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The iconic, red lizard stands at shoulder height to its trainer. I’d guess that the odd bumps on its head and back signal it won't be long until it’s a Charizard. It matches Avril’s braided mohawk and red jacket, funny enough.

Avril points at Naomi and I, “I’ve got no problem with the rest of your team, they won clear as day.” shifting her finger back to Jane, “But anyone with eyes could see that Blaziken had plenty of spark left to wipe your team!”

Naomi rolls her eyes, “And if they had brains, they’d recognize that a veteran gym pokemon judged the match sufficient to earn the badge.”

“Oh, yes, great strategy.” She scoffs, “Annoying your opponent until she’d rather call it.”

Jane practically growls, “Is that why you’re using it now?”

The girl has the nerve to smirk, “Yes, now throw down or get out of my town!”

A familiar white and gold pokeball enlarges in Jane’s hand, “You’re the one getting thrown down. Go Marble!”

Sparkling in the morning sun, Jane’s dazzling Onix roars at the challenge.

Not waiting for permission, Avril calls the first move, “Wildfire!”

Charmeleon leans forward and releases a cloudburst of black smoke from his mouth. Spreading like a dark tide, the thick ash covers all of the ground between the two pokemon. The Onix’s head is tall enough to look out over it all.

“Coil Marble, eyes sharp!” Jane decides to hunker down a buff up, waiting for the opponent to reveal themselves.

Avril raises a brow, “Not going to win like that.”

Proving her point, Marble barks out a growl as some of the drifting sparks begin to burst against her sides. Then more start to pop and singe. I hop up on the nearby fence rail to get a better view.

Now I can see it, all of the sparks are circling Marble like she's the eye of a storm. I can’t tell if this is another version of Fire Spin or Will-o-Wisp. The entire training ground is heating up fast.

Naomi notices another element, “Sunny Day is active.”

Crap, even on the sidelines it’s like being exposed in a desert.

Citro cheers our teammate, “Come on Jane! You got to make a move!”

Right, even if Onix resists most of the damage, most isn’t all.

Jane makes a decision, “Try blasting it away with Roar.”

Marble reels back her head and howls into the smoke. We hold our ears as she makes a sweeping motion to blow away the ash.

Charmeleon gets revealed right where he started! The cheeky lizard never even moved! It dug its claws in to withstand the pressure of Roar.

“Marble, Bulldoze it!” Jane laughs.

Onix lunges forward!

Avril smirks, “Too easy, Do it!”

The fire on Chameleon's tail flickers bright green, still on all fours, it opens its jaw again and we’re all blinded by a bright flash of light.

I can hear Marble’s howl of pain while I’m still blinking the spots from my vision.

“Hahaha. You didn’t really think I forgot you had an Onix did you?!” Avril gloats, “Solar Beam again!”

“Fuck,” Jane shouts, “Flash Cannon!”

One blinding beam meets another, an explosion of light and heat radiates out! The cone of the blast noticeably aims towards Charmeleon however.

“Rock Slide!”

Marble, much closer despite being interrupted earlier, whips her stone tail around and smashes the recovering lizard right out of the training area!

Avril catches her pokemon with a flash of a pokeball. She turns back, likely about to talk more shit. Only to pause seeing Jane worriedly spraying a potion on her Onix’s sun scorched face. Marble is softly groaning in pain, sprawled out on the gravel.

The Spitfire sighs and pulls a tube out of her bag, tossing it to Naomi who is already running to help.

Watts reaches Jane and grabs her shoulder, “Here, Burn Heal!”

Hard to call this a win.

Avrils teammate, Amber, pinches the girl’s waist. With a sigh, Jane’s opponent quickly walks over and pulls out a second tube to help sooth the large pokemon.

“I’m sorry,” Starts the girl, Jane looks up in surprise, “Even if I don’t like how the gym match went, I shouldn’t take it out on your pokemon.”

Walking over myself, “Who’d expect a Charmeleon knowing solarbeam?”

She snorts, “Same number of folks who’d expect an Onix already knowing Flash Cannon.”

I won’t point out that Jane has used the move in an official match already. The girl probably didn’t see the battlecast.

Citro is too curious, “So what’s up with your Charmeleon anyway?”

Avril’s smug look is quickly cut short as Amber steps over and snickers, “Well, when a papa Tropius and a momma Charizard,”

“Ya, ya, they get it!” Interrupts her teammate whose face is as red as her hair.

Agnis joins us followed by her’s and my spiders, “How about we break for lunch?”

Miss Wick steps up to my side and I give the Houndoom a quick ear scritch. Glancing at the Onix, “We can hit the medical room on our way to the staff lunch area.”

As the day moves along, everyone has their own focus as planned. It’s not just constant sparring for five days. We have a lot of material to work with when it comes to Moves and Combos.

I wish my bat was up for some serious training, but the big lug is clearly in another evolution molt. Professor Birch even called to have me swing by when I had the chance. The data from my scans indicate that Shak is so far from the normal Crobat stats that the expert suspects it may be some kind of half assed branch evolution.

All I care about is that he’s big, grumpy, and good at scaring off random young teens that pop up from time to time trying to ‘Impress’ Naomi. The only thing she’s impressed by, is when they manage not to piss themselves.

When I asked my on loan Houndoom if she had anything she’d like to work on, I swear she scoffed. Amber did mention that Miss Wick needs a couple more days of rest.

Which means most of my time is going towards getting my starter up to scratch. Literally. From the awesome combinations that Gary Oak hinted at to the Lunge move that Torch gave me a TR for.

We’ve got a few move combinations down. Wild Charge works with the new Lunge basics if we’re in a position to leap. We’ll go with Shock Lunge.

Pin Missile with Thunder Wave wasn’t too complicated, Stun Needles. Stepping it up to Discharge will take just a bit more time than we have.

I’m trying to think of a good name for combining Leech Life and Thunder Fang; Electro Vamp?

As for Steel type moves, Anchor Shot is just down to accuracy practice. Iron Defense is there, but there’s nothing fancy about it yet.

What has my Galvantula tearing up a wooden practice log right now is building Furry Cutter into a string of Metal Claw attacks. The next step is adding Crush Claw to that mix. Shredder sounds plenty intimidating.

Eventually we can move onto even stronger base moves. It’s a tad frustrating being so close to what is essentially the next tier in power. Tesla still has plenty of room to grow.

I suspect this is one of the larger departures from how this world was depicted. Type energy and moves aren’t set in stone. If one thing is close to another and the pokemon has an affinity for it, why not try it?

There's plenty of time to take it steady with more than a few months left in the season. Most teams don’t drive everywhere either. One of our advantages is having more time to use facilities like this instead of hiking across the land.

My dedicated spark bug ambles back to my side before plopping down to take a breather.

I watch the fading sunlight shimmer across her metallic red fur, “You showed that log whose boss, huh girl?”

Traces of humor flicker in her larger blue, primary eyes. A quick spark of static zaps my hand.

“Yeesh!” it stings, sure, but I suspect that would have sent a rookie trainer off with a second degree burn. My skin barely turns red as if it had been smacked.

Crouching down I scratch the top of her head, carefully going with the needle like fur. Her happy chitters sound like a cat purring. The vague amount of Biology knowledge I have isn’t enough to tell me if bugs normally feel the surface of their exoskeleton like this.

I suppose in this world, we can just ask, “That feel good girl?”

A happy nod and enthusiastic, “Gal!”

“Well, you’ve definitely worked hard… It’ll take the gym staff days to restock on logs.”

My arm hair tingles, this time I dodge the arc of static I can feel coming while laughing.

“Come on, let’s find the team. It’s been nice having a few days to train but we’ve got to hit the road early in the morning.”

One sight makes me grimace, Blue has completely shredded a corner of the grounds with roots and vines while helping the team practice evading grass moves.

Naomi said not to worry about it, but kids often forget someone has to clean up this kind of mess.

Well, maybe it’s her last jab at Torch.

The guy has come around a couple times to offer pointers, especially to Jane. However each time I’ve noticed him taking chances to mention Naomi’s responsibilities as one of the leading role models of the region's young trainers.

Dude is barking up every wrong tree.

I’m not too happy with the way he brushes off Citro’s questions either. Like he’d rather forget that travesty of a match even happened. I’m sure his bank account still feels the sting.

Torch at least asked Citro how his progress had been on the last day. To which my bud just replied, “It’s Fine.”

Our final night in Lavaridge is capped off with a “Staff Meeting” in the inn, hot springs and spa. Naomi invited the gals from the boat along with our production duo.

Her father’s secretary Hollie, aka Fiancé, also dropped in. She gave Naomi the good news that Gary already caught two of those fire type Goldeen from Cinnabar.

Jane and most of the Jolteon Crew are just relaxing either in the water or at one of the massage tables. I got a bit of a shock when a Machamp and his trainer showed up to work those knots.

Captain Johanna, Gabby, Hollie, and Naomi are all in deep discussion about our tour of east Hoenn.

That leaves us boys, Ty, Citro, and I to just relax in the warm water. While Ty is giving the boy on screen persona advice, I’m watching our various pokemon. Miss Wick is taking a snooze on the rocks behind me, Jane’s Golisopod is rubbing shells with the crew’s water types, Naomi’s Altaria is getting a bird bath courtesy of Citro’s Whiscash.

From the sky, a very frantic Noibat comes flapping down and rapidly chittering at Citro!

Before he can get her to slow down, a familiar Fearow races over the bamboo trees boarding the spring. He lands behind Jane on the pool side and begins squawking like his life depends on it.

Machamp steps forward to defend the inn patrons. Houndoom growls, taking an alert stance.

Hollie nervously starts pulling Naomi towards the building, “Is there a Pokemon Rampage?!”

A silhouette catches my eye, “Not one we need to worry about.”

Steam is whipped up in gusts from the pool as a behemoth of black fur and wings makes a less than gentle landing on the rocks, crushing some of them in its claws.

His bloody maw growls at the cowering Fearow.

Jane protests, “Kurt, cool your Bat!”

“Oi!” I get the ten feet of terror’s attention, “Knock it off!”

Those big black eyes glare my way.

Standing up in the water I stomp over to my overgrown beast.

Leaning forward, he bares fangs bigger than my hand. I can actually feel the Dark Type energy radiating from him.

Which means the big lug can only whine as I grab the biggest tooth and yank his head down! He nearly slips off the rocks.

While Shak scrambles to regain balance and not fall in the water, I point at the blood, “Don’t drool in the pool!”

Instincts, training, and recognition finally dawn on my favorite monster. That primal urge to hunt and assert dominance recedes, he then nods obediently.

Looking at the mess of red staining his lighter grey, mane fur, “Come on bud, let's get you washed up. You better have stayed away from the ranch to the south like I said!”

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