My entire body glistened as I sweat profusely. I'd thrown my shirt away after it had been soaked all the way through a couple minutes ago. The harness for the sled certainly irritated my skin, especially with the force behind it, but it would only tear up my skin a bit. It'd probably heal by tomorrow anyhow.
Tomorrow.
That's when I was going to step outside of these walls for the first time. Well, at least, the first time I'll remember. Nurse Joy had said that I'd been found outside the walls, but I had no recollection of anything before the hospital bed.
Zuko lapped me again, his claws scraping against the turf as he sped by. His lithe yellow body was like a machine, plowing forward on all fours. His forearms and legs were strained from exertion, but he continued with his quick pace.
The sled with three forty five pound plates followed behind him, kicking up stray black flecks of whatever was embedded in turf.
I groaned as I pushed harder. I wouldn't let myself be lapped again by the little brat. Of course, I had also said this the first dozen times he had lapped me. It probably just exhausted me further, pushing myself a little bit too hard every time Zuko passed me.
I should have added another plate to his sled.
I turned back to my own sled. There were thick black straps connected to the front that latched onto the harness around my chest. The sled itself was small metal contraption, with smooth sides that slid across the ground with only mellow resistance. There was a pole in the middle that you could use to put weighted plates on. The same kind of weights you would put on a barbell for squats or bench.
There was only one lousy plate on my sled. The same was true for Azula.
I looked back to the blue eyed red lizard. She was taking each step with purpose. She would twist her entire body to put one foot as far forward as she could. Each step had her entire weight behind it. She leaned forward with her nose almost on the ground. Her stubby arms were gripping the harness around her chest for extra purchase. I could see the effort in her eyes. She grit her teeth with each step. Steam leaked out from her mouth in effort. Her tail flame had grown to almost half her height.
A yellow monster passed me again on my right. His forelegs would dig into the ground and push back, while also bringing his back legs to the front in the same motion. Then his back legs would dig into the ground, launching him forward. Even while dragging about a hundred and fifty pounds behind him, Zuko had the grace of a greyhound as he ran.
He was nearing evolution. Or at least I thought he was.
Azula was too, given her growing arms and a small nub starting to grow on the back of her head. Her claws had been getting longer and thicker. Her scales had also begun to take on a darker shade.
Zuko on the other hand had different signs of growth. He was nearly four feet tall now. That was the size of a standard Charmeleon. I had no idea how big a normal Starfallen Charizard was supposed to be, but Zuko had not stopped growing since I'd gotten him.
The red pouches on his forearms looked like a deflated accordion when not in use. They were shriveled red crinkles forming an oval. They had started off as small red ovals on his forearms. Now they nearly reached from his elbow to his wrist. When inflated, they looked like the fins of a fish, but more skewed towards his elbow. Kind of like Garchomp's scythes on its arms, but less sharp. I wonder if that would change with evolution.
His arms and legs had gotten very muscular. While he had natural genetics for physique, the weight training had really brought out his potential. While the size of a Machop, his physique was more similar to that of a Machoke, although still a bit more lithe.
He liked staying quadrupedal, as that gave him the most speed, but being around Azula and myself had encouraged him to try standing up on his back legs more. He wasn't very good at it, however, so he looked more like a hunchback with sharp claws. Kind of like Midnight Lycanroc.
He had also begun to form a nub at the back of his head, same as Azula. His aggressive tendencies had failed to mellow, but he had gotten better at listening to me. Most of the time.
Well, some of the time.
He listened to me in battle. That's what counted. Or at least, he listened to me in the few battles that we had.
In the two weeks since Barry's proposal, I had frequented the battle tower. It turns out it was far more complex than I'd thought. I had only just made it to the second floor by the time I was done training. Turns out each floor requires a certain number of wins to progress to the next floor. In a row. I had to win 10 battles in a row on the first floor to progress to the second. The amount of wins in a row to progress to the next floor gets smaller as you get higher, as winning that many times consecutively gets progressively harder. But this meant every floor of the tower was exponentially more difficult. And every floor would have less of a pool to fight against. This wouldn't be a problem until I got to the higher floors, however. And different floors had a loss limit. On the second floor, if you lose 5 in a row, you get bumped back to the first floor. You have to win 8 in a row to progress. So people tend to stay on the same floor for quite a bit of time. It's actually pretty rare for people to switch floors. There's different rules for the higher levels, given the highest lets you challenge Taimu himself, but nobody had let me know what they were yet. I was still only on level two, after all.
We had also gone harder on our training. If the outside of the wall was even half as perilous as I'd heard, we would need to be prepared.
My mind flashed to the image of Aerodactyl's gargantuan jaws, making me shiver internally.
The battle tower had been pretty successful. Zuko still hadn't lost any battles. While a lot of that was simply due to trainers being inexperienced with his species, and the fact that his blinding speed let him take advantage of the surprise factor, nothing had lasted more than a few seconds against him.
Well, a lone Grovyle had been able to dodge around him for a bit, but a well placed karate chop to the back of the neck had stopped that. As dangerous as it seemed, I had taught Zuko key areas he could target in a pinch. Looking back, it was a very stupid idea. Aggressive pokemon with control issues now equipped with dangerous knowledge of how to incapacitate nearly any enemy? Yeah, not great. Granted, it didn't really change much. If Zuko had decided to attack a random pedestrian, they would be killed or maimed, extra knowledge or no. Luckily, he had not used anything I had taught him outside of my own commands.
And that being said, I didn't really teach him anything he couldn't have learned on his own. Pokemon still had similar biology to humans in most cases. So letting Zuko know about how if you hit the back of somethings knees while it was putting too much weight on it, it will likely topple, wasn't that bad. It had been a little frightening when he had taken out an experienced Gallade in three seconds flat by blitzing behind it, sending two consecutive thunder punches into the backs of its legs, toppling it, and then slamming his elbow into the back of its neck. The other trainer had yelled at me for a couple minutes after that, saying how dangerous that could have been. Honestly I wasn't sure if I should be terrified of the monster I created, or be proud of the little menace.
I'd done my best to get Zuko and Azula to be able to think on their own. Calling something out in battle would have a couple seconds delay. I would first have to think of something, which would be a couple milliseconds of delay. Then I would have to yell it, causing even more delay. And then either Zuko or Azula would have to process what I said, halting their own thought process, leading to potential openings for the opposing pokemon, or causing enough delay that the opening I saw was no longer there.
So I would be more of an overseer. Small things like dodging and defending were expected. If we were in the wild, and were dealing with multiple opponents, there was no way in hell I'd be waiting in the back, hiding behind them. They would not be sitting ducks waiting for my commands.
No, they would be able to fight on their own. With my input, they would just be able to fight far more efficiently. My job in battle was to spot my opponents weak points, and then tell them to Zuko or Azula. That way they could switch up their own battle styles to exploit those weaknesses.
Like when Azula fought a Manectric earlier this week. That thing was fast enough to dodge anything Azula threw at it. So while Azula continued to defend and stall the Manectric with wide AOE flamethrowers, I had come up with a plan. I wouldn't have been able to come up with said plan if I had to tell Azula to dodge every time the Manectric wild charged. That sort of thing should be common sense. I wouldn't have my pokemon fight their base instincts to take commands from me. They would use their base instincts, along with my input, to be exceptional battlers. I had told Azula to bait the Manectric over to the rocks, smokescreen, and iron claw a bunch of the rocks. This created essentially hundreds of ball bearings that the Manectric slipped on in its next charge, letting Azula finish the job.
Today was our last training session before going on the excursion. I knew there would be tons of Rangers with us, but I was still a little nervous.
That Aerodactyl had been terrifying. And if the wild just had more monsters like that, I wasn't sure if I liked what I was getting into.
But I knew that I would have to go into the wild sooner or later, and being under the experienced care of many Rangers sounded like a good place to start.
I saw Azula slowing down behind me, so I signaled them to stop. Azula took off her harness and collapsed to the ground, heaving for breath. I took off my harness and leaned against a wall to do the same. Zuko on the other hand, decided to drop his harness and grab Azula's, continuing to run around the turf track with the lighter weight.
I smiled. I had taught the idea of a superset to Zuko. Of doing two exercises back to back, or of doing the same one again, with less weight. To push your body to the absolute limit. He loved it. And had proceeded to show me up in every single exercise that we did. At least his endurance had grown exponentially because of it.
After a short break for water and snacks, I took Azula and Zuko down to the pokemon training areas in the basement.
Since I might need them at full strength tomorrow, we didn't do the full round of strength conditioning today. Each training day consisted of a mixture of a couple of the following: strength and endurance training, specialized move training, combination move training, strategy, puzzles, and research.
Strength and endurance training was generally standard weight lifting with some calisthenics, aimed at increasing natural strength and athleticism.
Specialized move training was for aiding the latent abilities of the pokemon. Whether it be for endurance, in being able to constantly hold a flame or an electric charge, accuracy and precision, or just raw power, we did it all. Or they did it all. I just supervised and came up with all the training.
Combination move training included different team combos we could do on a potential wild pokemon or in a double battle. You never knew when your pokemon might need to work together, and having already done some training would avoid that initial moment of hesitancy, or even naive mistakes in the field. Even a moment of hesitation could mean death in the wild. And mistakes like accidentally hitting each other while attacking the same enemy would be devastating. So by practicing specific things, and getting Zuko and Azula attuned to working together, they would be ready in the field. Whether it was Zuko blitzing in with nuzzle to paralyze while Azula charged up a particularly powerful cone of flamethrower, one that had enough startup that any enemy usually would be able to dodge or prepare for. Or Azula acting as a distraction and blinding an opponent with a wide and nearly harmless flamethrower, allowing Zuko to slip in with a powerful thunderpunch. There were many other potential combos that we'd practiced.
Strategy could include things like knowing what moves to use and when. Azula should not try to confront a Machoke with an iron claw. Using the pokedex to show Azula and Zuko potential opponents, letting them see when an opponent might be stronger than it appears, and trying to train how to initially respond. Ultimately I broke it down to one final rule. If you don't know your opponent's capabilities, play it safe. Keep your distance, and test the waters with ranged attacks while keeping your guard up. Azula had adopted this strategy easily. Zuko, on the other hand, had continued to just blitz his opponents, even when they were unknown. I couldn't blame him though. It hadn't failed to work yet. Besides, he was more limited in ranged attacks. I'd have to amend that soon.
Raw power was pretty self explanatory.
Research was just me experimenting with different things. Things like finding if Azula's scales were more resistant to fire than Zuko's. Or if Zuko could increase his latent electric charge. If Azula could find ways to activate Blaze without being near death. Was it just an adrenaline response? Could it be activated under different conditions? How much electricity could Zuko absorb? How much could he create on his own? Could I increase either of those through training?
Overall, once Oak got back, he would have mountains of information to sift through. It had almost been two months since I last saw him. I wonder what that old geezer was up to.
These past two weeks I'd been focusing on potential problem areas that might come up in the wild. I didn't need to focus on combination moves before, since I hadn't planned on doing any double battles for a while yet. But in the wild they might happen without me having any say in it.
I looked down to the lizards next to me. Zuko's eyes were filled with grim determination as he focused on feeding electricity into his teeth. Azula was working on sustaining a flamethrower while keeping her claws silvery sharp with iron claw.
Overall, I was feeling like we were ready to take on the world.