Grey's POV
Brandon had to leave by evening, as Scott had apparently called him for some work that required his attention. Before leaving, however, Brandon did leave his number with me so that I could contact him if I ever needed to ask him something or if we happened to cross paths again.
After getting some rest, I eventually started feeling much better. Whatever had happened with Regirock and that strange vision had left me shaken, but physically I was fine, and I didn't want to waste the rest of my time sitting around thinking about it. There were still things I needed to do, so I decided to continue training with my Pokémon.
Steven had already told me that he would be willing to do a two-versus-two challenge for the Boulder Badge. One of his Pokémon would be Claydol, while the other would apparently be another Pokémon he had found while exploring one of the ruins around Heart Village.
Well, that kind of spoiled some of the fun of figuring out his team, but I wasn't exactly expecting some incredibly thrilling battle against Steven anyway. The objective here was simple. I needed the badge, and I needed to move on.
Honestly, I wasn't going to complain about the quality of the battle either. I came here just to get the gym badge to avoid the battle with Giovanni.
So, for the rest of the day, I focused on training my current team again.
Larvitar was assigned to train with Heracross and Fraxure. Since Larvitar's evolutionary line could learn Brick Break, I wanted it to start working on the move and refining its physical abilities. Larvitar was also on the slower side compared to some of my other Pokémon, so I told Fraxure to focus on teaching it how to take hits and then dish them back with even greater force.
In a way, I wanted Larvitar to develop a fighting style somewhat similar to how Paul's Torterra fought in the anime. It wasn't about blindly standing there and taking every attack, but rather about using its durability and size to endure attacks that other Pokémon might have to avoid, then turning that endurance into an opportunity to retaliate.
Larvitar seemed to like the idea, although it was going to take quite a bit of training before it could actually pull something like that off consistently.
Meanwhile, Persian and Charmeleon went into round two of their training together.
I had also switched Exeggutor out for Cloyster today. After contacting Ken, I got the Pokémon swap done and brought Cloyster back from Bill's house.
I got to know from Ken that Cloyster had already started working on Hail. He also explained the reasoning behind it, and after hearing his explanation, I agreed with the approach. Ken was using his breeder knowledge along with his own understanding of Pokémon training to help Cloyster approach Blizzard in a more manageable way.
Bill had definitely chosen a good butler to help with this.
Cloyster also met Larvitar properly for the first time.
Larvitar was clearly impressed by him. That wasn't surprising considering it had watched Cloyster fight against and ultimately defeat that gigantic Golurk inside the ruins. To Larvitar, Cloyster was already one of the strongest Pokémon it had ever seen.
Cloyster, meanwhile, didn't seem nearly as impressed by the attention and mostly just acted like Cloyster.
We continued working on the Hail training, with me giving some further inputs wherever I thought they could be useful. Cloyster was already making good progress, and with the approach Ken had suggested, I felt it could eventually figure out how to use the move properly.
After the training session, I fed the Pokémon their natural food and let them rest.
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A little later, Bill called me.
Apparently, he had finally received the TM for Teleport that I had asked him for. He sent it over to me almost immediately, and I was honestly pretty happy to finally have it in my hands. This was going to make things much easier in the long run, especially with how often I planned to rotate my Pokémon between Bill's place and my current team.
Since I had the TM now, I decided to start with Exeggutor. I recalled Persian and swapped him out, letting the cat enjoy the rest of the day without having to worry about training for once. He had already done plenty today, and honestly, he deserved the break.
I then called out Exeggutor and Cloyster.
The moment the two appeared, they looked at each other.
And I could almost see the sparks flying between them.
Neither of them said anything, but the way they were glaring at each other made it pretty obvious that their little rivalry was still alive and well.
I sighed.
"Don't start."
Thankfully, neither of them immediately tried to attack the other.
I recalled them both back into their Poké Balls and placed the Teleport TM against each of their Poké Balls, allowing the TM to transfer the move's knowledge into them. Once the process was complete, I called them both out again.
Both Exeggutor and Cloyster seemed to understand the basic idea behind Teleport now.
They had a rough understanding of what the move was supposed to accomplish and how they were supposed to manipulate their psychic energy to make it happen. The rest was simply going to come down to practice.
So I left the two of them to practice Teleport for the evening.
Meanwhile, I called out the rest of my team so they could continue their own training.
For the most part, I left Charmeleon, Heracross, Fraxure and Larvitar to handle things among themselves. They could either train together, teach each other what they knew, or simply talk things out and figure out what they wanted to work on.
Apparently, they did more than just train.
At some point, the four of them started discussing the moves they wanted to learn.
And that conversation eventually turned into an entire training plan.
I already had a reusable TM for Rock Tomb, so naturally, that became the first thing everyone wanted to learn.
Charmeleon wanted it.
Heracross wanted it.
Larvitar wanted it.
Even Fraxure wanted to learn Rock Tomb.
Once they learned Rock Tomb from the TM and had a proper foundation for using Rock-type moves, the plan was for Charmeleon and Heracross to learn Rock Slide from Larvitar.
Larvitar already knew several Rock-type moves, so it could help them understand the basics of manipulating Rock-type energy and forming the attack properly.
Then there was Brick Break.
Larvitar would learn Brick Break from Heracross and Fraxure after it had finished learning Rock Tomb. Charmeleon would also learn Brick Break for the same reason.
Charmeleon especially needed some additional coverage against Rock-types. Metal Claw was useful, but relying on a single move wasn't exactly ideal, especially when I had other options available.
I did consider teaching Larvitar Dragon Claw as well.
It was a move that would eventually fit nicely into its arsenal, especially once it evolved further.
But apparently, Larvitar could learn Dragon Claw after evolving all the way into Tyranitar.
So that could wait.
There was no reason to overload the little guy with too many things at once.
Honestly, if the team could actually get all of this down properly, I would be pretty happy.
If they could master even a good portion of these moves by the time we reached Saffron, that could make a huge difference.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much potential this training period had.
We weren't simply teaching random moves anymore.
Everyone was teaching someone else something.
Larvitar could help Charmeleon and Heracross with Rock-type techniques. Heracross and Fraxure could teach Larvitar Brick Break. Charmeleon could work on its own coverage while learning from the others. Fraxure, despite not necessarily needing every move himself, was also participating because he could explain things from a different perspective.
It was almost like having a small training group where everyone could point out mistakes the others were making.
And that was exactly what I wanted.
I recalled all four of them back into their Poké Balls and gave each of them the knowledge contained within the Rock Tomb TM.
Once the TM finished transferring, I called them all back out.
Now the real training could begin.
The idea was simple.
They would learn the move together.
If one of them made a mistake, the others could notice it. If someone figured out something faster, they could explain it to the others. Instead of four separate training sessions where I had to individually correct every little mistake, they could iron out some of those problems themselves.
Larvitar should theoretically have the easiest time learning Rock Tomb.
It was already a Rock-type Pokémon and already knew several Rock-type moves, so it had a natural advantage when it came to understanding the fundamentals.
The problem was that Larvitar was still young.
It didn't have anywhere near the experience of the others.
So if it happened to learn the move faster, that was fine. It could then help the others understand the technique.
Fraxure was also learning the move partly for the same reason.
He had more experience than Larvitar and could probably explain the underlying idea better if the younger Pokémon struggled with something.
I looked over the group as they began practicing.
This was going to be a long evening.
But honestly, I didn't mind.
There was no reason to rush things.
By the time night finally came around, the training schedule for the evening was pretty much fixed.
Teleport for Exeggutor and Cloyster.
Rock Tomb for Charmeleon, Heracross, Larvitar and Fraxure.
Brick Break for Larvitar and Charmeleon after they had built a proper foundation.
Rock Slide for Charmeleon and Heracross once Larvitar had enough understanding to teach them.
And, if everything went well, all of them would gradually become more versatile because of it.
As for Steven...
I had already made my decision.
I would challenge him in three days.
Technically, I could have challenged him tomorrow.
Steven wasn't going anywhere, after all. He had already promised that he wouldn't go on another excavation for a week, so there was no real urgency.
But there was no reason for me to rush either.
Larvitar had only recently joined the team. It needed some time to settle in, get used to everyone, and continue training with the rest of the team. Besides, I had just come up with a whole bunch of ideas for moves and training methods.
Three days would give us enough time to work on all of that properly.
And if I could get even some of these ideas working before the battle, then the extra preparation would be worth it.
Steven could wait.