Chương 32: 32-Dodge

Amelia furrows her brow and lips as she struggles to make the knot in her hands cooperate. This will be the third time the target weight flies comes loose and she swears there will not be a fourth. Finishing her knot, she gives it a few firm tugs and concludes it's–"Chans ch an." Chansey says offhandedly, barely glancing up from the egg in her grip.

"Oh really?" Amelia asks, vaguely insulted.

"And what makes you a knot expert?" Chansey looks up and half gestures at one of the loops.

"Chan ch chansey chan chan. Ch ch ansey ans." She says, pointing out the 'obvious' flaw in the knots tensioning.

"Chansey, chan ch." She adds offhandedly. Amelia squints at the last few words, trying to translate the vague impressions of what her partner's saying into comprehensible japanese. The first bit makes total sense, but the last bit…

'Before now, myself observing relevant information, you are wrong, pattern bad.' Or something like that. She squints harder.

"It's… not a good kind of knot for this?" Chansey nods. Amelia sighs and considers arguing the point, but it's pretty clear her method isn't working so it would be silly to try to argue otherwise.

"Alright, you want a go?" She asks, offering the rope.

"I'm not getting anywhere, and I don't want to keep throwing this stupid makeshift counterweight into the woods." Every time the knot has come loose they've spent fifteen minutes searching for the thing, which is both extremely annoying and slowing them down. Chansey's eyes flare purple and the rope lifts into the air. Unraveling in less than a second, the counterweight floats freely for a moment before it's retied in a way completely foreign to the trainer.

"Chan." She says, tossing it back. Catching the rope, she gives it a few more test tugs, feeling no appreciable difference but noticing how the knot doesn't shift or pull under the strain.

"... Huh. Thanks." She says, before glancing at the massive backpack on Chansey's back.

"Why do you have this much rope anyways?" Sure, Amelia's got a little rope, but it's mostly a utility item for camping. But when she'd asked Chansey if she had any, she'd pulled out three large spools of various thicknesses. The 'mon waves off the question.

"Chansey." She says, gesturing as if to describe her absent sibling with the motion of a flipper. The trainer nods, then reaches for her newly occupied pokeball. The thought –even hours later– sends a thrill of excitement through her. Popping open the ball once again feels just like how she'd imagined it, sending out a burst of light that resolves into the form of her new partner. Her newest 'mon is…

surprisingly comfortable with being inside his ball, she'd known intellectually that some 'mon prefer it, but she'd grown up with Jigglypuff and can count on one hand the number of times she'd gone into a ball, Chansey just continued the trend. But it seems like the second the trainer takes her eyes off the avian he's bopping his beak against the aperture of his ball and hiding away. The trainer grins.

"Ok Taillow!" She says with a clap.

"I think we got the lure tied on right, so let's try this again." Taillow hesitates for a moment, but then turns his head slightly, jolts, then nods quickly and takes to the air, flapping higher as Amelia begins spinning the weight at the end of the rope, trying to form a long semicircle like the training manual she'd read instructed.

"Ta Tail!" The 'mon cries out unintelligibly, presumably saying he's ready. The trainer nods and speeds up her rope spinning.

"Alright! Try and grab it!" At her words, Taillow tucks his wings in and begins a steep dive, disappearing into a blur of speed as he approaches the ground, falling past the treeline the 'mon pops his wings and all that vertical speed transforms into horizontal, zipping toward the lure with talons outstretched. Then Amelia pulls on the cord just in time, yanking the lure away with an enraged cry from the 'mon.

"I know you can dive! I wanna see how tight you can turn!" She shouts, letting out the rope. Taillow screeches in protest, landing at speed and hopping to bleed off the rest.

"Taillow! Ta Tail low!" There isn't much guesswork needed to understand the thrust of the message." Told you we're training your turns!" The trainer tells back.

"You said you wanted to get better at flying and this is how we do it!" She'd been giving food as a reward for good performance, which kept the grumbling at a minimum. But she'd run out of dried berries an hour ago and he's becoming increasingly agitated as time goes on. Amelia pauses, trying to figure out how to get Taillow to get back in the air again.

It didn't take long for her to realize she'd been spoiled by Chansey, her work ethic and similar ways of thinking, combined with human scale intelligence means training with her is almost like training with another human. Taillow's shorter attention span and reduced capacity to understand delayed gratification means figuring out how to keep him going is already becoming an issue. The 'mon proves her point by flaring out his wings in an irritated dominance display"Tail low!"

He cries, launching off the ground in a single powerful beat and flying toward the training aid again. But this time, instead of chasing the lure, Amelia notices him turning to attack the rope instead. She tries to pull away, but finds herself too slow and suddenly tugging against the 'mon's grip. Firming her hold, the trainer is about to try and yank the rope away, but both pause as Chansey speaks.

"Ch chans ey sey." She says, and Amelia is forced to agree. The trainer sighs as Taillow quickly drops the rope and flies a short distance away.

"You're right, but he does still need to improve turn performance…" She hums, eyes flicking from the new arrival to her partner as she carefully holds an egg.

"How's it going with you?" Chansey releases the smallest of sighs, then abruptly throws the egg she's holding into the air, with telekinetic assistance. A moment later another egg appears in her pouch and Amelia gasps.

"You did it!? That's incredi–""Chans." She interrupts with another sigh, holding up a flipper to ask for a moment. Then Amelia flinches as the egg explodes above them, twice as powerful as any egg bomb she's ever seen an exeggutor create Chansey looks down at the new egg with a frustrated focus.

"Well… at least they're getting stronger." She consoles, then notes how Taillow startled at the noise, darting into the treeline from the explosion. In the back of her mind, this reaction is added to the ever growing list of things she needs to consider when trying to decide what skills and moves are optimal to train for their growing team, mentally creating configurations for each avenue of effort.

Natural high speed typically means a predisposition that makes them unsuited for dealing damage or taking hits, so tail wind to support the rest of the team's weakness? But that's just yet more setup in a near certainly setup heavy team, no matter the configuration of future 'mon. If they end up going west to Rustboro, steel wing is a must, but that puts them though route 117 and 116, which forestry reports don't say have anything that could help solve the gridlock.

Two normal types also means a weakness to fighting, covering for that weakness is a must, thus a mental map of the region is updated with probable locations for a few different 'mon to choose future pathing. But that… Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. She trails off in the middle of the thought as the infinite options begin giving her a headache.

There's a momentary flash of regret for throwing that pokeball, but it disappears almost instantly as the memory of holding it in her hands for the first time rises again. One step at a time. She's known Taillow for less than a day, a little more training to assess what he can do and what they can improve will give a more complete picture of what happens next. She's reasonably sure she can beat Wattson, just as long as she can get to him.

He's well known for turning his gym into an electric maze, but she's never heard of someone failing the gym challenge because they couldn't get there. It's then that she almost trips on a root, and her attention returns to the outside world.

"Chans chan chan chansey. Chan se se cha?" She lectures, having somehow convinced Taillow to allow her to grab him and, now holding the frozen avian in her psychic grip, uses a fin to point at sections of his wing.

"Chansey chans chansey chan chan ansey." Amelia blinks, focusing as she tries to understand what her partner is saying. Though this time not because of a fluctuation in their bond, but rather the fact that the concepts are complicated. The best she can figure out is that she's talking about… something related to physics? She's pretty sure there were some shapes mentioned, so geometry too?

After a moment, she starts getting the most vague gist of it, and it seems to be Chansey's attempt at helping improve Taillow's flying, using a lot of complicated ideas about how much air the wing can… not lift… displace? Or… But as the trainer stares at the wing, held still in her partner's psychic grip, a thought occurs.

"Chansey?" She asks, eyes flicking across the avian's body with professional detachment.

"Do you mind bringing him up a little?" The 'mon complies, and the abnormally quiet Taillow rises into Amelia's focused gaze. As he rises, he looks at her with an expression of extreme relief and opens his beak. But, for some reason, when he sees her face, his beak snaps shut. Ignoring this, the nurse in training focuses and mentally peels back the feathers, skin, and viscera to get a better look at his biomechanics, imagining how each part must move to perform the aerobatic feats he does.

Under that dissecting eye, she makes note of the pectoralis and supracoracoideus muscles that take the bulk of the strain under flight, plenty strong in order to pull out of a dive like he did. But…

"The pronator brevis." Amelia says finally, tapping where the muscle would be underneath the skin, and glancing down at her partner.

"I think you said something just now about needing more control over… something about how the air moves over his wings past the elbow?" Chansey pulls a dead silent Taillow back down and squints at the wing, moving it with her psychic energy. Finally, she gives a slow nod.

"Chan… Chan cha chansey." Amelia grins at the confirmation.

"I thought so too!" She cheers, clapping her hands together.

"So we need to exercise that before we can do anything else." With an avenue of thought to work though, the trainer's mind gets to work once more. If she remembers correctly an injured pronator brevis means issues with takeoff and landing, after a bit of imagination she confirms it's because the muscle does the most work at those points of flight. Also used in low speed maneuver, presumably for tight corners.

Following that logic, they need to create a difficult environment with repeated takeoff and landings, preferably while also habituating Taillow to loud noises. It only takes a moment longer for a plan to form. —-- –_– —-- Amelia wheezes as she drags an impossibly heavy body up a shallow incline, their mid-hike training entering its fourth hour.

"Chan!" Her partner calls from behind with far too much energy. The trainer yelps and ducks as an egg flies over her head on its parabola toward Taillow a few steps ahead. The bird doesn't have enough breath to scream as he uses shaking wings to fling himself to the side, barely dodging the explosive projectile in a move that could only somewhat be called a takeoff.

He slams back down to the ground barely, trying to cushion the fall with his wings and Amelia feels a tiny bit of vindictive satisfaction as Chansey pauses and pants for breath from behind, gravity wavering for a moment.

"You need a break yet!?" She calls over her shoulder, pressing the button she'd learned Chasney had in the first week they'd known each other. In many ways being partnered with Chansey is like being with another human, but there are the unmistakable levers unique to 'mon that every trainer knows to pull to get them training. Chief among them a near pathological need to defeat any challenge put before them, the drive synonymous with pokemon. As expected, there's no response, and gravity stabilizes.

With the return of gravity, Amelia is forced to refocus completely on pulling every ounce of strength and performance from her body once more. She feels her bag slipping and almost panics as she teeters on the edge of falling over. But then, her mind flashes to Chansey suggesting that she might skip out on the gravity training, because Amelia might 'slow them down.' The trainer growls as she digs deeper.

For a moment, her body screams in protest as she forces it beyond her limits, but she pushes though, rights herself, then pulls more energy out of nowhere and turns it into a burst of speed She staggers again as she's forced to duck yet another egg, and in the quiet afterword, she idly wonders what other trainers do to improve their reflexes and stamina, and feels a twinge of jealousy for those whose partners do not have the seemingly bottomless well of mental energy needed to keep gravity magnified for hours at a time.

Exhausted legs almost slip on dust and faceplant, but she holds firm. With the healing, she can literally feel herself getting stronger every cycle, and can only imagine what it will do for a 'mon. The efficiency is worth it. Slowly, the gentle five degree slope that feels like a sheer cliff begins to taper off and Amelia can barely muster a sense of relief through the exhaustion as she stares at the ground, planting one foot in front of the other.

Only to almost overbalance and fall over again as the gravity abruptly returns to normal. What? Confused, she glances at Taillow where he's looking equally surprised next to her, then turns and looks back at her partner.

"... Are we done?" She asks, taking a few breaths.

"I think we're still good to continue?" Tailow gives a panicked yell at the idea, but Chansey merely shakes her head pointing ahead of them down the trail.

"Chan." Amelia turns, looking out from atop the overlook to the world below, and takes in the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. Silhouetted in the oranges, purples, and reds of the setting sun over the ocean's horizon, the sparkling ocean is magnified by evening air wavering in the heat, all an ever-shifting backdrop for the unmistakable greys and yellows of Mauville City. They made it!

"We made it!" She cheers, looking back to the others as she speeds over the top of the hill and down the other side.

"Cmon!"