When I returned the first thing I noticed was Sin's teeth. Those things were bared at the surroundings as he cpped his leg in time with the beat of a pop rock song. I hadn't heard it before but the area was filled with mist shapes, some of Puff herself and other cute Pokémon. I withheld myself from looking at the fairy, preferring to join in for the rest of the song.

  By the end I was smiling and Puff bowed having mist-roses fly at herself. "That was beautiful Puff, thanks for that. I finished thinking and Spritzee can stay." The Spritzee jumped having not seen me, still skittish from earlier but appeared happy enough with the arrangement. It started chattering with Puff, probably thanking her for her support.

  "No problem, so are you going to catch him?" Puff answered before turning to me.

  I gave Spritzee a side eye, with his 'pn' to follow us while we fought off everything(which doesn't even make sense since he should be able to fly) did not give me hope that he would be a strong battler. "Don't push it Puffball. Now Ian, how are the Bidoof looking?" The rest of the night was nice, the meat a bit charred since I was away for so long but it was good enough for me. Juicy tasting even although I now have a desire to check out the next spice rack I come across to see what I can add.

  Spritzee was warry enough to stay away from me while sleeping, instead perching near Puff before closing his eyes. Fly had worn herself out for a couple minutes and that allowed me to get to sleep. The next morning we set off again. The higher caliber wilds were still picking on us and we only beat 1 group of 8 Sentret off. Spritzee had just hung back, using his ability to fly to stay out of any fighting. I did learn though that he got tired of flying quickly and preferred to instead float on a soft fairy wind. This was much slower than even Ian so he would have been easy prey for anything with a modicum of speed.

  I wanted to fight more and also have something to do other than jog, watch, and advise my team on their moves so I started teaching Puff some more rock songs like Johnny B. Goode, This Afternoon, Sweet Home Abama and she took to it like a fish to swimming. The extra attention drew in music reted Pokémon who sang along with us for awhile before they ran off or we attracted wilds who didn't want to join in.

  Spritzee also spread that sickeningly sweet scent to lure in more when he realized what I was trying to do. Thats how we spent our time the next couple days, around a week in total. They all learned new moves and for Sin I had him lean farther into his style since he had everything I wanted of him. Not his own specialty move but improving his focus energy and a watered down version of bide.

  Fly had finally learned to both cancel her ability on command, cycling the energy to the rest of her, and make it leak even farther when she used it, a couple inches around her. I watched a couple discharges studying the basic formations in that move to give her advice and it was a small scale success. She was exerting electric TE, her ability turning it into a static field. Both Fly and Sin also gained a connection to me and I to them. Fly was interesting, calling me the scratches giver or the scratcher for short when I was pying with her and Maxy like Puff when speaking with others.

  Sin on the other hand was influenced by a half-typing from his upbringing in the Colosseum. He wasn't going to be the best man at my wedding, but he was everything I wanted in my fighting type. Ruthless when fighting wilds, dedicated to his craft even more than they usually were, and strength focused despite his lean build. He did something to his muscles that his father had taught him, muscle condensing. While it made him gain muscles slower as he packed them tighter together.

  A monster, that's what I was raising, not unlike Stew's own. He didn't need to be that fast, just strong enough to destroy anything he could reach.

  I watched him fire punch a Seedot through a tree before Sin then chucked the unconscious form as far as he could into the trees. He was tired afterwords because he put a lot of effort into his windup trying to increase his distance. Still, he kept up with the rest of us like nothing had happened after expending a ton of energy on that one throw. He was also teaching the others some moves through demonstrations, I knew concepts and was studying the formations each time a move was used but the final combination was a bit much for me right now.

  "You think really hard about protecting yourself and put your hands like this and push out the weak energy" he said, teaching Ian protect. Weak energy=normal TE in his mind as he has a definite advantage there. Unfortunately he needs it for some of his moves. An energy of tricks and empowerment of weaker effect as he described it which was true in a sense.

  Ian didn't get the expnation but leaned forward like a nod. His subsequent attempt failed, only the smallest of formations making it up. I smiled and looked around, seeing Puff riding on Fly's head while she recovered. Something the rest of us didn't really need to do, even I had tons of extra energy now as the new connections filled me and reinforced my body. I would only get tougher from here and able to form my own natural barrier and felt amazing.

  Recently, I saw some Weedle that I checked with my pokedex, none that I captured. I only wanted one with the hidden ability if I was going to catch one, the boost to speed when running away would become sniper when it became a Beedrill. I also saw a weird walking Tentacool that ran away when I tried to get closer, that was all that interested me though along this route.

  I passed more and more trainers as I got closer and there were fewer attacks as I got closer to the next gym city. There were two vilges I stopped in, nice folks who were willing to restock my food and other supplies with foraged goods. Fly even got along with a kid from one of them who ran over to pet her.

  Remembering how Dawn was made up of trainers from vilges and small towns I asked around and in both they didn't know anything. I could call Henry and ask but I didn't want to again so soon. While interested in Dawn, I wasn't too invested and I wasn't even qualified to join it. One day I would see what they did, maybe it was even nothing to do with the vilges themselves but I didn't have any clue other than they looked into alphas.

  Just as I was wondering how much farther it would be, I saw the city of endless possibilities. One bursting with so much dark energy that no future telling worked within miles of the pce. It was made of a bunch of concrete and looked less nice than Blossom but overall structurally sound. I pointed it out to the others and they were curious about it. What would lie ahead for us? We got closer and closer until I had a better view of the outer reaches. There was a short concrete wall around a tightly packed series of one story houses, some with broken windows.

  "Excuse me but can I check out your Honedge?" someone interrupted my view with their pale mug and I refocused onto them. It was a skinny kid with a Ghastly t-shirt on and a Phantump and a Sandygast following him. The former twirled around me and giggled before observing Sin upside down. He swatted at it, annoyed and growled before it giggled again and disappeared into the shadows.

  "I guess, what's your name" nice thing to do since the guy was obviously interested in ghost types.

  "I'm Thomas, nice to meet you ..." he drew out his sentence like a question that I filled in.

  "Max"

  "Max. Honedge aren't from around here, is he your starter?" he asked, holding Ian up like an appraiser with a small smile.

  "Yep, what about you?"

  "What? Oh my starter, that would be Lori my garian Corso. Hmmmm...your Honedge appears to be over oiled" Thomas was looking down Ian's sharp point now in a very precarious manner. His hands gingerly held the sword hilt and the ft of the two foot bde.

  "Is being over oiled bad?" It wasn't apparently, just a waste of money. Ian was disappointed when he advised once every two days instead of daily and to use the whetstone I forgot about to fix scratches. He also provided other knowledge and legends about the Aegissh line and ghost types in general while walking me to the nearest Pokémon center to register for the gym.

  "And that's why Sinistea's real body is actually the liquid and not the cup" he said. A very dedicated fellow Thomas was. While Puff registered me I was getting the others touched up with the help of an Audino.

  Finishing up Puff turned to me "Can you ask him about that Skeledirge again? What types of songs do they sing?"

  "Later, Thomas do you want to battle Ian?" Ian has been working hard the past couple days and I want to see how I can battle with him one on one when I am not focusing on slicing a Budew up and running from anything I couldn't damage to let the others take care of it.

  "Gdly but I don't exactly have a lot of money so I can't bet anything. Spent too much on snacks while studying for my rematch tomorrow" Thomas turned towards his shadow. "I'll use Lori, can you wake up for that?" he asked while staring at it. Inside was a darker shadow with a white spiky frame that rose out of it to give a nod before sinking back in.

  "She loves to do that trick since she has stubby legs, did you know that Curso can faint Pokémon that touch them? Its..." I was interested but I focused more on the battle. Tuning him out, I walked out of the center with him right behind me to find a patch of dirt to battle on.

  "Good luck Lori, may us slow folk have a good match" Ian said while floating out of Thomas's hand to get a heal.

  On a completely different note, Hannah might owe me money since I made it in under two weeks!