The head of the hoe hit the ground, sending a small shock up Vhira's arms as the edge of the tool struck rock. She rubbed them, sighing all the while, "hahh... what else am I supposed to do after all this Rein?" she asked the lazy Nidoran dozing off under the shade of a nearby shack, Rein opened one of his eyes, looked at her, and gave out a hiss as an answer before going back to sleep,

"whatever you say," she rolled her eyes before removing her tool from the ground, she laid it right next to her as she sat to dig the rock she met with it out of the ground. Digging it out had been relatively easy thanks to the soil being loosened by prior harvests.

The rock that she took was half the size of her head, she looked at it in shock when she saw the indent her tool made on the surface of the large stone, she rolled it around, figuring out how she could have even done something like this to a rock.

She threw it away when she found out that there wasn't anything that said the rock was weakened before her strike, no residual plant roots, water damage, nothing. She did, however, conclude that it was probably something that she and Rein practiced with and it just so happened to be that the rock had managed to land in this exact same spot after Rein threw it away with double kick. A lot of rocks around here had met the same fate after all, and she wouldn't be surprised that this one got lucky enough to land in the tomato field.

With the rock gone, she filled up the hole, stood up, and continued to till until she reached the edge of the line wherein she immediately proceeded to move right and start anew.

Work like this was no longer a stranger to her after the land owner allowed her to help around the place, something that he had done only after a whole lot of persuasion on her part. Even then, the reluctance that came from the fact that she was just an 8-year-old child gave her a hard time convincing the farmer to even let her till one plot of land.

Now though, after everything that she has done, like carrying bucketloads of fertilizer, watering, and just overall help; the landowner decided that she was more than capable of helping around and just lets her be.

Though, the help that she offered made it outright impossible for the land owner to accept the money she gave him, she reasoned that it was just a small part of her winnings but the man had none of it and let her keep it for herself instead. It had gotten to a point where the two of them would wake up early in the morning to see a wad of cash in front of their door and when one didn't accept, the other would put it back in front of the other's door until they do.

All of that only ended when pokemon got involved and since she didn't want to battle the Tauros that sat in front of her step-father's porch, guarding it from her and her alone, she ultimately gave up on trying to give him money. She did consider fighting the Tauros once, given that Rein knew poison-inducing moves as well as an attack that held a type advantage but she doubted that it would even put a dent on the large bull.

Speaking of Rein, the little guy has been making good progress and after learning his latest move, poison sting has allowed himself to fight against enemies that would have otherwise beaten him. Even if its chances of poisoning someone is low, what's more important is that Rein now has the ability to target people in long range- a prospect that the two partners gladly welcomed in their fighting capability.

And it wasn't all just moves either, both Vhira and Rein had managed to come up with ways to properly utilize Rein's move pool and after watching other people fight, especially Whitney's Pidgey, Vhira realized that you can use pokemon moves for things that doesn't involve attacks and thanks to that, the two of them decided to modify Rein's double kick with the move enabling the little rabbit to evade, jump higher distances, or even disorient foes by kicking the ground.

Vhira eyed the sleeping Nidoran as she worked. He was someone that had managed to change the way her life worked ever since he's been introduced to it and she couldn't help but be thankful that the two of them even met. The opportunity that both Lionel and Whitney had given her was an action that she held dearly and if the time comes, she would be more than happy to help the two of them.

Once the ground has been properly tilled, it was now time for her to start planting things, the job became easier once her Pokemon got up from his resting spot and proceeded to carry the bag on his back for her. All she needed to do by then was to just pick up the seeds from the bag's mouth, adjust the ground slightly with her hoe, and plant the seed. An easy job all things considered.

When it was finished, it was time for her to feed the animals in the barn and when she walked in, she couldn't help but eye the strange-looking creatures called cows; they were just like a Miltank, but unlike those, these looked like and acted as if they weren't all that intelligent.

And it was most likely true, even then, she still wonders if killing them for food was the right thing to do...

After the bag of food was emptied, she got out of the barn and checked to see if she could remember any other job that she needed to do around the farm, and after a few seconds of contemplation, she decided that she didn't have anything else that she needed to do and so, she went over to the empty field where both her and Rein practiced and exercised.

...

Practice is, as always, something simple; just learning how to do a basic trick where Rein tries to use Poison Sting twice in a row.

He had been managing to do it well so far and even though letting off two Poison Stings took a toll on him, he has been cooperative to the point that exhaustion didn't matter right as long as he managed to do it. Sort of like right now-

"Poison Sting!" the horn atop his head produced a long, needle-like copy that shot out to a nearby mycelium bottle, hitting it square in the center and sending it flying. "good! now, again!" another needle shot out, hitting the bottle in the air, striking it twice before it could even land.

Rein panted in exhaustion but grinned, knowing that he can shoot off around 12 of these double Poison Stings in a row was good because it let them take proper breaks.

And the break that Rein had been waiting for came as Vhira pulled out his meal and placed it on the grass, he walked over, his tiny little ears twitching alongside his nose as he listened to Vhira's hum and smelled the scent of his food.

And, that was it, she and he would repeatedly do the exercise over and over again and even though using Poison Sting like this was relatively new to the two of them since they'd only been practicing it for about two days now, they didn't mind because they've done this plenty of times before, they both know that they'd be able to execute the move against other trainers in the near future.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

And, even if they do get discouraged, they can always look back to their past accomplishments, such as the move that they improved around a week ago, where they focused on using and improving Focus Energy so that it's able to deter the enemy. Where just using the move alone would make the enemy hesitate.

The two of them worked hard to reach that goal, and eventually, they did.

The new and improved Focus Energy had been effective during its debut and it netted them a few wins back in school.

And when they thought that the move couldn't be improved on any longer, the two of them decided to move on with what they wanted to practice and that led them to doing what they were doing right now; using Poison Sting twice in a row.

Since Rein decided to rest, Vhira sat down on the grass and uncorked a bottle of water for them to use since the first one now had two holes in it. Surprisingly, Mycelium bottles were tough, that wasn't a bad discovery on the duo's part because that made the bottles perfect for use whenever they wanted to test the power of Rein's Poison Sting.

Back then, when they were first starting out, Rein couldn't exactly do any substantial damage to the bottle with his second Poison Sting and when she realized that it didn't even make a dent, Vhira decided to buy a whole box of the empty bottles.

Afterwards, she would ask Rein to fire a Poison Sting in the far distance before doing so again at a bottle in front of him, as they expected, the first attack would always be more powerful and faster whilst the second one wouldn't do a single damage.

That was two days ago and progress has been made since then and right now, Rein can do damage with the second sting just fine.

"your problem is stamina right now," Vhira says, patting Rein's head, the rabbit nuzzling in to her touch, purring happily. She smiled at that before standing up, "and speaking of that, how about we start our exercise?"

And so, after a small amount of stretching, the two of them worked on their physicals. Both Pokemon and trainer ran around the field in large laps before stopping lightly to rest, do minimal amounts of workouts and warm-ups such as squats and jumping jacks to release their tense muscles before then going back to jogging around the field.

She and Rein didn't exercise for the sake of getting muscular or to become an athlete for that matter, no, those were just the side effects of their want to improve their cardio and stamina.

She heard from other trainers that straight and safe paths on the different Routes were already set for journeying trainers out in the wilds and right as long as the trainers stay on that path, they wouldn't have any problems navigating the Routes between towns. There were exceptions of course, such as her and Lionel when they were training in Route 34 - where they go out of the typical, laid-out trainer path in favor of the wilds so that they can find more Pokemon, - but that was a given since not only did her and Lionel live near Route 34, one of them was also quite familiar with the place and can navigate it easily enough.

After their exercise, came the light stretches to make sure that their muscles aren't tense and strained, and once that's done, both she and Rein would rest before going back to her room to clean themselves and change into a new set of clothes.

- This was the typical schedule Vhira has in her day-to-day life; work and help out with the farm, do light Pokemon training, and then exercise to improve their cardio. All of that takes up around half her day and more, when she's done though, Vhira is essentially free to do whatever she wants and she normally spends that time going out into the public battle parks to observe and battle against other trainers.

Clothes now fixed and Rein's Pokeball tightly locked on her belt - a gift from her adopted father - Vhira set out.

Right when she was about to leave the place though, she noticed in the distance that Lionel was leaning against the fence of their farm while chatting with her adopted father. Judging by how calm they were, Vhira thought that they were being casual and so she let her guard down knowing that nothing strange is about to happen but something caught her eye; there were two Pokeballs on Lionel's belt and one more in his hand and from what she could tell, there were Pokemon inside all of them.

She jogged up to the two of them, waving at Lionel as she approached, she stopped when they were at earshot, "-e's already here so I think it's probably best that I talk to her about this myself," Her adopted father nodded and walked away, Lionel waving him goodbye as he left and as her father passed her by, he patted Vhira on the shoulder before continuing back to the farm.

She walked closer to Lionel, her heart racing, "talk to me about what?" she asked, eyeing the Pokeball in his hand suspiciously, "I mean, I don't really know what's going on but is something wrong?" she knew that Lionel has been having some... problems lately and it was all because of his trip to Union Cave where he got himself new Pokemon.

'not to mention him being rather less attentive lately,' - she thought to herself silently. She, He, and Whitney haven't had much time to spend with other lately and she knew it was mainly because the other two were busy but... Why would he bring a Pokeball here? He had been absent yesterday so that definitely means something happened. But what? Did he catch another Pokemon? She didn't really want a Zubat but if he was giving one to her then she didn't really mind...

She resisted the urge to sigh, why would she think that he would give her a Zubat of all things?

Regardless, true to her expectations, Lionel lifted the Pokeball in his hands for her to see, "there's nothing wrong," he started, looking away from her in guilt, "it's just that... I guess I didn't know where I wanted to put this guy because I didn't want to trust him with other trainers but after thinking about it for a while, I thought that maybe you'd want him,"

He showed her the ball and Vhira took it and immediately released the pokemon inside, she stared at the Cubone and in reply, the Pokemon met her eyes through the skull mask that he wore.

Lionel continued, "the guy's pretty strong and after being rescued, he's been working hard to keep up with the others and with my, or, in the case of the future, your help, he can be a real powerhouse," the ground type gave a single, curt nod in reply as Lionel told her what he's capable of, she didn't miss the whole "rescue" part of his sentence but that it was inappropriate to say at the moment, "and I know you don't exactly want pokemon that aren't poison types but-"

With widened eyes, a flustered Vhira cut him off, "who says that?!" she squealed out, wincing internally when she realized what she had just done. She paused, and took a deep breath, "I-I mean, I don't really mind other Pokemon you know?" she says, her thoughts of wanting to deny being Cubone's trainer already in the drain before she could even say them.

Lionel smiled in appreciation and she did everything she could to look away from him, which, in this case, was to bend down to pet the Cubone, and the little guy nuzzled into her touch. His skull mask felt strangely warm...

Lionel smiled at her, "I guess you're right..." he murmured before standing straight, causing the fence to creak slightly, "so that's it then? you'll take care of him?" she nodded immediately,

"nice! I'll get going then," Lionel started walking away, "oh, and one more thing, you're uh, Dad wanted me to come over sometime and I think I will..." he looked up, squinting, "...uh, around two days from now?"

She nodded, causing toxic-green hair to fly around, "yep!"

"I'll get going then, see you."

Vhira watched Lionel walked off, conflicted about whether or not she wanted to tell him that she wanted to return the Cubone and she looked at his receding back until it became nigh-indistinguishable from the other trainers in the distance. Since she stared at him up until now, she could still tell it was him.

When she looked away for a second to see the Cubone that he'd given her she turned back to see him off but he was gone, his form already blending in with the group of trainers in the distance. She looked down at the Cubone again, and when she saw the little guy, her emotions about returning him went away and she bent down to hug the Ground Type. He was hot, and touching him was enough to keep the cold air around the farm at bay.