Cynthia had a great day, getting a recommendation from Keya, but it might all blow up in her face now that evidence of her past indiscretions has been plopped in Ayame's lap. Will the tomboy forgive Cynthia for playing pranks on her (former?) boyfriend? Or will she be mature enough to brush this aside as a harmless prank? Either way, though, it doesn't reflect well on her maturity for taking care of newborn pokemon. Remember to review!

KedharS: And it will never fail to screw her over, either.

Jjjdunk1: Cynthia keeps messing up, it's kind of funny.

Arbiter8991: Yeah, it's been a while since we've seen the Track and Field Club. Does anyone even remember Jamie?

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 1260

"Can I ask you something?" Ayame asked. Cynthia decided to not make the point that she just did ask her something.

Ayame was in a rather scary mood, after all.

"Um… sure, what?" She winced.

"Why did you think I would just give you a recommendation?" Ayame asked.

"W-Well… we're friends, right?" Cynthia asked hopefully. Unless Ayame's memory problems meant that they-

"Well, yeah, obviously."

Phew. Dodged a bullet there.

"But that doesn't mean I would just give you a recommendation."

"…Oh." It didn't? Whelp. This had been cocked up from the start then.

"Yeah," Jamie agreed emphatically, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why would the captain help out her love rival, huh?"

Ayame's eye twitched. "You… are not helping," she sighed. "This has nothing to do with Blake. Even if I was still interested in Blake, which I'm not, I wouldn't let those rumors affect my decision. I'm not just going to write you a fucking recommendation until you prove yourself worthy of it. That would just be irresponsible."

That… sounded pretty reasonable actually, Maddi had to admit. An awkward giggle escaped her lips as she smirked.

"Oh! A pokemon battle?" Cynthia brightened. "Sure, I'd love to! But, uh… my team's kind of exhausted right now, so I'd need to give them time to rest at the Pokemon Center…"

"Huh? Are you nuts? No, not a pokemon battle," Ayame said, rubbing her temples. "Why would you think I needed to judge your battling skills?"

"Um…" Because… this was the Pokemon Academy? Cynthia wasn't the asshole here, her assumption was valid, right?

…Although now that she had to think about it, a pokemon battle probably wouldn't be the best test of her qualifications…

"Look, Ayame, I'm gonna let you know right now that if you're going to test me, I am NOT a fast runner. I can't even run a 10 minute mile! I can't run a mile period!" She wailed. "So if you want to challenge me to a race for your recommendation, that's-"

"Are you mental?" Ayame squinted, unsure if Cynthia was actually being serious or just messing around. "I'm not going to race you for your recommendation. That wouldn't prove anything! I need to make sure you can actually do the job I'm recommending you for. We're dealing with a nursery here, that's newborn baby pokemon. If you can't take care of them, then there's no way I'd let you get a job working there."

"Okay, yeah, that makes sense… so what do you want me to do then?" Cynthia shifted her weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable.

"…Well, to start, I want to take a look at your setup for taking care of your pokemon right now," Ayame said, raising her eyebrow.

Maddi held in her snickers at Cynthia's "oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense" face. The redhead stared dumbly at Ayame, before nodding.

"Sure, let's do that…"

Honestly? Cynthia should have expected something like that to begin with.

And with that, Maddi decided that now was as good a time as ever to say "farewell". Ayame and Cynthia were heading back to Cynthia's dorm, and Maddi's dorm was the other way. A fairly easy time to split up and head back to-

"Wait, Maddi!"

Maddi really needed to start wearing backless clothes whenever possible, Cynthia was wearing out all her collars.

"What?" Maddi groaned.

"Don't go away! I need you, for moral support!" The redhead pleaded, staring up at Maddi with big watery eyes that would give puppy pokemon a run for their money.

Maddi sighed. She glanced at Ayame for an instant and the tomboy flinched, averting her eyes. No wonder, given the situation.

"…Fine. I'll go," she grumbled. The track team all went their separate ways now that there was nothing to gossip about (not that that would stop them) and the trio of Cynthia, Maddi, and Ayame headed for the Bulbasaur Dorm.

By the time they reached the dorm, Cynthia had the impression that something was very wrong. There was an awkward tension in the air, and she doubted it was just because she of how serious the situation was.

Ayame had never been the type of girl to joke around casually with her friends like Cynthia or Sango would. Unless it was with Blake, of course, because those two had quite the rapport. So it wasn't unusual for her to be this quiet, per se.

Even so, Cynthia still felt uneasy. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable given by how she was fidgeting, and the flashes of tension across her face. Under the circumstances, Cynthia would have assumed that it was because Blake also lived in Bulbasaur House, and she was feeling anxious about possibly running into him again.

That would have been the conclusion Cynthia would have reached if Ayame had been the only one behaving oddly.

But Maddi had been acting weird too. In the opposite way. She was actually talking. And not only that, she was the one initiating the conversation, bringing up stuff to chat about with Cynthia, random bits of small talk that felt completely out of place. It thoroughly weirded Cynthia out, and made her absolutely certain that something was up- Maddi was just trying to talk to her, after all, and was trying very, very hard to act as if Ayame wasn't here.

Something had happened between the two of them on the trip to the Orre Region, Cynthia was certain of it. She just had to figure out what it was.

Wait, no! This isn't the time to play detective! I need to show Ayame that I'm totally the kind of girl who would rock it as a nursery aid! Cynthia reminded herself, finally remembering the whole reason she'd brought the other girl here in the first place.

"Okay! Here we are!" Cynthia said, stopping in front of the door to her dorm room. Luckily, they hadn't run into Blake, so Ayame's mood hadn't been worsened by anything. She swung the door open and led the girls inside.

"Ayame?" Sango sat up in bed curiously. "What are you doing here?"

Julia waved from where she was lying down on her bed. "Yo."

"I'm here to do an inspection on Cynthia's living conditions and how she raises her pokemon," Ayame explained. "She's trying to get a recommendation to work in the nursery, so I thought it would be prudent to inspect her daily caretaking practices."

Julia sat up now too, sharing an open-mouthed stare of shock at the redhead. They glanced at each other, trying to comprehend what they'd just heard.

"With that in mind…" Ayame's eyes swept across the room, observing the state of chaos. The girls had been back for a single day, and already things were a mess. Their suitcases were half-unpacked, their dirty clothes littered the floor around the laundry hamper instead of resting inside it, and… were those open food containers?!

Ayame turned to Cynthia and gave her a sour look. She pulled a clipboard out of thin air. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to dock you points for this," she sternly rebuked the other girl, conjuring a pair of glasses out of nowhere and pushing them up her nose.

"Hey! Hold on now!" Cynthia exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at Ayame. "Don't use your memory loss as an excuse to redefine your character parameters! Where'd you get that clipboard from?!"

"It's part of my duties to make sure that this environment is accommodating for pokemon," Ayame calmly explained. "And while there's nothing here that can be construed as hazardous…" She took another look around the room.

"…I wouldn't call it the room of someone who's responsible enough to take care of young pokemon, either," she sighed, writing something down on her clipboard.

"Hey! That's not fair!" Cynthia wailed. "I do MOST of the cleaning in here to begin with! Heck, I go to Caelia's room sometimes and clean that up, too! This mess isn't my fault, it's because of these two slobs!"

Ayame raised her eyebrow and glanced at Sango and Julia. "That's… unexpected. Is she telling the truth?"

Sango's guilty expression and inability to meet Ayame's piercing gaze spoke volumes. Those glasses just added too much to her intimidation factor.

"W-Well, I mean… I'm really busy with my other responsibilities, so…"

Ayame sighed.

Julia made absolutely zero excuses for her behavior and stared Ayame dead in the eye. "I keep my mess in my section of the room. It's concentrated madness and it works for me."

"You see what I have to deal with?!" Cynthia wailed. "It's like shoveling snow off the driveway in the middle of a blizzard! …I assume."

Cynthia neither had the license to drive a car, nor resided in a place where snow existed in great abundance.

Ayame sighed, scratching her head. "Well, I suppose I can't blame you for that, then," she admitted, crossing something out on her clipboard. "Now, on to the next part of the inspection, pokemon food. What are you feeding your pokemon?"

Cynthia's face lit up.

"Well, where do I start?! See, a lot of pokemon food is store-bought, right? But that stuff has a lot of added preservatives and junk and isn't very nutritious. So when it's feeding time I just give my pokemon stuff I make myself! You see, cooking for pokemon is actually WAY simpler than making food for people, since they aren't that picky. As long as the food is adapted to their individual tastes and is easy to digest, then they love it! So I always make sure to buy a lot of bulk materials when I go shopping. Then I just use the facilities here to make special pokemon pellets! And everybody loves them, of course! It took a lot of trial and error to get the proportions right, especially when it comes to new pokemon. And Aud in particular was tricky! Since she was just a newborn it was difficult to get the ratios right at first and account for all the nutrients a growing pokemon needs, so I had to rely on Serefina's recommendations and the recipe she provided. But now that she's matured enough to no longer be considered a baby I can give her food like all the others and- why aren't you writing any of this down?" Cynthia asked, tilting her head to the side in confusion.

"O-Oh, sorry. I just… got a little carried away," Ayame said, scribbling down on her clipboard that they could skip the assessment on food. Maybe it was her brain damage, but she'd completely forgotten that Cynthia was a phenomenal chef.

"So what next?" Cynthia asked hopefully. Judging by Ayame's reaction, she was totally acing this little assessment.

"What about medical care? I hope you're not handling that by yourself," Ayame said.

"No, totally not!" Cynthia shook her head. "I take 'em in for checkups at the Pokemon Center every two weeks, and I make sure that they're being looked after if they get too injured."

A shadow crossed her face and Ayame caught it.

"What's that? What aren't you telling me?" She asked suspiciously.

"W-Well, it's, uh, it's like I said," Cynthia mumbled. "I got into a pokemon battle earlier, and some of my pokemon fainted… I know I should have taken them to the Pokemon Center, but I didn't…"

Ayame frowned. Leaving a pokemon in a condition where it was unable to battle for too long was NOT a good thing.

"Wait," Maddi jumped in. "They're fine though. She used items on them. Revives and hyper potions."

Ayame blinked. "Well, that changes things. And all your pokemon are conscious?"

Cynthia nodded. "Yeah. I don't want to fight with 'em, though. Not until I take them to the Pokemon Center."

Well, it was still a demerit, but nothing critical. Ayame could let it slide if they went to the center after the assessment was complete.

"What about exercise? How often do you let them out of their pokeballs?"

"Oh! All the time!" Cynthia gushed. "We go practice our battling every day, you know?"

"There's more to outside-the-pokeball time than just battling," Ayame chastised her. "You also need regular, normal exercise as well. Things like calisthenics. It'll help improve your pokemon's concentration."

"Calisthenics, got it," Cynthia nodded. "Anything else?"

"Play time? Do you just let them goof off?"

"Yup! After we're done with practice we all hang around and have fun, maybe do a picnic!" Cynthia laughed. "Kick around a soccer ball, make sandwiches, you know, all that stuff that makes the games super-easy and boring."

Ayame didn't play video games so she didn't have any comment on that, but stuff like playing soccer was always good.

"One more thing," she continued. "I wanted to talk to you about Aud. You said that she's growing fine, right? Since she hatched?"

"Yeah, she's great!" Cynthia let the pokemon out of her ball. "Take a look!"

The last time Ayame had gotten a good look at Cynthia's Vulpix had been before she went on her trip. In the month since then, the little fox had gone through quite a growth spurt, now nearly the size any healthy Vulpix would expect to be in. She definitely couldn't be called a baby pokemon anymore, that was for sure. And with Ayame's appraising eye she could see just how good her pokemon's condition was, and felt a little impressed, honestly.

"She's so big," Ayame smiled, reaching down to pet the little fox. She remembered how much of a panic Cynthia had been in when the little thing had first hatched. "I'm glad you're taking such good care of her. She's perfect."

"Thank you!" Cynthia gushed, picking up Aud and hugging her. "She's just great, aren't you little Aud? Yes you are, yes you are!" She cooed.

"Vulpix!" Aud cooed right back.

Ayame felt overwhelmed by the sweetness. She sighed.

"I remember how much you cared for her when she was a newborn, I don't think there's anything to worry about on that front," Ayame said. "There's just one last thing I want to check though."

"Oh, yeah? Sure! Anything!" Cynthia nodded eagerly.

"I want to assess the condition of all your pokemon," Ayame said, narrowing her eyes.

There was a reason that Ayame's recommendations held such weight in the Caretaking Course. Frankly, not that Cynthia knew this, but a recommendation from Ayame would have been enough to get her immediately admitted into the program no strings attached. She wouldn't have even needed Keya's recommendation.

And that was because of Ayame's eyes.

With just a glance at a pokemon, Ayame was able to see how well it had been taken care of. How much time and effort the trainer had put into improving its condition. Certainly, pokemon that were high-leveled or naturally strong could give off a distinct impression and were harder for her to judge, but in terms of absolute quality of care there was no one more skilled to measure that than Ayame.

Cynthia clearly had no idea how significant this was. She nodded cheerfully and reached to her belt, but then caught herself.

"Whoops, got a little too excited there," she laughed sheepishly. "Letting out Tristan or James or Elise in here woulda been bad."

"Yeah, no kidding," Julia sneered. She didn't need Cynthia's pokemon mucking up their room. Would she have loved to go to bed every night snuggled up in the center of a Fire type triangle of Roden, Blaze, and Nuri? Damn right she would have, but she had more sense than that.

"We should probably finish this up outside," Ayame nodded. "See you, Sango. Julia." She waved goodbye and the other girls headed back out. Sango waved goodbye back, calling "see you, Maddi!" after them.

When they finally headed down the stairs and away from Blake's room, Ayame let out a sigh of relief. But she couldn't breathe easily just yet. There was still a chance that she could run into Blake coming back up, after all.

But she was fortunate. They made it to the field outside Bulbasaur House with no issues whatsoever.

"Alright, gang! Come on out!" Cynthia was carrying more than the mandated limit of six pokeballs, but it didn't really matter. She sent out her pokemon.

"Kirlia!"

"Breloom!"

"Loudred!"

"Swellow!"

"Spheal!"

"Mawile!"

"Gligar!"

"Vulpix!"

"…"

Eight pokemon, just as Ayame remembered, and-

She stared at the fox-eared mute girl in stunned silence.

"This is Ruka!" Cynthia introduced her. "You guys met already, right? On the beach yesterday!"

Frankly, Ayame had repressed most of that. She just nodded dumbly. "Okay, um… could you have her turn back? I can't really assess her condition this way…"

"Right! Go back, Ruka!" Cynthia urged.

"Zorua!" Ruka chirped, returning to her fox form. She padded over to Aud and smiled. The Vulpix gave her a curious glance.

"Aww, how cute!" Ayame grinned, unable to hide how adorable she found the whole thing. Cynthia had two foxes now.

Anyway, back to business. Luckily, grading the conditions of pokemon was an easy job. She started with the ones in the best shape, the four Cynthia hadn't used in her battle with Keya. Rose, James, Chris, and Leon all looked great, healthy as could be. Whatever Cynthia used in her pokemon food it clearly did good work.

Since she'd already assessed Aud's condition earlier, that just left the remaining four. And frankly, Cynthia had made a big deal out of nothing now that Ayame could get a closer look. Oh, certainly, Tristan and Elise were exhausted and worn down, but beneath that Ayame could tell that their baseline condition was fine. And since their strength had returned from the revives, Ayame would just about suggest that she didn't even need to go to the Pokemon Center for treatment.

She'd still advise it anyway, of course.

Next was Ruby. She was in better shape than the other two. Her hand was injured, and there were traces of freshly-healed burns, but nothing a good stay at the center wouldn't fix. She held her head up high with confidence.

And, finally, Ruka. The Zorua seemed to have an aversion for staying still, much like her trainer. But Ayame crouched down beside her, staring intently at the little fox, and was able to study her closely enough to see that everything was alright. She was about to get up and tell Cynthia the good news when Ruka had a playful idea.

A very, very bad, very Cynthia-esque idea.

Ruka had no idea how important this assessment was to her trainer. But what she did know was that Ayame had a very hilarious reaction when she'd seen Blake on the beach earlier. And since Ruka herself was so fond of Blake, she couldn't help playing around just a little bit, to tease the girl who had his attention.

So while Ayame was right in front of her, she transformed into Blake.

Oh, and the illusion she created wasn't wearing any clothes.

Ayame screamed.

Whelp. Way to go, Ruka. Screwed Cynthia over on the last stretch. She was so close, too! Now what'll happen? Will Ayame still give her that recommendation? Or will Ruka's immaturity and Cynthia's inability to rein her in reflect poorly on the little fox? This certainly isn't looking good for our girl, that's for sure. Thanks, Ruka.