Chapter 4

I woke up the next morning utterly exhausted. It had been a long time since I had walked as long as I had the day before, and I realized I was probably out of shape. Well, nothing for it, I guess I'd be training alongside my Pokémon.

I sat up gently, rolling the unconscious form of Ralts off of my chest and into my arms. She didn't wake or move at all, a cute little snore escaping her the only indication that she was alive at all. I banked up the campfire, boiling some water in a pot, before I made a thick gruel out of some grains and berries I had in the backpack. As the smell of breakfast wafted through the camp, my three companions started to rouse and investigate.

The first one up, surprisingly, was Pidgey. The small bird stretched with a short trilling song, before fluttering to land on my shoulder. He rubbed up against my cheek, his soft feathers tickling my face as he sidestepped back and forth along my shoulder.

I scooped out four bowls of the gruel, setting them down on a large stump. Pidgey hopped down and began scarfing down his breakfast. Rattata poked a twitching, cautious nose out of my sleeping bag, then bolted over to me with a silver flash of energy. She let me pet her behind her large ears for a bit, then began to fastidiously eat her breakfast, taking small lumps in her paws and nibbling on them.

Ralts blearily walked over, a grumpy, tired look on her face.

"Oh cmon now, don't look like that. It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and look! Breakfast."

"Rrrrrrrr." She muttered, rubbing the side of her head. But she ate, and that's all that really mattered. Seeing that my Pokémon partners were all eating, I tucked in myself, mechanically eating the rather bland gruel.

I'll admit, I've never been a great cook, but it filled the hole and it was good enough for me. As I ate, I scrolled through the menus of my pokedex, looking for training tips.

I remembered from the games that were were a handful of species that didn't learn any offensive moves for the first couple of levels. Magikarp and Ralts being prime examples. So the question was, how did they level up in the wild? In the games, the accepted method was to send out the Magikarp first, then switch out for a Pokémon with offensive moves to defeat the opponent, sharing experience among the two. It didn't seem like it worked the same way in real life though.

I knew the first move Ralts would learn would be confusion, the weakest of the psychic attacks. But how to teach it? The Pokédex had the answer! Apparently confusion was essentially a telepathic shout coupled with a telekinetic push. The push provided the damage, while the shout could confuse the opponent. So, to teach confusion, I had to teach finer control with Ralts' teke.

But first, some general conditioning. I gathered my team together, giving them the basic layout of what we'd be doing this morning. Essentially, we'd start out with wind sprints, push-ups, crunches, and planks, followed by some weight training with stones and boulders I'd found nearby.

To be perfectly honest, I thought I'd have a mutiny on my hands at the looks they gave me, that is, up until they saw me start running the wind sprints too.

And so the morning passed. We did ten sets of ten, and by the end of it, we were all ready for a break. I passed out some water before we sat for a while, resting.

But then it was back to it. For weight training, I found two twenty-ish pound rocks, and using some rope, tied a harness around one. The harness got attached to Rattata, and I told her to start pulling on the rock, see how far and how fast she could go while the rock gave resistance.

Sure enough, it was slow, but her four little paws dug into the dirt and she slowly inched along, the rock carving a furrow into the ground behind her.

For Pidgey, I tied a simple loop around the rock, and put the loop in his talons. His task was to attempt to lift the rock with his wing power alone. His goal would be to lift the rock a foot off the ground and keep it there as long as he could.

He gave it his best shot, and he didn't give up, I'll give him that. He could only manage to lift it a few millimeters off the ground, for split seconds at a time, but it was a start.

For Ralts, I had found a small pebble, about the size of my thumb. I set it on a large flat rock and had her focus her senses on it. Her task would be to lift the pebble with telekinesis alone. And so she sat, focused intently on the tiny pebble, her horns glowing faintly.

I found myself drawn into the exercise as well, my attention drawn to the pebble just as hers was.

As I focused my mind on the task, I started to feel foreign sensations, feelings that weren't mine.

Focus

Determination

Strain

Pull

Feet gripping the earth harness digging in rope chafes slightly pull pull PULL

Stroke stroke stroke lift strain more power SUCCESS

Small pebble granite with metamorphic inclusion I am the pebble the pebble is me move move MOVE

I watched as the pebble shook, then slowly, inexorably lifted off the rock. Ralts' face shown with elation as she focused intently, forcing it up, up, up. I held my breath, both at the shock of hearing my pokemons thoughts and at the success of Ralts' training.

"Good job Ralts! Everyone, that's outstanding work!" A small chorus of happy sounds greeted my pronouncement. "Alright that's enough for today. Let's hit the road! I want to hit Viridian City before nightfall, then tomorrow we'll head to route 22 to hunt down some new friends. Sound like a plan?"

Chirps, trills and an irreverent salute greeted me. We quickly packed up camp and hit the road.

We walked along in silence for a few hours, focused on the road, and fighting off the myriad wild Pidgey and rattata we found. My team was growing stronger, but they were also getting tired.

It was then that we heard the screams.

I looked at my team, sharing a look of agreement and determination. We took off, running through the brush towards the screams.

The sight that greeted us took me aback for a second. A young teen girl, about the same age as me, was laying on her back in the grass, screaming as a large Beedrill bore down on her with sharp stingers. She was pretty, long legs emerged from a pair of short shorts held up by suspenders, over a yellow top that struggled to contain a sizable pair of tits, red hair swept up into a side ponytail. Huh. So far I had assumed that this universe was some variation of the games, and I had been acting accordingly. But here was Misty Waterflower from the anime, though the situation was different than I remembered.

"Hold on! I'm here to help!" I shouted. "Pidgey, use gust! Rattata, use bite! Ralts, hit it with confusion!" My three pocket monsters jumped into action, knocking the giant wasp away from the girl, as I ran to her side, helping her up off the ground.

The Beedrill picked itself up off the ground, shaking dirt off of itself before buzzing angrily. It's attention had shifted, it glared at me and my team before it's two arm stingers began to shine with a light green glow.

"That's a twinneedle! Dodge it Ralts!" The diminutive psychic type threw herself to the side, rolling to her feet. She launched another confusion attack, and the Beedrill screeched in pain, but seemed undeterred.

Beedrill was a bug and poison type, which left Ralts at a distinct disadvantage. I ran over the list of moves my Pokémon knew, before I finally hit on an idea. "Pidgey, spam it with gust attacks! Everyone else, fall back!"

Pidgey trilled a challenge to the giant bug, before flapping his wings hard. The training had paid off, as the formerly anemic gust of wind was now a powerful burst of concentrated air. The gust attack slammed into the bug, knocking it into the dirt again, hard. I held my breath for a second, hoping that had been enough.

Unfortunately, the Beedrill shook itself off again, before spitting a purple glowing needle at my small bird. Thankfully, Pidgey dodged the Poison Sting, barely. "Pidgey, use Quick Attack to build up speed, circle around it, then use that wind in your next Gust!"

Pidgey chirped an acknowledgement, then moved to execute. He disappeared in a flash of silver energy, circling around the giant bug, again and again. The Beedrill tried to follow him, but quickly lost focus. I could feel the air starting to cyclone around it, a small localized tornado, before Pidgey finally stopped outside the air current. He flapped his wings towards the nearest wall, sending the whole mess towards the bug. The result was spectacular.

The Beedrill was caught in the outer wall, buffeted again and again by the flying type attack, before falling to the dirt, unable to get up. I recalled Pidgey and Rattata to their balls before turning to the girl.

"Are you ok, miss?"

"I-I'm fine. It just took me by surprise. I r-really don't like bug Pokémon."

"Everyone's afraid of something." I smiled. "Let's get you out of here, how about it? Viridian isn't that far from here."

She nodded, and off we went.