I called out for Fly, Puff having already noticed me and perched on my head while Spritzee hovered nearby, still jumpy around me from a few too many chicken dinner jokes mostly made by Sin, Ian, and me. I dragged her aside, getting a little privacy from other trainers "What was that?"

  "I WON! Did you see?! Did you see!?" Fly answered, jumping up at me, putting her head in my hand such that I'd rub it for her as I crouched down.

  "I saw, you beat that Herdier but what was that move you used?" she was making this into a smaller deal than it was. Learning custom moves early was rare, for her to just learn it out of the blue was even more so. She demanded more head scratches before telling me so I readily gave them.

  "I just really wanted to win so I static-ed him for a second! I thought really hard about freezing him and pushed my thingy towards him!" she rolled over and I switched to belly rubs. There was a static buildup there I noticed, with all that running she should have been bursting with electric TE from the friction conversion her species used. The amount was elevated for sure but not as much as it could have been.

  After more scratches and belly rubs that filled her with energy by the time I was done, I understood what had happened. In the moment, through desperation, she had consciously pushed her static field away from her using the buildup. It was exactly what we were practicing but it was a big breakthrough compared to her earlier attempts. As I got more and more visible in my excitement Fly coasted on the energy and we each were living it up.

  "Can you do it again?" I asked while smiling.

  "Yes! FOR THE SCRATCHES GIVER!" Fly jumped up and targeted Puff, who noticing the evil eye she was given tried to escape in a hurry. As I watched, no structures popped up on Fly's fur, the energy moved through her and the excess buildup of static surged outwards into her surroundings. The swirling natural field of static electricity Fly had around her was pushed outward by an unseen order as the blob expanded like a bubble. I felt a tingle as I was caught in the crossfire and felt a shock pass over me quickly before something caught and it lingered on my body until it encompassed my entire body. Puff with her numerous speed increasing moves was just able to get away from the small rising cloud.

  As quickly as it came, the blob retracted back towards its source. It seemed to get a little thicker as it built up again, like a muscle that was recovering from exercise. Fly was not in the least exhausted although her motions were less frantic, having expelled the excess buildup with uneconomical amounts.

  And the effect was even bigger this time! I knelt down and let Fly get a little closer to fulfilling her dream of kissing me that all dog like Pokémon seem to have. Closer didn't mean I let it happen, but she tried anyways. A ruffled Puff watched as we celebrated together. Since she earned a pce among prodigies tonight, I gave her the biggest piece of the Sunkerns that Ian had hunted while I was talking with Thomas. Other trainers looked on with some disgust at eating wilds but that's just how it worked when you are poor and there is free food avaible for the taking.

  Sin was quiet during this time, looking at Fly with respect but also sadness. When he did say anything it was about how talented fighters became star pupils under a master. Learning quickly on their own until a master did notice them. I couldn't help my excited tone but in the back of my mind I tried to think of a way to make him feel better. While learning so many moves was in of in itself challenging, that was only for shorter periods of time(like the first year of being a trainer). He had over 10 years and hadn't made any significant progress past that move diversity.

  I wanted to ride the wave that Fly was on, but I hadn't studied her long enough to figure out how that particur ability worked, so at best I could provide exercises to try. Ian was doing fine on his own, hunting and figuring out protect in his free time while Puff was working on sing. Both harder moves to learn so it would be another day or two at least adding onto the practice we did while traveling.

  I had already picked out one move from each of them that I focused on figuring out so by the time I left this city I would be ready to start messing with moves. Nothing too crazy, but I would start teaching them better, with more specific instructions. Something that would make the 3rd gym easier.

  Ian was lowering himself into the fire and I had to pull him out with a rag to grab his burning hilt. Like a really steaming sauna he had started getting softer, having to remake his bde by gathering steel TE and materializing it using ghost TE. A really interesting process really that I hoped to learn more about one day. One day meaning not tonight, so after finishing my portion of Sunkern I went to bed with a less electrifying than usual puppy.

  In the morning, I was used as a weight for bench presses by Sin. I was lighter than what he usually used but I didn't have a good way to get him something that heavy without visiting a gym since there wasn't many rocks around that were solid enough to be used. Trees were too heavy for him and also protected by some fierce evolved wilds but we made do. It was kind of terrifying actually, he was bancing me not 2 feet off the ground but I couldn't get over my fear from the floating position as he lifted me. With one hand.

  "So Sin, woah! Careful!"

  "You'll be fine, stop moving so much" he was adjusting his hand, shifting around my back before doing another rep.

  "Ok, I trust you" I said, pausing to regather my thoughts "so how about we work together today? Particurly on karate chop."

  He didn't respond immediately as he was in the middle of a rep with my back touching the hand neckce but when he finished "Sure." He didn't seem that into it, favoring punching moves, but he wouldn't say no to someone who beat him so recently. It wasn't his way, but I wanted to have him be happy when training, when working on something you liked you got better faster.

  "We'll try to turn it into a punch by changing the condensation point to the knuckles instead of the side of your hand" if he wanted to punch then by god I was going to make everything a punch if I could. I would be the first to invent a punching kick! Or I could just do the ones involving his hand and arms. Specializing in punching moves could be a great way to start learning the various types with how diverse they were.

  He didn't say anything but I assumed he was happier with that expnation. My time as a barbell was still scary, but I got used to it as he used me to do squats and to curl. Puff was ughing at me as she knit normal TE together with the vibrations of her voice, trying to imbue it with a feeling of drowsiness. Her singing was on point as she sung a lulby that her mother sang to her, it traveled all around and produced a calm atmosphere in our training area.

  When Sin was finally finished warming up I had him first use karate chop. I had him repeat it multiple times and had him switch up a couple of the formations which increased the effect.

  He did exactly what I said but didn't seem to understand what any of them did like most Pokemon. Moves were natural to them and adjusting them was mainly instincts or changing the flow rather than creating the formation itself to induce that change. As part of my training, I learned the very basic ones and common changes people made. They came in a variety of shapes and coated the body part that used the move and were generally bigger on the weaker Pokémon. The strongest had them so small that you couldn't see them without a magnifying gss or sensing them directly. They were about the size of my palm now with very little changes or additions made by Sin, likely part of the reason why he couldn't make his moves much stronger in the past couple years.

  On an instinctual level Pokemon could create new runes to use and mess with their skillsets and that was what older trainers relied upon, but nowadays we had recorded a vast amount of them. I had a notebook of them but it got trashed in the attack so I had to rely on the old noggin for this one. With a rock that had been kicked up by his attacks on the ground I drew something like a rectangle with straight lines across it and added some basic additions to my drawing "Can you try and make this please, it doesn't have to be perfect but do the outer box first before working inwards, make your hand the focus point like normal."

  He did what I said and when he used the move there wasn't much difference, if anything it was slightly weaker as it had fewer add-ons powering it up and making the flow efficient. With a full on change to one of the core components he wasn't able to form it properly and it looked skinnier than it was supposed to, without the straight lines. I encouraged him and the move barely changed each time, the shape mostly the same. Maybe a little wider or shorter or some variation of those as he was struggling to guide the fighting TE this way.

  I looked at the pokedex time and ended our morning training to go watch Thomas's gym battle after another slightly weaker karate chop damaged the ground. We had made quite the mess but it was slowly reforming how it was before as a different worker than before came over with a Carnivine. I didn't look him in the eye, feeling a little bad about making him clean up after me. My mission to make a quick fighting type punch was still in progress and we would be making a bigger mess once Sin got the hang of it.

  "Let's go cheer on Thomas and check out this gym for ourselves" I picked up Ian and we assembled into our little squad arrangement we had grown used to on the road. Sin on my left, Puff on my head, Ian in my right hand, and Fly leading us somewhere with utmost confidence.

  "Psssst, the left street Fly" Puff whispered.