Today I decided to finally focus on getting started on Tinks and VV's training. I probably should have much much earlier, but we had important things to work on. Now that there wasn't any real construction we could do, we had plenty of time to dedicate to training.

Though I definitely underestimated how difficult it would be to train Pokemon on the Skyblock.

Battles were right out. We didn't have the space for it and I didn't want to risk any of our limited dirt being thrown off the edge and lost forever. Their sparring the other day back in Paldea, the name of the region we had ended up in, had torn up the area we had been practicing in, and I didn't want that happening here.

But while battling wasn't an option, they still have moves they could practice. Unlike the games where Pokemon just had instant mastery over a move and it couldn't be improved, various aspects of a move either learned naturally or through TMs could be improved. Power, control, accuracy, efficiency, speed, and more, depending on the move.

I had VV practicing the Shadow Ball TM by launching them into the empty air over the edge. It was one of the few options we had for attacking incorporeal things, and while I thought the chances of us running into something like that were low until we started going to more dangerous worlds, it didn't hurt to start now.

Levy, Tinks, and I watched as VV stood prepared looking past the edge. He was several feet away from it though, because there was no need to risk things unnecessarily.

"Alright VV, let's see what you've got," I said.

VV nodded before opening his mouth. In front of it a small purple ball of energy formed, swirling with dark winds. Over the course of a second or so, it quickly grew into something the size of a soccer ball. Inside of the ball, something glowed and pulsed with a malevolent purple energy that gave me goosebumps just looking at it, and it sparked with that same energy.

With a cry the ball shot forward into the air. Once again it reminded me of a soccer ball that had been kicked, initially traveling fairly fast through the air before slowing down and coming to a stop. Though it was unaffected by gravity and coming to a stop also meant it fell apart into stray wisps of purple haze that quickly faded away.

Still, the Shadow Ball traveled quite a distance before doing so. It was hard to judge distance, but my best estimation was a hundred or so feet.

VV looked over his shoulder at us, eyes somehow expectant.

"That was really cool!" Levy cheered supportively, causing VV to preen.

"Yeah, good job VV," I agreed. I didn't really have a basis on if it was impressive or not relative to other Pokemon, but it seemed impressive to me. It was exactly what I was hoping for. "The only thing that worries me is how long it takes to charge it. How about for your training for now you focus on trying to speed that up?"

"What he means is that it would be really impressive if you could shoot those super fast," Levy said, stepping in. Then she turned to me. "I'll work with VV, so why don't you go ahead and get started with Tinks?"

I shrugged. VV was technically her Pokemon anyway, I was mostly only calling the shots because I knew more about Pokemon in general. Though Levy had gotten a lot of experience that morning where she fought a lot of trainers, and she'd spent some time with the Pokedex reading up on Eevees.

"That's fine with me," I said. "Come on Tinks, I've got a few things I want us to try."

Tinks made a little chime-like noise and followed me to another corner of the Skyblock as Levy sat down with VV. I wanted them both to be able to focus on their own efforts and not get distracted by watching the other.

We took up a similar position and I squatted down so I could talk to Tinks more face to face. Tinks looked up at me seriously, though a little nervously as well.

"So there are three moves I think you should be focusing on for now," I said. "First, Thunder Wave. You might have to fight outside of Pokemon Battles, but often we won't want to hurt anyone, just stop them. If you can master Thunder Wave we'll be able to do exactly that."

Tinks' nervousness definitely increased at that, but I continued. "Second is Fairy Wind. It's a long range attack you can easily and safely practice here. And third is Swords Dance. You're going to be super strong when you grow up, and if you can master Swords Dance, you'll be the strongest of them all. Do you think you can do that?"

Tinks hesitated for a moment before nodding uncertainly. Then she tilted her head to the side, confused. She held up a hand with one finger raised, then raised a second finger, then a third before making a noise.

It took me a moment to interpret her question. "Which one should you do?" I asked. She nodded. I rubbed my chin. "Are there any that you're more interested in?"

Tinks thought for a moment, putting her finger to her chin in a very human-like gesture. But she shook her head, apparently having no preference.

I mulled it over for a bit. "Thunder Wave," I eventually decided. "Fairy Wind you know naturally so training that is more about improving efficiency, and we already trained with Swords Dance a bit the other day. Let's practice with that one."

Despite it being a core part of our strategy to take on the Gym, we hadn't trained Thunder Wave much that day because we only had so many Paralyze Heals and didn't want to spend a ton of money on them. Which meant we skipped it in favor of practicing Rock Slide.

But now I had an idea for how to train it.

I went over to the pile of unused 'METAL' letters and brought a couple handfuls of them back to Tinks. "Can you squish these into a ball? Something about this big." I formed a circle with my hands a few inches wide. "It doesn't need to be perfect, it's fine if it's rough. It just needs to not fall apart when I throw it."

Tinks looked at the pile of iron, considering it. She picked up an 'L' and an 'A' and put the tall part of the 'L' through the center hole of the 'A' before bending it to secure it in place. Even at just one foot tall she could casually bend the metal like that. Then she looked up at me and nodded quickly before returning her attention to the letters.

A few minutes later she had what I requested. It definitely wasn't pretty, and in fact was a jagged ball of scrap, but that was exactly what I asked for. I held my hand out and she gave it to me. The edges and corners dug into my skin, but it wasn't sharp enough to draw blood unless I really gripped it tight.

"Okay, this is what we're going to do," I said. "The most important part of Thunder Wave is making sure you actually hit what you're aiming for, so we're going to do some target practice. You face that way," I pointed to the corner adjacent to the one we were at, the one opposite of where Levy and VV were. "I'll stand behind you and throw this ball, you try to hit it with a Thunder Wave. Don't worry about the power for now, just focus on hitting it. Got it?"

Tinks nodded and let out another warble, so we took our positions.

I started out with gentle lobs that arced over her head and landed a handful of feet in front of her. She'd hold her mallet out, it would crackle with electricity, and a spark would shoot out aimed at the ball.

She actually managed to hit most of them, surprising me. She missed a handful over the course of our practice, especially as we neared the end and she was getting more and more tired, but most of the time she hit the lobs I was giving her. Next time I'll throw them further and faster, see how she handles that.

I had to recover the iron ball each time I threw it, which was annoying, but I didn't want to take the time to have Tinks make more of them. And that would only help so much as I would still have to retrieve them all and carry them.

But it helped pace things out so Tinks didn't tire herself out quickly, and I could look over to see how Levy and VV were doing. From what I could tell, and from what Levy told me as well afterwards, VV managed to make some progress on how fast he could fire a Shadow Ball, but it was slow going.

Shadow Ball was a very tiring move compared to something like Thunder Wave. And further, VV didn't have the downtime that Tinks had and was firing them at a much higher pace. So he had to stop frequently to rest and recover. Levy would sit down with him and talk with him during those times, but they were too far away for me to hear.

Improvement would be slow, for now. Really, what they need to improve is Talents. Well, need is a strong word. But they would help a lot in increasing how fast they improved. Certain Demiplane Laws would help as well. All of which were things I wanted to get soon, but I had to prioritize what earned us Credits first, rather than what was convenient.

Still, we spent all morning chipping away at it. It was simple and repetitive, but that's just how working out and training is like. You have to put in the time. And time is something we have a surprising amount of.

We finally stopped at lunch time. Tinks ate her half of her daily blapple and promptly fell asleep, as did VV.

As Levy and I ate lunch, and after she gave me a rundown on how VV's training went, Levy brought up something important.

"You should praise VV more," she told me. "He's… well, he's prideful. He needs to be praised or he'll lose morale."

"Didn't I compliment him on that first Shadow Ball?" I asked, confused. "Was that not enough?"

"It would have been if you hadn't immediately followed it up with a criticism," Levy explained. "Didn't you see how he reacted to that?"

And, of course, I hadn't. Thinking back then, and the few times I've tried to think about it since then, I didn't remember his reaction at all. I wasn't sure if I was even looking at him when I made the comment about needing to improve his speed. I'm pretty sure I had been still looking at where it had disappeared.

"No," I admitted. "But that wasn't a criticism. It's not like I expected him to have mastered it already, I was just pointing out the thing he should focus on for today's training. The power, speed, and distance were fine, but the startup time makes it predictable."

Levy sighed. "I know, but he's a little more sensitive to that kind of thing. From your perspective it was meant in good faith, but to him it sounded like you were saying the thing he was proud of doing wasn't good enough."

It was my turn to sigh. "That's… it sure is an interpretation of what I said. Telling him where he needs to improve and work on is kind of our job as his Trainers."

"But we can do it nicely," Levy insisted. "Be encouraging so he'll work even harder. Isn't adapting to the needs of our Pokemon also our responsibility?"

"I guess, yeah," I admitted. Then I sighed again. "I'll try to be more careful about it in the future. Couch my criticism as more… gentle suggestions I guess?"

"Just tell them to me, I'll make sure we work on those areas," Levy said. "You just offer him praise, okay?"

"I can do that," I replied. As I noted earlier, she's nominally his Trainer, if she thinks it's best that she's the best one for that role, I'm inclined to let her. I'm not having any problems with Tinks, at least I don't think I am, so I'll just focus on her.

"Good!" Levy said cheerfully, the matter settled.

We finished our lunch in silence, my mind fixated on our conversation. I could feel a small pit of anxiety in my gut as I thought over my interactions with VV. I knew my social skills were, at best, middling. I wasn't likely to stumble over myself and panic in any random conversation, but this was hardly the first time I've missed social cues others considered obvious.

It was never a good feeling, realizing that. I'm glad Levy told me, so I wouldn't make that mistake again, but it kind of ruined my afternoon as I couldn't help but beat myself up for it. Even as we transitioned into making more clay pots(we have a bunch of clay pots we aren't using but they could easily break and you really can't have too many, especially once we start growing berries) I was only half paying attention to what I was making as I thought over it.

Tinks and VV woke up from their nap and, seeing that we were busy, started playing with each other. I glanced at VV a few times, trying to gauge his mood. He seemed fine as far as I could tell, but I didn't really have any confidence in my ability to assess that.

I noticed Levy glance at me a few times, worried, but I just shook my head and gave her a smile. Even with my reaction, I was glad she had told me, so I didn't want to burden or make her feel bad for doing so.

Of course, I knew that wasn't going to happen if I continued like that. There was no way I fooled Levy for a moment. So I did what I always do when faced with a problem, and came up with a plan.

The sun was starting to set by the time we finished the next set of pots. We really should start doing those in the morning, because having them dry overnight seems inefficient when the sun could dry them during the day and we could fire them when it had set. But making them was always something we did when we didn't have anything else to do that day, so it usually happened later in the day.

But as we ate dinner, and as I ignored the churning in my gut that really didn't need to be there, I looked over at VV, who was sitting looking at the sun. "Hey VV?" I called out to him. He turned to face me with an inquisitive look on his face. "Levy told me how well you did earlier in your training. Do you think you could show me? I really want to see how awesome your Shadow Ball is now."

I had picked my words carefully so I didn't accidentally say something dumb again, and it seemed to have worked. VV perked up and let out a small bark before turning to face the other way again. He raised his snout to the sky and created another Shadow Ball.

If I'm being honest… I'm not sure if there was an improvement in how fast he formed it. It looked faster than I remembered, but not by enough for me to be certain of it. Which is roughly the amount of improvement I expected to be honest. It was going to take more than a morning of work to see a large difference.

But I didn't say any of that as I watched him fire it off into the sky. Instead, I did as Levy said. "You must have worked really hard while training," I said, trying my best to sound genuine. "Because that was really impressive. Good job VV."

VV's face was elated as he looked back at me and let out a happy little yip. He approached me and I held out my hand to pet him, fingers sinking into his soft fur. He let out a purr of contentment and crawled into my lap as I continued to stroke him.

When I looked up Levy was watching us with a fond smile. Our eyes met and her smile grew bigger and she gave me a thumbs up before mouthing "Thank you." I shook my head and smiled back, just happy to have resolved that situation before it got worse.

And that was pretty much the end of the day. VV is still on my lap as I write this entry, and I feel like we've gotten closer. Tinks and Levy have been spending some time together as well, with Levy making small bits of iron for her to play with and offering her some tips. I can see that Tink's hammer has been half disassembled again and they're working together on improving it.

I wonder if this is what daily life is going to be like from now on. Probably, but also probably not. We'll get more people eventually, maybe even soon. We'll grow from here, take on more projects, automate more things, and gain new abilities. Maybe I'll still spend my evening relaxing and talking to the others while looking at the stars. Maybe I'll be too busy training with a sword or in a garden or practicing magic.

Who knows? Certainly not me, but then again, that's half the fun, isn't it?

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AN: I've decided to stop doing multiple uploads at once. It's not fun to upload multiple chapters to multiple sites simultaneously. And I'm sure none of you are going to complain about more frequent updates, even if they're small.