hyper-caffeinated payload into the air.

With both moves squared away, I wanted to have him learn something new, but I was drawing a blank on what that should be. My unfamiliarity with the Sawsbuck line was once again biting me. The only move that I could think of that was strongly associated with them was Horn Leech, and that one was out given that Peren didn't have antlers yet. The list of potential moves that I'd come up with in December hadn't been particularly helpful either. Under Peren's name, I'd written Razor Leaf, Absorb, and Mega Drain, with each move having a question mark next to it.

For some reason, I wasn't terribly excited about any of those options, so I decided to switch tracks and use the same unexpectedly successful logic that I'd used for Blitz. When I'd originally classified my team, I'd marked Peren down as a cleric. This left me to try to figure out what he was missing to be able to best fulfill that role. It only took me a few seconds to realize that all Peren's current and planned moves exclusively healed himself and not his teammates, which was a pretty large tool to be missing.

Unfortunately, given my lack of familiarity with double battles back home, I couldn't think of any moves that directly healed a partner. In fact, the only party healing move that I could recall was Wish, which seemed a bit out of reach for now. That said, there was a different move that would fit the bill that we had been exposed to only a few weeks ago.

With a plan finally in mind, I called Peren over once he'd finished demolishing the latest stack of targets. "I'm ready to call you done with Stomp, what do you think?" Peren glanced back at the several piles of debris that he'd left behind before giving me a nod. I smiled and continued, "Awesome. I'm thinking we get you started on Aromatherapy next. It's all about creating such a soothing scent that you and your teammates are cured of any status conditions you might have."

Peren nodded again, and I was about to say that we should get started right away when I realized that there was a possible issue with him learning Aromatherapy. The only status condition that any of my Pokemon could reliably induce was paralysis and none of them were great targets for it. Scout and Nin were effectively immune to paralysis due to their respective typing and ability, while Shadow was still too young for me to be comfortable with the idea of intentionally paralyzing her for practice. While we technically could paralyze Peren, it seemed that it would be a lot harder for him to learn the move if he was fighting off the status himself.

That left only Blitz.

Fifteen minutes later, Scout and Blitz were both out of their Pokeballs and I sighed as I watched Blitz stubbornly avoid Thunder Waves from Scout. The fact that she was clearly reluctant only made matters worse, but at least she stood a chance of paralyzing an unwilling Blitz. Nin didn't even stand a chance since all Blitz had to do to avoid Glare was simply not look at the other Pokemon. Peren patiently stood next to me as I helplessly watched the scene in front of me continue to unravel.

For such a simple move, I had a feeling that learning Aromatherapy would be the biggest pain yet by far.


A/N: Thanks to Dosidicus for betaing. Next up is Chapter 25: A Perfectly Normal Fight