“Wake up,” Florence said right in my ear.
I gasped and jolted upright, nearly falling out of my hammock, and Pausso brayed in protest from his side of the swinging bed. I looked around immediately, trying to see what had gone wrong this time. “Whassit – what happened –“
Everything looked… fine. Tanaji was over by the table unpacking the last of the rice balls we’d purchased in Azalea for breakfast, but the rest of the crew seemed to be upstairs already. Isaac was still in his hammock with Oddish nestled up by his side, and Charity yawned as she trudged up the stairs to the main deck with Maisy in her arms. Florence didn’t seem particularly alarmed either; she just looked at me expectantly.
“We have spent enough time lazing about,” she said firmly. “It is time for us to get back to training.”
I groaned, laid back down, and pressed my face into the canvas of the hammock. It was the morning of the third day on the Relicanth, and I still felt out of sorts from my watch shift in the middle of the night. It turned out that staying awake in the dark while everyone around you was sleeping was hard. The worst part was that by the time I passed the shift to Pausso I was alert enough that I had trouble getting back to sleep. All I wanted to do now was doze through the morning.
Florence clearly did not sympathize. “Up!” she said more loudly, poking my stomach for good measure. “Last warning.”
“S’not fair,” I muttered into my hammock. “You had the las’ watch. You train. Lemme sleep.”
She made a ‘hmph’ sound. “You will thank me for this later,” she informed me.
Then she swung my hammock ruthlessly, which almost sent me sprawling out of it and onto the deck.
“Hey!” I protested as my bed moved wildly back and forth. I had to clutch at the fabric to keep from falling out, and Pausso’s immediate feeling of surprise and irritation made it clear he was doing the same. “Knock it off!”
“Not until you get up,” she said with no remorse whatsoever.
By that point I had started to wake up properly, and I sat up with my legs over the side to glare at her. “What happened to not training while on the ship?” I asked grouchily. “I thought we agreed there wasn’t enough space.” It was true, too. The lower deck was crowded with supplies, and though there was some space on the upper deck we couldn’t risk getting in the way of the crew while they worked.
“There may not be enough space for our usual routines,” she replied, “but that just means we need to come up with new ones. I spent some time thinking and I have a few ideas.”
I did my fair share of grumbling, but I also forced myself to get up and helped Pausso down from the hammock as well. Echo came flying down from her chosen hanging spot to perch on my head, and I reached up to rub her back in greeting.
Florence gathered her own team from the nests they’d made out of canvas and rope alongside the sides of the deck, then positioned us all at the back of the deck. “First,” she said, “is running.”
“There’s no space to do laps,” I pointed out. In fact, there was barely space to move around in the lower deck. I didn’t see how she planned to have us run.
“But we can do sprints!” she said with some excitement. “One at a time. I will start.”
I covered a yawn and took a moment to stretch my legs and arms as she took off running as fast as she could towards the front of the lower deck. When she got there she tapped her hand against a barrel nestled against the wall, then turned on a heel and ran back towards us again.
When she reached us, she leaned over and slapped her hand against my shoulder. “Your turn!” she said as she panted for breath.
“Seriously?” I whined.
“Seriously,” she said firmly.
I heaved a giant sigh, then started running forwards.
~
We ran individual sprints until each of us had run the length of the ship ten times, Pokemon included. Then we switched to individual exercises. Pausso worked on his flexibility with a range of stretches, and Echo worked on her core strength by doing the equivalent of pull-ups from her tails. I worked my way through my usual set of push-ups, planks, and squats, and I hated every moment of it. The exercises had gotten easier over time, true. That didn’t make them fun.
Tanaji watched us the whole time, apart from when he went up to the main deck to distribute food to the others. When we had finished he gave us the last of the rice balls, then sat on a barrel and watched us scarf the food down.
“Why do you do all of that?” he asked with clear curiosity as I finished the last of my breakfast. “Would it not be better to focus on training your majū’s moves?”
Echo had finished her first berry and squeaked at me for another; I tossed her a second pecha berry and she caught it in midair. “We do that too,” I explained. “But training is about more than just attacks. You need speed, strength, and stamina to outlast an opponent in battle.” I silently thanked Smith for drilling the importance of the fundamentals into me in our early days of training.
Florence looked over at me and raised her eyebrows. “We really should practice the move patterns too, though,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe if we have our majū aim their moves over the ocean?”
I hummed and nodded slowly. “That could work.”
We all made our way to the main deck to find that the ship was already under way. Some of the crew members cast curious looks at us as we had our Pokemon start firing their attacks off into the ocean, but they didn’t complain, so that was good.
Pausso was in a good flow state with his pattern, so I decided to focus on Echo. I frowned as I watched her transition from Mean Look to Supersonic to Absorb. Her Mean Look had never been particularly strong, which I could only attribute to her personality. Sure, she technically had the ability to glare other Pokemon down so that they would be restricted to specific location for a while, but her heart usually wasn’t in it. But her Absorb looked shaky too.
“Hey girl, pause for a second,” I called out to her. She squeaked a question and twitched her ears around so they pointed at me as she flapped her wings to stay in place. “Are you up for a tug-of-war with Skiploom?”
Her ears dipped down a bit, and for a moment I thought she’d say no. Pausso paused his own move pattern to say a few words to her; she replied shortly, then turned to me. “Zu,” she said with the flick of her wings that meant yes.
“Great!” I replied with a smile.
The problem we had was that Absorb was a strange move. Echo would generate a green ball of energy and send it out to her opponent. When it hit them, it would suck energy out of them and send it back to her in little glowing orbs of light. If the orbs touched her she would regain some of that energy. But she had to mentally direct the attack and mentally call the orbs back to her, and she still struggled to control the grass-type energy that formed the attack.
Skiploom, on the other hand, was a natural. That meant that when she practiced with him she really had to push herself to keep up. And I figured that was good for Echo, because I got the sense that she didn’t usually give her full effort when it came to training. It wasn’t like she was slacking – far from it! It was just that she usually seemed hesitant, like she was worried about something. I had tried to talk to her about it a few times over the summer, but she always closed up when I broached the topic. It worried me, to be honest, but I wasn’t sure what I could do to fix it.
Florence and I had Skiploom and Echo position themselves over the water. The ship was moving at a steady pace; that meant the two flying-types had to fly at the same pace to keep up. That would add an extra dimension of difficulty to the exercise, but I was confident Echo could handle it.
“Alright girl!” I called out as I leaned over the ship’s railing. “Absorb!”
Echo formed a small ball of green energy in front of her mouth, then launched it off towards Skiploom. I smiled proudly as I noticed that she had accounted for her forward movement. The ball of energy moved at the correct angle, forward and to the right instead of going straight right.
Florence watched the green energy fly towards Skiploom for a few moments. Then she barked out a quick order. “Push it back.”
Skiploom grinned fiercely and flexed his flower. The green orb immediately halted its sideways movement, though it kept pace with the two Pokemon as they flew alongside the ship. Then it started slowly inching back towards Echo again.
“C’mon Zubat! You’ve got this!” I called out to her. She flexed her wings extra-hard and the Absorb attack hung in place, briefly holding position behind the two Pokemon.
Then Skiploom twitched a paw and the attack zoomed forward to hit Echo in the back.
She screeched in surprise, though I knew from experience that she wouldn’t be hurt that badly; she was doubly resistant to grass attacks, after all. Yet she was still startled enough that she didn’t even try to control the little orbs of energy that scattered out from her body. Skiploom was able to draw them all right back to himself, and he rustled happily as the energy gave his body a new luster.
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Echo turned on a wing and flew back to rejoin me. She landed on my shoulder and gripped my shirt with her wingtips, and I could tell by the way her ears and wings drooped that she was feeling down again.
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” I told her. “You did a good job angling the attack at the beginning, and you put in a really good effort. Skiploom’s more used to grass attacks, that’s all. You want to try another round?”
“Bah,” she replied immediately, rejecting the idea. Then she pointed a wing towards the stairs that led to the lower deck.
“Not yet,” I said gently. “It’s still early morning, the sun’s not that bad yet. And you need the practice.”
She made a dejected chirping sound and I almost relented, because I hated it when she looked sad. But I knew she could last out in the sun for longer. She just needed to keep working at it to build up a tolerance.
We spent another half hour or so training. Echo didn’t want to work on her moves, but I did coax her into flying practice. She did dives where she got as close to the ocean as she could before she pulled back up into the sky, and that seemed to cheer her up a bit. Pausso worked on holding his Psybeam attack for as long as he could before he sent it out over the ocean. It looked like holding it longer did help it go further, but I couldn’t tell for sure when I was stuck on the ship.
Eventually both of my Pokemon wore themselves out, and I decided it was time to switch gears. I walked over to the other side of the ship where Florence had her Pokemon practicing their moves. Skiploom relentlessly launched Fairy Winds out over the ocean, and it looked like he was trying to force the pink glitter to move against the natural wind. Her other two Pokemon were training together; Natu kept generating Night Shade clones to send against Snubbull, and Snubbull had to retaliate by Biting the shades before they could attack her.
“Come on, Florence,” I said cheerfully. “We’re ready to wrap up. Time for your favorite part!”
She grimaced. “Perhaps we should skip meditation,” she said carefully. “After all, we do not want to get in the way –“
“Nope, you’re not getting out of it that easily,” I said happily as I grabbed her arm and towed her towards the stairs. “There’s space enough in the lower deck. We’ll make it work.”
It was kind of funny how the two of us had changed positions over time. I had hated meditation at first, but it had grown on me over the past few months. Having time to sit quietly and empty my mind helped me clear away any anxiety or stress I was feeling, and breathing in time with my team made me feel closer to them. On the other hand, Florence now viewed meditation with clear dread. Part of it was just that she liked physical exercises best; she had grown to love running and put a lot of effort into her personal workout. But the majority of her problem lay in her own expectations regarding how she and Natu should connect.
Back in Ecruteak, after all the crazy events had wrapped up, Chiyo the Kimono Dancer had sat the two of us down to talk about communication with psychic Pokemon. “Telepathy is a strange power,” she told us. “It draws on psychic strength, yes, but it also draws on connection. The strongest psychics can send messages to anyone nearby, whether they know them or not. But even a weak psychic can send a person a message if they feel close enough to them. However, that can come with some complications.”
“I think Drowzee and I are dealing with that,” I had admitted sheepishly. “He started sharing thoughts with me about a month ago, but they’re hard to understand sometimes and they give me headaches.” Pausso had lowered his ears and felt guilty, and I had quickly sent back a soothing feeling and reached out to scratch his head.
Chiyo had raised her eyebrows delicately at me. “You two are very young to have formed a mental bond,” she had said in a mildly surprised voice. “My dearest and I did not connect that way until several months after she evolved.” Her Espeon, who had been laying in her lap, stretched her legs out and purred contentedly.
“How did that work?” Florence had asked eagerly. Natu had been sitting on her lap, and the little bird peered around at her surroundings with interest. “Monroe had Drowzee use Confusion on him to establish the initial bond, but that didn’t seem like the right approach to me.”
“Certainly not!” Chiyo had said, looking rather aghast. “Nothing so drastic is needed normally. You simply must spend time with your psychic partner. As they grow closer to you and grow to trust you, a bond will form naturally. That was how it worked for Espeon and myself.”
And that was exactly what Florence had been waiting for over the past months. She had diligently trained with Natu every day, and in my opinion they had gotten closer. But despite their months of work, no connection had formed.
Florence had gotten progressively more and more reluctant to practice meditation over the summer. I’d confronted her about it a few weeks earlier, and she’d admitted then that practicing just made her feel like a failure. “It shows both that I have not helped Natu grow in her psychic powers and that I have not grown close to her as a trainer should,” she said glumly. “At this point I am not sure it is worthwhile to keep trying.”
“That’s silly,” I had told her right away. “Chiyo said it took her several months, right? And that was with an evolved majū! You just have to give it time.”
Since then, I had viewed it as my personal responsibility to make sure Florence still practiced meditation with Natu every day. Secretly, I was willing to bet Natu just wasn’t a strong enough psychic to manage telepathy yet, though if she evolved someday, maybe that would change. Still, if she and Florence spent more time together it would help them grow closer to each other, and that could make all the difference.
So we all settled down in a circle on the floor of the lower deck. Isaac had forced himself out of bed to get some fresh air and the rest of the crew were busy running the ship, which meant our little group had the deck all to ourselves. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and concentrated on calming myself.
“Breathe in… breathe out…” I said slowly, listening as everyone around me followed my instructions. “Let the sounds of the world wash over you.” There were still plenty of sounds coming from above as Zuri called out instructions to the others and boots scuffed on the deck overhead, but it was surprisingly easy to tune them out. “Breathe in… breathe out. Begin to empty your mind.”
I wasn’t an expert at conducting meditations, not like Smith, but I had picked up some of how it worked over time. I led the group through the mantra and slowly got them to relax. At one point I peeked an eye open and smiled. Everyone was breathing deeply, and Pausso and Natu were both surrounded by the soft glow of psychic aura. Pausso’s in particular was looking stronger than ever. It felt a little odd to see him now and think back to the way he’d been when we’d first met, when he’d struggled to use a simple Confusion.
I closed my eyes again and settled into a steady stream-of-consciousness where I barely had to think about the words I was saying. The thought entered my head that I was glad Florence had forced us back into the training routine. Taking a break was nice, but I had missed this –
“Florence! Monroe!” Charity hollered from the top of the stairs.
I jolted back to my senses and opened my eyes blearily. The others looked equally disoriented as they were pulled out of their meditations. “Huh?” I said.
“There are other ships!” Charity said brightly. “Come see!” Then she disappeared back above deck again.
I raised an eyebrow. We had passed one or two other ships already on the voyage, and Charity hadn’t gotten worked up about those. Well, it didn’t really matter; my concentration was shot anyway. “Might as well wrap up there,” I told the others, and Pausso grunted as he shook his head woozily.
I climbed back up the stairs to the main deck and blinked at the sight ahead of me. There were three boats out on the water, all smaller than the Relicanth but large enough to seat two or three people each. That wasn’t the most interesting part, though.
No, the part that immediately stood out was the giant Tentacruel with a man clinging to the top of his head.
Florence perked up and dashed forward to wave from the side of the ship. “Trainer Richard!” she yelled. “Over here!”
That definitely wasn’t necessary since he’d been headed towards our ship already, but he grinned and waved back anyway. His Tentacruel even raised one tentacle up into the air to wave at us as well, though he mostly focused on moving forward.
“A friend of yours?” Zuri asked from right next to me. I nearly jumped out of my skin; when had she gotten there?
“Uh, sort of,” I replied. “Florence knows him best. He’s from her village.” I looked out towards the boats and noticed that several people in them were waving at Florence too. “I think they all are.”
“Interesting.” She hummed for a moment, eyeing the large fish that were piled up in the boats. Then she smiled brightly. “Yes, this could be quite productive.”
I frowned, not sure what she was talking about, but she had already moved forward. “Lower the sails!” she called out. “Aipom, fetch the boarding ladder for our guest.” The little Pokemon chittered a quick reply and ran off to the lower deck right away as the rest of the crew started bustling around the ship, preparing to slow it down. Well, most of the crew leapt to action. Tanaji was so busy gaping at Tentacruel that Zuri had to yell at him twice before he paid attention.
It turned out that the rope ladder wasn’t necessary, because when Tentacruel reached the ship he just hooked one of his tentacles onto part of the boat and hefted himself up until his trainer could scramble over the side. Richard took one look at Florence, who stood with Natu on her shoulder, Skiploom hovering overhead, and Snubbull hiding behind her legs, and boomed out a giant laugh.
“Ha! Michael told me you’d become a trainer, but it is good to see it with my own eyes,” he told her. “What are you doing out here?”
“Travelling to Cianwood,” she said happily. “Monroe and I and the others are helping them with a problem.” She turned to look at me and waved for me to join them, and I hesitantly moved forward. “How is everyone in Enrui?”
“Fine, just fine,” he replied jovially. Then he mock-glared at Florence and waggled his eyebrows. “Though you gave some people quite a fright by running off the way you did.”
She smiled weakly and didn’t reply. I scratched at my ear, feeling awkward, then smiled when I saw that Echo had flown over to greet Tentacruel. It looked like Pausso was going to approach them as well, though he seemed cautious. That was fair; I was still nervous around the giant Pokemon too.
“Monroe, good to see you,” Richard said, and I looked back towards him. “Your Drowzee seems to be doing well.”
“He’s great,” I replied, relaxing a little. “He’s a lot stronger than the last time we met.”
“Oh really?” Richard asked. “We might have to have a battle then.”
I laughed nervously. “Uh. That’s not necessary…”
I was saved by Zuri’s appearance. “Well met, trainer,” she said with a broad smile as her Pelipper sauntered up next to her. “Welcome aboard the Relicanth. Monroe tells me you come from the same village as Florence?”
They exchanged brief introductions; then, out of nowhere, Zuri pounced. “I noticed that your friends out there have a good haul today,” she said, her eyes gleaming. The fishing boats from before were sitting idle in the ocean now as the men in them talked to each other. “Am I mistaken, or is that Basculin you have fished up?”
“Good eye,” Richard said gruffly. “We found a large school recently and have been visiting it the past few days. They aren’t usually seen in these parts, so we’re taking advantage while we can.”
“Hmm,” Zuri said. Her mouth curved into a broad smile. “I do not have much in the hold right now, but I have a few goods that may be of interest to you. Care to trade?”
Richard’s eyebrows shot up. Then he grinned widely in reply. “I have no head for business,” he said with a laugh. “But if you are willing to stop by our village, we may be able to reach a deal.”
Florence suddenly looked very nervous.
Zuri ran a hand over her scarf as she considered this. “Is your village north of here, or south? We are on the way to Cianwood and cannot afford to take much time away from the main route.”
“North, so you’d stay on path,” he assured her. Then he shrugged. “Ahh, but we might not be worth your time. I am sure you get plenty of Basculin in Cianwood.”
Her eyes flashed in a way that made me pretty sure they did not get plenty of Basculin in Cianwood. Then she smiled easily. “Ah, well,” she said. “As long as we are quick about it…”
The two adults quickly became engrossed in their planning. I glanced over at Florence and raised my eyebrows. Her Pokemon had abandoned her to go talk to Tentacruel, and her face looked practically green instead of its usual tan as she stood there and stared off into the distance.
“Umm, Florence?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
She looked back at me and swallowed hard. “My mother,” she said quietly. “It has been months since I last saw her. She is going to be so upset with me.”