Chapter 17: Vacation and training

It was already quite late by the time Joey managed to return to the gym leader's house. He'd ambled his way there, just as he'd ambled his way to the department store and upon arriving he'd found a small cold dinner prepared for him in his guest bedroom. He quickly consumed the meal before calling out Metapod and feeding her the usual, in addition to some iron now. Then he groomed her carapace, told her how proud of her he was, and went to sleep. Good battles tended to be absolutely exhausting, and the gym-battle had definitely fit that criteria.

-/-

The next morning Ruth used a portable card reader to update the licences of everyone who'd managed to win their gym battle and handed out new Pokeballs for those who'd merited a team expansion. Mia was extremely excited to potentially catch an Oddish, Michael was talking about how there was a Spearow out there with his name on it, and Sabrina would probably catch a third Abra. The bug-catcher Rick, who'd lost his battle, mostly seemed sad. Hitoshi was a gym trainer, thus not falling under Ruth's jurisdiction, and Joey, as always, didn't quite know what Pokemon he really wanted.

The second badge meant that he was now able to field a team of three Pokemon, but he was still stuck on tier-1, which meant he couldn't evolve Rattata, for example. The third badge, the one he would hopefully get from Surge would finally allow him to do that. It was the only badge that didn't increase team-size allowances, the reasoning being that a trainer first needed to get used to having evolved Pokemon around.

They all filed onto the bus and had an uneventful trip back to Saffron. Joey almost wanted something to happen just so that he could see Elio's probably impressive team in action. But no such luck came his way and he spent another several hours chatting with Mia. He'd really have to avoid her for a bit in the future because they were really running out of things to discuss.

Perhaps it was proof that he was a bit conflict-seeking, but at some point during the drive, Joey stood up and walked to Hitoshi, who was daydreaming at one of the window seats. Probably about stuffing someone into a locker, or something. "How do you train fighting-type energy, anyway?" Joey asked in lieu of anything else to say.

The brown-haired boy looked at Joey as if he were an idiot. "Why do you think wild fighting types constantly challenge each other to battles? Using fighting-type energy in a fight is the best way to train fighting-type energy." Was the short explanation.

Joey didn't have an answer to that, other than a short thank you, and he went back to the seat, wondering if the answer was actually as easy as it sounded or if it made perfect sense. Joey knew a lot about Pokemon, moves, habitats and diets. He could probably get a breeder's licence if he really wanted to. He'd even worked his way through thick tomes such as, "The consistencies of anatomy between different mammalian fire-types." The issue was that how to specifically train a TE, was not something that had quite managed to enter the public sphere of knowledge. Perhaps trainers kept it to themselves, thinking it gave them an edge. Perhaps it was all so individualised and there was no point in trying to set up general statements. Or maybe, maybe, there was a reason why many of the most successful trainers were type-specialists.

He didn't move from his seat for the rest of his trip, and stumbled out of the bus profoundly tired and feeling weary to his bones. He had a lot to do, gather money and bet on Lance winning his match against Bruno, train for the next gym, teach Rattata Dig and find more trainers to challenge. However, right now he mostly just felt like lying down and reading a fiction novel, instead of a book that would help him in some way become a better trainer. Getting the first badge had required extensive preparation and work, the second badge had been more of a challenge than he'd thought, and Joey realised that he'd maybe figured out a limit. Sure, he took weekends off, mostly, but maybe three months of continuous work was enough for him to need a more serious vacation. His Pokemon deserved it if nothing else.

However, before he was allowed to leave and go think about the thought he'd just had, Joey and the other youngsters, sans asshole this time, were gathered by Ruth who had one last announcement to make.

The old woman nodded happily as she looked at the youngsters assembled before her and started. "Good job, everyone. I'm sure you'll do great next circuit and the following conference. However, rather than just focusing on getting badges for the next year and nine months, the league has decided to offer youngsters another incentive to grow, which I personally think has been missing for quite a while. You will receive this news by mail later on, but I wanted to share it personally with those youngsters already there, or well on their way to qualifying for, the first time ever held, youngster tournament!" she announced.

Joey's brain short-circuited for a second and the first thing he could think of when it rebooted was about who exactly would want to watch a bunch of Rattata Tackle each other all day.

"To qualify you need to be in possession of at least one badge. You will be seeded on the amount of badges that you have beyond that. The prizes will include cash rewards, but also technical machines, Pokeballs and maybe even a rare Pokemon," she continued explaining excitedly. She stopped when she saw Joey that Joey had raised his hand. "Yes?"

"When and where will the tournament take place?"

"It will be two weeks before the start of the Indigo conference, so you still have half a year to prepare! The place hasn't been decided yet, but, the thought has been that maybe it will be held in the city which has the most youngsters with badges, so there's less people to transport," she explained.

Joey sort of hoped that it wouldn't be in Saffron. It wasn't easy to travel in the Pokemon world and he'd enjoyed his trip to Celadon. It would be nice to get to explore another city before he actually started his journey.

"It's also a great opportunity to start building a portfolio for future sponsorships," Ruth explained, causing Joey to look up again attentively. Sponsorships were good. He'd need to see how possible it was to get sponsored by Professor Oak, but winning the youngster tournament and then placing high in the Indigo conference would probably be a pretty good springboard for anything else.

He felt a glare hit the side of his head, and looked to see Sabrina staring at him like a boxer about to enter a ring. The thought that she would be his toughest competition had crossed his mind. It was nice to see the thought reciprocated. He gave her a smile while Ruth finished explaining the details.

He'd take a break first, he really was tired. But, it seemed like rather than just thinking about the next gym badge, Joey had just gotten a more long-term goal to work towards.

-/-

Despite a newfound motivation that latched itself like a fly to shit onto the upcoming youngster tournament, Joey did not ignore his body's screams for rest. He spent four days after his return to Saffron doing absolutely nothing. He lounged around in his room with some novels and comic books and went to the park with his Pokemon for fun, not for battling.

It got so bad at some point that Theresa confronted him about it, asking, of all things, if he was depressed. Joey laughed at her face and then helped her make dinner for all the other kids. It was a great time. Four days were the double of what he usually took off, the weekend, so he actually got to relax. He wrote in his diary, visited the technology museum and went out to try and find the best ice cream in town.

It ended up being a little corner store owned by a lady who used to be a trainer. She specialised in ice types and made water-based ice cream that was better than its milk-based counterpart. Joey's mind was officially blown. There were even flavours for Pokemon, so both Rattata and Metapod got some too, although the latter didn't like it too much, preferring to munch down on her Toxic Orb even in times of rest. She was becoming less and less affected by the poison. The gym challenge seemed to have commemorated a jump in terms of resistance, which just really went to show that Pokemon learned best in battle.

He'd even visited Macy's pokedoll store and was surprised and gladdened to find that there was way more variety than there had been before. There hadn't been a Metapod doll, unfortunately, but the Murkrow one was actually making a killing. Perhaps due to the fact that Murkrow were sort of exotic for Kanto. Both the native birds were actually sort of boring, brown and cream-coloured.

However, all good things came to an end eventually, and on the fifth day of his return from Celadon, Joey and his crew were gathered outside in the city's training rooms. "So, you're probably wondering what the next step is," the boy said as he paced in front of the attentive Pokemon, like a general about to set out for war giving a last-minute briefing to his troops. "We beat Kong and we beat… Celadon. Nobody believed in us, no one thought we could do it. But we did. Give yourselves a pat on the back."

Rattata and Joey patted themselves on the back, while Metapod fired a String Shot at the latter. The trainer dodged, long since used to the bug's antics.

"Anyway, good job and all that. We took four days off to celebrate, that's done with. Onto our next challenge," Joey said and puffed out his chest. "We're going to be facing a real macho man, a trueborn American, my personal hero. He's going to send out only one Pokemon, and that's going to be a Raichu. Our job will be, as three, or two, depending on whether we will find a new member that suits the squad, to wear that monster down. Raichu are physically strong, have a whip-like tail with a halberd attached to it, and shoot thunder and lightning out of their ass. Suffice to say, this is a bit problematic." He pointed at the green bug Pokemon. "You're going out first, as it only makes sense. Your job is to exhaust the Raichu. Hit him with as many String Shots as you can, and ruin the field. From what I've seen it doesn't really have much else other than electric and physical moves so if you can keep it at bay with String Shot for long enough to properly Harden, then you can stall for a while. In that sense, your training sort of stays the same. You'll use String Shot to block ranged attacks, and you'll exchange physical hits on your body to weigh them down with as much string as possible. The only difference is that while a Bug Bite would be nice, you shouldn't aim for it, the Raichu will just shock you. On that note, never leave a String Shot in your mouth for long, electricity might travel up the connection."

Metapod nodded, an awkward tilt forwards and back, seemingly alright with the fact that she was going to essentially be a speed bump for the more powerful Pokemon. But, this was what Surge's gym taught to a certain extent. Who to sacrifice. "I would also like to start working on something new in regards to String Shot, I recently saw a Caterpie compact the move and harden it somehow. It sort of attained the same function as Bullet Seed. It would be a good way to finish an enemy from afar if you manage to slow them down enough that they can't dodge. Would be a good way to damage the Raichu a bit as well while keeping it at bay."

"Metapod, pod, pod?" the Pokemon stated questioningly with a roll of her eyes towards Joey's backpack.

"The Toxic Orb?" he asked and received a nod. "You're not quite there yet I think, but you'll probably develop a sufficient resistance soon enough. I foresee a call to Koga in our near future," Joey said before turning to Rattata.

"For you, we got a special technical machine which should help you out a lot against Surge. It's Dig, a ground-type move. You have three months to get it down. It will provide a retreat into which Raichu's electricity won't be able to follow. Your only respite, probably. You'll use it to dodge and counter-attack, with some flashes of Detect in-between to avoid randomly getting hit for no reason," he explained succinctly, and before his hand could go for the Pokeball at his belt, his starter already began furiously digging into the earth below, flinging up grass and dirt as his paws blurred.

"We haven't taught you the move yet," Joey muttered as he recalled the enthusiastic Pokemon, went over to his backpack and pulled out the appropriate technical machine. Placing the Pokeball at the base of the grey-silvery square which held the disk with the encrypted data, he pressed start.

It wasn't an overly dramatic process. The disk flashed a bright brown, before losing its colour, which seemed to flow into Rattata's Pokeball. A few seconds later the machine beeped once, signalling that it had completed its task. Removing the pokeball and releasing the rat on the ground, Joey didn't even get to say anything before the purple rodent was going, digging down at a rapid pace and disappearing from sight. Both Joey and Metapod looked at the hole their comrade had disappeared into.

What went down had to come up, right? Joey looked around the clearing, wondering where his starter would jump out from, before starting to get worried at the ten-second mark. Rattata had disappeared quite fast, so it wasn't like the digging should take that much time.

Joey suddenly realised that for all of Rattata's talents, he didn't really have a way of navigating the vast underground. How exactly was one supposed to tell which was way up, or down, when traversing the earth? Sure the move provided some basic sensing, but this was the rat's first time using it. Getting slightly worried Joey ran to the hole and looked down, the sight that greeted him enough to make his poor fragile heart relax in an instant. All worries for his starter fled his mind as he saw the idiot laying there in a hole that went straight down for six feet, completely and utterly knocked out. The rat's eyes were swirly and his body hung limp on the ground. A bit of earth crumpled and fell down, covering Rattata, and making Joey aware of the danger of not retrieving his starter. He sighed and recalled the Pokemon, sending him out again on the stable surface of the training field.

The rat had probably gotten knocked out by the unknown energy expenditure that ground TE represented. He hadn't learned it properly, hadn't rested between the intake of the move and the first try, and had immediately tried to use the full-fledged version of the move instead of first testing it out on a smaller distance.

"You're really lucky you're the most motivated and loyal Pokemon in the world," Joey muttered, looking at his starter's unconscious form, thinking back on the blood and sweat they'd excreted to even get to two gym badges and the dangers they'd faced together. "Because you are definitely not the smartest."

With a shake of his head and denying himself the satisfaction of waking the rat right back up with a large splash of cold water from his reusable water bottle, Joey turned to the exasperated Metapod making up the other half of his team. "Let's start with working on the Bullet Seed String Shot," he said with a shake of his head. "By then maybe the idiot will have woken up. We probably won't get to do a Dig and Bug Seed tandem training exercise yet going by how his first Dig went, but maybe we'll just do a quick Detect session."

Metapod, blessed with a higher than room-temperature IQ nodded and promptly spat out a large glob of String Shot, which somehow resembled a ball but quickly reverted back to a liquid once it hit the ground. Joey looked at the result while stroking his chin, thinking about how, if one left String Shot out for too long, it sort of calcified and crumbled. "Try holding it in your mouth for a bit, until it hardens. Let's work on consistency first, then we'll do shape. It doesn't really need to be ball-shaped anyway, any object hurts if it's solid enough," he said and watched as Metapod initiated the move, but struggled to keep it in her carapaced mouth. It was leaking out, covering the green chitin with white sticky liquid.

There was nothing else to do than keep trying in cases like this, although maybe Joey would have had an easier time had he asked for the bug-catcher's advice back then. Maybe the gym battle had tainted his opinion of the boy a bit too much, also, the getting kicked out of the game-corner was pretty cringe.

Anyway, he and Metapod worked together for approximately half an hour, actually managing to get somewhere, before some light shuffling and weak chitters disrupted their flow. The youngster nodded at Metapod to keep going and turned around to the Rattata who was stumbling up on all fours, as usual.

"Maybe we should approach this a bit slower, huh?" Joey asked reproachfully, causing Rattata to awkwardly stand on his hind legs and scratch the back of his head.

"You feeling alright?" Joey asked and received a series of rapid nods in return.

"Rattata, Rattatatatatatata!"

The trainer sighed. "Alright, but if you collapse again you're benched for the day. So keep a good eye on your energy reserves. Whenever you're feeling tired you can stop working on Dig and do some physical exercise, you're still not the fastest Pokemon alive, and even when you are, you'll have to keep training to keep that edge."

Rattata nodded enthusiastically, shadowboxing in the air and jumping up and down.

"How about you just try to initiate a Dig, but hold the energy in your paws at first. Let's see if that's already your limit," Joey suggested.

Rattata scrunched up his face and concentrated. Light brown energy gathered in his paws and dissolved the ground they were resting on, without the Pokemon even having to move physically.

"Fascinating," Joey muttered. He wondered if they could split training the move into two separate categories. Channelling the energy and trying to travel downwards without any movement, and travelling with only movement, no energy. However, experimentation would take a while, as Rattata looked noticeably tired from the small exertion. "It seems to be quite an exhausting move," Joey concluded. "However, that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. If we treat your TE exertion prowess as a muscle, then having a move that can so thoroughly and quickly exhaust it might be a good thing. Take a five-minute rest, I'll be back in a second," he said and went over to check on Metapod.

She was already producing a String Shot that was considerably less sticky and more hard than the one she'd been using before. "This will probably be more exhausting on your nutrition reserves than just practising the move," Joey cautioned. "I'll be preparing a higher amount of meals today for this purpose. For Rattata as well, he seems to be getting tired really fast." Metapod blinked at him, signalling that she understood, and continued in her efforts to get to a decent hardness level. Joey watched for a minute or two, making sure that she was making a decent amount of progress without his interference, before returning back to Rattata.

His starter already looked less tired, and Joey had him run through a set of drills, during which he would randomly call out Dig. At every such instance, Rattata would have to quickly channel Dig through his limbs, creating small paw imprints into the ground. The training was a mix of physical exercise and ground TE training since only the latter would exhaust the Pokemon too fast. It seemed to be working too, as Rattata was able to do it for an uninterrupted fifteen minutes, the imprints in the ground growing larger and larger with the same amount of channelling. Joey nodded in satisfaction and gave his starter a short break before turning his attention to Metapod again.

He wondered as he trained his team throughout the day, how he would handle training even more Pokemon in the future. He wasn't necessarily being run ragged, but to him it seemed that with every new addition to his roster, he'd have less time to give each Pokemon individual attention. Perhaps there was a number of Pokemon that a trainer simply couldn't train at the same time. A point where the quality of training suffered so much that the expanded roster which usually suggested a higher type-coverage, was actually giving diminishing returns.

Joey strongly suspected that most trainers could handle about six Pokemon. Personally, he was struggling to imagine doing more than four. It would come with time, probably.

It was an extremely successful day in the end. He still hadn't quite decided if he actually wanted to give the Sleep Talk TM to Metapod, wondering if he should save it for a Pokemon with whom he wanted to use a Rest + Sleep Talk combo, but Metapod was making progress regardless, her String Shot growing harder and harder by the hour.

Maybe he'd sleep on the decision, he thought to himself with a chuckle, drawing some odd looks from the adults walking the same street he was taking home. But tomorrow it was time to start having more mixed days. A bit of training in the morning, then making some money, and then some battles in the afternoon when the hobby trainers came off work.