CHAPTER 255

Pauline arrived with a Primeape.

The fighting type walked so peacefully. His eyes were closed, his breaths slow and he practically glided across the Pokemon Center's orange-beige glossy floor without a sound. Pauline wrapped me, then Cecilia into a hug. Emilia followed close behind, her brown hair tied into a ponytail. Denzel came into view with his Swablu sitting on his head, still angry at everything like always. My best friend looked worried, which ended up worrying me. If he was showing his worry, then the sky might as well have been falling. We hugged him too, and the others also arrived at that moment. All of our friends were here— save for Lauren, who was arriving in another two days. The greetings felt long, especially when a meeting hung over all of our heads.

"He evolved when he was meditating or something, I don't really understand it," Pauline told us as she shrugged, staring down at the cross-legged Primeape. "Vigoroth had annoyed him really badly that afternoon, so I think that had something to do with it?"

"They still have that going on?" I asked.

"Oh yeah," she snorted. "Vigoroth will try to get him angry in their spars, but Primeape never rises to that anger. He's making good progress—" she stopped when the fighting type side-eyed her. "Okay, you're making great progress toward reaching enlightenment, or whatever. Good job."

A calm, zen feeling was the only thing radiating out of Primeape. How stable he was surprised me. Emotions were like colored waves, never staying at the same level for long. They ebbed and flowed, but Primeape's was a line, even when Pauline annoyed him. A far-cry from what I had learned to expect from his species. They were depicted as so angry they couldn't think in the media I consumed as a kid. He was the only evolution our friends had, though, but not the only one that had made progress.

"I'd feel confident using Swablu against Wake," Denzel said, continuing a conversation with Chase I hadn't been following. "Craig taught me a lot of fundamentals, which means that training up a Pokemon from scratch is quicker. Granted, I wouldn't call her seven-badge level yet, but she's getting there! That Cloud Nine ability is going to do wonders against Rain Dance."

"So when's she evolving, then?" Chase asked with crossed arms.

"I don't know? Maybe in a few weeks," Denzel hesitantly said. Swablu preened her feathers and puffed up her chest, not to impress anyone here, but to make herself feel good.

"How's Sylvi?" I cut in.

"Emotions wise? Just like I told you on the phone. Battling-wise? He's been doing great— we're working on Moonblast and a few new glamour tricks. By the way, Chase, you caught a fucking Wimpod? I never would have thought…"

I left them to their conversation and slipped back in with Pauline. Emi was talking to Mira, Louis, and Justin, but she was doing great. Every time I saw her, it was like she was more confident, and somehow she ended up being the least worried about these poachers.

"You better not leave us in the dark," Pauline warned Cecilia. "It's just like you and her," she turned toward me, "to try to do everything on your own while we play here like children."

My girlfriend had been entirely too content to avoid the topic, but that was impossible when she was being confronted with it directly. "We'll talk about it tomorrow, Pauline. Just settle into Pastoria for now, okay?"

The redhead nodded, then smirked after a pause when she looked at me. "Did you know she posted, like, a thousand different pictures of your sleeping face yesterday?"

Cecilia shot Pauline a look of what could only be described as pure betrayal. I had taken a one hour nap or so before leaving, having fallen asleep to the sound of the waves.

I gasped. "To the group chat?"

"No! Just to her," she sighed.

"You should have seen her texts," Pauline laughed. "Anyway— where's… ah, there's Justin! Justin! Stop being so emo and battle me!"

The pale teen turned toward her and away from Emi. "I think you should catch your sixth Pokemon as fast as possible. And we wouldn't want your team to be out of commission when you have to train for Wake."

"But Grace battled Barry!"

Justin tilted his head. "Grace has six badges and you have five. She can afford to."

"Blegh. You're no fun."

"He's right, you know," Maeve muttered. "Every day counts for us."

They'd sign up for Wake earlier than we would, and they'd leave earlier too. If I remembered correctly, the plan was for Denzel to go quicker than he'd like so Pauline could carry him to Canalave on Braviary. She would also bring Louis with her since he didn't have a flier while Maeve and Justin had their own mounts. Essentially, Denzel would leave and fight Wake earlier than the rest of us with six badges. I wasn't planning on going last, either. I wanted to give some distance between myself and civilization for Sweetheart to evolve so there were no casualties. Even if I could just recall her in her Pokeball if things got too dicey, accidents were possible. I had done my fair share of research on Tyranitar while planning to contain her, and they had among the highest defenses of any Pokemon.

That was not an exaggeration.

And their mega evolution was even better, although that was never happening this year. Only a few mega Tyranitar had appeared in history and the tales weren't pretty. Apparently, getting them to listen to anything you said was impossible, and when they had the power to literally reshape the landscape, that was a pretty big problem.

The reunion led to one of Emilia's famous parties, where we realized that Justin actually kind of turned back to normal when he was drunk? He had drank of his own volition, despite complaining about how unhealthy it was. The sight of it alone made Pauline tear up, even though she tried her best to hide it. I almost thought she was going to ask him to be permanently drunk, but she didn't. Instead, she just let Mira shirk the info over to her Alakazam, who would chew on it for a day or two and come back with one of his many theories. Hopefully he'd actually figure something out soon. He had declared it his 'life's work', since no other doctor or scientist had solved it before. The only 'cure' known was to wait for years for the energy to disperse, and again, even then he'd still be affected.

If someone could create a breakthrough, I believed it would be him.

When the party came to a close, neither me, Denzel, Cece, Mira, nor Chase had drunk any alcohol, which was normal for me and Chase, but highly unusual for the other three. All of our Pokemon were recalled. I had kept my team up to speed with the poaching situation, but tonight was when we actually formulated a plan on how to tackle this. No one would come out of this room until we did so.

Denzel audibly swallowed as Mira turned the music down. He pulled out a folded map from his bag—

"Woah. When'd you buy that?" Mira asked. "Is that—"

"Route 212 in its entirety," Denzel said, unfolding the map. "And I bought it on the way to the Pokemon Center." He stopped to tape the map on Cecilia's wall. "It was pretty cheap since maps have gone out of style since phones came into prominence. You get a real bang for your buck, and you all basically warned me like a bomb was about to go off at any moment. I thought it was good to be prepared."

It was an impressive map. Route 212 was drawn in excessive detail, from the Marsh to Pastoria's west, with all of its bogs and lakes, to the river that run from Mount Coronet, to Solaceon to cutting the route in two before emptying into the ocean. Then eventually, the route swung north toward Hearthome as a relatively flat downslope. The most unique thing about this section of the route was that a rich family lived in a mansion there called the 'Pokemon Mansion', which really showed how high their ego was. Apparently they had guards around the clock there to protect their home from the wild Pokemon, since it had only recently been built. The family whose name eluded me had come there from Hearthome to 'get away from it all'. I remembered it had been a pretty big controversy when Hearthome's government had leased them the rights to the land. Coming back to the map, it also had a list of common Pokemon found on all areas of the route, but that wasn't what we were interested in.

Denzel tapped on the swamp. "This is where almost every trainer has had their Pokemon stolen," he declared. I was content to let him speak. It reminded me of when he'd give us a rundown on the routes when we traveled as a large group, only in a much worse context. "So you'd think that their base was nearby, but Grace spoke to her… ACE Trainer and was told that they hadn't found anything on all of route 212, is that correct?"

"Yes. They swept the route with fliers in the last few weeks, but found nothing," I nodded.

Chase sighed. "I thought they only meant the swamp."

"No, they meant the entire route, including the non-swampy parts," I reiterated. "And they found nothing."

Mira raised a finger. "So, could they be Teleporting on another route? Off-route, maybe? That bodes badly for us," she said, glancing at my ankle. "If the League's scouts can't find a base, it'll be difficult for us to find one."

"What about your Trace trick?" Chase asked.

Denzel frowned. "Trace trick? Gardevoir's ability?"

"It's how I managed to track Abel. Gardevoir spent so much time in my head from the day I caught her that she's far more attuned to the ability than others— that and I got lucky. She could also sense the Zoroark, so that's a plus. The problem is, I don't think he'd be sending her out if he hadn't found a way to fix that. It was too big of a hole not to patch."

Cecilia glanced at me, and I gripped the edge of my desk. Mira and Chase nodded. It was time, then. "Denzel," I said, a little quieter than expected. "Uh, before I tell you this, I need you to know that if you want to back out, you still can. We are technically breaking the law by telling you this— and even the League doesn't know the extent of how far this goes."

"Uh…" he trailed off. "I mean I would rather not, but if you think this is important."

"No, I need you to agree. I know it's confusing, but this is a big deal. You'd have to carry this to your grave."

My best friend frowned, and I could tell he was considering his options.

"Okay. I agree. You can say whatever you want to say," he agreed, clenching a fist.

Mira beamed. "Perfect! Okay, so long story short, your best friend Grace not only has the ability to understand what Pokemon say freakishly fast, but she can also feel when something is a Pokemon in a way I'm pretty sure could bypass whatever the hell Abel came up with."

Denzel's mouth gaped. "Huh?"

"You know that lake next to your hometown and the one you were at next to Snowpoint? There's a third one north of the Hotel Grand Lake. Three Legendary Pokemon hibernate there— well, according to Cece it's not hibernation, but dormancy. They can still influence the world in subtle ways, including giving a bunch of children powers, for some reason, but we also aren't chosen somehow—"

"Hold on. Hold on," Denzel stammered with his hands up. "Is this a joke? You're fucking with me."

"No, Williams. This is unfortunately true, and we can prove it," Chase shrugged.

"I thought you just had, like, a connection to Pokemon or something," Denzel said, his voice aghast. He was pale like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You said you can prove it— prove it how?"

"Cecilia and I, we can force people into doing things with our Voice," he said. "She never uses hers, though. I can run a quick test on you if you want. We were saving my one daily use for this."

"Supposedly Mira and Grace will get something out of visiting their lakes just like we did," Cecilia added. "But the point is, we have a way of telling Zoroark apart from other humans. Abel is strong, but she's apparently only carrying Hypno with her and that isn't one of his fighters. The five of us could take them— and if the ACE Trainers come in like you said," she turned toward me, "then it's not even a question. And if she's carrying more Pokemon that day, we can always pretend we didn't notice."

Mira nodded. "See, Abel is still operating from the point of view that we're just a bunch of normal children. He lacks information. And actually, Cece, we wouldn't even need for it to be a fight—"

Denzel yelled, "Slow down! Slow the hell down," he exhaled. "I trust you guys, but… test it on me. Make me, uh, make me jump a couple of times."

"Oh, that's a classic," Mira giggled.

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Chase placed a fist in front of his mouth and cleared his throat. "Okay. Jump five times."

Chase took a deep, tired breath as soon as the words left his mouth. Denzel, of course, instantly began jumping up and down. Cecilia stared with the same displeased look, though she had gotten used to it at this point.

"Why five times?" Mira asked.

"He said a couple of times."

"So three," she said.

"Five is fine—"

"Holy fuck," Denzel hissed, his eyes bulging. He gasped for air, like he was drowning and I took a hesitant step toward him. He held out his hand, motioning at us to stay back. "What the fuck? This is actually real?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I'm sorry you were in the dark for so long, but we thought it was better you knew if you're going to help with this. Even the League doesn't know about the Voice stuff because we don't exactly trust them."

"You don't trust the League?" He asked in a confused tone.

"They've been fucking us with their lies and keeping us in the dark," Chase said, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. Even after practicing with Azelf's gift for so many weeks, he still wasn't capable of using the power more than once a day without passing out— and he never would be. At least he could use it without nearly collapsing now.

"Just let me sit down for a second," Denzel dryly said, stumbling onto the bed. "You said you were— chosen."

"Not chosen," Cecilia said. "Azelf liked to reiterate that."

"Azelf? I think I remember reading that name in a book or something," Denzel muttered. "Uh, do you know why this happened? I assume it's related to Galactic, like, everything is connected."

"It's another heavy topic," Mira warned. "Very heavy. Knowing would not help and would only serve to hurt you. I'm talking world-altering consequences." Her lips flattened, and she took a deep breath. "But if you really want to know, then—"

"You know," he interrupted. "So I want to know."

We told him the world was maybe going to end.

—

It took an hour for Denzel to have the energy to get up from the bed. He hadn't cried or panicked. Mostly, he had laid his back against the bed and stared at the ceiling the entire time. It had been apathy. Him wondering if anything he'd done in the last half a year and anything he'd do in the future even mattered. It took many attempts to convince him to talk again, mostly by saying that the League had things under control, from what we knew. We didn't trust the League, but we knew they didn't mess around, even if I unfortunately had learned that even their trainers weren't flawless. Nobody was.

But the goal was cheering him up. Denzel was an optimistic person. It was just in his nature to think that things were going to work out somehow. Be it through powering through or finally having processed everything, he sat up on the bed.

"Can— can I have some water?" He asked. He rubbed his chapped lips together and erratically blinked. Cecilia silently handed him the bottle, and he downed it in one go, squeezing the entire plastic bottle down before standing up and shaking his arms. "I think I'm okay. I have to be okay."

"Come on Williams," Chase gave him a friendly pat on the arm and brought him up on his feet. "You're strong."

I hugged him gently. "I know it's heavy. I'm sorry."

My best friend wrapped his arms around me. "You were carrying this this entire time? How?"

"By not thinking about it," I nervously chuckled. "But now, you know everything."

And that was an immense weight off my chest. Since Solaceon, I'd been hiding things from him. Denzel had been with me from the start, through thick and thin. He deserved to know, and even though it was hard to bear, I knew part of him was relieved.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay," he exhaled. "Do me a favor, don't tell Emilia or Pauline about this. In fact, don't involve anyone else. I'm not even going to tell my Pokemon this."

"We weren't planning on involving them," Chase said. "I wanted to bring Lauren in, though."

"That Braviary could be a nice scout, and her Gothitelle can see a little into Pauline's future, so…" Mira shrugged. When Chase turned to glare at her, she frowned. "What? I'm just saying!"

"What if I told you to involve Maeve in this?" Denzel asked. "You'd say no."

"I would say no," she agreed.

"Pauline literally asked me to involve her when she arrived in the lobby," Cecilia sighed.

Mira raised an eyebrow. "What'd you say?"

"That we would talk about it tomorrow."

"Do not," Denzel forced out. "This is my red line."

"I agree," Chase shrugged.

"I… have to agree," I spoke up. "Denzel is already going to have to stick with one of us at all times to be covered by the ACE Trainers. We don't want to spread them too thin. Trust me when I say this, they would let you die to save us instead."

"Okay, we have a majority," Mira said. "Sorry, Cece. I know Pauline's gonna get pissed at you."

"Not just at me. At all of you," Cecilia shrugged.

Denzel brought his hands together and leaned against them. "So what's the plan?"

Mira smiled. "Nothing for now. We need to wait until Cecilia finishes getting her license so she can fly on Golurk. You said you already ordered the custom saddle?" She asked.

"As soon as I finished my written exam," my girlfriend nodded. "It's already finished, waiting for me in Sunyshore. I'll pay a fee to have it Teleported… unless Alakazam can go get it for me?"

"I'll send him," Mira said. "He's been wanting to see Erin anyway. It'll take a few hours, though. So many jumps will tire him out."

"Send him tomorrow," I said.

"Gotcha, boss!" Mira yelled with a sheepish grin. "Continuing the plan, when Cecilia can fly, we send her, Chase and Grace flying over the marsh, just to see if the Rangers missed anything. Talonflame could do it stupidly fast, so I'd say we should send our other Pokemon independently, but I doubt any of us want to risk that. The last thing we want is for them to be captured by poachers."

There were nods all around.

"What do I do?" Denzel asked.

"You're a social Butterfree, Denzel. Keep the social cohesion going and make sure our other friends don't do anything stupid like we're doing," Mira said. "Pauline seems like the girl to say, 'Hey, they're doing this but don't want us to help, so I'm going to help in secret!'"

"Other than that?" Denzel added, leaning forward.

"Well, you can't fly since you don't have a license, but you could go on Princess or Lehmhart when Cecilia gets her license. Two pairs of eyes is better than one," Mira said. "But the real goal, the more tangible option is to find one of Abel's Pokemon. He's sending them out on their own. Ditto would be ideal, but that Pokemon has the mind of a child, I doubt he's going anywhere. Then, we have that Pokemon spill the beans through coercion."

"Coercion?" Cecilia asked.

"Yeah." Mira's smile stretched to her ears. "That's what I meant when I said we don't even have to fight. You call Chase, and we use The Voice."

"And you don't think the League will find that weird?" I asked.

"Come on, we can just say we ripped it out of their heads with our Psychics and they got lucky enough to get out of it unscathed. Since it wouldn't have been a fight, all they'd be seeing is us talking with a stranger."

I nodded.

It wasn't much, but it was a plan.

—

It was Friday. Alakazam had gone to pick up Cecilia's saddle, and Denzel was probably arguing with Pauline and the others. Those were worries for later.

A grin plastered itself on my face when I saw the numbers on my Trainer ID go up in front of my eyes. The Poketch Company had finally paid me for the month and an extra 350,000 had just been added to my account. I'd already been waiting in the Poke Mart for thirty minutes and called Melody three times to confirm that I was getting my paycheck today because of how excited I'd been. I already had a list of moves on my mind that all totaled around 400k in total, so I'd have to spend a little extra, but that was fine. I swept through the store, grabbing disk after disk and paid for all of the moves in bulk. Seeing the money go down after a month's worth of work always hurt more than it should have— after all, what good was money if I didn't spend it?

You could have invested it, I heard an imaginary Emilia say and spontaneously rolled my eyes. First, I needed to finish learning about politics before ever delving into the stock market.

That statement was only semi-ironic. I knew trainers like Craig actually invested a lot of their earnings.

But enough about money! I'd spent a whole lot today, and it was time to give everyone their moves. I had Princess fly me close to 'our' spot at the park and released the family. They already knew about the fact that they were all learning moves today, and it was impossible for them not to be excited. TMs were honestly the best, both for trainers and Pokemon. I knew they'd been created by Silph Co. during the war to train Pokemon quicker, but they had also been independently created in Unova by the Ope… Opelucid Group, I remembered from Cecilia's rants. What a weird name for a city. The two companies still fought about who had created the concept first, but one thing was for sure, there had been a whole lot of spying during the war and someone had stolen the technology from the other.

I smugly presented the six disks, fanning their casings out with my hands. One thing the battle with Barry had taught me was that while coverage moves would never be as good as your bread and butter unless you were really good, it was still a necessity to have them. I'd bought today's moves with that mentality in mind, save for Sunshine's TM. I also wanted to limit myself to moves they wouldn't be able to learn naturally without a lot of struggle. I placed every disk inside of my Pokedex and licked the back of my teeth as the TMs loaded into the device. I'd throw the disks inside one of those TM recycling bins later.

"Sunshine, you're going first," I said. When Sweetheart protested, I continued. "Come on, be patient. You'll be next!"

That satisfied her, and she rumbled inside of her cocoon. I recalled the dragon and placed the Pokeball close to my Dex and selected the 'Flame Charge' move.

Sunshine already had plenty of coverage moves, so I figured a boost in speed would help, even after we figured out how to have him fly. With his endurance, he'd basically be able to have Flame Charge activated at all times and gradually speed up. Since it was a fire type move, he'd take to it pretty fast too. I released Sunshine, and something in his eyes had changed. It must have been weird to have that extra knowledge jammed into your brain in seconds.

As promised, Sweetheart was next. For her, I had picked up Aerial Ace. Why? Because Barry's use of the move had given me a new appreciation for it. Not only would she be able to combine it with her jets, but the move was known to track down the user's opponents and almost never missed. It would work wonders against grass and fighting types and complemented her current battling style very well. There was the obvious question on my mind, though. What about when she evolved? This wouldn't be like Princess and Rollout. The body shape would still be there for her to use Aerial Ace, but the flight aspect? It was difficult to imagine a multi-ton mass of rocks and armored plates flying, even with tricks with the wind and Sandstorm.

Yet the move would still be usable, so I considered it a good purchase.

For Buddy, I had picked Ice Beam, which had been one of the most expensive TMs on this list. I simply believed that he needed a better way than Acid to battle grass types, and Ice Beam could be used from anywhere in the arena. Not only that, but it'd be mighty useful against Crasher Wake's water types, be it to freeze them or create ice platforms on the water for the others. His TM was really the most straightforward, and I knew he'd get accustomed with the move faster than the others, which was good because we needed to work on Taunt and his defensive custom move whose name was still in progress.

Angel had gotten Brick Break. Alone, it might have seemed underwhelming, but he could use it with multiple vines at once. It would be an excellent counter for ice types, but to be honest I'd gotten it especially for Byron, as were all the moves that would follow. None of his grass type attacks would hurt the steel type specialist, so I decided to remedy that with Brick Break. Plus, moves that could make full use of his vines were just an obvious choice in general. Angel's vines shivered in excitement when I let him out of the Pokeball again, and he blinked at me in rapid succession. He was happy.

For Honey, I'd gotten Bulldoze. Earthquake was a move Electivire could learn, but one, it was way too expensive and two, he was nowhere near powerful enough to use the move. Bulldoze would serve two purposes: it would help him defeat Byron's Pokemon, and it would also serve as a tool to shape the arena when he got good enough with the move. I hadn't forgotten how Volkner's Electivire had managed to raise a wall of earth in front of himself to dodge our attacks, so it could also serve as a means to raise a shield whenever he ran out of energy for Protect. Honey hesitantly tapped a foot against the forest floor, as if he was scared of accidentally using Bulldoze right now. Luckily for us though, nothing happened.

Lastly, Princess. For her, I had bought Mystical Fire, the most expensive technique on this list. It was also a move that Mira's Gardevoir already knew. It was less powerful than something like Flamethrower, which I wanted her to learn down the line, but what it traded for power was control, which she excelled at. Users of Mystical Fire could shape the flames however they wanted when they grew experienced enough with the move, and that control over fire could eventually extend to all fire, which meant better coordination with Sunshine.

All in all, I was happy with my purchases. I'd agonized over what moves to buy for weeks now, and there might have been better choices for events I hadn't foreseen yet, but I fully believed the focus on Byron was warranted. I had been warned about him far too much not to. I wasn't disrespecting Wake either, but the eight badge was the badge. No one— and that was not an exaggeration— no one other than truly gifted prodigies won their eighth badge on the first try.

I desperately wanted that to be me.

Plus, I had a specific strategy for Wake that I was workshopping in the back of my mind that only needed the tools I currently had.

"Okay, everyone, I'm going to have Princess bring me toward one of the arenas so we can get you started on these. It'll be important not to hyperfocus on them, though. You're all juggling a lot, so feel free to tell me if you get overwhelmed."

We needed to grow faster.

Twenty minutes later, we were outside of the city. I made rounds while my team practiced their new moves. Princess could create the fire, but her control over it right now was mediocre. She couldn't shape it properly, but she could at least move it around, so that was something. She was doing some nifty things, combining Ancient Power with the Mystical Fire by turning her drills or spears into flaming weapons. It wasn't so much that they were burning, but having a shape to wrap the fire around made it easier for Princess to handle her new attack.

Sweetheart was higher in the sky than she'd ever been. The rock type was quite literally soaring, and the constant, loud jet-like burst of air had now been replaced by the occasional expulsion to keep her going. Aerial Ace would carry her further, make her fly faster, and make her attacks impossibly hard to dodge, even under water. Still, to prevent her vents from flooding, she'd actually have to keep blowing air constantly under the surface.

Honey was far off, but the ground around him was a mess of small ridges and chasms. He was struggling the most with his move, mostly because he didn't know how to not hurt himself while using it yet. Power-wise, though? He was already set.

Angel slapped the sand around himself with three simultaneous Brick Breaks— which was up from the one he could create thirty minutes ago. He was making steady progress and soon he'd be able to be as comfortable with it as he was with Knock Off or Power Whip. Hell, maybe we could even do the detaching trick with Brick Break too.

Sunshine barrelled down the sandy beach, burning sand into a crisp with each step. The force of the flames wasn't much, but that wasn't why we'd bought the move in the first place. I'd never seen him be this quick. He ran faster than I could ever hope to. While he was continuously speeding up, it looked like he'd reached his cap for now— my eyes almost fell out of their sockets when he retracted into his now glowing shell. An explosion sent my hair flying everywhere, and Sunshine took flight, jumping fifteen feet into the air and even further with his momentum. Another slap of his tail, and another explosion rang out, but he lost his balance and tumbled down into the sand.

I circled around him, carefully waiting for him to cool down, but Princess was faster. She landed next to the fire type, not caring about her sizzling fur to congratulate him. That had been a breakthrough. I held out a hand and slowly approached until I realized the heat just hurt and wouldn't actually burn me. I crouched next to Sunshine and grinned.

"You see that?" I asked with an intense stare. "That's only a taste of what you'll do."

I caught a shadow of a smile on Turtonator's face, and he stood up. Sand washed off his scales like water, and he carried himself tall. This singular action? That had been his goal for the past three years, and he had finally tasted it. After thanking Princess, Sunshine gruffed, saying that he needed to practice keeping his balance more, but that the Flame Charge was a huge help to gather starting momentum.

"That's why I got it for you," I said with my hands behind my back and a sheepish smile. "I was thinking of getting you started on Shell Smash too, actually. When you blow up your shell so much that it's fractured? There's supposed to be a way to harness the pain and channel it into power."

The fire type's face twisted into a gleeful grin.

But there was also something else.

He wanted to go see Mudsdale tomorrow.