Chapter 5

'...' for thoughts

"..." for speech

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'This day has finally arrived, today I'm going to become a youngster!'

These were Jaspers first thoughts when he woke up that day.

After doing a lot of stretching to get sleep out of him, he headed to the bathroom next to his room to get ready for the day. As he showered, he thought about what had happened since arriving in Nimbasa City.

~~~

After leaving the train station, Joshua's friends were already waiting for the family of four and welcomed them to Nimbasa City.

These people were Joshua's childhood friends Kai and Veronica Volt and their daughter Elesa Volt, a beautiful little girl with short yellow hair. Elesa, wearing a little sundress, looked like an angel sent by Arceus himself, and it was clear that she would become an incredibly beautiful woman in the future.

Jasper couldn't help but stare at her and only broke off after the parents had already greeted each other and waited for him to introduce himself. Jasper blushed a little after realizing everyone was watching him, but quickly regained his bearings and held out his hand to greet the blonde beauty. "Hi, my name is Joshua and this next to me is my future partner Magby. I hope the three of us can become good friends, you are really beautiful!"

Hearing Joshua's introduction and praise, Elesa looked a little shy but took his hand anyway. "My name is Elesa and I also hope that we can become friends."

After greeting each other, both families got into a car or taxi and drove to the house that Joshua and Gina had bought beforehand.

Elesa and Jasper met again just a few days later, and Jasper discovered that Elesa also already had a Pokémon that she had trained to become her partner. It was an Elekid.

Right after they met at a park and introduced their Pokémon, Elesa suggested a fight between Elekid and Magby. Jasper quickly agreed, and both Trainers and Pokémon took their positions.

Jasper and Magby were confident in their strength after all their training, and their power showed right after their first clash between Magby's Fire Punch and Elekid's Thunder Punch. Magby overpowered Elekid fairly easily and hit it with his fire move, Jasper thought his victory was already a forgone conclusion.....he couldn't have been more wrong.

After seeing that Elekid is weaker than his opponent, Elesa decided to change tactics. She first ordered Elekid to use Thunder Wave to stun Magby and slow down his superior reflexes and speed, then ordered Elekid to activate Light Screen to halve the damage of all incoming special attack moves like Ember. While casting Light Screen, Elekid was hit by Magby's Ember but tanked it like a pro and then obeyed Elesa's command to run around Magby and take turns attacking it with Swift and Thunder Shock. Jasper just stood there, shocked and helpless, unable to respond to the rapidly changing battle with his arrogant "I'm sure to win" grin frozen on his face. Magby fell shortly after, not because he was weaker than Elekid, on the contrary, he was quite a bit stronger than Elekid, but because Jasper was completely outclassed by Elesa's ability to command and her combat experience.

After this cold shower of a battle, Jasper came got off his high horse and realized he still had a lot to learn, even from kids his age.

Seeing Jasper recalling Magby and walking up to her Elesa also recalled Elekid.

"Did you come up with these strategies beforehand? And how did you react so fast during the battle?" Jasper asked, intense curiosity shining in his eyes.

Elesa proudly smiled at Jasper after hearing those questions. "Yes, we planned a few stragies for different situations, but seeing that your Magby is so strong we had to adapt on the fly and when it comes to battle experience, me and Elekid battled against my two best friends and their pokemon quite a few times before. But now you have to answer me first, how did you train your Magby to become so super strong?!"

Jasper heaved a sigh hearing that. Knowing that this was not Elesas first battle helped him repairing a part of his broken ego and then answered her that he did a lot of specialized training with Magby.

After that, Elesa and Jasper decided to meet up nearly every day so that Jasper could give Elesa tips for her training and she could help him as a sparring partner and share her battle experience with him.

~~~

After he finished showering he clothed himself and went downstairs to have breakfast. He had a nice Sandwich with egg and remoulade. Magby joined him a short while later, he had his own room inside the house.

Having finished his meal Jasper and Magby hurriedly got in Joshua's car, it was cold outside. Jasper's dad drove them to the City Hall. It was a short trip and nobody talked inside the car, they were all still a bit sleepy.

When they reached rhe City Hall, Jasper and Magby got out of the car and Joshua said. "Call me if you want me to pick you up."

After waving Joshua goodbye Jasper and Magby went into the hall. The entrance room was a big room with just one counter, behind which a bored middle aged lady sat. The hall only had a few persons inside, one counter was clearly enough.

Before Jasper could walk up to the bored lady he heard a shout coming from his right. " Jasper, Magby over here!"

When Jasper turned to where the shout came from he saw 3 girls sitting in a waiting area in the corner of the room. Two of these girls were blond and one had red hair.

As Jasper went near them all three girls stood up and Jasper said to one of the blondies, Elesa. "Hey Elesa, good to see you. I guess these two must be your mysterious best friends you always talk about, but whenever they come to visit you you don't want me there."

Elesa just chuckled at that. "That's right! Let me introduce you."

She pointed to the blond girl, wearing black clothes, standing to her right. "This is Cynthia Shirona from Sinnoh and she and her family live in a tiny village named Elyses and her grandma is the Village Elder there. Cynthias starter is impressively a Gible, a dragon type!"

Jasper looked starry eyed at Cynthia after hearing about the dragon and was just about to barrage her with questions when Elesa quickly continued with her introduction, having known that Jasper would react like this. "And this pretty girl to my left is Skyla Zephyr from Mistralton City, her grandfather is the Gymleader of Mistralton City. Her starter Pokemon is a Ducklett."

Both girl's said hi to Jasper and quickly got into a conversation due to Jaspers intense curiosity about their birthplaces, family members and above all Pokemon.

After half an hour of talking and getting to know each other, the four people and one Pokemon went to the reception. They had an appointment with the bureau responsible for the youngster-license.

Cynthia and Skyla would stay with Elesa for two months straight so that the three girls and Jasper could experience the first step of their pre-journey together.

The next hour was just tedious signing papers, handing over letters of acceptance signed by their parents, taking id-photos, registering their first Pokémon and ultimatly getting the youngster-license-card.

Finally done and outside the building, all four breathed a sigh of relief, but quickly perked up again. They were now officially Pokémon trainers, youngsters, but still trainers.

Cynthia then said. "Let's pack our things today and head out tomorrow. We can start exploring the routs and eventually the wilderness outside the city starting then, but we need to prepare. We need enough food, repellant for resting places, all-weather gear and clothes and various medicines ranging from Potions over Toxic Heals to headache pills, from pokemon medicine to human medicine."

"You're right. And we have to teach our Pokémon a few things too like not randomly attacking wild Pokémon and staying alert for bushes too." Skyla continued.

"Then let's do it like this. I have already called my dad to pick me up, he can drop you three at Elesas home too." Was what Jasper added to close the topic.

After a brief half an hour of talking about Pokémon related things, Joshua arrived and drove the three girls to his friends house. When only him and Jasper remained in the car Jasper released Magby again, he was recalled to make place for the girls.

Joshua then questioned. "When will you let Magby evolve, son? I believe he is ready for it since quite some time ago."

Jasper answered. "Yeah, you're right, he's can evolve any time, but I asked him to repress his evolution. I want to build the perfect foundation for Magbys future, he already has a fantastic control over his fire-element and his body is as good as it can get. He has quite a good move pool and learned close combat from that martial arts instructor you and mom hired for us, he even leaned his egg moves Mach Punch and Mega Punch. Only one thing is missing now, I want him to learn Psychic. I already bought the TM for that, I only need it to use it. Then he also has the basis for future psychic-type moves I want him to learn, especially teleport but that will be hard."

"Egg moves? And I thought you said that the Magby line didn't have teleport in their movepool?" Joshua asked, confused.

Jasper quickly clearled his doubts. "Egg moves are moves that the father Pokemon had in his movepool. When he and the mother pokemon have a child together the child may inherit one or more of his genetically engraved moves, but not every move is inheritable. Magbys father was most likely a fighting-type Pokémon. And when it comes to teleport, Pokémon do not need to have a move in their movepool to learn it, but learning it without the fitting genes is very hard. Having mastered moves of the same type helps learning these moves due to the familiarity with the typing in question."

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