All of the Pokémon around Violet City were back to their normal behaviors for the first time in two long years. None of the people believed it at first, remaining extremely cautious. After one of the police patrols came upon a flock of pidgey, however, curiosity and disbelief spread. The flock of birds, instead of launching an immediate assault on the three officers, glanced curiously at them before continuing to peck at the grassy ground.
Though it took around a weeks time, children were once again chasing Pokémon around and playing with them. Considering the fear she had seen in everyone when she first entered the city, Xanora was thrilled to see this positive change. The teachers at the Pokémon School were also working with wild Pokémon again, having reopened the school.
Just one thing kept the young trainer and her Pokémon from leaving the city. The gym leader based in this city, Falkner, was still being monitored in the hospital. The doctors were running test after test, trying to find the cause of the mans memory loss. A scan showed that he had no concussion. No head injury. His blood was being tested for toxins, the doctors trying to see if some sort of poison had entered his system and claimed his memories. No test showed any positive results, however, which had them all dumbfounded. Falkner, of course, insisted that he was fine. He also insisted, however, that he didn't somehow forget two full years. Not having left the hospital since waking up there, he was entirely sure that the hospital staff were either pulling a prank on him or trying to force him to get some rest, since he tended to push himself more than he should.
Not able to claim her first badge, mostly due to the doctors not allowing Falkner any visitors for the time being, the new trainer spent her time wandering around the city and training her newly acquired hoothoot and gastly. While Klaudan was mostly quiet and tended to do his own thing while not training, Akira the gastly was a bit of a prankster. He moved things around to see how long it took his new trainer to figure out what had happened to what she had. He also enjoyed disappearing at random, forcing a game of ghost-hide-and-seek on his trainer. His game of hide-and-seek did cause a little bit of trouble now and then, mostly by his appearing right behind a young child, scaring them.
Most of the training Xanora did with her Pokémon was outside of the city. Klaudan may have been the quiet sort, but he did seem to have an interest in getting stronger. At first, the training for him was having practice matches with Shard. They both held back in their attacks, making sure not to seriously hurt each other. After Shard first used an Iron Tail during one of their matches, however, his interest in sparring died down. Instead, he would often stand with his back to a tree, hooting low before trying to smack the tree with his tail feathers. He was trying to learn the attack that had landed with a lot of power. His lack of an actual tail made it impossible to learn that move, but he was determined enough that he didn't seem to care how long it took to learn the move.
This was yet another day of training for Klaudan. Xanora and her umbreon as well as hoothoot were just outside the city limits, once more practicing on the trees. The training hadn't showed much success thus far, but the girl wasn't about to give up when her Pokémon was so determined to learn.
"Remember, Klaudan, you have to focus all of your strength into your wings. Once they feel strong enough to crush a boulder, fly at that thick branch up in the tree and hit it with your wing." She wasn't the best at teaching a Pokémon a new move, but she was going to see this through. Her buddy Shard had learned the move by actually slamming his tail into rocks, so she tried to use that as an example for how strong his wings needed to feel to learn Steel Wing. She wasn't about to let him smack his wings into rocks, though. His wings, unlike the umbreons' tail, were vital to him. Tree branches would still hurt every time the move wasn't used, but they'd at least cause a lot less damage than rocks would.
Being day five of this sort of training, the girl was running out of bandages. Her hoothoot was so determined to get stronger by learning that move that he just wouldn't stop slamming his wings into branches. All the trainer could do was watch while trying to offer decent advice. If nothing else, Klaudan's wings would gain a good deal of strength. Even if the move just couldn't be learned, his Wing Attack would be quite the force from all of this strength training.
Hooting deep in his throat, as had become his habit during this training, Klaudan yet again launched himself into the air after bunching his muscles. Smacking his right wing into his targeted branch, he let out a grunt-like hoot before heading back to the ground. The branch was missing some bark, a decent chip in the wood, but the attack was once again a failure. He refused to target the thin, flimsy branches. Those would give false hope just from snapping. No, he only targeted the nice, thick and sturdy-looking branches.
Stepping over to her either annoyed or irritated owl, Xanora knelt down and stroked his head. "It's alright, Klaudan. Don't worry about it." Glancing up at the branch her Pokémon had chosen to hit, she chuckled slightly. "Hey, just think. When we started, you wouldn't have even made a dent in a branch that thick. You're doing great."
Cocking his head, the owl looked to his trainer to see her smiling down at him. He had gotten used to the worry her face showed by this point, but was glad to see that her worry wasn't nearly as bad as when this training had first began. His wing hurt horribly that first day, and she fretted over him the entire time while in the Pokémon Center. Now, instead of staring at his wings and trying to decide if he needed bandages or to be carried to the center, she simply smiled a little. It was encouraging, really. Actually damaging his targets was also a great show of his improvement. He hadn't thought he was weak, before he had been caught, but now he knew just how weak he was in compare to how strong he could potentially be.
Author Note
This was literally all I could come up with in the week since I created and posted the last chapter. My desire to see this story to the end has drastically decreased, seeing that almost no one is interested. After all, what's the sense in writing something if I'm the only one that'll enjoy it.
If anyone wants this to continue, please post some sort of review. It can be something as simple as "Good stuff" or something as grand as what could be done to improve the story. Comment on how you liked or disliked the things in this story, in some way.
This will either be an interlude for the next chapter or just a small bit of personality showing at the end of the story. The choice of which this is, well, is up to you guys.
As my profile plainly states: No reviews, no stories.