The light had just broken through the tree line to shine down on a new day. Illuminating a sleepy city and bringing with it the warmth expected of summer.

It was June, the season had ended and the Ventress Conference was due to start soon. Once again reminding me of a now tighter deadline on when I’d have to start applying for starters. I had to achieve some kind of success with my idea before the end of the conference.

This gave me six weeks, two weeks for each level of trainer at the tournament. Given the progress I'd had with Lillipup I was excited at the possibilities. By the end of those six weeks he will likely have evolved and I would be ready to start advertising. As I'd go from the kid in the park with the Lillipup to the trainer with the Herdier.

I'd been training the little guy for two weeks now and he'd progressed further than I'd ever expected. He was already completing our morning run with a heavy weight vest. And his bite force and tackle had increased in power from one to two stars.

What had surprised me though was the seeming increase in strength of his energy for his physical moves. This was most likely due to the move training we did in the evening. That said, I had a theory that it was also linked to the physical training we did.

I couldn’t prove that yet, though I was certain that it had also increased the amount he could use in any one move. As at the end of the first week before we started to train moves everyday he seemed to be running out of energy faster from his moves. Which did change when we started to train the moves and thus the energy specifically in our evening sessions.

Every morning for the past two weeks had started with our morning run in the park. Even now as I ran through the park Lillipup was chasing after me, his weight vest on him looking like a sleek black vest.

After our run we progressed on to weight training. This had him pulling a heavy sled in between two trees. And bite training which had him pulling a lighter weight from his jaw along with biting down as hard as he could on tough materials.

I’d learnt so much about Pokémon training in the past two weeks. Most of which were the kinds of things that I was taught about but had to see to truly understand. Firstly I realised how difficult it would be to overtrain a Pokémon with my schedule. They just had such a good level of recovery. In fact at first I had definitely been undertraining him. Now though I think I’d managed to optimise it to train him as hard as I reasonably could.

Lillipup for one had reacted well to the increase in intensity and had been pushing himself at the pace required. I guess the little guy really hated being weak. Though I suspected most pokemon had some sort of drive to reach at least a certain level of strength even if they didn’t like battling. Their evolutions were often tied to it after all.

Today the goal for the sled pulls was to complete a fifth lap of the two trees he dragged it between. At this point he was almost ready for an increase in weight but I decided just to keep pushing him on the reps for now.

Due to his small frame it looked a little funny as he struggled to pull the sled which was twice his size and loaded with metal plates. As he walked between the trees his face strained with effort such was the intensity of the training.

When he got to the fifth lap his legs were shaking, yet he soldiered on. His will power had been another thing that had increased through our training. I think seeing his progress through the weight increase had given him a drive to increase his strength that he’d been partially missing before.

His goals hadn’t changed; he had just become more confident in achieving them.

He struggled on with the sled, running on nought but fumes as he heaved pulling the sled back finishing the fifth and final lap.

“Well done Lillipup! You’re really getting much stronger little guy.” I say walking over to him and unbuckling him from the sled and start preparing it for his next exercise. This was done by taking off some weight and changing the grip to one he could pull in his mouth.

“Lillipup” he whined through his exhausted panting and I pulled out some water which I’d crushed an oran berry into for him to have while he recovered. The oran berry itself helped to speed up the healing process and allowed for us to fit this workout in before I needed to go to school.

It only took a few minutes for him to jump up ready for the next exercise. Much like a person who went to the gym, a Pokémon needed to learn when their body was ready for another set, when the fatigue from the last set wouldn’t stop you from being able to push yourself to get the maximum possible out of the next one.

When he was ready he took off pulling the lightened sled with his jaw, only three sets to go.

Once he was finished with his training we left the park. It being fairly early in the morning the park was fairly deserted, more filled with people on their daily commute than anything else.

We walked home quickly, only briefly stopping and greeting those I'd gotten to know on their morning commute. It was nice getting to know more people but the main benefit of these small connections was that these were the people I'd be advertising too once I was ready to start training.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Once I was home I quickly cooked a meal for myself and Lillipup, his meal was more specially made as he needed to put on some muscle mass and recover before our evening training.

Then I got Leo out of bed, warmed up some of his food and made sure he ate it all. If I didn't he'd end up being a little grump for Grandma Heidy.

After the little guy was fed I headed over to Grandma Heidy’s and dropped off a sleepy Leo and an exhausted Lillipup.

“Are you coming over to watch the opening ceremony tonight?” she asked as I was turning to leave.

“I wouldn’t miss it” I say with a smile as I leave ready to go to trainer school.

Trainer school, much like regular school on earth, was extremely interesting if you liked the subject and mind numbingly boring if you didn’t and even then some lecturers found a way to make exciting topics come across as boring.

The school itself was a large, relatively insignificant looking building with a green roof that stood out when compared to the relatively plain roofed buildings surrounding it. As the school itself functioned more like a university in style it had no ‘play area’ just a library as students didn’t stay the whole day. Most left after lecture and many more didn’t attend all of those.

As a student whose attendance was reported straight to local law enforcement (Hidden Villages Association) I kept my attendance high. Only missing the occasional rescheduled class when it clashed with my working hours.

Today I only had one, two hour lecture and it was back to back hours which was lucky. As it normally meant I could work a few extra hours and earn a little extra money most of which would be spent on training supplies.

Today was slightly different as I had a meeting with one of my lecturers after lectures.

My class was called ‘Feeding Pokémon’ and was about diets. Most lectures provided a basic overview of what Pokémon needed in their diets and what giving them more of would help with. But they tended to hammer home that Pokémon, like humans, needed some of every nutrient and that whilst emphasizing one would help boost a specialisation it didn't mean that they should get none of the others.

Later in the class they would give you case studies to work from to show you a healthy diet and the final assignment (which I'd already submitted) was to make a diet for a particular breed of Pokémon and justify why you chose certain foods over others.

About a week ago I’d written up Lillipup's diet and submitted it for my final assessment, I still had to go to the lecture today though as I needed to receive my grade and persuade them to write a letter to Captain Jubilee to tell her that I’d tested out. That was why I had a meeting later today.

I’d have more time for future clients if I tested out.

Walking into the school I was greeted with a T junction straight away as the building was designed as a square with a small courtyard in the centre designed as an outside lecture hall.

Immediately turning left I walked down the hallway straight to my lecture hall. Ready to sit through hopefully my last two hour lecture on Pokémon diets.

Entering the lecture hall the first thing you notice is it's size, it was huge, mainly due to the need for large Pokémon to fit at the front door demonstrations in some subjects.

Diet though was a fairly boring subject with the information mainly being given through lectures and slide shows.

It was by far the most useful of my lectures though as the information given was highly detailed and was something I knew little about. This was due to the different morphologies of Pokémon having different dietary needs and environmental needs.

My lecture head one Dr Brian Stevenson was a small middle aged man with brown eyes and broad shoulders. Who had an intense glare and extreme passion for the field.

Today's lecture was a fairly interesting one on reptiles. Mainly focused on snakes warning us not to over feed them as they had a tendency to binge eat and could die in extreme cases. Though more likely was that they wouldn't be able to battle at their best and would feel lethargic throughout the day.

It was quite interesting, but as I’d researched ahead I found myself quite bored and spent my time thinking of training techniques for different Pokémon as practice.

After the lecture I found myself in my lecturer's office. His office was covered with framed awards and qualifications. Which was sharply contrasted to his desk which was neat holding only a laptop that was off to the side and a small framed picture of his family.

“Okay Luis you're here to talk about your assignment, yes?” He asks from behind his desk.

“Yeah, I was hoping to ask about possible improvements and to potentially test out of your class so I'll have more time to work to make money for my journey.” I responded hoping he wasn't too offended that I wanted to leave his class early.

“Hmmm, there'll be no problem with you testing out. Reading your diet plan was a pleasant surprise, normally when someone puts together an assignment this early it’s poorly researched and gets them a fail. As for improvements I’d add some fish oil for joint health and perhaps consider boiling the food if your Lillipup shows signs of indigestion.” he says with a kind smile.

“Thanks, I’ll make sure to add the fish oil,” I say happy to get some new information.

“No problem, happy to help,” he responds as I write it down.

“Oh also before I forget, I’m in the Hidden Villages Association’s program, could you email Captain Jubilee and tell her I tested out,” I ask.

“That’ll be fine, give me her email and I’ll let her know,” he says.

“Thanks professor!” I say.

“No problem Luis, now unless you have something else to ask I’ll let you get back to your day, “ he says with a small smile.

Taking the que I bid him farewell and leave his office and headed to work. With that class gone from my timetable I now had Mondays entirely free from lectures and could either work more or try to get my first clients.