Five minutes later.
The battle result was about as Aiden had expected.
It was a completely one-sided victory.
"..."
Staring at the fallen, reverted-to-its-original-form Squirtle before him, Mewtwo fell silent for a moment, then shook its head.
"I lost."
Hearing this, the rookie trainer opposite him finally let out a long breath of relief.
Honestly, when he had just won against this Pokémon, he had been startled by the terrifying aura that suddenly burst forth.
If not for Teacher Azure being there, he would have suspected the opponent wasn't playing fair...
However, this gym apprentice who didn't look like a local finally acknowledged his defeat.
Although it had seemed somewhat intimidating at first—the miraculous ability to make Pokémon evolve through psychic power was unheard of—but in actual battle it clearly lacked experience.
It was like seeing himself when he had just become a trainer.
"The first test is the challenger's victory."
Aiden, temporarily serving as referee, quickly made the judgment, his eyes carrying a hint of amusement as he looked at Mewtwo.
As expected—even with talent, one couldn't suddenly have an epiphany overnight and transform from a complete rookie into a qualified trainer.
Even for Mewtwo with its super brain, this was difficult to achieve.
Moreover, its opponent wasn't really a "fairly matched opponent"—after his subtle cultivation over this period, the students at Naranja Academy had all become extremely competitive.
Those who could make time to challenge Sunshine Gym on Monday were among the stronger students, already having overwhelming battle experience compared to Mewtwo.
Not to mention the weather advantage and some dimensional-downgrade strikes in strategy...
However, for the proud Mewtwo, experiencing a few failures early on might actually be a good thing?
After a moment of silence, Mewtwo lifted its head again.
Indeed, being a trainer wasn't that easy—there was still a long road ahead on this path.
In that case, it could only work even harder.
Mewtwo's gaze quickly shifted to the other rookies, its eyes burning with determination.
It needed a large amount of practical battle experience to develop its battle logic, and Sunshine Gym happened to have a large group of fairly capable rookies.
How could there be such a coincidence in the world? Perhaps this had been considered by Aiden and Mew from the very beginning.
Living temporarily at Sunshine Gym was also to have a place to improve its tactical skills and catch up to Aiden's pace as soon as possible.
Therefore...
These rookies were all its experience packs—none of them could escape!
After being swept by Mewtwo's burning gaze, the nearby rookies inexplicably felt a sudden unease in their hearts.
It was as if they were being watched by a lion patrolling its territory.
However—
Judging from the battle performance just now, this specially recruited gym apprentice of Teacher Azure seemed to have only average strength, even appearing somewhat overconfident despite lacking skill.
How had it become a gym apprentice and gained Teacher Azure's recognition? Had it used backdoor connections?
The students also showed signs of confusion in their hearts.
Although Sunshine Gym's reputation had always firmly held the top spot in Paldea (in reverse order), with Teacher Azure's strength, he shouldn't need to rely on such a "weakling" to boost their confidence, right?
What did he think we students were! Were we the kind of people who would deliberately give bad reviews just because we couldn't win?
We were really being looked down upon by Teacher Azure.
At this point, we must give more bad reviews!
...
The next two days passed without incident.
Sunshine Gym once again experienced peaceful daily life, with students arriving in groups as usual to challenge.
However, starting this week, Sunshine Gym had added a new testing element.
Gym apprentices had always been a common testing method for gym leaders in other regions—by sending out several fairly capable rookies to judge the challenger's level through battle, ultimately deciding how much to hold back during the test...
This was an unspoken rule.
However, for the newcomers, Sunshine Gym's apprentice was quite interesting.
Aside from its identity as a Pokémon, the trait of being "overconfident despite lacking skill" was gradually being discovered by challengers.
It clearly looked like a strong one—relying on its powerful strength that could even ignore rules, it could probably kill indiscriminately if it wanted, yet it insisted on becoming a trainer...
Shouldn't we give it a good lesson, showing it how deep the waters of Pokémon battles really are?
With this thought, some newcomers who had previously lacked confidence and hesitated to challenge Sunshine Gym also began appearing in Cabo Poco.
If I can't beat Teacher Azure, can't I at least beat a mere Mewtwo?
Thus...
Under the combination of various factors, Sunshine Gym's popularity inexplicably surged again, leaving even Aiden somewhat puzzled.
However, since this was a win-win situation—even win-win-win or win-win-win-win—he was quite happy about it.
Students gained confidence, Mewtwo grew stronger with visibly rapid progress over these two days, and Sunshine Gym was thriving.
Even Aiden's popularity quickly skyrocketed.
He truly hadn't expected such good chemistry between Mewtwo and Sunshine Gym.
At the same time, through these two days of testing, Aiden had a rough idea of Mewtwo's level.
Slightly stronger than rookies, but not by much. However, its learning ability completely surpassed humans—just two days of intensive battles had significantly improved its strength.
Perhaps in a few more days, rookies with slightly weaker strength would already be inferior to it in command skills.
This might sound ordinary, but upon closer thought, it was quite terrifying.
After all, Paldea followed a path of universal education—these newcomers had been exposed to trainer-related knowledge since childhood and had systematically studied it at school.
Yet their efforts over the past half year or more couldn't compare to Mewtwo's improvement in just one week...
This was even after Aiden had placed restrictions on Mewtwo, not allowing it to use more psychic power to assist its Pokémon like Sabrina did.
If we really counted Mewtwo's off-field abilities as a trainer, it might even be qualified to be a slightly weaker gym leader.
Indeed, the Pokémon world was too absurd.
Although he felt some emotions about this, Aiden was also somewhat curious—
What level would Mewtwo ultimately reach under his teaching as a teacher?
With this thought, time quickly came to Wednesday.
Today was the day Lance and Clair would arrive in Paldea for their short trip.
Upon waking up, Mewtwo had already arrived early at the battle field.
Taking advantage of the time before students arrived, Mewtwo would begin morning practice, using psychic power to apply various effects to assist the cloned Pokémon in their training.
Psychic power was too versatile—under Mewtwo's continuous development, functions like applying pressure, gravity reversal, Trick Room, and similar abilities gradually became small tricks it could master.
The cloned Pokémon it had caught also had good talent—they could still complete Mewtwo's not-easy training plans on time despite various obstacles.
In a certain sense, Aiden even felt that Mewtwo the trainer was much stricter than himself...
After all, he seemed to have never arranged proper training for his own Pokémon—mainly going with the flow.
Sylveon didn't want to train before evolving? Then focus on developing interest!
Lucario trained on its own? That's great—here's a set of Saitama's training methods, train on your own!
Hmm... it seemed he really was a layabout winner, completely relying on his Pokémon not being very legal—each had its own absurd growth method...
Mewtwo's abilities were quickly noticed by Lucario too—every morning it would come to train with Mewtwo, completing its own training under the influence of multiple gravity and Trick Room.
Of course, both naturally reached some kind of shady transaction.
Mewtwo helped Lucario train, while Lucario had to assist it in researching something very important to Mewtwo.
Mega Evolution!
Currently, the only one in the entire gym who had mastered Mega Evolution was Lucario, the lone survivor.
Influenced by Sabrina, Mewtwo had also begun researching the topic of "whether I can break through evolution barriers" during this period.
Obviously, the most feasible solution was Mega Evolution.
However, even after researching for several days, and even after Aiden had demonstrated this unique evolution phenomenon in front of it, Mewtwo still couldn't figure out its principles.
Regarding this point, humans hadn't completely figured it out either—currently they basically only knew that Pokémon and trainers should be connected through bonds...
Therefore, neither Aiden nor Mewtwo were in a hurry about this.
After all, Mewtwo didn't have any urgent reason to become stronger in the short term—slowly researching and steadily improving strength was fine.
Don't end up being too eager for quick success, go astray, and evolve into the last place on some mega Pokémon ranking list...
With Mewtwo's powerful psychic abilities, becoming a boxer and fighting as a martial artist—was that appropriate!?
While Aiden was mentally complaining about this, he quickly shifted his gaze away from Mewtwo and Lucario.
Compared to watching Mewtwo train, he had more important things to do today.
As an official gym leader of Paldea, he would represent the region in receiving the cousin pair Lance and Clair.
Since Lance had previously come to Paldea to participate in the Dragon-type Master Tournament, and had off-handedly stopped by Cabo Poco to meet Aiden, even giving him that iron-headed Bagon as a gift.
Therefore, this time they would land directly in Cabo Poco.
This was also the main reason why Aiden had refreshed himself outside the gym so early in the morning.
"Graaow..."
It seemed that because Aiden was blocking the way and affecting its sunbathing area, Miraidon quickly made an unhappy grunt, drawing Aiden's attention.
Speaking of which...
Casseroya Lake was actually quite far away.
For the Dragon-type cousins who had Dragonite as flying mounts, it wasn't a problem.
But it seemed he could only ride Miraidon and slowly make his way there? Thinking of this, Aiden shook his head, quickly crouched down to look at the impatient Miraidon, then stroked its head before speaking earnestly:
"Miraidon, when will you learn to fly?"
"Graaow?"
Miraidon's eyes instantly became sharp, internal alarm bells ringing loudly.
What does this mean?
You're not disliking me, a good mount Pokémon that only needs sandwiches as fuel and is completely clean energy, right...
Does a mount need to know how to fly?
But even my previous self never learned to fly before...
Instead of Aiden's casual remark, it was Miraidon that felt a bit depressed, immediately lowering its head.
Everything else was fine—only flying was something it truly couldn't do!
Could it really create something out of nothing and suddenly have an epiphany to learn flying?
But since Aiden had said this...
Could I really learn to fly???
For a moment, Miraidon lost confidence in itself.
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