As the two walked on, Akuma used the trainer battles on the sides of the road to point out common flaws and useful techniques that could be used during the average battle. Some trainers were ignorant of the surrounding area before releasing their Pokémon and were immediately put at a disadvantage. Others relied on their Pokémon's special abilities to play a big part in the battles. One group even let their Pokémon battle without giving commands to see how well they had trained. Akuma also requested that the kid figure out who would win battles within ten seconds after the battle began. This was very difficult to do, and it depended on pure chance really, but he wanted to see how fast the kid was learning.
Before long they came within view of the ocean. No more trainers dotted the area, but there was a Pokémon or two down by the shore and seagull Pokémon, called Wingull, could be seen out across the horizon too. Akuma and the boy were higher up on a cliff face and couldn't make it down to the shore unless they wanted to be. Instead they walked along the edge toward a larger than average house to the east.
When they come closer they saw that the house was decorated with pictures of Pokémon both rare and unseen etched into the framework. Akuma could pick out some extinct ones too, but he wondered how many the boy could recognize, if any.
"Tell me," he asked, "how many Pokémon do you recognize in this artwork?"
"Just a couple," the kid said as he studied the pictures carefully. I can figure out Mew, Porygon, and some Eevee evolutions. I think I've seen a few others too, but I don't know their names."
"Which ones do you not know the names of?"
"This one in particular," the boy said as he pointed to a streamlined Pokémon with two fins on its back end. It was almost shaped like an elongated bullet. "I saw this one pass through my front yard in Cerulean a year ago."
"I recognize it too, but I don't know its name. I'll get some help from somebody after we're done here. She'll be able to help us find out its name I think. When we go inside don't freak out too much when you see who we're visiting. I think he's tired of all the fawning."
"Who is it?"
"His name is Bill. He's an enthusiastic Pokémon collector and loves new Pokémon discoveries."
"I don't think I've heard of him before."
"You will soon then. Just watch your excitement when you make that discovery." Akuma opened the doors and walked into the large hall within. He saw a man hunched over a computer so focused that he didn't even hear them come in. Akuma made sure his footsteps could be heard while he walked towards the desk so the other man wouldn't be startled by a sudden appearance. He looked up after they were more than halfway across the room and seemed to be expecting them since he didn't panic.
"Are you the one who found the thieves?" he asked when they were in reasonable hearing distance.
"Yes, all your Pokémon were accounted for except for four that the Rockets had taken. They weren't among the ones that they had already stored."
"That's disappointing," Bill said in a sorrowful voice. "I was hoping that all of them would be recovered."
"Fortunately for you, they were," Akuma said as he pulled out the pokéballs he had lifted from the rocket's group. "I found them separately from the others, but still intact. The release device on one of the pokéballs is broken though. You should get it fixed soon. Since they weren't with the others I came to deliver them myself."
"Thank you very much," Bill said as he accepted the pokéballs from Akuma's hand. "Yes, it seems like Flareon's pokéball was damaged somewhere. I'll have it fixed soon. Do you want payment now, or should I contact your employer?"
"Contact him if you would please. He takes care of the business deals; I'm just the handyman."
"Lavender, right?"
"Correct. Is there anything else you want to settle before we go? I'm pressed for time."
"Would you let me leave a Pokémon in your care? I've tried to balance my work and my Pokémon's needs, but it's a chore sometimes to finish everything at once. When I owe a competent and trustworthy trainer a favor I usually offer one as thanks. I'd like to give one to you so it can get more attention if you're willing."
"Only if you give it to him," Akuma said with a motion to the boy. "I have enough Pokémon to mange right now as it is. I need to choose my acquisitions carefully and earn them myself."
"Okay then, I'll be leaving one of my Pokémon with you it seems," Bill said with a smile at the young boy. "Are you his business partner?"
"No, I'm a regular trainer. I'm going to be his student for the next few weeks and I'll beat him someday because I'm going to be the best!"
"Is that so? Well then I'd be glad if one of my Pokémon was able to defeat him! It would be something to be proud of as a collector. Come with me, I'll show you which ones are available."
"I'll wait by the door," Akuma said. "My schedule doesn't allow for much time so I need to leave quickly."
"We'll be back in a moment," Bill reassured him. "I'll help him choose a suitable partner."
When they went into the next room the boy quickly asked Bill some questions. "What did you mean by business with him? Does he have a job that requires him to travel?"
"You don't know what he does?" Bill asked. The boy shook his head. "In that case I would recommend you don't ask him about it. It's not a position I think he wants many people to know about."
When they came into the next room the boy saw a vast assortment of Pokémon both rare and beautiful. There were Pokémon ranging from small green flowers with roses on each hand to seven foot tall brown giants. There were even Pokémon that looked like clay dolls sitting as decoration and a six foot rock monster in the middle of the room. The boy was overwhelmed by the numerous species that spread out before him and was suddenly struck with the realization that he would be allowed to take one of these magnificent creatures with him.
"Well?" Bill asked, "Which one would you like to have as your new partner?"
Kurishimi had arrived at the intersection an hour ago, but Akuma hadn't shown up yet. She had humored a passing trainer with a short battle that she quickly won, but after a while she got bored again and started looking up information for Abra in her pokédex. As it turned out, she was right about Abra not being a good combatant. It's only natural ability was to teleport away from battles and if it wanted to learn any other moves it would have to be born from special parents or have a trainer use a technical machine, or TM, to teach it how to use new attacks. Even then its potential was still limited. She thought about looking for evolutionary information, but she had quickly grown bored of the limited data. Instead she released Grimer and Jigglypuff from their pokéballs and started battling herself to train her Pokémon.
"Now that you have a new Pokémon partner," Akuma was telling the boy after they had left the house and were heading back toward the intersection, "you need to learn how to take care of it and raise it correctly or it will grow up like that Mankey your Nidoran fought earlier. It will be even harder because it was used to Bill's treatments and won't adjust well to yours at first. You need to learn as much about it as possible, so we'll go over its attacks, abilities, and quirks while we go. Before that though, I need to know what Pokémon you chose."
"Wait a second! You told me just a little while ago that I shouldn't show you my Pokémon team if I intended to beat you. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, and under normal circumstances I wouldn't ask, but this Pokémon was not caught and raised up until this point by you so we need to work quickly to get you two adjusted to each other. Now what Pokémon did you receive?"
"It's a short electric type with a power socket on its head. Bill told me it was a baby Elekid; only a few months old."
"In that case training may be easier than I thought. But I suppose it could also be harder too now that I think about it. Do you have any experience with electric Pokémon?"
"I got electrocuted by a Pikachu once. Does that count?"
"To a point. Elekid's electrical power is far less than a Pikachu's so the result should feel less painful if you should be electrocuted."
"It felt like my eyes would melt out of my skull. That's not all too reassuring," the boy said with a pained look on his face.
"Good thing you remember too. It'll make Elekid's seem less painful. Now then, on to business. Elekid has two basic attacks at its disposal: quick attack and leer. If those are the only two it still has I would recommend striking with leer first then following up with a quick attack, but if the opponent is faster than you are it might be better to strike with quick attack right from the get go and aim for a weak point on the opponent or get to a better spot to counter attack and then use leer. This is only if it has two attacks though. If it was born a few months ago it should have access to a thundershock, the most basic electric attack there is."
Akuma continued his explanations of Elekid and basic battle strategies in standard combat for a good part of the trip. After he covered what few ideas he could think of he began explaining proper care and treatment for baby Pokémon, and of course he covered Elekid care in greater detail.
As they neared the latter half of the trip back Akuma noticed the sun had begun to set and he remembered what he'd said about the meeting afterwards.
"We'll have to cut our lesson short here. We've wasted too much time and we'll need to run to the crossroads that lead back to Cerulean quickly. There's someone waiting there and I can't be late. We'll run as fast as we can." So saying, he broke out into a high speed sprint with the boy following behind him. Two minutes from the crossroads a group of three people walked into the middle of the path. He called out for them to get out of the way, but they stood as if they were blocking his path intentionally. The sun hadn't touched the horizon yet, so he slowed to a stop a short ways from the group and instinctively raised one hand to one of the pokéballs resting on his chest.
"What do you want?" he asked the group.
"You humiliated me a while ago," the figure in the middle said. "You taught a good lesson, but you must understand that I have to take back some of my honor as a trainer."
"You're spouting poetic nonsense," Akuma countered. "And you'll have to remind me who you are because with the sun in that position all I can see is your silhouettes against the background. But at least I can give you points for dramatic effect."
"I'm the one that you beat with that kid's Nidoran," the person said again. "All I want is to beat just one of your Pokémon with mine and I'll let you go."
"And what about the kid; you aren't holding anything against him?"
"No, but if I did, I don't know where he'd be to fight him either."
Akuma looked behind him and saw the kid far behind running to catch up. If the others didn't know that the boy was behind him he would've been easy to miss. Akuma released Charizard from its pokéball. "There's a kid about 12 years old on the road behind me running this way. Go get him and bring him back to me," he ordered. Charizard gave a questioning growl. "I don't know his name. He's wearing yellow shorts and is running this way. You can see him from here, go get him." Charizard nodded and flew down the road to escort the kid.
"That was an impressive Charizard," the other person, now his opponent, said. "What will you do now though? You can't have enough power in your other Pokémon to take on a whole team of four trainers."
"Don't the Pokémon league rules state that only one trainer and their Pokémon are to battle at a time?" Akuma asked suspiciously.
"Call this 'trainer ingenuity' if you want," his opponent stated with the words Akuma had told him just recently. "You're obviously a very capable trainer, so this a tactic that gives me the best chance to win even if it does twist the rules like you did against my Paras' stun spores. You'll only get one Pokémon to battle with. We'll fight you with everything we've got."
"Now that's not a fair battle," Akuma said as he pulled a pokéball not from his chest straps, but from inside an inner pocket within his vest; a seventh pokéball. The color was a dark red on both halves decorated with black trim and while the shape was still spherical in design chunks of the ball seemed to have been intentionally cut away. "How much challenge could there be in only four trainers?" He opened the pokéball and a massive flash of rainbow light erupted before the battlefield as the other four trainers emptied a total of 18 Pokémon to battle with.
The boy kept running up the road after Akuma. His new teacher normally moved so slow and methodically it was almost Slakoth-like. He had no idea he was tutoring under someone who was also so… athletic. He'd really need to train himself as well as his Pokémon to keep up with his master; both metaphorically and physically. As he ran he heard a call that reminded him of something he'd heard only from fairytale legends. He slowed as he looked up to see a red dragon flying down the path towards him. Panicking, he turned around and ran back the other direction, almost stumbling over his feet as he did so. He was much too slow of course and the dragon passed by him with a roar that could have come from the wind as much as the dragon itself judging by how fast it was moving. The blast of air knocked him down to the ground and he thought he was safe until the dragon circled around and swiftly came bearing down on top of him. The boy quickly crawled backwards in a futile attempt to escape as the dragon landed right in front of him. Again he scrambled to escape but the dragon closed in on him with only a single step. This time it grabbed him up and started flying down the road in the direction it had come from. Then he realized that it might have been sent from Akuma to fetch him since he'd been falling behind.
They did arrive at Akuma's location just as he recalled a Pokémon that he'd been battling with. The boy didn't see what it was or any details other than the usual beam of light when it was recalled. Then he noticed the multiple Pokémon sprawled across the equally ruined area. Whatever Pokémon Akuma had used, it was clearly a devastating opponent. Now more than ever, he wondered if he stood a chance to become the best if this was less than what the best really was.
Akuma did not like using that Pokémon; given the circumstances and his lack of time though he'd had no choice. Whenever he even revealed that Pokémon's existence he cringed. He could have easily won with one other Pokémon, but he was too rushed to care. As the last Pokémon began to collapse, Akuma recalled the dangerous creature he'd called upon. Immediately afterwards he heard the sound of Charizard approaching from behind him. Akuma stuffed the pokéball back into his inner pocket quickly and turned to recall Charizard as well.
As the dragon vanished the boy asked, "What happened here?"
"I was ambushed because your opponent from before felt like he was insulted. There's no time for explanations, run ahead of me to the crossroads." The boy obediently ran ahead while Akuma walked over to his attacker who was still looking at his fallen Pokémon with an empty stare. "Let me point something out to you that you'll find very interesting," Akuma said as the roughly grabbed the other person by the collar and gave him a single hard shake. "If you ever pull a stunt like this again, whether I'm your opponent or not, the Pokémon league will find you and take away your license and you won't be able to do a thing about it. Raising Pokémon is a privilege, and you've pushed your luck too far. When your license gets taken from you because of something like this it will be illegal for you to even touch a pokéball for the rest of your life. I will forget what happened here if you start thinking for yourself from now on and never speak to anyone about my existence or that of my Pokémon. Will this be enough to wisen you up, or should I report you when I get back to Cerulean?"
"No," the other trainer said with obvious fear in his voice. "But who are you? What kind of person can be that strong?"
Akuma let go and the trainer dropped to the ground. "Someone you should forget about if you value your future. I'm best left forgotten, but remember what I said or you will regret everything you've seen today until you die."
Akuma left the trainer to his shock and potential grief, knowing that some Pokémon in the group had not survived the assault and ran after the boy. He had less than one minute left until the deadline and two minutes before he could reach that point.