Erika woke up feeling unexpectedly light hearted and refreshed. It was both a welcome and bizarre sensation, and Erika couldn't quite pinpoint why she thought it felt so weird, until she realized that Snivy was standing on her chest and staring straight at her, his hooded amber eyes peering ominously into her own like a noctowl.

"Snivy sniv sniv…" Snivy said, waving his arms around as he spoke to Erika.

Erika nudged their bond and focused, letting it transcribe the noises Snivy made into something which she could understand.

…'need to talk.' Hearing her pokemon speak was actually quite jarring. What she audibly heard was 'Snivy sniv snivy', but her mind registered it roughly as 'need to talk.'

The aura bond was convenient for a lot of things, but it wasn't all powerful. Their current bond was strong and facilitated basic communication, but it still couldn't replace true speech. That would come later.

"Get off me first," Erika said flatly.

Snivy hopped off Erika and landed smoothly on the floor beside her bed. One of his feelers extended across the room and pulled a trolley over, revealing a sumptuous breakfast platter on top.

'Ate your bread.'

Erika looked at Snivy appalled. "You ate all the french toast? That's my favorite! How could you?"

"There's eggs?" Her starter shrugged. "At least you didn't take everything."

There weren't any signs a French toast had even existed on the breakfast platter, so Snivy must have thoroughly devoured it. The 'egg' that Erika mentioned was actually placed on top of a piece of bread and some salmon, so Erika assumed that they were meant to be eaten together. She dug in, cutting the egg open and letting the yolk spread over the smoked salmon and bread. She also noticed a yellow sauce coating as well, and liberally scooped it up and poured it on the bread.

With a crunch, Erika bit into her breakfast. This stuff is good, was her conclusion.

She leaned back onto the bedframe and continued to munch on the egg toast, staring at Snivy as she did so. Snivy just stared back expectantly, almost as if waiting for her to initiate conversation.

"What's the name of this sauce?" Erika asked. "Surely you must know."

Snivy's face was incredulous. '…you serious?'

"Yes," Erika said bluntly. "Now, name. What is it? I'm not talking until I get a name."

'Irrelevant. Why do you want?'

"I'm going to ask for it and eat it again obviously," was her response. Erika marked her statement with an extra loud crunch of the bread, letting the yolk drip onto the plate.

Snivy put his hands to his face. 'Egg butter lemon sauce.'

Huh? Erika blinked a little at that.

'Yes,' Snivy reiterated. 'Bond not translating well. You don't know real name. Bond works on own knowledge.'

Erika gave him a thumbs up in understanding. "Forget about it then. What was it you wanted to talk about?"

One of Snivy's feelers dunked a glass cup into the healing spring, and he brought the glass to his face to sip the water. 'Relationship needs change. Current situation bad for both.'

"I'm glad you're finally seeing sense," Erika said perfunctorily. "But what does that have to do with me? You've been the uncooperative one this whole time."

Even as Erika said that she winced, realizing how combative her statement sounded. Am I just unable to be abrasive? Erika wondered to herself. I really need to work on that.

Snivy gritted his teeth, almost as if regretting even bringing the matter up, but he powered through. 'Move on. Time to move past.'

Is he serious? Erika's eyes widened. While she was happy that Snivy was suddenly willing to talk, things seemed to almost be moving too fast. This is almost too easy. How did Snivy's attitude overnight? However, Erika didn't voice her concerns to him.

"Let's talk then," Erika said eagerly, spreading her arms. "You already know what I want - cooperation, and a willingness to obey my instructions during training and in battles. Name your conditions."

'...take your oath seriously,' Snivy informed her. 'You act disgraceful. No more. Break oath more than once a day, I won't work with you.'

"Three," Erika said immediately. "One infraction per day is much too little."

Snivy shook his head. 'Impossible. Three too much. Compromise at two.'

"Fine," Erika replied. "I can deal with that. What are your other conditions?"

'No murdering innocents.' Snivy raised his hand and clenched it. 'I will break the bond.'

Erika scoffed. "I wasn't planning on doing that anyways. The League looks out for their own civilians well enough, and I don't want investigators on my trail. However, trainers who attack us in the wild with the intent to kill don't apply. Scratch that - anyone who attacks me first, or has the intent to harm me will not be considered innocent."

'Only innocents count.' Snivy affirmed. 'Malice holders and provokers not innocent. I will judge.'

Now, here was the real kicker. Erika prepared herself to hear an instant rejection. "What about my partnership with Fulton? Please keep in mind that if I break off my relationship with him, Fulton will immediately silence me."

It took Snivy a good while to think about it. Erika swigged her glass of orange juice and ate some grapes that came with the breakfast platter while waiting for his response.

'I can deal with it.' Snivy responded eventually. 'I want you to leave eventually.'

He paused momentarily to gather his thoughts. 'Fulton cannot be permanent. Betray when you are stronger.'

Erika smirked. "Betray, huh? That's ironic, coming from someone who was betrayed."

Snivy ground his teeth and reaffirmed his statement. 'When stronger, betray him.'

"That's probably never going to happen," Erika told Snivy honestly. "Just like how I now know stuff about Fulton he would never want to become public, he also knows the same about me. I'm going to become a high-profile trainer and gym leader in the future, and Fulton will drag me down with him if I choose to break off our partnership. This request is impossible for me to fulfill. Like it or not, Fulton is probably here to stay."

'Discuss later.' Snivy said. 'Ignore for now until see Fulton's motives.'

Erika extended a hand to Snivy expectantly. "If you don't have any other conditions, then restore the bond," she told him. "We should start training for Rising Stars."

There was a sudden movement from the bond, and Erika felt Snivy's speech rapidly turning clearer. His next words were the most comprehensible yet, and Erika could almost hear it in human language.

'I want a traditional knight's name,' Snivy said. 'Don't you dare name me something like Greenie!'

Erika burst out laughing. "I wouldn't do that to you anyways. Have some faith!"

Snivy hesitated a little but ultimately reached out to shake with her, sealing their deal. 'Remember your word,' he warned her. 'No second chances.'

"Oh I will," Erika said, her eyes sparkling. "This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I can just tell!"

With that, the immense pressure from the bond that had been trying to crush her instantly vanished, and Erika felt goosebumps everywhere on her skin. Her hair rose involuntarily, and she felt power surging through her body once more.

Her vast aura, which had been stagnating in growth suddenly exploded outwards once more, expanding in size and quality at the same time. I'm finally getting auric feedback from the bond again! Erika cheered internally.

"I name you Mordred," Erika told Snivy cheerfully, watching his face instantly darken. "I think it's wonderfully appropriate, since you did try to instigate me into committing betrayal."

'Hate it.'

"It's a traditional name," Erika reasoned with a smirk. "How much more traditional can you get than being named after the legendary King Arthur's son?"

Mordred glared at her, clearly unimpressed.

"We're going to be great friends," Erika repeated, clasping his hands. Mordred wriggled, trying to break free from her grip, but Erika was undeterred. "If you've nothing else to do, then we should get to training. You've missed out on enough as it is."

'Only three days.' Mordred stated flatly. 'Nothing missed.'

"That's three days too many," Erika told him cheerfully, still riding on the adrenaline high from regaining feedback from the bond. "Glory awaits! Let's go train!"

'Wait. Chocolates.'

Erika had already begun to march off when she was suddenly halted by Mordred's words. "What do you mean, chocolates?"

'Chocolates,' Mordred repeated slowly. 'You owe Gwen good chocolate.'

----------------------------------------

Water roared down from above, pouring in thunderous waves which deafened Erika's ears and blasted her off her feet, sending her careening across the rocks and into the pool below.

Fuck! Icy water surged into Erika's mouth and nose from the speed of the fall, and she gasped from the extreme chill which invaded her body. Erika could barely move her limbs due to the cold, which stiffened up all her muscles and locked them in place. Furthermore, the violent downpour of the waterfall stirred up the basin, creating turbulent waves which threatened to drown her.

"Mordred!" Erika spat out water and shouted as she struggled to stay afloat. "Where are you?"

From out of nowhere, several vine-like feelers extended and grabbed her, lashing Erika up and dragging her out of the basin and back onto land. She coughed violently and hacked water out of her lungs, and covered herself with a towel which Mordred proffered to her.

"Beginning with Level 4 was a mistake I think," Erika admitted, shivering from the cold. She winced in pain, noticing the cuts which covered her arms and legs where the rocks had dug in. "I think we should go back to Level 1."

Mordred snorted. 'You think? Told you so.'

The rocky platform attached to the base of the waterfall where the water crashed into the basin was meant for trainers to stand or sit on. Erika had just tried standing on it previously on the Level 4 setting, but she was instantly blasted off her feet. Good thing I didn't try to go for a higher setting, Erika sweated. I might not have gotten away with just some surface cuts.

Erika cranked a nozzle on the wall and watched as the roaring of the waterfall noticeably quietened, observing how the waterflow began to decrease to a trickle compared to its previous state. The room temperature started to rise as well, returning to a more manageable chill instead of the flash freeze which Erika had just experienced. "This should be more manageable for us to train in."

She released Gwen onto the rocks beside Mordred, letting her plant get accustomed to the challenge in front of them. Gwen appeared with chocolate wrapped in her head leaves, and she was visibly chewing on a huge piece. Erika smiled involuntarily upon seeing Gwen, suddenly very pleased that she had decided to give Gwen her second bond.

Gwen said something which Erika couldn't quite catch even with the help of the bond, but the intent was communicated anyways - Gwen liked the chocolate. My bond with Gwen isn't strong enough to translate intent into language just yet. That's gonna have to wait until she evolves. Incidentally, her ability to communicate relatively clearly with Mordred was another big advantage she had over new trainers. Most trainers were stuck at the Intent stage of the bond and had to guess at what their pokemon wanted to say, but she and Mordred were already able to talk and exchange ideas on a more detailed level, and he would be able to easily give feedback and suggestions to her training plans.

The room which Erika and her pokemon were situated in was the Icefall, a specially designed training chamber which featured a giant waterfall and basin. The temperature of the water had been artificially lowered to become extremely cold, and the basin was over a hundred meters (328ft) deep. The depth was apparently completely natural, and was formed over time due to the crashing water from the waterfall tunneling through the rock beneath.

Erika marveled at the towering waterfall before her. Behind the arterial spray of mist and pouring water was a sheer cliff face of a hundred meters in height, standing tall and proud despite somehow being located inside a luxury hotel. The rock composing the cliff face of the waterfall seemed to be entirely black granite, and had been polished by years of erosive water currents until it had become reflective and glossy. Patches of lichen and plant life poked out of crags in the sheer cliff, and Erika could see a faint rainbow forming from the vapor in the air.

Milly generously offered Erika an access token into the Grand Verdant's special training rooms, which Erika found out was a big part of the hotel's services. Other than functioning as a luxury hotel, the Grand Verdant catered to high-end trainers and provided unique resources like the Icefall which could give their patrons an edge over competitors.

Yesterday, Milly had told her that she would give Erika access to her family's private training rooms. While the Icefall was undoubtedly one of them, it was usually reserved for extremely important and rich guests who paid a ton of money to use the room, or internal family members. There were less important training rooms that were rented out, and the fact that Erika was given access to the Icefall meant that Milly considered Erika a very close friend, and an important connection.

Erika peered into the basin and shuddered. It looks bottomless. Training under the basin must be insane!

Indeed, the bottom of the basin was actually meant for training as well. Prior to entering, Erika had flipped through a brochure about the Grand Verdan'ts training rooms, and studied the Icefall's services.

It served three main functions: body tempering, aura training, and mind training.

By standing or sitting on the rocky platform, trainers could use their bodies to resist the downpour, which would temper and help strengthen their musculature and bodies. The same was true for their pokemon. If you were strong enough, then you could even practice training katas or martial arts beneath the downpour, and do exercises like pushups, or even meditate beneath the waterfall. This sort of resistance training would greatly enhance your stamina and endurance over time, and promote good muscle growth evenly across your body.

However, the real benefits of the Icefall would only be revealed at the external aura stage. The realm of the External marked the point at which a trainer's aura became corporeal, and further aura progression from this point onwards would involve increasing both the quantity, quality, and thoroughness of your aura. The first two were easy to do, and could be accomplished just by battling constantly. However, thoroughness was tough.

Once in the External, a trainer would develop a thin film of solid aura on their skin which could protect them from injury and attack. However, the layer of aura was thin and the protection offered was extremely minimal. Progression beyond this point demanded the trainer push aura into their skin instead of just covering it, letting it seep in and fully integrate until all the skin on their bodies contained aura. Further progression was done in a similar fashion, requiring the trainer to push in and integrate aura into different layers and parts of their body until their entire bodies contained aura. The key point to this process was that aura had to be evenly integrated into each part of the body. However, doing so was extremely hard.

With no other means to help, a trainer would be limited to force injecting aura manually into different parts of the body, and they would be unable to evenly cover every part. Some areas might get too much aura and become oversaturated, while other areas might become undersaturated with aura, creating hidden problems and bottlenecking their future aura progression. These areas of over and undersaturation would also create exploitable weak points in combat which canny enemies could exploit.

This was where the Icefall came in. While submerged beneath the crashing waterfall and in the glacial temperatures, a trainer only needed to drive their aura to resist the force of the falling water, and the extreme chill would invade every part of the body, forcing their aura to instinctively defend against it. In this magical state, the entire body would be stimulated, and you could evenly temper and push aura into your body without mistakes. It both trained your muscles and helped progress your aura at the same time.

Even though Erika hadn't yet externalized her aura, the Icefall was still a brilliant means of resistance training for physical conditioning - especially since she was a grass specialist.

Through her second sight, Erika could see vibrant tendrils of water and ice aura, which threaded through the downpour like snakes. The booklet on aura Fulton gave her had been very clear about the benefits of absorbing water aura for grass specialists.

Grass is tolerant of all things, she remembered. Like all plants, grass aura has a bizarre tendency to adapt and overcome, and water aura is extremely nourishing for a grass specialist's own aura progression.

Erika breathed the air in and plunged back into the downpour, feeling her aura become invigorated and suddenly active. "Mordred, Gwen, jump in! We're going to be doing some light resistance training as a test run! I want you both to run around without stopping, and jump up and down!"

Her pokemon dutifully followed, and Erika could say no more, as the water crashed down onto her head and muffled her voice. The water was crystal clear, and surprisingly didn't irritate her eyes, so Erika could still see her pokemon on the rocky platform beside her. She imitated their training and started doing sprints and jumps, letting the water press down upon her and increase the difficulty of her task.

Erika had no doubt that the Icefall was special. The water is definitely subzero. However, it hasn't frozen. Despite being brutally cold, it still remains a liquid.

And to think, she thought, this is a real waterfall. The Beldings must have been crazy.

According to the brochure, the Icefall was a naturally formed waterfall from Tohjo Falls, a special demilitarized zone separating Kanto and Johto. The Belding Family uprooted one of Tohjo Falls' original three waterfalls during the Great War, relocating it to their family grounds and heavily modifying it until it became the present day Icefall training chamber.

The brochure was very proud to announce that the Beldings had been given the honor of defending Tohjo Pass - a blockade set up on the Kantonian side of the DMZ, even though Kanto ceded the area to Johto as part of the negotiations to form Indigo. After the Belding family's tenure of service was over, they audaciously had their 7-star ace and his titled pokemon steal the entire waterfall from under the noses of the Johtoan government, uprooting quite literally a third of the land.

As more and more water crashed down, Erika felt herself growing weaker and more tired. She persisted with the sprints and jumps, and switched to doing planks and pushups, copying her pokemon beside her. Her skin was bright red from the cold, and her entire body was shivering intensely.

Finally, she decided to get out. Erika couldn't speak due to the crashing water, so she signaled with her hands for Mordred and Gwen to dive into the basin.

Erika cried out when she hit the basin as she met unexpected resistance - it almost felt like the water hardened upon impact, and she nearly pancaked on the water surface. This doesn't feel like water! What's going on?

She didn't notice it previously when she fell due to her shock and adrenaline, and while she was training beneath the downpour, it wasn't obvious either. However, now that she was properly swimming in the basin, it immediately became apparent that the water contained a bewildering resistance. Whenever she moved her arms, they felt sluggish, as if she were trying to swim through a particularly dense jello or slime.

"It's like mercury!" Erika shouted out to her pokemon. "Let's try to dive! Swim down as far as you can!"

Mordred was the first to sink beneath the turbulent basin, exhaling deeply and plunging himself downwards. Erika followed next, expelling air from her lungs so she could sink properly and diving down, only seeing Gwen briefly before the waves consumed her.

Barely a meter down, Erika was already encountering fierce resistance due to the abnormal density of the water. The more she tried to swim down, the more the water tried to repel and reject her, forcing her back up. At two meters, Erika's body gave out before her lungs did, and she let the water propel her back up to the surface.

This is absurd, Erika thought. The brochure says that ace trainers can swim to the bottom of the basin and use the terrifying water pressure to sculpt their bodies. I can't even make it down three meters on the easiest setting!

She broke the surface with a gasp and coughed, clearing her nose and looking around for her pokemon. "Mordred! Gwen! Let's swim to land for a quick break!"

The group reconvened back at the entrance to the Icefall, huddling together for warmth. Erika exhaled deeply and watched as her breath instantly misted over, such was the chill of the room.

"I think I have a good grasp on the benefits of the waterfall now," Erika told her pokemon seriously. "We should focus on physical conditioning for now. Building a solid foundation is important, and the body is the linchpin of all combat forms. We're going to be training endurance - both physical and mental."

Gwen eagerly bounced up and down despite the freezing cold, proving that she was a true glutton for punishment, and Mordred just gave her a solemn nod of agreement.

For the rest of the training session, Erika focused on having Gwen and Mordred do resistance exercises like planks, squats, pushups, and jumping up and down beneath the downpour. She grabbed a pair of weighted belts and strapped them onto Mordred and Gwen, forcing them to endure greater pressure beneath the waterfall on the rocky platform.

Gwen didn't have arms so Erika excluded her from the planks and pushups, but made her jump extra and do more squats than Snivy.

Each set lasted over ten minutes initially, but Erika gradually shortened the durations as the training progressed, and slowly decreased their weights as well. It was a style of training called drop-setting, where you drew out your maximum potential by lowering the weights burdening your body so you could keep exercising even when fatigued.

The only time you would be allowed to quit was when you physically collapsed, or fully removed all the weights after dozens of sets. Training to failure, Erika nodded. The most optimal training method.

It was a brutal method of training, but extraordinarily effective if you could withstand it. Erika didn't leave her pokemon to train on their own, however. She believed that solidarity was important, and training alongside her pokemon - especially Mordred, would help earn his acknowledgement faster, so she strapped on some weighted belts and followed her pokemon in exercising beneath the waterfall.

When they were finally pushed to collapse, Erika dragged herself and her pokemon to shore and she sat down heavily, her body shivering from the cold and her head spinning.

The worst part of this training wasn't even the drop-sets, Erika reflected. It was actually the cold. She thought it would have gotten better as time passed, but her body never got used to it, and she just felt profoundly uncomfortable the entire time. Given her immense grass affinity and proclivity towards grass types, her dislike of cold was enhanced even further.

However, that means that Mordred and Gwen must have hated it too. Erika looked at her pokemon lying down on the pebbled shore, both gasping and heaving and shivering all at the same time. As if sensing her gaze, Gwen perked up and struggled to her feet, displaying a radiant smile as if inviting more training.

Erika could only give Gwen a thumbs up at her willpower. Mordred clambered to his feet shortly after as well, and Erika had them continue their training after a five minute break.

Phase 2 of training was move training. After the physical portion of their session was done, it was time to move onto training moves.

Now, today's focus wasn't on power, but rather technique. While Erika was good at coming up with orders on the fly and adapting to different situations, it definitely paid to be prepared for any circumstances, and honing your techniques and coming up with new ones was a big part of that.

In an empty training room outside the Icefall chamber, Erika set up dummy human and pokemon targets for Gwen to spray her acid at, and pushed her to her limits. Whenever Gwen collapsed due to the strain, Erika would splash water onto her body and force her upright again to keep spraying.

If Gwen's accuracy ever dipped, Erika would splash her with icy water. She wasn't even doing it as a means of punishment - it just helped to shock Gwen back into focus.

Erika taught Gwen how to focus her acid into a thinner line, increasing the spray distance and intensity over time. Furthermore, they worked on having Gwen spray her acid while in motion, being extremely careful to limit the spread of the acid in the air since hitting unwanted targets or civilians would be inadvisable in real combat outside arenas.

Thanks to months of prior physical conditioning with Erika even before bonding, Gwen already had a good physical foundation compared to Snivy, even though his body was innately superior. Her extreme pain tolerance let her keep pushing even after her poison gland ran out of acid to spray and her aura could no longer induce the gland to keep generating poison beyond her limit.

After seeing Gwen entirely spent, Erika assigned her to throwing razor leaves as fast as she could manage, having her work on her body's natural regeneration of her head leaves, and her accuracy in throwing the razor leaves while extremely fatigued and tired. Of course, she had Gwen do this underneath the waterfall, where it would be three times as hard.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It would be of good use, Erika reasoned, if they ever had to fight in prolonged battles or battles of attrition, which was a likely possibility in the near future, especially since the Rising Stars Gauntlet was coming up.

For Mordred, Erika had him cough up all his secrets - every move and ability he had previously concealed from her, which she knew he was concealing, since she witnessed him use iron tail against Fulton during the escape from the Claw hideout.

"Contrary? Wait, aren't you named Mordred?"

Erika burst out laughing, nearly having to wipe out tears from her eyes. "You really do suit your name, Knight of Betrayal!"

She was glared at a lot by Mordred for the rest of the training session for that comment, but he eventually had to give it up. For her part, Erika was overjoyed with the ability, even if she didn't voice it aloud. It's gonna be hard initially, she calculated, especially since Mordred won't be able to use growth or other boost moves. However, it's going to be a different story once he matures.

Imagining Mordred at his full potential made Erika's mouth run dry.

It also raised an important point. "If you bonded with a weaker trainer it definitely would have killed them. Your ability makes it inherently harder to bond with you, to the point that it can cause auric backlash!"

Erika's smile was growing by the second. "You really must have been a wastrel in your family, Contrary Snivy can't boost early on, and there's no way a rookie would ever have enough aura or affinity to bond with you as a starter. Bonding with a veteran trainer means you can't get the potential boost from becoming a starter, and you would never settle for that. You were fucked from the start!"

Mordred gave her another annoyed look. 'Know that already. Others don't have enough affinity.'

"That means I'm the only one who can bring out your true potential," Erika continued, visibly preening and fanning the flames of her ego. "Aren't you lucky Mordred? I'm quite literally the only person you're able to create a starter bond with."

He turned away to leave, upset at Erika's words, and she had to run after him in apology. "Oh come on, Mordred! It was just a little joke! Indulge me, won't you?"

After she brought him back, Erika had to remind herself not to tease Mordred too much from then on.

The discovery that Mordred held Contrary as an ability was momentous. It was traditionally useless not only for the aforementioned reasons, but also because it inhibited evolution. Mordred would find it extremely difficult to evolve, and failure meant that both his potential and lifespan would be heavily damaged.

However, what does that matter to me? Erika sneered. I've already formed the starter bond and received the corresponding benefits. With my affinity and talent, I'll help him smash open the bottleneck holding him back from evolving, and I have Fulton and Milly's resources backing me up. Who can say that they're in a better position than me? In my hands, I'll turn both this ability and Mordred into a super legend of epic proportions!

A violent snap on her leg jarred her back to reality, and this time it was Erika's turn to glare. "What?"

'Narcissist.' He snorted. 'Save the monologuing for someone who cares.'

Erika embarrassingly realized that she had said the last part aloud - the fact that Mordred could feel her emotions to some degree probably didn't help either. With a rapidly reddening face, she had him continue divulging his move pool and skills.

When Erika heard Mordred's full repertoire of inherited and acquired moves, her eyes began steaming with happiness. "You're telling me you know every egg move for your lineage? How convoluted is your family bloodline?"

Mordred just shrugged. 'Moves can be learned without lineage with effort. Not necessary.'

"Yeah, but it's nearly impossible," Erika retorted. "Why else would breeders go to the effort of crossbreeding for inherited egg moves? You need specific bodily adaptations for certain moves - like how sweet scent needs a special type sebaceous gland, and a certain degree of corresponding type affinity for others - like water affinity for aqua tail. I definitely need to get you scanned. The list of affinities you have must be crazy!"

'Aqua tail isn't inherited.'

"That is true," Erika paused. "Do you know it by any chance?"

'Yes. Uncle taught me how to do it.'

Erika had Mordred swim in the basin the entire time after finding that nifty fact out, having him learn how to wield water through his aqua tail. He wasn't too familiar with its usage, but Erika knew it would come in handy.

Given her nature as a grass specialist, she was bound to come into contact with Fire specialists eventually, and she needed one of her pokemon to learn water moves to suppress them. Otherwise, she would need to devise a glass cannon strategy to immediately take out fire types before they could spew their flames. Hit and run strategies wouldn't work as well against fire types due to the wide area of effect their moves could reach, and flames could be indiscriminately blasted across an entire arena to corral her own pokemon's movements.

Learning aqua tail was a priority, since it would not only help defeat fire types, but also eliminate the threat of being cornered in a battlefield that had been set ablaze. Mordred would be able to put out fires if needed, and take out fire types quickly with this move.

Erika ordered Mordred to train his lungs as well by diving frequently further downwards, using his tail like an aquatic pokemon to swim via water displacement and propel himself downwards. Simultaneously, he would try to manipulate the water in the basin to move himself faster.

It was a brilliant method of training which would hone Mordred's lungs, tail strength, and ability to control water all at the same time.

The only issue is the lack of water in land based arenas.

This was a huge concern for water specialists, and a big reason why water types couldn't ever dominate in competitive battling. Pure water arenas were rare, and almost always resulted in a steamroll fight where the water types crushed their enemies. The water type was very situational compared to its elemental cousins, and couldn't display its true power unless a body of water was present.

Or, unless you learn how to condense water out of air moisture and wield that, Erika thought, thinking back to the numerous battle VODs she watched of ace trainers in tournaments battling, and how Fulton had been able to wield his ice. He condensed air moisture into water, and then rapidly cooled it to create ice he could use.

Thankfully, a decent number of standard arena types featured at least one decorative body of water like a puddle or small pool, even if it wasn't extremely common. Unless we're unlucky enough to fight on the Desert Field or Volcano Field, we should be okay.

Two hours later, Erika fed both her pokemon the slow-release vitamin tablets she bought from the Glass Helix and gave them chansey extract to speed up their recovery, and returned them to their pokeballs. It was exceedingly wasteful to blow chansey extract on mere recovering mere fatigue, but Erika was now filthy rich - at least until Fulton pulled the plug on her card, so she remained willful with her spending.

Erika was also completely knackered and gave herself a jab of chansey extract, and she stumbled across the hotel back up to her room to rest.

She was barely able to grab a hot shower and change of clothes when her phone started ringing loudly. Shit. That's Fulton. He's probably here to grab me to go make my passport and trainer license.

Erika couldn't find the will to move after the training session she had just done. She was completely out of energy.

However, she still forced herself to her feet and towards the phone to pick it up. "Fulton? Is that you?"

"Meet me downstairs at the hotel entrance," was his curt reply. "Your room is warded against teleportation."

Erika started smiling before realizing something was wrong. "Didn't you just teleport my stuff into the room yesterday?"

"Yeah, but that was teleporting in," Fulton told her over the phone. "I have my own ways to teleport stuff across a Ward, but getting out is impossible. You're gonna have to meet me outside where I can actually have my jynx transport us to the passport office."

Erika groaned and clicked her phone off.

It took her nearly ten minutes to make it down to the lobby, and when Fulton saw her state of fatigue, he chucked her a mint.

"What is this supposed to do?" Erika asked annoyedly. "Freshen up my breath?"

"It's a power mint."

Fulton threw one into his mouth as well, crunching on it loudly. "They don't have much effect on me anymore, especially after I became an ace, but the effects should be quite pronounced on you."

Erika did as she was told and put in the mint in her mouth. She didn't even have the chance to bite on the mint when the worst brain freeze of her life hit her, causing her to drop her phone onto the ground. "Fughr! Wha the fugg!"

"Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that," Fulton said casually, enjoying her discomfort. "They're designed for ice specialists. Whoops."

Erika glared at him, but the brain freeze quickly ran its course, and she found herself reinvigorated with energy once more, her mind sharpening and her body visibly filling up with power as the mint flushed her system of lactic acid and stimulated her endocrine system. The training in the Icefall also helped her withstand the cold of the mint better, and even Fulton was surprised by how fast she recovered from the brain freeze.

"That usually gets everyone," he commented. "Anyways, let's get going."

Carzi, Fulton's jynx, appeared next to him and wrapped them both in a loop of psychic energy, and Erika found herself experiencing the horribly jarring sensation of being twisted through space once more.

When the world finally snapped back into place, Erika was in an ovular room with a high ceiling covered in boring gray panels. When she finally stabilized her stomach, Erika saw Fulton talking with a dark haired woman in a professional looking suit.

He was apparently very familiar with her, since he didn't retaliate when she leaned in and socked Fulton in the stomach. Fulton doubled over in mock pain and burst out laughing. "Don't tell me you're still angry at me for ditching on you last time Amy!"

Amy scowled. "You left me with a huge bill!"

"It really was an emergency," Fulton defended himself awkwardly, holding up his hands in apology. "There was a massive Rocket raid going on nearby, and I was called to go since I was the closest to the attack.

"You better compensate me at the next gathering!" Amy said fiercely. "It wasn't even my turn to pay!"

She turned to Erika with a smile after saying that, suddenly having noticed her presence. "And who might you be? Fulton, were you hiding a kid this whole time?"

"Niece, actually," Fulton replied smoothly. "My late brother turned out to have had a kid before dying, and I only found out recently. I'm here to get her registered for a passport and trainer license since she didn't have any documentation before I found her."

"I'll handle that, don't you worry," Amy said dismissively to him before looking at Erika again. "What's your name kid?"

"Erika Caldwell," was her prompt reply.

"I'll get right on it then!"

Amy started typing away on her laptop and quickly entered Erika's details, and then pulled Erika towards a camera room with a blank white wall for a backdrop. She had Erika smile for the photo and snapped the camera with a flash, which made Erika blink. Amy measured Erika's height, weight, and other biometric details using a scanner, and then plugged the scanner into the computer and shooed her off to go stay with Fulton.

This is quite fast, Erika observed.

"It is fast," Fulton spoke up, making Erika twitch at the reminder that he was reading her mind. "Ranger dependents can skip the entire process of booking an appointment and submitting details and just bring their dependents in for a quick registration. It's one of the benefits offered by the league to their military personnel."

Fulton saw Erika give him a look, and he nodded. "You're gonna ask about Amy right? We're just old friends from ranger basic training. Don't worry about it."

Amy called Erika over to hand in her pokeballs for registration, and had her fill out a few more forms declaring her status as a legal citizen of Celadon and sponsorship by an ace, and finally a form called the Y-3, colloquially known as the Youngster License.

"Every trainer below the age of thirteen needs to fill this out," Amy informed Erika. "Normally, you have to pass a battery of tests and certifications to prove you can handle training at a younger age, but Fulton vouched for you and let you skip all the steps. It's nice to have him as an uncle, right?"

"Definitely." Erika gave Fulton a thumbs up for his contribution.

"Put in your specialization if you have one here, and fill out this form too please."

It took a few more minutes for Amy to get the passport made and the trainer license printed, but eventually Erika found herself staring at a shiny new golden-green passport emblazoned with the letters IL - for indigo league. She flipped to the information page and found her smiling face staring back, with all her biometric details like latest height, weight, hair, and eye color recorded on the passport. The printer next to them started whirring loudly and ejected out a rectangular card, which Erika promptly snatched out of the air.

"Good reflexes!" Amy praised. Erika turned the card over and admired it.

————————————————

Erika Caldwell | GRW-777311

Grass Specialist, Initiate

Mordred - Snivy - LV.18 ♂

Guinivere - Oddish - LV. 15 ♀

————————————————

It was emblazoned with the same IL letters as her passport, and was beautifully decorated with artwork of various different flower types like magnolias and bluebells. The material of the card felt like wood, but it was astonishingly polished and far too heavy to be wood. Erika turned the card over again and again, playing with it and getting a feel for its weight.

"This doesn't look like your average trainer card," Erika murmured, tracing her fingers across the wood-adjacent material.

"Special treatment," Amy informed her. "All grass specialists in Celadon get complementary benefits like this regardless of your affiliation. It's part of an initiative by the Celadon Conservatives to draw more of the youth into becoming grass specialists."

A quick glance at the card through second sight revealed that it contained grass aura - and it looked suspiciously similar to her own. "That's my aura inside, isn't it?"

"It's a confirmation of identity," Amy said. "When you first picked it up, it took a wisp of your aura to store and scan. From now on, that card is a unique identifier for you and your identity can never be stolen."

She and Fulton left quickly after getting her documents done, but not before Fulton promised to treat Amy to two more dinners on his tab.

Erika studied Mordred's evaluated level as they left the passport office, noting how Mordred was already past the average level where his species evolved but still showed none of the signs of an impending evolution. Contrary is working overtime already, it seems. Mordred must have wanted to evolve to break out of captivity, but it was never going to happen.

For the next five days, Erika and her pokemon trained furiously for the preliminary rounds of the Rising Stars Gauntlet (RSG). She sped up their training both as individuals and as teammates, forcing Mordred and Gwen to quickly adapt to working together under pressure and learning each other's weaknesses and strengths.

Although the RSG would be in singles format, both Mordred and Gwen needed to learn how to cover each other's weaknesses, and to take advantage of the gaps and openings they each created in enemy defenses.

For example, if Gwen sprayed acid onto an enemy with a mammalian skin type, the effects would be much more pronounced - and painful. Upon being switched in, it would be effective for Snivy to viciously whip the acid soaked areas, since it would trigger even more pain from the exposed nerves and distract the enemy. This was but one of many possible scenarios and examples where knowing your teammates's attack methods and weaknesses would come into handy.

The combination attack that Erika conceived during her first battle against the Claw-owned raticate was also honed and developed further. She would have Gwen indiscriminately spray weakened poison powder into the air and acid onto the enemy, and then start absorbing at a distance to wear down tough enemies. Depending on the strength of the enemy, Gwen could opt to overexert herself by creating more powerful poison, but this was a last resort since it would make her wither quickly.

It was a very effective tactic for dealing with tougher opponents, since Gwen only needed to keep her distance and wear them down in attrition battles - and with the dual effects of a passive absorption and airborne poison, they would be finished in no time.

Erika made sure to dose Mordred with a good vial of Gwen's poison every single day, building up his immunity to her specific brand of airborne poisons in the case that he was switched into a heavily poison-powder covered battlefield. Nothing could be done for his resistance to acid unfortunately, but she wasn't planning on having Gwen attack Mordred with acid anyways.

To ensure that Mordred didn't feel bad, Erika also poisoned herself on the regular to build up her own immunity. While this didn't make much sense from a competitive standpoint, official tournaments and competitions were only a small part of being a trainer. If Erika ever came across an enemy who tried to kill her, she would be able to indiscriminately poison the entire area - herself and the enemy included, and she would be able to walk out unharmed. It also minimized the risk of dying to her own pokemon's poison, which would be terribly embarrassing for everyone involved.

Every morning at 5AM, her team would go through their physical conditioning routines at the Icefall, with Snivy practicing his tail strength and water control using aqua tail in the basin and iron tail on dummies, while Gwen honed her accuracy with acid and her speed at regenerating her head leaves when using razor leaf. She also participated in an abusive regimen of self harm Growth sessions, learning how to tolerate the pain of double boosting without flinching and incurring too much backlash damage.

During this abusive training, Erika also realized why growth had such a devastating effect on Gwen's body. A single round of growth didn't only boost Gwen's bodily strength, but it also increased her aura reserves at the same time. Growth was a staple move for grass specialists due to how versatile it was, but it also brought greater strain with each use.

Erika went out and bought tennis balls and collected rocks to throw at Mordred, and he had to batter them back at her using only his tail. Not only did this practice increase the stability of his tail movement, but it also taught him how to accurately deflect attacks in different directions. At the start of their training, he could only hit the attacks straight back, but as they progressed, he started to become able to hit the rocks and tennis balls roughly in any direction which he wanted.

Mordred also started working on learning his newest move, Leaf Tornado. Despite already being level 18, Snivy hadn't been able to practice his leaf tornado since he was stuck in captivity with the Claws. It was a good control move for denying movement, and would help with his longevity in battle. Erika knew that the preliminary rounds of the RSG were free-for-alls, so he would need a method to defend himself or deter enemies from approaching in favor of easier targets to take out. Leaf tornado would fill that role perfectly, and even though Erika knew the move had more potential, five days simply wasn't enough time to learn anything more than a basic grasp of the move.

Mean Look was another move which Erika had high hopes for. It complimented his natural talent in the use of Glare - even though they wouldn't be able to reveal it publicly in case someone figured out Mordred's uniqueness. Mean Look could be used both as a trump card, and as a way to cover up the effects of glare if things really went south. Erika could claim that Mordred used a jumped up version of mean look to intimidate his enemy into freezing out of fear, instead of their muscles literally locking up when glare was used. In addition, at critical moments, using a mean look could disrupt the concentration of an enemy, so it was another card that Erika was able to add up her sleeve.

Erika also borrowed a few reusable technical machines from Milly's private stock, which could download rudimentary knowledge on how to use their moves into a pokemon's brain. She was very careful only to pick out the truly useful ones, since there was an acclimation period the pokemon had to go through in order to properly absorb and learn the move to a very basic degree.

She didn't have Mordred focus on anything else, since it would be detrimental to his progress. The other inherited moves were interesting, but with a five day schedule, it was impossible to do anything meaningful as previously mentioned. Erika prioritized Aqua Tail the most, since she needed an anti-fire asset in the worst case that she got matched up with a fire specialist.

All meals were eaten quickly as possible, and Erika mashed sitrus and lum berries into Gwen and Mordred's food to slowly build up their vitality and abnormal status resistances. Even during their training breaks, Erika called over some hotel staff to bring pokemon with status moves to poison and paralyze her pokemon in new and interesting ways. Some training breaks saw Mordred and Gwen fully paralyzed and unable to move, so Erika just lectured them on battle strategy and team plans that she had come up with.

During their sleep, Erika had her pokemon chilled in ice baths using water from the healing spring, and hotel masseurs would help massage her pokemon to work out the knots in their muscles and speed up their recovery. While they slept, Erika would also meditate to get more in touch with her own aura and enhance her sensitivity to aura, training herself according to the guidelines in the ranger corp aura manual Fulton had given her. Her reflexes and instincts were already naturally sharp, and getting more in tune with her aura would increase it further until she had a nearly supernatural sixth-sense for danger.

Throughout the entire training process, Erika spared no expense to work her pokemon as hard as possible, making them consume vitamin tablets every day and giving them chansey extract after each practice. She literally treated money as paper, and blew close to 500,000 pokedollars worth of chansey extract so that Mordred and Gwen could hold up to five intense practice sessions everyday, disregarding the need for muscle regrowth and repair from the intensity of the sessions. Even when their auras ran dry after the first two and three sessions of training, she still worked their bodies to the bone running extreme physical and coordination drills for the rest of the day.

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Finally, it was the day of the preliminaries for the Rising Stars Gauntlet. The pre-stages of the RSG were held in the Oberlin Stadium, a smaller stadium typically used for local tournaments with minimal stakes. Due to the massive numbers of preliminary round participants, it was necessary to conduct the test here since there wouldn't be enough space anywhere else. Erika studied the bland architecture of the Oberlin Stadium as she walked in, thinking about what she would do during the actual tournament after the preliminaries.

The real RSG would be held in the Corner Stadium, a massive battle stadium used to organize important competitions and tournament which was also owned by the the Corner Consortium, an economic giant which managed nearly all of Celadon's many arcades and gambling dens. The reason for the choice of location was because the Rising Stars Gauntlet was a joint initiative between the local government and the Corner Consortium - they each provided a part of the first place prize, admission into the Corner Charity Gala and a live interview with a government news network.

Both Erika and her team were confident that they would win. The only question now was how overwhelmingly they would do so.

Erika wasn't satisfied with just winning, given her talents and the efforts her team had put in.

By nature, she was a vain and greedy person, and Erika knew that she wanted more than just a measly first place. She was going to win, and do it with style. She wanted to utterly crush her enemies, and sweep them so thoroughly that she would become an overnight sensation. That was the only outcome that Erika was willing to accept from the RSG.

Next to her, Mordred was rolling his eyes, but Erika didn't even care.

This was the second turning point in her grand and momentous destiny, and she was determined to send out a message to the world announcing her presence.

Five days ago, Erika registered herself into the RSG preliminaries. While she could have skipped the entire process by getting a seeded position through her connections, Erika disdained doing that. In her opinion, it was far more worthwhile for her pokemon to experience the chaotic free-for-all of the preliminaries, since it was both a valuable learning experience, and a chance to warm up in a real fight before the actual tournament.

She narrowed her eyes as more and more trainers flooded into the room, making sure to track and follow interesting or strong looking characters.

Keta was nowhere to be seen even though he said he would come fight her in the RSG. He was probably a seeded contestant anyways, so Erika gave up on looking for him after a certain point.

Apart from physically conditioning her pokemon and honing their moves, Erika herself had been busy with devising battle tactics and stratagems. She didn't idle her time away, and instead devoted hours towards researching potential enemies that could threaten her and refining the strategies which she came up with.

Just by looking at the gathered crowd, Erika could already see multiple fire specialists and flying specialists. However, her smile only grew larger at this sight. There wasn't any glory to be gained in beating up a trainer using type suppression. Only by challenging fire specialists and flying specialists with her grass team could she truly earn glory and respect for herself. Now that she had a chance to train up her team properly and devise strategies for them, she no longer feared elemental weaknesses as much.

"Gather round everyone!" The announcer shouted. "We will be beginning the preliminaries in three minutes! Please grab your token and head to the corresponding field!"

Erika followed the shambling crowd and stuck her hand into a bag, pulling out a wooden chip with the number 3 on it. She ran off to the designated room and pushed the doors open, grabbing the closest trainer podium and waiting for her arena matches to arrive. While the preliminaries were free-for-all, having hundreds of people in the same room would be too much to handle, so the organizers broke each preliminary match into groups of 12 people.

As more trainers filed in, Erika immediately pinpointed three major threats to her team using her second sight - which, funnily enough in hindsight, was a huge advantage others didn't have. Without being able to see aura, no one could tell who specialized in what except for Erika. Of the trainers in the room, only four had pure auras, while the rest were heterogeneous.

They're either generalists, or people who have no clue about aura progression, Erika thought silently, closing her eyes to think. There's a flying, ground, fighting, and water specialist. Good matchups for me. While it's not likely for the people with heterogeneous aura, there's a good possibility that the specialists have second sight too. I'll need to observe carefully, even if I can suppress half of the major threats using elemental matchups.

Erika opened her eyes intending to let Gwen sit out the melee so she could guarantee a safer victory, but accidentally met the eyes of the flying specialist standing opposite to her. He was handsome, wearing a blazer and sporting a messy haircut, but it was his eyes that Erika really focused on. There was a barely visible glint to them hinting at the supernatural, and when Erika opened her second sight, she could see his stormy gray aura gathered at his pupils, a telltale sign of someone actively using their second sight. Shit.

Her instincts that were honed from years of brutal street life were loudly going off, and Erika's aura reacted in confirmation. He's probably devised original moves like me. This preliminary is too chaotic. I can't let him target me with his flying types.

Even as the referee counted down, Erika was already changing her battle plans. Having to face off against an elementally superior enemy with second sight was not a good start, and it meant that he was well informed and well trained. She would need to expose one of her cards to take him out quickly before he did the same for her. The fact that he was several years older didn't help either, since it meant that he had more training time than her.

"..two…one…begin!" The referee shouted.

Erika skipped the theatrics she was planning and didn't toss her pokeball into the air, merely clicking it and beaming Gwen down onto the field. "Come forth Gwen!"

Her second appeared in a flash of red light, much like eleven other pokemon, and the arena instantly devolved into chaos. The flying boy released a terrifyingly large Skarmory for their badge-group, and Erika knew she had to commit, as she could literally see flying aura gathering in its body for some type of mass area attack, judging from how its aura moved.

"Fume Hood!" Erika snarled loudly. "Wipe them all out!"

Amidst the chaos of the infighting, Gwen rapidly swelled up in size. Despite the speed at which everything happened, two of her enemies still spotted what she was doing and warned the others, probably to try to get them to jointly suppress her.

"Be careful! That's an original move!" One of them called out. "Let's join-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Gwen deflated and puffed out a truly massive poison cloud into the air. The cloud of poison remained relatively put together until it ascended ten or so meters upward, and then it violently detonated in a horrifying display of purple, suffusing the nearby air with its color.

"Shit!"

"Fuck you man!"

"Beat her down!"

With that stunt, Erika had instantly become public enemy number one. However, it didn't matter anymore after Gwen had pulled off the Fume Hood.

A terrible wind was whipped up immediately following Gwen's poison attack, and Erika's face grew grim.

"Plan D!" Erika shouted to her pokemon, fighting to be heard over the chaotic noises of the arena. "Bury yourself!"

Gwen sliced and diced up the ground using her sharp head leaves and squeezed herself into the cracks, wriggling as deep as she could before the inevitable Flying attack came, which it did. Horrifying gusts of nearly visible wind currents were released from the Skarmory in every direction, cutting up all the pokemon caught in its effect. Gwen luckily evaded it due to Erika's anticipation of the attack.

No one was in any shape to continue fighting after that. Not only did the wind shred most of the weaker pokemon into near fatal conditions, but it also dispersed Gwen's brutal poison concoction into every part of the arena. The psychic barriers separating the arena from the trainer area prevented them from being poisoned, but the same could not be said for the pokemon inside.

At first, the pokemon inside only felt their bodies becoming slightly numb. However, that effect quickly changed to become a stiffening of their muscles, and then their lungs followed, constricting their throats and making it prohibitively difficult to breathe. No one bothered to try to attack Gwen after that, since they were all busy trying to eliminate the nearest pokemon to each other.

The RSG preliminaries were of free-for-all format, and only the last three could advance into the actual tournament rounds. There wasn't any point in trying to target the far away and difficult to catch Oddish, or the skarmory that just patiently waited high up in the air. Maybe if they had more time, the trainers in the arena might have given it a go, but with the terrible gashes and wounds left by the skarmory's cutting winds and Gwen's terrible poisons, everyone knew that they were living on borrowed time. The smartest thing to do was to take out everyone nearby and hope that they were among the top three.

Things happened exactly as Erika intended. The rest of the trainers devolved into infighting while Gwen continued to dig deeper and deeper using her head leaves as a shovel, and the skarmory continued waiting in the air above the danger zone.

Erika met eyes with the flying trainer. "Nice day we're having, isn't it?"

Her unexpected small talk made him laugh. "I think the preliminaries have basically been settled. Let's just wait it out."

And wait they did. Erika stood stiffly in position waiting for the other pokemon to kill each other off or be recalled, thinking about how she could better optimize the Fume Hood. She had specifically chosen the Toxic technical machine to experiment with, and helped Gwen devise a fast acting and virulent poison that could be sprayed into the air. It was extremely hard to hold the mass of poison together while releasing it, but Erika was able to take advantage of Gwen's proficiency with acid by borrowing its framework, keeping the poison in a semi-liquid state that could clump together before scattering at the desired height for better spread. Improvement is impossible in the short term. This is already the limit of what I can do with this little time.

"The preliminaries have concluded!" The referee announced through his megaphone, blasting his canny voice across the room. Erika could see the shock in his eyes at how fast and brutally the preliminaries for group 3 had ended. "Falkner Mistral, Erika Caldwell, and Aster Williams have advanced to the next round!"

In the end, none of the pokemon battling on the surface made it past the first round, having all either succumbed to the poison or from infighting.

Falkner's skarmory was still lazily flapping its wings far above the surface, and Erika nudged the bond to signal Gwen to dig back up. She poked her head out, looking like a real planted cabbage. On the opposite side of the arena, a graveller emerged from the earth smoothly, having also apparently fled below ground to avoid the brutal wind bombardment of the skarmory. It wasn't like it needed to avoid the wind, Erika complained silently. With a physique as dense as that, and its elemental advantage, it would have been fine.

Hidden ventilation fans started sucking up the poison spread through the contained arena, pumping as much out as possible before the psychic barriers dropped. Every trainer other than the winners had already returned their pokemon and were rushing off to the EMT, leaving Erika, Falkner, and Aster in the room.

Aster took the initiative to speak first. "So, second sight anyone? I'm guessing we all have it."

"That's an amazing judgment," Erika clapped sarcastically. "How else were you supposed to predict the move?"

"Probably really rich battle experience," Falker offered to her left. He scratched his head and readjusted his shirt, crossing his arms after he was done. "Although, that poison cloud was brutal. If my pokemon couldn't fly or resist poison, it would have been over."

Erika rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up you. Both of you resist poison! How am I supposed to attack your skarmory? Plus, that wind attack was monstrous. If my oddish didn't dig down in time, how was she supposed to survive that? That's kind of fucked."

"We all play with the hand we're dealt," Falkner shrugged. "Also, aren't you too young to be swearing?"

"I'll say whatever I want." Erika crossed her arms. "What are you, my dad? You're not that much older than me either."

"Thirteen is a little too young to be a father," Falkner agreed wryly.

Aster just shook his head and laughed. "I think it was inevitable for us three to end up advancing. Ignoring the fact that everyone else lacked the means to predict the wind and poison, no one would have been able to escape it anyways. The wind literally shredded everything on the surface, and the poison would have finished the rest off. Unless you were able to fly above the poison or dig below the ground in time, you were screwed no matter what."

"You would have been fine even on the surface," Erika nodded sagely. "Your graveller can ignore both the wind and the poison to a large degree."

"Well, that's just the heart of the cards I guess. Good matchups for me, not so much for everyone else. Say, do any of you want to grab lunch? I hear there's a shop nearby that makes a mean pidgey sandwich. You guys down?"

"Doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"I'm hungry."

"It's settled then," Aster clapped his hands. "Give me your contacts while we walk and let's go grab lunch."

Graveller rolled towards him, nearly knocking Aster off his feet before he laughingly recalled it, and the skarmory swooped down to try to perch on Falkner's shoulder. Falkner collapsed instantly due to the weight, and he shooed the terror bird off in annoyance. "Stop it Titania! You're not a chicklet anymore, and I can't bear your weight!"

Erika amusedly recalled Gwen and followed her new friends to get food.