Chapter Sixty-Seven - Schedule

Everybun, everyone, and everymon was sitting around a table in the pokemon centre's dining room. Choco got Broccoli's right knee while Oran was sitting next to him on her left. They were having an early supper, which for the humans was spaghetti with some sort of whitish sauce.

Choco had a lump of a kind of bread that Broccoli had called "French baguette" and the other humans had called a "Kalosian baguette." He didn't care what it was called, it was yummy dipped in sauce either way.

"Alright," Jazz said as she sat up straighter. She smacked the table with a small book that had rings on the back keeping the pages together. "Time to schedule."

"Yay!" Broccoli said.

Choco wasn't sure if this was a yay moment, but he didn't care that much. This was dinner, and Jazz and her schedule was somewhat entertaining, at least. It was more entertaining because Weepinbell was sitting next to Jazz, looking very smug with an entire three-buneary-long loaf of French baguette sticking out of his new, much bigger, mouth.

"So, tomorrow is Saturday. Honestly, probably the best day to do any shopping we want to do. Does anyone mind if we pencil that in for the morning?" Jazz asked.

"Mar! Marill rill marill." No! I need to do my training to get stronger.

Broccoli nodded and translated. "Oran says that she wants to do training to get stronger."

"Oh, right," Jazz said. "Okay, let's pencil in every morning and... every evening after supper for training? That's about three to four hours a day, which I think is about as much as we can realistically do without burning out." She added some lines to the book she had.

Choco nodded, that seemed like a good amount. Training in the morning, a day of fun, then more at night after food. That was a good schedule.

"Alright, so, training, then shopping. I checked on the gym site, and we can pop over to watch a fight in the afternoon," Jazz said.

"I'd like that," Tabitha said. "Do we know the badge level?"

"No, it says the trainer's name, but I didn't look to see which badge they're on," Jazz said. "Sorry."

Tabitha shrugged as if it was of no matter. "It's fine. Any level will tell us a little about the gym leader."

"Are we going to fight trainers again?" Broccoli said.

Jazz winced. "I don't know if we'll have time? The soonest I can schedule in three fights with the gym is in a week and a half. Wednesday. Not the one coming up, but the one after. It's a little ways away. If we want to do a trainer battle, it'll be pushing us back even more."

"Darn," Broccoli said. "But a week and a half is a long time. I'm sure Oran here will have mastered the basics of the Way of the Mystic Bun by then, and Choco will become a Fireball pro as well."

"That's a good point," Tabitha said. "Can you pencil in some time to catch a pokemon? There's another I want in the region. The sooner they become part of my team, the sooner I can train them to a satisfying level."

"Sure," Jazz said. "Monday?"

"That is acceptable," Tabitha said. "Thank you. I can go on my own?"

"No!" Broccoli said. "Friends help! We'll be able to canvas a bigger area, and ask more people for help in finding your new friend!"

Tabitha nodded, then gestured for Jazz to continue. "Was there anything else to add?"

Jazz looked to the agenda. "Sunday... there's a contest thing. Not the actual contest, but a sort of invitational? The rules and applications and such. Broccoli, you said you wanted to look into that?"

"Yes please," Broccoli said. Choco nodded next to her. He wanted too.

"Cool, adding it for Sunday afternoon. It might be interesting. The actual contest is the Sunday after." Jazz leaned back, then counted the days. "We have six days where there's nothing on the schedule but training. I feel like that's not the best."

"I think it should be fine," Broccoli said. "Six days to walk around the city, meet new people, eat new things."

Choco nodded, and pointed towards Broccoli. He would have spoken, but his mouth was busy with chewing at the moment. She was, of course, right. Eating new things was the best thing to do.

"I think that's it for the schedule," Jazz said before closing her agenda up. "Unless anyone had anything to add?"

"Not really. I mostly just let things flow along," Broccoli said. "I don't mind planning ahead, but sometimes it feels a little stifling to know everything that's coming up. It lacks spontaneity."

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What was a spontaneity? Was it a kind of bread?

"Should we do a practice session this evening as well?" Tabitha asked.

Choco looked up to the blue-haired girl, then nodded. "Bun!" he agreed. More practice would be good. His Fireballs were awesome, but he could do better. And he had to get quicker with his physical moves. Quick Attack was quick, but it could be quicker.

So, after supper finished—he couldn't finish the last of that bread, so he gave it to Slowking... or at least, he placed it in the pokemon's bowl. Slowking was still staring at it a minute later—he bounced off with Broccoli to the pokemon centre's training room.

Unlike any of the centres they'd been to so far, this one didn't have a backyard to work in. Instead, the centre had a whole floor underground to train in.

There were some two dozen trainers down there already, and twice as many pokemon. It was very loud compared to the backyards he was used to, and it was immediately obvious that the training space was divided in half.

Along the left side were mats on the floor and a few basic obstacle courses. There were a few dummies too that some pokemon were attacking. On the right side were obstacle courses that were a lot more complicated and big machines.

A machamp was grunting as he did squats under a rack of weights that looked twice as heavy as the pokemon himself. A charmeleon was ducking to the side, then spitting a fast and powerful ball of fire at a dummy before ducking to the other side and doing the same. And there was a jolteon zipping through the obstacle course in quick bursts of yellow light.

Choco felt a little strange. All of those pokemon looked a lot stronger than he did.

"Okay!" Broccoli said. "We have a week and a bit to tackle the next gym. Jazz said that it's not any particular type of gym, so we don't need to focus as much on elemental stuff."

Choco blinked. Wasn't it a Normal-type gym?

"I think that we should seriously consider taking this week to work on our fundamentals."

"Buneary?" Fundamentals?

"Ma maril marill rill." Obviously Broccoli means the basics.

Broccoli giggled. "Yes, that's right, the basics! Moving, staying steady on your feet, aiming and hitting with the attacks you know. I think someone can go very, very far just knowing the basics well. There was this strong martial artist back home who said that he was more afraid of someone who knew one kind of punch really well than he was of someone who knew a thousand different punches. Or something like that, I haven't had access to the internet in a long time, so I'm probably butchering that paraphrase."

"Bun, eary bun bun?" So, what move do we train?

"Hmm," Broccoli said while rubbing her chin. "Choco, we'll have you focus on three physical moves and three magical ones. For your physical moves, Quick Attack is a must, and then Defence Curl has been really strong too. Finally, I think we should teach you some of the basics of the Way of the Mystic Bun. You're a bun, and one of my friends, so it only makes sense."

"Bun!" he said with a nod.

"For magic, Cleaning Shield, Fireball, and I think it's about time we upgrade your Cleanball to something better. How about something like a cleaning blast? Wider dispersion, harder hitting, but less range?"

He grinned. That sounded fantastic!

"Oran, hmm, we need to teach you some close quarters fighting. It won't be a move, exactly, but just a few ways to strike hard and fast from up close. Aqua Tail is also a must, you were getting close to that one, I think, and it meshes well with the Way of the Mystic Bun. Finally, I think Defence Curl could be a good move on the side, but Focus Punch was strong too. We'll have to see if we can't figure out another cool punch move for you to practice, that one was a bit too slow for a real fight."

Oran was nodding her entire body.

"As for magic, obviously Bubble Beam. I do want you to learn Cleaning magic too, so we'll keep practising that until we can transition to Fire magic. And then... hmm, I'll ask around and see if there's a Water-type expert around. You're good with that, so maybe they have a cool move you could learn?"

With a plan laid out, they broke and got to work. By the end of the week, Choco would be showing up the showoffs on the nicer side of the gym!

***