Goldenrod city had a lot of battle plazas, and depending on the time of day (it was during the afternoons when they were packed,) they would be full of people but mornings typically had little to no trainers and the ones that did come either wanted to simply walk around, had weak Pokemon, or, in the case of Virah; to train.
After her daycare job was finished- all she had to do was feed Pokemon, - she immediately headed for the nearest battle plaza.
Her job also made sure that when she finished, she would still have around an hour left before her school started.
And how did she get to her 5:AM job to begin with?
Well, the answer is simple- even after going through her excruciating and sleepless thoughts the night before, her body was simply too used to waking up as early as 4 o clock in the morning and that it didn't even care that Virah felt tired when she woke up, 4 AM was 4 AM and so, she needed to move.
Just like yesterday morning, Virah tutored Nitro how to use one of the strongest moves a Bug Type can learn this early-
Bug Bite was a move that, by definition, had the user, well, bite their opponent, and so, to tutor Nitro on how to use the move, Virah told him to bite things.
“Okay Nitro,” Virah threw the oran berry she was holding high into the air and caught it, and Nitro, even after eating a free breakfast back in the center, followed its trajectory with his gaze, a hungry look in his eyes. “I want you to catch these oran berries again,"
“We- Weedle!” Nitro nodded energetically.
“I'm going to repeat what I did yesterday, but this time, there's going to be a sitrus berry among the orans,” Virah told him.
The Weedle perked up, the happy feelings oozing out of his very being the complete opposite of the pained cry Virah's wallet was letting out, “but before it comes, you're going to need to catch all of the oran berries in a single set, if you don't, you'll try again until I run out of oran berries and then we'll leave for school.”
The fact that Ntiro wouldn’t be eating a sitrus berry if he failed went unspoken on purpose.
Virah eyed her Weedle, “did you get that?”
Nitro’s head quickly moved up and down, eager to eat and overconfident in his skill, “WEEDLE!”
“Okay, okay- geez-” Virah stifled her laughter and threw the first oran berry into the air, which Nitro caught with ease, and as he chewed, Virah threw another one, and then two, then three, and then she stopped with the warm up.
Virah took out another handful of oran berries, “it’ll be five this time, and you'll have to catch all of them or else you won't get the sitrus berry next round, got it?”
Nitro stopped chewing and nodded.
Virah tossed 2 berries at the same time at first, which was quickly followed by another one, and then just as the last one she threw fell, the remaining berries flew off her hand. The part where a berry got flung far away from the others was out of the question.
Nitro, in panic, jumped and caught the first berry in the air.
He chewed as he made his way back to the ground, then he caught another and the last berry was near the ground by the time he finished eating his latest catch and that was when Virah saw her Pokemon's body glow green and then, with a sudden burst of speed, Nitro reached for the distanced oran berry and caught it inches away from the ground.
Weedle displayed the berry to her proudly, and Virah nodded, “good job,” she complimented, “now, I'll give you two sitrus berries without working for it if you repeat what you did just now,”
“Weedle?” Nitro tilted his head.
“The Pokemon move, Nitro,” Virah elaborated, “you used one just now,”
The Weedle looked down in contemplation and perked up a second later, “Weedle!” He jumped in place as if he was trying to do the move again, “Weedle! Weedle! Weedle!”
Virah let him hop around, “remember, you can have two sitrus berries if you do it,”
Tutoring Pokemon was a whole lot harder than people expected, because- excluding the age and evolutionary state of the Pokemon, - most tutors are often masters of the field they were teaching Pokemon in so the only thing that a trainer sees is someone easily getting their Pokemon to learn a move.
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Obviously, a Hiker would know a lot about mountains and so, they'd know how to teach Pokemon Rock Slide or Stone Edge, and a Martial Artist also knew how to break rocks with their fists, so teaching that to Pokemon isn't so hard.
Tutors were already good, it was why people think that them teaching moves is easy because, to the common trainer, tutoring is just them telling a Pokemon to do something and then bam, move learned.
But if that's the case then professional battlers wouldn’t need specialized tutors.
In truth, teaching Pokemon requires a lot of factors, with the most important one being the evolutionary state of the Pokemon in question as well as their age.
And the older/more evolved a Pokemon is, the easier it is for people to tutor but for newly hatched babies like Nitro, there needs to be some kind of trick to get them to be taught.
Like the one Virah is doing right now where she tricked Nitro- who was still jumping around while yelling his name in a vain attempt to call upon his Bug Bite, or in other words, playing. - into using Bug Bite by making him panic and thus, rush for the berry that almost touched the ground.
But back to the tutoring, most of the time, move tutors taught Pokemon when they were still children and that requires quite a bit of patience to pull, especially if the tutor in question is versatile in their freelance, and going from a tame or disciplined Machop to an annoying, and very arrogant Meowth can take a toll on a tutor mentally.
Do that every day and well… it’s understandable why Virah didn’t plan on going down this route and instead chose to become a professional battler.
And it's not like adult Pokemons were easy to tutor too because if a trainer is arrogant enough to think that tutoring Pokemon is easy and requires no effort then the Pokemon would just think of the human trying to teach them as an annoying pest who thinks they couldn’t learn the move on their own.
She has watched her seniors at the Breeding Centre doing it and she… just didn't think she wanted to be a breeder forever.
And come to think of it, as a breeder and move tutor Virah could- should have already done this to a Weedle a few generations ago so that when they bred as a Beedrill, the resulting baby from their egg would know the move Bug Bite.
Sadly, she didn't and now she has to teach Nitro about it now instead of him knowing the move already.
She felt regretful at the wasted opportunity and if Nitro knew Bug Bite already, then Virah could have taught him something else. Maybe something like Drill Rush? Or maybe that's too much for Nitro right now?
Hm. Roost would have been good too…
Virah frowned and stopped thinking about all the what-ifs and simply waited for her Weedle to use Bug Bite, which he failed to do but he earned himself one sitrus berry regardless after managing to successfully glow green for a split second.
Virah internally nodded as she watched the Weedle chew on the sitrus berry happily, that should encourage him to keep going in trying to do Bug Bite tomorrow.
And who knows? With Nitro's prodigious state, he might even learn Bug Bite- a move with the same type as him, - with ease.
Virah estimated he would do it in… two days time? Yeah, that sounds like appropriate and she was already cutting the standard education rate of normal Weedles by three days.
Virah didn't know if Nitro would do it in less though, but she couldn't wait for him to surprise her.
She recalled the Weedle back to his ball and made her way out of the plaza
The trainers were starting to filter in now, and not just them, businessmen and workers were starting their shifts for the day and the streets were slowly becoming crowded.
Virah increased her pace, she didn't want to be caught up in the rush hour of the morning if she could help it.
She moved into the narrower and calmer streets of Goldenrod, slowly increasing her pace as she beelined for her trainer's school.
She… thought about Whitney as she walked, mostly because the pinkette simply wouldn't leave her mind since last night and Virah wasn't stupid, she knew what that meant but the implications were lost on her.
Or rather, she refused to outright think of the implications.
Virah wasn't… has never been attracted to anyone else before- as far as she's aware, - and Whitney suddenly taking up most of her thoughts was a first so it was pretty obvious from the start but-
But she also didn't-
She sighed and stopped walking.
“Whitney would be there,” she said to herself, mostly to get her thoughts in order, the uh, Alakazam therapist of the Breeding Centre told her it helps, “how would you react to her? By blushing?”
And, like clockwork, Virah’s own thoughts answered with a very contradictory- from its clear infatuation with Whitney, one would think that her stupid little brain would scream out yes- and loud- NO.
She sighed and kept walking, “guess that's that then.”
So wait- if she didn't want to think of the implications of her attraction to Whitney, then, why is she thinking about them at all?
Virah compartmentalized the thoughts to the far away creases of her brain, knowing that one day she'll have to face them- when she either sees Whitney being married off to someone and she thinks, ‘wow, that could have been me,’ in regret, or when… she confronts Whitney about it, be it accidentally or on purpose.
She would never do that last part and the pain of seeing Whitney marrying a man can be dealt with by future her and so, Virah- now with her worried thoughts of being attracted to another girl placed- locked tightly at the back of her mind, - walked to trainer's school with a much clearer head.
When she got there, she saw Whitney- more like Whitney missiled straight for Virah the moment the pinkette saw her actually, - and offered her a chipper and completely platonic smile.
“Good morning Virah!” The pinkette waved her hands high.
Virah held back her laughter, “you know, raising your hand like this should have been one when I was far away but-”
Virah reached up and gave Whitney’s outstretched hand a high five, causing Whitney’s face to turn red from the way their cheeks almost made contact.
Virah grinned and still did not put distance between them, with Whitney's pink eyes overtaking most of what she was seeing, she said- “good morning,”
Whitney stayed and didn’t return the greeting which Virah thought was fair, she was a bit pushy just now.
Virah didn’t even bother to look back at Whitney and the way the pinkette stared at her hand, because she was thinking that today would be great because her worried thoughts about liking another girl- the only problems she couldn't do anything to fix, - was hiding behind a wall of normal ones.
And Virah thought that everything is better off that way.