Chapter 3: A move-ing performance
This morning was not too different from when I first woke up here. I felt as I have fallen off a cliff (which technically, has happend), and I could barely move. But I had to train.
The morning went the same as yesterday too. I woke up almost at the same time as Ember, and we both had some light breakfast as we went towards our respective buildings.
This time, though, I was going to the dojo alone, as I already knew my way. So after waving goodbye to Ember, I headed towards there. It was not a very interesting trip, to be honest, since I didn't know anyone in this city.
However, I felt something odd. As if someone was watching me from among the Pokémon that were walking through the streets.
I quickly shrugged it off.
I'm new here. Some people may not like strangers. That's all. What other reason could there be?
The feeling went away when I entered the dojo and saw Nash with his apparently usual paperwork.
"Hi, Jake. Kit's waiting inside. I think it's the first time he was this eager to train someone. You must be a great pupil, I assume?"
"More like the opposite..."
"Well then. Don't make him wait!"
I nodded and entered through the door that lead to the training area, and sure enough, Kit was already waving at me from afar.
"Hey Jakey! Glad to see you haven't given up yet! Ready to learn some moves?"
"Yep! Ready when you are"
I walked towards the small arena to begin.
"Alright, so the most simple move would be Tackle, but I'm sure you know how to tackle someone. So lets go for something a bit more complicated. You are going to learn Force Palm"
"So back to punching you?"
"Nope. Since you are going to be hitting things a lot to train, I am not going to be the punching bag"
He then signaled to a small wooden figure next to him. "You will hit that until you manage to break it".
"Umm...Kit, not to be rude, but that thing looks like it can barely stand still. You sure it won't break if I touch it?"
"If you are so sure, then break it"
I rolled my eyes and prepared myself in front of the small wooden figure. "Alright, what do I do?"
"Alright, so turns out that you have a move expert in front of you, so I know a lot about them. For Force Palm, you have to run up to the opponent, touch him with your paw, and then focus your aura on it to make some sort of aura-blast or something"
"Sounds simple" I smirked. "What if accidentaly miss and hit you with a full attack? Will you make it?"
"You will need more than a Force Palm to take me down, kid"
Alright, so run towards the opponent and focus aura on my hand? That sounds simple, right? Maybe it's not, but I have to train. I am going to learn a move today.
I took some deep breaths and prepared myself.
"So since is the first time, and the opponent is static, just walk towards the decoy and touch it with your palm. You can figure the rest on-the-go"
I nodded and walked towards the decoy. I put my palm on its "forehead" and asked Kit. "What now?"
"Focus! You have to make aura go from your whole body to your arm and then blast it out as an attack. That's why we practice what we did yesterday first. Maybe try thinking about your girlfriend again?"
I rolled my eyes. "You are not helping!"
"Come on! Focus!"
Alright. So focus energy in my hand and blast it out? Damn. It looks a lot simpler when you are the one telling Pokémon what to do.
I closed my eyes and tried focusing, but I couldn't. All I did was hold my breath until I couldn't anymore and I fell to the ground, panting.
"What was that? Come on, you have to keep breathing!"
I grinned and replied "If you are so eager to see me do the move, come here and do it!"
"I can't learn that, and you know it. Maybe if you do it, I can Copycat it, but you have to do it by yourself first"
And with those words of encouragement, I kept training for the rest of the day, but no progress. Not even a small crack on the decoy.
I want to punch it so hard right now.
Before I knew it, Ember was behind me with our lunch done again.
"Is he ok?" she asked Kit.
"Yes. I think so at least. He's trying to learn Force Palm, but there hasn't been any progress so far"
She looked at me, contemplating. Finally, she asked Kit. "Have you made him stand and focus against that thing for the whole day?"
"Yes?"
"I think I found your problem"
"What is it?" I said while walking towards her.
"If you don't feel the need to use a move, you will never learn it. You have to feel like you have to fight to win. And I doubt that a wooden decoy will do that"
Kit looked as amazed to hear that as I was. I grinned and looked at him. "And you are the trainer?"
"It's not like I had to train someone that was at this level! Normally, everyone knows at least something, like a basic move. Who even are you?"
A human in the body of a Pokémon.
I just shrugged.
"Well, seems like I arrived at the perfect time! I would say you look exhausted, but I don't think you've done a lot of things today. And no, no gummi shakes today"
We visibly saddened at that. But it didn't really matter. Having lunch with friends is enough, gummi shakes or not.
Friends. Never thought I would say that in this type of situation. But again, who would even imagine this situation at all?
"I don't mind. Having lunch with you guys is enough for me"
Kit rolled his eyes and replied. "I thought I was just the cool teacher?"
We sat down and Ember unpacked the food.
We had a pretty good lunch. Sandwiches again, but it's not like you can prepare steaks for three and carry them from one end of the town to another.
The conversation was not much different from yesterday. I asked Ember how her day had gone, and she answered with some complaints about someone being rude. Being a cashier sure looks like it's harder than it looks.
At last, time was up, and Ember went back to work. But before going she warned us. "If you fight, you better not give Jake a beatdown, Kit! If you break something, you are taking care of him tonight!"
"Don't worry! I wouldn't hurt your little friend"
And with that, she left. I suddenly remembered what I wanted to ask Kit so bad yesterday. But best to start off with another thing.
"Hey, cool teacher? "
"Yes, rookie pupil? "
"Do you think I could join one of those explorers team?"
He scoffed. "Join a team? Not currently. You have to learn to fight. Never thought that you would ask me that"
"Yeah. I always liked exploring and helping people. That's why I thought that joining one of those teams would be cool. And maybe even help me bring my memory back!"
"You gotta have some skills. Notably fighting skills, but also other things. If you want to be in a team so badly, the easiest way is to form one. You gotta pass a quick exam, but it normally means just going into a MD and fetch out something. It's not that difficult to be honest. I wonder who would you form that team with...?"
"Yeah. About that... I wanted to ask you if you knew something about why Ember is so reluctant to talk about exploring. Yesterday when she explained what MD's are, she really had a hard time saying 'explorer team'. I want to help her, but I can't if I don't know what happened. Do you know something?"
He tensed up for a bit, and then sighed. "I don't. I only know that it had something to do with her family and exploring. Whatever it was, though, seems to have really hurt her. Just to let you know, being in an explorer team was her childhood dream"
What?! But then...what happened? Was it that bad to put her off her dream?
"That...actually helps a lot Kit. Thanks. You know, Ember told me that she would give me a tour this evening and that then we could hang out. Maybe you want to join us? If you have nothing to do, of course. I want to talk with her about it and maybe I can tonight"
"Huh? You inviting me to go out with both of you? Really? Of course I'd love to! It was so long since I hung out with Ember! And I think you will need some help to not mess up trying to make her explain that incident. But don't you dare make me be the third wheel tonight!"
"It's not a date! Is that a yes, then?"
He nodded. "Yep. Can't wait. But I think we had enough chatting already. Time to continue"
He then took a battle stance. "If you land a Force Palm on me, you win. You want to join an exploration team? Bring it on, then!"
I prepared to fight. I quickly jumped towards Kit, but he quickly got away with what looked like Agility. I couldn't react quickly enough and got a Night Slash used on my back, which knocked me back onto the ground.
Since it was not very effective, I quickly stood back up and charged again at him.
If he was right about the move, I had to touch him. He used the same tactic as before and doged my attack before attacking me again, this time from one of the sides.
He is using Agility to dodge every attack I do! If only I could predict where he was going...
Hold up.
I tried using the aura thing and began seeing the familiar blue outlines and a grey blur with the form of Kit.
Just gotta do it again.
I charged towards him again and, as expected, he used Agility. But before he could strike me, I saw the grey blur from before come from my right. I dodged the Night Slash and put my paw on his back, and focused.
I felt something. It was not an attack, but I felt my hand become encased in some blue light before dissapearing.
"Not bad, kid. You used your aura-sense to dodge. And before you feel dissapointed, you are getting the hang of the attack. I felt something come from your paw! Not much, but it was something" he then kicked me back. "KEEP IT UP!".
"Come on! You almost got it!"
I was on the verge of fainting. We had to have been fighting for at least two hours now. Bad news, I was exhausted and couldn't almost hold still. Good news? Ember was right. Feeling like you need to use the move really helped.
I almost had it done. The only problem is that I couldn't hold the aura-charge enough time to be big enough to actually hurt, but if my opponent was a weakling? It would work out.
But if I want to be an explorer, there are going to be no weaklings to fight. I need to learn at least one move! Come on, Jake! You can do it!
Again I charged at Kit, but instead of trying to hit him, I slided between his legs and kicked his back making him stumble forward, giving me enough time to run towards him, jump and (somehow) do a flip in the air and (how am I doing this?!) land on my feet.
Before he could use any counter moves, I extended my arm and put my palm on his stomach.
THIS IS IT!!!
Blue energy came from my palm and encased it.
DON'T FAIL ME NOW!
I felt the energy in my palm become stronger and also unstable. But I had one thing in my mind:
I won't fail
When I felt that the attack was ready, I released it, knocking Kit a few meters back, making him fall forward.
I was panting. Arm extended, I didn't move at all, and...neither did Kit.
Did I knock him out? It can't be. He told me I would need more than this to do that, right? Please, let him be ok-
Kit's laughter took me out of my thoughts. He was laughing. He was ok. Thank god.
"What was that?! That was a perfect Force Palm! I thought you had no idea of how to do it! And that flip you did was amazing! Congratulations, Jake. You did it. You learnt your first move"
I-I did it. I learnt a move! I learnt Force Palm! And it's still so weird to say that!
"Of course I did it! I got the best teacher in the whole town, don't I?"
"Yes you do. Now, how about you help me up before I ground you?"
I walked towards the Zoroark and helped him on his feet (or claws, whatever).
"Thought you could cope with some Force Palms?"
"Yeah, because I thought they weren't going to be perfect ones? You did it amazingly! I hate to say this, but Ember was right!"
"Of course I was"
That voice took us both by surprise. Ember was standing near the door.
"How long have you been there?!" I asked in confusion.
"Just enough to see Jake doing the best fighting strat I ever saw him do. And also you getting beaten by a rookie, Kit"
"But don't you have to work?!"
"Yes. And I did. How long do you think it has been since we had lunch?"
"At most two hours?" I said.
"It's been six hours, Jake. I finished my shift, went shopping and came here and still had enough time to see you fighting"
"SIX HOURS?!" We both asked.
"Guess time really flies when you have fun. It was long since I had this much of it training. Now, how about we go hang out for this night?"
"Guess Jake told you already?"
"Yep. He said he was ok with it, so we are hanging out, I guess"
"Yep. Just three friends hanging out. I already warned Jake about not leaving me as the third wheel tonight"
"You want me to beat you up again?" I said
"Yeah! Can't wait to have fun! I hope that someone doesn't end up drunk tonight..." Ember teased Kit.
"Excuse me? I'm not the only one that gets drunk here"
"I dunno, Kit. You look like the type of person that would drink four beers without thinking about the consequences"
"What are beers?" I got as an answer.
The gestures that Ember made confirmed that, indeed, I messed up and there wasn't something as beers here. At least not with that name.
"It's...ummm, you know, like a drink with alcohol?"
"And what's alcohol?"
Ember put her paw to her forehead. I messed up again, it seems.
"Lets just go"
Kit rolled his eyes but decided to keep quiet. Ember approached and whispered to my ear. "It's Totter Seed juice. Not alcohol "
I nodded. More information is always good, I guess.
"Alright, I'll show you around, Jake. Lets go"
And she exited the arena. I sighed. I still had no idea how to even begin asking her about the incident.
"Looking down. You okay?"
"No. I have no idea how to ask her about it. I'm afraid I will mess up. I don't want her to get angry with me or something"
"We are probably going to go to drink something at a bar. I think it would be a good idea to ask her after that, as long as she's in a good condition of course"
"That is a great idea. Thanks for your help, Kit. For everything"
He winked at me. "No problem. Now lets go. Em's probably waiting outside"
And with that, and a new move on my movelist, we set out to have a night with an undecided end.
I hope she doesn't get angry with me. I want to be on an exploration team, and helping Ember would probably teach me how to be good with people. I hope I can help her. She saved my life, I want to help her as much as I can.
END OF CHAPTER 3
Woops, guess the night has to go on another whole chapter, since it will be a big tour! And maybe drama? Who knows?
