Chapter Fifty-Three - Repertoire

Choco wasn't sure what the whole situation was with that Rocket Boss guy, or why Jazz and Tabitha were so worried.

They'd beaten him once before, why freak out about it now? Broccoli wasn't worried at all.

But maybe they were worried because they weren't as strong as Broccoli was? He considered that overnight as they slept in the pokemon centre again and decided that that must be it. Silly humans. If they were really so worried they just needed to get stronger and evolve like Broccoli had.

The next two days were for practice, and practice they did.

By now, Azalea was becoming really familiar, and so was their routine. They'd wake up at the crack of dawn, have breakfast in the cafeteria, then head out back into the yard to train. They'd play tag, hide and seek, and once Broccoli set up an obstacle course for him and Marill to navigate as quickly as they could.

They also did normal practice, training their moves and then training their bodies until they were all sweaty and tired. It wasn't a bad kind of tired, and it made lunch that much better when it came around.

Choco wasn't sure if he was getting stronger or not, but he was pretty sure he was getting faster. Marill couldn't keep up with him in tag, even when she cheated and used Bubblebeam to create obstacles in his path.

His Quick Attack came easier and faster now too, and it wasn't the only move he'd improved.

Fireball now only took one and a half seconds to make and launch! That was kind of a long time in a fight, but it was much better than it had been.

His other moves were getting better too. Clean Shield and Clean Ball were now second nature. On the first day, Tabitha had come to watch him practice and was impressed by the move. She did say that it had limited utility, but Choco didn't care. Limited didn't mean none!

She was a lot more impressed, surprisingly, by his non-Clean Ball, the move where he made something like a Clean Ball, but didn't use Cleaning-type energy. He could move that one around at will a lot easier and could make it track flying targets with just his mind.

Tabitha called the move Swift.

He was a bit disappointed to learn that it wasn't a move he'd invented himself, but that was okay too.

Right now, his full move repertoire was looking pretty good. Clean Ball for ranged Cleaning-type damage. Clean Shield to block some kinds of attacks. Fireball to light things on fire and smack people. Swift just to smack.

Then he had his more physical moves. Quick Attack was way better than his old Pound, so much so that he didn't even practice that one anymore. Defence Curl... well, he kept practising that one too. Broccoli said that there might be some ways to improve it later, but that would be a later-later thing.

And then his secret move, the one he didn't let Broccoli see. Baby-Doll Eyes.

Tabitha had mentioned it as a Normal-type move and a precursor move to one called Charm. He didn't know what that one was yet, but he was going to learn it too!

Of course, he wasn't the only one getting better, as much as it annoyed him a little.

Marill was... stronger now. A lot stronger.

"Maaaarillll!" she shouted as she turned her whole body around and punched forwards. Her closed paw struck a wooden plank that Broccoli was holding, and while it didn't break the plank, it did leave an impression in the wood and made a loud crack on impact.

Marill let out a long exhale, then nodded to Broccoli who lowered the plank to clap. "Well done!" she cheered.

His... friend? Rival? Best fish forever? Was growing a lot stronger. She wasn't great with what Broccoli called magic, but she was stronger than he was. She could lift heavy logs and throw them farther than he could, and she was always flexing and trying to become even stronger.

That punch move of hers took forever, and she had to focus really hard for it to work, but it hit hard too.

She was practising other things too. Pushing magic into her tail so that when she slammed someone—usually him—with it, it hurt even more than her normal Slams.

Marill was having a hard time with any Cleaning-type moves that weren't physical, though. She was trying to master something Broccoli decided to call the Clean Slap, which involved getting in close and just smacking the heck out of some poor bunny right in the middle of a spar.

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He didn't like the move, but he could respect how much it stung.

Marill was alright with Water-type moves too. Her Water Gun was a lot stronger now, and she was slowly getting better and better with her Bubblebeam.

After the day when they beat the gym trainer and learned about the Rocket Boss guy getting away, the same day Tabitha watched them train, the weird human girl had said that before they faced their third gym, she'd show Broccoli and Choco and Marill how to use a few special moves that made them stronger. She mentioned being able to help, a little, with the "theory-crafting" for a move called Aqua Ring and another called Agility.

He was kind of looking forward to it. And more importantly, to how he and Broccoli could turn it into some super strong move!

The evenings after training were more about having fun and helping out.

Marill asked Broccoli why they spent so much time helping out around the town instead of training more. It was a stupid question, of course. His ears still perked up to hear the answer though, because he really wasn't sure. He just knew that it must have been for a good reason.

"Hmm, well, I guess we could spend more time training. There's no harm in doing that. But I think that one of the most important things you can do when you arrive somewhere new is to look around yourself and see if anyone needs help."

"Marill, ma ma marill?" But isn't becoming stronger more important?

"I think that a lot of people think that way. And it's not even all about becoming stronger. Some people want to become more famous, others want to become richer. We all want something, and that's okay, but... well, what's the point of having more strength?"

"Marill. Ma marill rill ma." It's obvious. If you're stronger then you're stronger.

Broccoli had giggled at that. "Yeah, I guess so. But I think that while having strength and fame and money and whatever else is nice, if you don't have a way to put it to good use, then it's kind of lost its meaning. I don't know, maybe I'm just selfish, and maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I feel like being strong for the sake of being strong isn't as nice as being strong for the sake of helping others."

Choco wasn't sure he understood entirely, but maybe it was the kind of thing that he'd figure out later. When Broccoli first explained magic to him, he didn't understand completely, but now he was basically a master.

The secrets to life and all that would only take a week or two more to be figured out, he was sure.

The first evening of the weekend was spent helping a local family clean out a park not too far from the Slowpoke Well. It had been a spot for families to gather and see the slowpoke while enjoying food and fresh air, but the space had gone untended for a long time.

Broccoli knew how to use a scythe, and Choco got to start a big bonfire with his new moves while Marill watched to make sure it didn't get out of paw. They picked up trash after, and stuffed it into a few bags. When the family arrived, accompanied by three more families, they all got to enjoy the freshly cleaned park. There was barbeque and it was nice!

The next day, Broccoli got a job escorting more youths, this time a gaggle (that was the term, apparently, for a group of human children, the same way that a group of buneary babies was a litter) from the local pokemon trainer school. They were all big Bug-pokemon fans, and they ventured into one of the safer parts of the nearby forest with nets and pokeballs and lots of noise.

There was a teacher of course, and she had a few pokemon of her own to help, but having Broccoli and Choco and Marill there helped too.

Broccoli had to convince a migrating hive of Beedrill not to eat the children by dancing at them for a while and then handing over some snacks (his snacks! But she promised to get more later) and one kid got caught in the web of a very frustrated spinarak. Choco had to negotiate with the bug, which somehow ended with it deciding to join the kid's pokemon team as long as it was given a steady diet of dead bugs to eat.

It made for a very long, tiring weekend, sure, but by the end of it, Choco felt a lot stronger than he had at the start.

Which was good, because three days after fighting the gym trainer, it was their turn to fight Bugsy for their second badge.

***