“Do it again.”

  Sol concentrated, turning his psychic type energy into rock. I took note of how long it took him to do so. It definitely needed improving otherwise it would never be viable in battle. He needed to be able to do it automatically whenever he thought about using Rollout. But we still had to get the actual move down before that.

  Focusing back on Sol, I looked into our psychic bond. I think it was getting stronger, or something, because I could feel him molding his own energy into rock. It felt sort of weird though, and I couldn’t really get a full grasp on it. When he finally finished, the cell Pokemon propelled himself forward using rock type energy. It wasn’t applied correctly though, because his momentum quickly fizzled out and he bumped to a stop.

  A disappointed, telepathic voice coming from the green Pokémon boomed through my head, first there was an incomprehensible groan of frustration before actual words, “Another failure, making it is easy now, but controlling it and using sucks hard ass.”

  “Yeah…” I agreed, before having a quick thought. “Do you think using psychic powers to skip the buildup process is viable?”

  “Nah. My psychic powers still ain’t all that. I can only really levitate small objects and, I guess telepathy. I can’t even fully do that, though,” Sol answered.

  “Guess we’ll have to do it the normal way,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t think a low level move would be this hard. This sucks.”

  I shrugged, “Well, we should be able to get it down by Violet City. Then we can start learning some other moves, or at least try before we have to take down Falkner. Oh, well, we’d just have to keep going at Rollout until we got it down.

  But before that, “Show me your wide Reflect and then you can get back to Rollout.”

  Sol groaned out a ‘yes’ and focused his psychic energies for a quick second. He was far faster at using his psychic energies, probably because it was more natural to him. A thin white layer of psychic energy appeared in front of him. I started the timer right before it faded, and waited.

  This Reflect took quite a bit longer than the others before it had. It was initially hard to maintain at first, but it looks like it got easier with practice. Now Sol could hold it for quite long, though I wanted to test it with Ralts’ attacks. I’d get to Ralts as soon as I finished timing Sol’s Reflect. Didn’t really need the timer at this point, Sol said he could hold it for pretty much forever now, just like his smaller Reflect.

  After I had caught Ralts, we had hit the road again. Ralts traveled with us and asked a bunch of questions, mostly about us and our journey. He wanted to make sure he could get stronger on our journey, which was probably something he should’ve asked before joining us. But it worked out apparently, traveling the region was also good for his hero thing or whatever. I didn’t really think that there would be many opportunities to actually be a hero. It made me wonder if maybe Ralts would leave us once it got strong enough.

  Anyways, we had a camp a few hours later and did some training. That’s when our initial attempt at Rollout had been. It hadn’t gone much better, but somehow this recent attempt was the better of all others.

  Then we went to sleep. It was safe to say that we hadn’t gone much traveling down yesterday, with all that trouble in Union Cave. But there were no other obstacles—not that Union Cave was one, that had just been my own dumbassery—so we would be able to reach Violet City in… not exactly record time, and not even average. But we'll reach it soon.

  I looked towards Ralts, who was practicing its Confusion. I’d told him to do that while I worked with Sol for a while.

  Now that I had two Pokémon to train, it felt like I was doing a lot more. I needed to keep track of both of their progress. And I had no doubt it would get a lot more complicated with more. Just taking a surface look at what I needed made me realize I had to save money. Ralts either evolved into Gardevoir or Gallade, depending on if they were female or male, respectively.

  Since my Ralts was a male, it’d take a Dawn Stone to evolve it. Dawn Stones weren’t just like any old Fire or Thunder Stone, they were rare. In other words, they were easily accessible, but expensive as all fuck. So I guess I would need the money from my parents anyways… whatever. I probably should’ve thought about that before I’d caught him, not like I was just gonna refuse…

  I also should’ve thought about typing. Ralts was a fairy type, which was actually a great type in general. Typing didn’t matter that much when it came to the big leagues, but it would help me a lot even then to be immune to dragon types if I got that far. Considering two very strong trainers exclusively used dragons. But psychic… Well, it wasn’t bad, but I already had one, which was overlapping.

  Typically, overlap didn’t matter that much, especially in the big leagues like I said, where any one Pokémon could be extremely different from another no matter the typing, or even if they were the same species. But right now? A good ghost type would destroy me, and that was not good, considering one of the gym leaders used that type…

  Also, Ralts’ fairy type changed to fighting type when it became a Gallade. I’m not exactly sure what to make of that, but I’ll probably think about it later. In any case, this ordeal made me realize I needed to choose my remaining teammates carefully. If I managed to even get a choice.

  Whatever.

  I realized I was staring aimlessly at space while thinking about all of this. Really needed to make these thinking sessions shorter.

  “Okay Ralts, I’m done with Sol,” I said as I sat down on the grass to be on a more fair level with him. “Show me what you got.”

  Observe.

  I nodded, and Ralts yelled out something before disappearing. I was confused, before realizing what had happened. It wasn’t disappearing, it was a Teleport. Ralts were commonly known to use that when they felt they were in danger. I looked around and spotted Ralts just a few meters from where he had stood before.

  I was intrigued by this. It could be very useful if used efficiently, “Can you go farther? Or is that your limit?”

  Ralts shook his head along with feelings of negativity that seemed to flow out from him. Definitely not, then. That explained why he didn’t use it to run away from the Geodude. It probably wouldn’t of worked all too well.

  “Show me your next move.”

  Ralts nodded his head before concentrating for a few seconds. It let out a cry before a small Confusion was formed by its horn thingie. The hypnotizing psychic rings faded after a little while meaning it was pretty weak. Not as much as how Sol’s used to be, but definitely not as good as he was now. That’s probably why Ralts had been impressed when he saw Sol’s Confusion.

  “Okay… we need to work on that. We already went through this whole process with Sol so I should be able to help you with Confusion,” I said. Ralts nodded once again, emitting determination. “Any other moves?”

  “One.”

  I nodded, almost telling him to show me what it was before I remembered that it was Flash. “Uhhh don’t show me that last one!” I said in a panic, just in case he got the wrong impression. His Flash was pretty good, at least from a close distance. It had basically blinded me…

  “You know, a Ralts having Flash is weird.” I said, remembering what I had found out last night.

  Ralts cocked its head sideways, basically saying ‘how so?’

  I explained, “Well. I checked my Pokédex, which is basically just a device with information about like… all Pokémon, or at least most of them. And yeah, according to it, Ralts aren’t supposed to learn Flash. Like, ever. Even with an HM of whatever. So… how did you learn it?”

  Ralts shrugged, it's feelings telling me it didn’t seem to know. That was weird, and very uncommon. Surprisingly though, it wasn’t completely unheard of. There were cases of Pokémon knowing moves that no other Pokémon of their species could learn. Just didn’t think it would happen to me…

  I just wish it was with a better move than Flash, I sighed. “Well, maybe we can work with it. For now, just go watch Sol train. Maybe he can help you? I’ll set you up with a proper regiment tomorrow. I need to do some more research on you right now.”

  Ralts obeyed, going over to Sol immediately. I joined them shortly after, where Ralts was watching as Sol tried Rollout once more. I think he was getting better at using his rock type energy for the right purposes, but I couldn’t tell.

  “Ralts is going to watch you train,” I warned Sol. “So answer any questions he has without being a jackass.”

  “No promises…” Sol sassed, then paused as he remembered something. “Also, you haven’t nicknamed him? Was that only for me or something?”

  “Oh yeah…” I muttered. I completely forgot about nicknaming him. Upon hearing about nicknames, Ralts was now staring at me expectantly. “I’ll give you a nickname, just give me a second.”

  Thinking about it now, I guess it was better to just keep up the same naming convention, right? The only reason I really named Sol was to differentiate him from any other Solosis—not that I’d seen other Solosis, they weren’t too common, even in Unova—and for sentimental values, I guess. Ralts couldn’t really be shortened. I guess I could use Kirlia’s name, but I’d rather use Gallade and shorten it to… Gal.

  I just realized that Sol isn’t named after his final evolution, whatever. Gah, got to keep myself from getting sidetracked. I looked down towards Ralts and presented his name to him, “Your name will be Gal.”

  Gal sent positive emotions towards me, and he seemed to be a little more animated. I heard that empaths were fueled by positive emotions, or something—except ghosts!—. So that was probably it. I smiled, kneeling down to be a little more on his level.

  “Welcome to the team, Gal.”

  …

  I sat at the base of a tree to the left of the path. Hopefully Sol and Gal didn’t get into any trouble while training alone. I took a last glance before focusing back on the task at hand; looking over Ralts’ information.

  A lot of the info here talked about their rarity, a product of their early access to teleportation. Apparently they couldn’t teleport long distances until they evolved into Kirlia, and even then it’s apparently hard to do then. Gardevoir and Gallade could do long range teleportation with just a little bit of training, maybe even innately.

  A Ralts’ empath abilities were also very small. Ralts was basically the only Pokémon who had these sorts of abilities and no one quite knew why. Apparently the source of this power was in their red horn… thingy. It was attached to their brain, and if one was somehow cut off, a Ralts would lose their ability. Not gonna wonder how someone found that out.

  Apart from sensing other people’s emotions, Ralts could also send their own emotions outwards. They became more skilled at this as the grew up and evolved, which is basically how everything worked with Pokémon. Once they got powerful enough, it was said that Gardevoir and Gallade could actually edit people’s emotions, which was a very unique ability. It wasn’t a very confirmed or researched fact, but it had to have come from somewhere, right?

  I looked over Gal’s specific movepool, which was pitiful right now. Teleport, Confusion, and Flash. Despite the fact that Gal had a move only unique to him in Flash, this didn’t mean we’d be winning any battles. Gal wasn’t completely trained, which I’d have to rectify today or tomorrow. I still needed to know what exactly he needed to grow…

  Moves like Disarming Voice should come naturally. It was very common for low level Ralts to know it. It was as easy as channeling fairy type energy into a scream’s soundwaves. Fairy was one of Ralts’ natural typing, so it should be pretty easy.

  That said, technically Gal’s movepool was better than Sol’s. He was practicing Rollout right now, but it wasn’t completely useful. My time in Violet City needed to be used wisely. Hopefully Gal and Sol would have a full moveset, maybe more by the time we fought Falkner.

  By a full moveset, I mean four moves. The earliest battle simulations only had four moves because of data restrictions. Luckily, we’ve come a long way from those battle simulations like… decades ago. But there was a genre of Pokémon games still based around those. Other fighting and more open-world games had more moves to demonstrate how Pokémon did indeed, have more than four moves.

  But I had a bunch of the former games, so I was pretty familiar with that terminology.

  Okay, it was time to go. I think I have an idea of a warmup for Gal. Apparently they didn’t have the best capacity for continuous psychic moves, so I’d have to try and train and expand his limits.

  I gathered Sol and Gal before getting back onto the path. Once again we started to make some progress towards Violet City. We were heading west now, not that I could really tell the difference. In any case, there were three main trails that one could take. There was no real difference between them, as they all lead to Violet City. But back in the old days no one path was relatively well known so they’d made a bunch.

  I chose the central one, since it was the road most traveled and I didn’t have to go through a bunch of trees. A difference from Route 30 was that there seemed to be a lot more ledges and small cliffs here. I’ve had to slide down or avoid a few, but they didn’t inconvenience you as long as you followed the path.

  Now that I had two Pokémon, I had to of course use more of my feed. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could feed Ralts with food to spare. When I got a third, I wouldn’t have extra to spare. With any more Pokémon, I needed more space or would probably just need to reorganize my backpack so I could put more food in it.

  I could also stop feeding Sol every meal. He only needed a meal every few days to stay healthy and function well. I didn’t want to feed him less than three a day. His life gel was super efficient with nutrients and all of that. He’s never complained about being hungry, which is definitely something Sol would do. Sometimes he even feels bothered to have to eat. But it feels inhumane to feed him any less, even if it isn’t. Whatever, I guess.

  Another thing about having a new member is how much Gal talked. He was a very curious Pokémon, partly due to never having lived with humans. He’d lived… amongst them, from what I could tell. But he’d never been partnered with one or anything like that.

  He had a lot of questions about traveling, journeying, and humans or whatever that we hadn’t gotten to earlier. I didn’t even know the answers to some of his questions considering we’d only just started our journey. But somewhere along the line Sol had gotten involved and now the two were just yapping at each other.

  Despite Gal being on my shoulder—he was too slow to walk on his own—, I’d managed to tune it out. And I’d have to for the next few hours, there were no moments of silence around these two…

  …

  I put my backpack down and started to pull out food from it. Unlike Sol, Ralts could actually taste the psychic type food. I hadn’t exactly anticipated for another teammate so the food blocks/pellets I had were pretty generic in taste since Sol didn’t really taste. Ralts said that the ones I had tasted bland with a hint of mint or something. I dunno, I gave him some sliced oran berries since we had extra and I doubt we’d be in an emergency from here to Violet City. He appreciated it, but apparently Aspear berries were his favorite so I’d have to put that in mind.

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  After eating, we headed back to training. Gen started his warm up immediately and I informed Ralts at what his task would be. Basically, he would try to stretch the limits of his teleport while building up a Confusion. Hopefully this improves both skills—though I doubted it would help Confusion—, increase his psychic capabilities, and multitasking skills.

  Gal started his warm up, and I could tell he was excited to be able to train. But after just a few minutes he was getting tired quickly. Sol had had better stamina from the start, though I think that’s because Solosis had to levitate themselves from birth so he had a lot more experience.

  I have to give credit to Gal though. He didn’t give up, and was determined to finish the warm up. He teleported at a snail's pace, and by the end he was almost passed out. I gave him a few more Oran slices to help him get better, and we took a small break so Gal could recover before actually training.

  After that I left it to Sol to test Gal’s Confusion. It obviously is going to take longer than an hour or so for Gal to improve his Confusion to Sol’s level at least. But I decided to at least get them started.

  According to Sol, Gal’s Confusion was still “weak as shit” but he’d gotten Ralts to focus at least. It was easy to tell if he was focusing when you could feel his emotions just by standing close enough. We—Gal—had wasted a lot of time with the warm up and break, so we had to get going soon after.

  Not long after we set on our way again, we were suddenly interrupted by a loud yell.

  “Hey, you! In the green! Wait up, let’s fucking battle!” A voice from behind me suddenly shouted. I ignored Gal as he yelled something back as he emanated annoyance or something of the sorts. Instead, I turned back to spot the source of the noise.

  It was a girl who was running towards us. She had blonde hair that was done in a ponytail, fair skin and was wearing an orange tank top and shorts. Following behind her was a considerably shorter violet skinned Pokémon that was seemingly wearing brown shorts and shoes and had its chest covered by bandages. It was humanoid, though it had these three weird horn spikes that kinda looked like a mohawk or something.

  I recognized the Pokémon. It was a Tyrogue, a fighting type Pokémon that were found in Johto. As I analyzed the pair, they were suddenly right in front of me.

  “Didja hear me? Let’s battle, kid!” The girl hollered, even though she really didn’t need to. I raised my eyebrow at kid, seeing that she was considerably shorter than me. If I had to guess, she’d probably gone out on a journey as soon as she could, and was probably thirteen years old.

  “Um, I dunno…” I hesitated. “We are in the middle of a route…”

  “Let me fucking battle or I’ll kill Gal or something.” Sol threatened, responding faster than even the girl, “That’s a stupid reason not to battle,” she said, “One spray of a potion and your Pokémon will be back to tip top shape. Besides, once a trainer’s eyes meet another, they’ve got to battle, y’know?”

  After I got over the quick headache of being talked to mentally and physically, I almost chuckled at that. It was a line that originated from one of the Pokémon games and was quite memed upon… In any case, she was right. It was just paranoid to not battle now, and I did want to fight again.

  Besides, I was worried about what Sol what do if I didn’t let him fight.

  “Alright, let’s do it.” I agreed.

  …

  Now we stood on opposite sides of each other on a roughly rectangular grassy battlefield. It was a little small, but our Pokémon probably weren’t going to need all that much space. There was also a stump around the middle of it, nothing we could really do about that. I’m sure it wouldn’t bother Sol, maybe we could use it against Tyrogue though.

  As we moved away from the road to find a suitable place to battle, the girl—Jennika—told me that Tyrogue was her only Pokémon. That was fine by me, I didn’t really think Gal should be battling yet anyways.

  “Yo, Gal.” I said as I set him down on a rock so he could spectate. “Watch the battle and learn how Sol responds to instructions.”

  Gal responded positively and I turned back to the battle, where Jennika yelled at me once again. “Are you ready? C’mon, let’s start!”

  I yelled back that I was, and after a small countdown, the battle began.

  “Get in close quick and set up with Reflect! Also Confusion!”

  “Foresight!”

  Tyrogue’s stance straightened out as his eyes focused on Sol’s movement. On my side, Sol zoomed towards Tyrogue setting up a Reflect with a Confusion in hand at the same time. The warm ups did pay off.

  “Dodge and counter!” Jennika commanded as Sol released. Tyrogue dodged under the psychic energy and got in close quarters with Sol. For a second, I thought they were going to actually use Counter, but instead, he punched Sol straight up. I’m pretty sure that was a Rock Smash, and a powerful one too. It cracked and pushed Sol’s reflect back, making him almost take damage despite the Reflect.

  “Damnit, get back and use Focus Energy!”

  I was about to call for us to retreat, but I figured I should keep up the momentum in this situation. “Confusion and refine Reflect!”

  Sol snowed a bit of hesitation before following Tyrogue, following my commands and attacking once more. Tyrogue easily dodged that one, hopping to the right before dodging another by sliding forward. He started to move inwards, probably noticing he was backing himself into a corner.

  We saw small success as Tyrogue seemed to blunder on a dodge, getting hit by a Confusion. It slid back, but recovered quickly. I could tell a few more would probably weaken it enough for us to win, but…

  Foresight was a lot better than I thought it’d be. Against a Pokémon that didn’t move with limbs, it was still able to anticipate attacks. Tyrogue would probably never get hit if it was a bit better trained, though these two were better than most in the battle facility.

  “Go in!” Jennika suddenly shouted. Tyrogue did exactly that, and having caught Sol right before a Confusion, he needed to move.

  “Back!” I responded, with Sol understanding immediately. He backed up sufficiently and I ordered for another Confusion before hesitating.

  Tyrogue hadn’t fully gone in for a hit, I realized. I hesitated on my words, which caused Sol to be caught off guard.

  “Fake out and Rock Smash!”

  Tyrogue moved quickly and struck against Reflect with a precise swipe. Then his other fist came in heavy with a Rock Smash that managed to break the Reflect in one fucking hit—well, technically two. Tyrogue managed to nick Sol with it, too.

  “Tackle!”

  Before Sol could back away any further, Tyrogue kept the pressure on and crashed straight into him. Sol was sent to the floor, but seemed to recover after a few seconds.

  “You okay, Sol?” I checked as he floated back towards my side of the battlefield. He sent positive emotions, followed by determined vines.

  He was still good at battle, though I could tell that had done a number. Sol still needed to get better at taking hits. One or two more and we might be out for the count.

  I set Sol back into close quarters, which was probably the best thing to do. If I waited any longer it seems like Jennika would’ve sent Tyrogue after us. Better not to be the one on the receiving side.

  Despite not being able to attack using his limbs, the battle became a close quarters fight. Sol tried to catch Tyrogue with Confusions while Tyrogue tried to break his Reflect. It was a battle of reflexes, and it was hard to tell who would win.

  Tyrogue dodged to the right, avoiding a Confusion. It went for the obvious frontal assault, but doubled back as soon as another Confusion came near. That had been a planned Fakeout, apparently. Because Tyrogue hit the Reflect from the side, damaging it but not enough to get to Sol.

  Sol kept Tyrogue off of him with a quick but weaker Confusion that Tyrogue still had to dodge. And then backed off to restore his Reflect. Tyrogue was on Sol quickly though, a Rock Smash managing to push through the Reflect and hurt Sol right before he reinforced the Reflect.

  We were definitely losing.

  With Foresight on their side, Tyrogue could dodge basically everything. His reflexes were faster and my commands were fast enough to contend. Sol was sorta fucking lost out there. We’d probably lose if it went on like this.

  We should probably just try a really strong Confusion that was guaranteed to hit. He might hit us with a strong Rock Smash, but at least we were getting one solid hit on them. And maybe this would be strong enough to get us the one.

  Besides, if I could build a Reflect up. We could minimize damage.

  So that’s exactly what I did. I focused more on Reflect than combatting Tyrogue, and we were able to hold a Reflect pretty well after that. If we stayed defensive too long though, Jennika would probably try something. On the very next Rock Smash, I ordered for a-

  “Confusion!”

  A fist cracked against the protective surface of Reflect. The fist reached Sol, who let out his Confusion before being pushed back quite a bit. He’d been injured too, I could tell. But not as much as before, probably due to resisting fighting type attacks. Despite that, Sol was still lying on the floor, seemingly unresponsive.

  “Sol, you okay to continue?” I called out, watching Tyrogue. It had been stunned by the Confusion, and had broken form. It was recovering, though, so we needed to do something else.

  “I’m fine. Just give me a moment…”

  “We don’t have a moment, get up!” I commanded, now knowing that he could still battle. Sol needed to get the fuck up quickly.

  I looked back over at Tyrogue, who had pretty much gotten up by now. We needed to act now, otherwise we’d have to return to losing in close quarters or another Hail Mary that probably wouldn’t work now that Jennika had seen it the first time.

  Fuck it, we ball. Literally.

  “Rollout!” I ordered.

  I could tell Sol was shocked by my command, but he got over it and performed it anyways. He created rock type energy, quicker than he’d ever done before despite being injured.

  That was proof my gambit might have merit. Pokémon adapted quicker, and they learned really well under the stress of battle, for some reason. I was pretty much banking on that. If a Rollout hit was able to hit, then we could win, I think.

  Sol used the rock type energy to propel himself, holding his body sturdy as he rolled towards Tyrogue. His body almost seemed more ball-like as he performed it. Fuck, he was actually doing it.

  As he got closer, I could see his control was starting to slip. But we were too close now, he was going to fucking hit Tyrogue.

  “Counter!”

  That wouldn’t help. If Tyrogue dodged out of the way, Sol should be able to bounce off the stump and gain more momentum. If he could keep the rock type energy working correctly.

  But that was operating on the assumption that Tyrogue would use the same countering technique that he’d been using throughout the match. And because I’m a fucking idiot, I didn’t account for the fact that he could be using the actual move.

  Why would I? I’m pretty sure they didn’t even learn Counter. But this one knew it, and he fucking caught Sol with his hands!

  With how Counter worked, I knew Tyrogue would use Sol’s momentum to hurt him. What is it over? I watched as Tyrogue stumbled backwards a bit due to the momentum, and as he was pushed back towards the stump, he lost form for a second.

  I shouted the command as quick as I could, “Confusion, Sol!”

  Somehow, Sol managed to get his bearings and shoot out his psychic rings at Tyrogue. They fucking hit, and I watched as Tyrogue stumbled.

  “Confusion again and get out of there!” I followed up, though I was pretty sure that that was the end. As Tyrogue was struck again, I was proven right by Jennika’s voice.

  “Tyrogue’s had it. Shit, you definitely win this one.” She yelled out, probably so we would stop attacking. I heard Gal shout something, though I wasn’t really paying attention. Because… we fucking won?

  Damn. I forgot how good battling felt, imagine if I had said no. I’d be pissed at myself.

  “That was a sick battle, huh?” Jennika said as she walked over towards the my side of the field. I was supposed to meet her in the middle, but I’d forgotten. Instead, I just let her meet me on my side. “Ty doesn’t really have Foresight down. If he did, we’d have seen that stump coming.”

  “Yeah, that was really lucky for us,” I agreed. That girl didn’t know, but it had been lucky that Rollout had even worked at all.

  “You guys were still good, though.” The girl responded as she sprayed her Tyrogue with potion. It seemed that Tyrogue wasn’t hurt badly, considering it was up on its legs already.

  “Well, we’ll see you later! Bye!” The blonde yelled before immediately taking off through the bushes. I watched as she and Tyrogue turned directions to follow the path.

  “Damn. They left quickly,” I said. Gal sent feelings of positivity that I could clearly tell were meant to convey that he had been amazed by it. It hadn’t even been that good, but I doubt Gal had ever seen a champion ranked battle.

  “Hey asshole, heal me. That battle hurt.” Sol suddenly interjected as he floated next to me.

  Oh yeah, “Shit, sorry.” I reached into my satchel so I could get a potion faster. I applied it to all sides of Sol—hits didn’t really leave a solid mark, so it was hard to tell where exactly I should spray it.

  “That was a pretty good battle, huh?” I said,

  “Hell yeah. I fucking did Rollout? Honestly I was really surprised when you told me to do that but… worked out.”

  I smiled, “Yeah. I got kinda lucky with the type advantage, if not for that…”

  “Shut up. That was an awesome fight. We’ve got to do another…”

  Ralts also chimed in at that point to tell me that it was great. And that he wished to be that strong—even though that really wasn’t that big of a fight, but my thoughts returned to that subject.

  ‘Course, it wasn’t the Pokemon’s job to rethink fights and see what went wrong and all that shit. It was the trainer’s, and I really did rely on the type disadvantage. I could say for certainty we probably would’ve lost without it.

  And we did rely on luck, too. The command to use Rollout had been founded on some logic—Pokémon performed and grew best in battles. That’s probably how Solosis had managed to learn Rollout in the wild, thinking about it now. And we’d been practicing, that was probably our only shot to win.

  But Tyrogue tripping up on that stump had been luck too. And though a stray Confusion would’ve done the job, if Tyrogue hadn’t been caught off guard.

  Well, I still needed to work on stuff, I guess. I kept thinking about it as we took a break and then continued to advance towards Violet City.

  I could feel Sol’s residual tiredness from the battle. He had taken a bunch of hits, and they added up, so I held off on serious training. Besides, our main goal, which had been Rollout, should only take a few more sessions to learn.

  For Gal, I just had him warm up until it was time to go to sleep. He was still having trouble with it, so I figured this could help him adapt. We’d worry about him strengthening Confusion later.

  The next morning, Sol and Gal did have another training session and the results were very noticeable this time. Gal’s Confusion was almost comparable to Sol’s, though his stamina was still shit. Apparently I’d need to train that more if I really wanted to get Gal to be a real team player.

  Also, I met another trainer on the way, actually two. The first one… fucking rocked me, pretty badly. And it’s not even that they were that good—well, they were decent. But I was pretty sure I’d be able to beat them if they didn’t have… a dark type.

  A Poochyena ignored Sol’s best way to deal damage. Which was to get up close and get them with Confusions and shit. Not only could it bite back with… Bite, it was super effective and Confusion wouldn’t do anything.

  We tried Rollout a few more times, and they sorta worked. But they weren’t concrete enough to win us the battle, which is my fault admittedly. Usually I avoided fights with dark types but I couldn’t choose my battles like in the facility, and when I accepted the battle he didn’t have his Pokémon out and…

  Well, whatever. This is why I needed to get Rollout down. And also because Violet City was near and I wanted to get this down before we got there.

  At lunch we worked on it finally. Sol was now able to use the rock type energy correctly to him into a ball shape and propel himself. But it seemed like he couldn’t use it as fluidly as psychic type energy and he sort of lost steam as he went. This could be fixed easily with practice, as most things, and a little bit of encouragement.

  That actually really helped Sol, for some reason. Even if he wouldn’t admit it.

  He said fully learning Rollout was a little bit like making rock type energy in the first place. It was hard, but he got a little more control over it every time he tried. He was frustrated when we had to leave, but he pretty much had it down.

  We were so close to Violet City though, we couldn't stop now.

  Also, Gal trained his Confusion and in my eyes, it was pretty much perfect for now. I wanted to test it against Sol, but this Rollout thing was taking up Sol’s time for now. So probably tomorrow. I’d find something for him to do in the meantime, since I figured starting the process of learning another move could wait until we got to Violet City.

  The big breakthrough came before that, thankfully. At dinner, while Gal worked on his teleportation range, Sol completed his Rollout.

  I watched as he dropped to the floor, and suddenly started to roll forward. He began to go in circles, though the process would’ve been faster if he had a target to hit. Either way he began to build up momentum and go faster, keeping his rock type energy steady. Despite his imperfect shape, he was rolling like he was a ball.

  After sufficient build up, he smashed into a tree and nearly knocked it down. A Hoothoot that had been resting in it flew off as we both admired his work.

  “Good job,” I congratulated, and Gal also put in some cheer despite them having been arguing just a few moments prior.

  Also, we beat that other trainer. He had tried to give me money for defeating him, but we really hadn’t agreed on it so I just let him keep it. In hindsight, it probably would’ve been better for me to take it. But it felt weird…

  In any case, I would need to think about betting on my battles soon. That’s you were able to get money to buy… extra things. Like TMs, new equipment, and fucking cool shit. I would definitely need to hold a thinking session about money once I got to Violet City. And thinking about it after, I kinda regret not taking that guy’s money, but it was whatever now.

  The next morning, I was sure I was going to make it to Violet City. But to really test Gal’s training, I decided to do a mock battle between Gal and Sol. I also wanted to see how Rollout would work now that it was properly learned.

  It was pretty obvious Sol would win in a full fight, but this was just for training purposes.

  “Sol, use Rollout. Ral—I mean Gal, use Confusion,”

  The practice match started as Sol started to barrel forward with Rollout. Gal charged up a Confusion after a few seconds, but the rings dispersed as soon as it hit Sol’s rolling form.

  “Teleport.” I ordered next, knowing Gal was probably pretty frail and might fall to even one Rollout. I wanted to see how Confusion would interact with Rollout, though perhaps it might’ve done something more if Gal was stronger.

  I saw Gal—and could feel—panic for a moment as Gol accelerated. With how fast he was moving, I thought Gal would get hit. But he managed to teleport out right before. Sol didn’t seem to register this and barreled forward, but he was aware soon enough.

  “Confusion, both of you.”

  Gal charged up a Confusion while Sol stopped spinning and immediately shot one out at Gal. It actually missed though, maybe because he was disoriented from the spinning or the excess rock type energy needed to disperse? It was worth looking into and fixing, which is why we were having this match in the first place.

  Sol had still managed to fire Confusion faster than Gal had thought. So he had that going for him. Gal’s Confusion has hit, but it didn’t seem to affect Sol much. Despite the fact that they were both weak—made me feel bad to say it like that—in the grand scheme of things. Sol still seemed to be on a different level from Gal.

  “Confusion again.”

  Two Confusions shot out and clashed between each other. Sol’s mind was stronger and immediately broke through, not slowing down. Seeing how they interacted was interesting, though it probably wouldn’t be too useful.

  “Teleport.” I commanded, but Gal was too slow this time. He was hit by the Confusion and it seemed to dizzy him for a second.

  “Confusion, Gal. Rollout, Sol.”

  The remainder of the battle continued somewhat like that. I kept ordering both of them to attack, but Sol always won every clash. I used Flash once or twice to keep Sol on his toes, but losing his sight for a moment was always a temporary roadblock that he seemed to get over in seconds.

  It would help if Gal had a more diversified movepool, but I would work on that. I just wanted to see how long his energy would last. And to see if the damage overtime would affect Sol. Predictably Gal got tired quicker, and I could see it with how slow his Teleports were. Also his Confusions got weaker.

  Sol didn’t even seem to be that damaged, aside from bitching about being bored. I sighed, seeing there was no use in continuing now, besides, this had been productive, “Good job guys, I’ll give you some time to rest before we get going.”

  …

  “Guys, there it is,” I said, pointing out the giant structure on the horizon. We could all see the tower that seemed to be shifting in the distance. I could barely see the top, but it was there.

  “Cool. We’re almost there.” Sol responded, not seeming to care about the tower. That was Sol for you.

  Amazing. I could basically hear Sol say. He’d never seen a tall structure like that, even in Hoenn. I guess I’d have to ask him more about that.

  I quickened my pace, seeing a sign of how close we were putting some pep in my step. We could get there before noon, according to my Pokédex, and I intended to. My first outing had been really cool, but I wanted to go to Violet City where I’d get to battle and do some proper training.

  I’d teach Sol and Gal some new moves, though what exactly I was still contemplating. There were some candidates, but I’m not sure what fit his style. Despite being a Pokémon that mostly used special moves, he liked getting in close. Attacking from far away just wasn’t his style, and I did want to help him with that. We already had Rollout, but there could be more…

  I thought about this, completely forgetting actually getting to the city before I felt Gal’s excitement emanating from the Emotion Pokemon. Look. He seemed to say to me. I looked ahead and saw it.

  There was Violet City, in all its glory.