Chương 72: Chapter 58

"When he said he wasn't going to go easy on us, this isn't what I thought he meant," Alyssa complained between deep, heaving breaths as she watched me from the side of the courtyard.

"I thought I'd done my last beep test last summer." The grousing wasn't directed at me, and I was only barely registering it. Most of my attention was instead focused on making sure I didn't throw up the half-of-a-calzone I'd eaten earlier. And whatever modicum of attention I had left after that was spent keeping my limbs going, forcing myself to run just a little bit more, to beat the incessant beep just one more time.

The twenty meter shuttle run, or the 'beep test' as it was unaffectionally known, was a rather famous fitness exam that, according to our PE teacher, all schools in Ferrum ran at least twice a year. The test is rather straightforward: how many times can you sprint twenty meters, with the length of time in which you have to do so decreasing every minute or so. Its simplicity, however, belies its sadistic nature. Something about the incessant beep, the tangible goal, the determination to hit just one more lap.

No other exercise or exam sees kids throwing up like the beep test. Especially during Ferrum's hot summers. This, I knew from personal experience. I could even still remember how many laps I'd run in the last beep test back in November. Forty-three. A respectable total. Well above the range that put me in 'excellent,' but a few points short of a perfect grade. There had only been two girls in my class that'd beaten that score.

Kara, whose family ran a dojo, and Beverly, a farmgirl who commuted into the city from the countryside.

"Seventy-three. Seventy-four. Seventy-five." At the rate I was going, I was going to double my previous record, at least. Part of it was that I was just in better shape. Up until just recently, I'd spent hours training every day, both at the ranger station, and with my partners. There was something comforting and familiar about the burn of exercise, something I'd been sorely missing since I got out of the hospital a week ago.

There was also the much less pleasant burning from the barely-healed cuts and lacerations on my arms and legs, but the roiling in my stomach and the lightness in my head made those easy to ignore.

"Sevent-seven. seventy-eight." Mr. Gima was looking at the counter he'd had Alyssa borrow from the gym with upturned eyebrows, even as he faithfully called out my laps. According to him, we needed to run a complete 'pacer test' so that he could evaluate our stamina. Good thing Alyssa and I had just bought exercise clothes. My best friend had tapped out on lap thirty-eight, which, if memory served, was eight laps better than her previous high score from PE.

She could have done a few more laps, but I didn't have the time to comment on her laziness, focused as I was on scoring as high as I possibly could.

"Eight-one. Eighty-two." My partners were cheering me on from the sidelines, my knights twitching like they wanted to jump in to join me. I'd adapted their warmup shuttle runs from this very test, and I knew that they loved the exercise almost as much as Ferrum's school-age children hated it. There wasn't really any reason to try this hard. Mr. Gima hadn't complained when Alyssa tapped out, and I was already way more exhausted than she was. If he needed us to do more, he would have had her keep going.

But if it was going to be a problem, he would have stopped me.

"Eighty-three. Eighty-four." There wasn't any reason for me to try this hard. Except for the best reason of all. Pride. This was a test. Someone was counting my laps. That meant I had to score as high as I could. That's really all there was to it.

"Eighty-five. Eighty-six. You're not cheating, are you Fione?" I didn't have the breath to tell him to call me Fe. Didn't have the breath to reassure him that no, I wasn't, even though I could feel something buzzing behind my skull. There was something new there, a well of energy left mostly undrawn. I wasn't tapping into it consciously, but it probably was impacting performance in some way, even without my active input. Still, I could have been using it for so much more, if I just tried to do so.

Instead, I shook my head at the Unovan man and forced my leaden limbs to carry me one more lap.

"Eight-seven. Eighty-eight." I was tired. Beyond tired, I was exhausted. But I wasn't cheating. Not too much anyway. I knew that, knew it for certain, because I could still remember what it'd felt like when I'd run out of syn before. The memories of the park- with my knights- and the nightmares of Cesnine forest- with Butterfree- were core experiences. Parts of my life I was sure I'd never forget. And the bone-deep weariness, the crushing malaise of syn exhaustion that I'd felt both times?

It wasn't anything like I was experiencing now.

"Eight-nine. Ninety." This was just normal exhaustion. I'd wake up from this tomorrow and feel as good as new. Maybe a little bit sore. Completely different from syn exhaustion, which dropped me below my best condition for days.

"Ninety-one. Ninety-two." In fact, waking up tomorrow sounded like sort of a good idea. Maybe I'd better get a head-start on that now?

"Ninety-thr– oh shit. Ink!" - Upsides, I didn't vomit. Downsides, I did pass out for a little bit. Whoops. Luckily, Ink the Zoroark caught me before I could hit my head on the hard concrete of the open-air courtyard. That he was able to do so while still maintaining our group's invisibility and aura of inattention was nothing short of remarkable. Alyssa had freaked out, but I came out of it fast enough that she wasn't insisting on bringing me to the hospital.

She settled for giving me a battle drink from one of the dojo's vending machines and berating me instead. She was even less happy when Grimsley had her run another beep test (22 laps) to get her in the 'right state' to test her stamina. By now, both of us had picked up the fact that his use of the word and ours weren't quite lining up. Context clues told us that when the Unovan man said 'stamina' what he meant was 'syn.'

I vaguely recalled Janine using the term before, along with ki, or aura, as alternative words for describing the same pool of energy that all humans and Pokémon possessed to some extent. Apparently, for Mr. Gima to test our 'stamina' properly, we had to be physically exhausted, so that our non-stamina capabilities didn't pollute the results.

"This'll be way quicker than the mean ol' pacer test, I promise." He reassured us as we both heaved for breath. We'd moved to sitting on one of the benches lining the courtyard and recalled our partners so they didn't interfere with his examination. Mr. Gima stood a few feet away from us, his navy penny loafers somehow unmarred by the dirt and detritus in the outdoor space.

"It's really simple, actually. You two just gotta sit there, and keep meeting my eyes. Longer you can, the better, got it?" We looked at each other between gasping breaths, but I saw only the same confusion I felt reflected in my best friend's eyes.

"O-kay…" Alyssa said, clearly hesitant, before taking one last desperate heave, and then sitting up straight. I copied her, after downing the rest of my battle drink. Mr. Gima had shut his eyes, and began taking deep, controlled breaths. His whole body went rigid, and the swept back hair on the sides of his head seemed to stand up straighter, in spite of the winter breeze. Ink prowled behind him, and the Zoroark's dark fur rustled faintly in that same cold wind.

His stance was similarly tense, as if he was preparing for something, and his piercing blue eyes flicked back and forth across the courtyard.

"Oh, one last thing," Mr Gima spoke up, "tap out before you pass out, please." That was clearly directed at me, and I had to work to suppress a wince.

"I won't push myself too far," I agreed. I had no desire to be out of commission for the next few days.

"Good. Now, for as long as you can, don't look away," Mr. Gima opened his eyes on the last word, and I could immediately tell why this would be a test. I was seen. All of me peeled back and reduced down and pulled taught and stared at. It was the attention of the crowd, judging eyes and haughty gazes. It was the glare of a predator, stalking and slavering. It was the surveillance of a state, invasion and omniscience rendering privacy an illusion.

I wanted nothing more in that moment than to escape the piercing, all-seeing stare. I remembered the eyes I'd seen before as a gentle, ocean-blue, but I must have remembered wrong, because right now they weren't any real color at all. Red. Yellow. Orange. Purple. Black. All those and more. All of them swirled together, drawn in a spinning, dizzying maelstrom of malign attention. An encompassing, enervating, inescapable sense of being seen. But with reflexive terror, came reflexive action.

My focus splintered under the attention, shards of me ablating away from the Dark-specialist's terrible gaze. Blubbering fear and horrid enfeeblement were staved off, reduced in effect, as parts of my mind rotated the chunks of me experiencing it, holding them in place just long enough to almost get overwhelmed before turning the pressure on to another. And so on. And layers deeper still, other parts of me ran a cold analysis on what I was experiencing. Intimidation? Like the ability? Some super-charged form of it?

Was this what it was like to be under a Scrafty's gaze? A Staraptor's? Maybe after this Mr. Gima would let his Pokémon test the effect of his ability on us. Evaluating the difference would be interesting. Someone was humming. The fact that it was happening registered to one of the pieces of my attention, only for another to helpfully inform that chunk that I was the one humming. Because of course I was. I had more defenses than simply falling to pieces. It was… a lullaby. Maybe.

Something half-remembered and barely recalled. A scrap of a memory dredged from the sump of my splintered mind by the desperate need for some sort of comfort in the face of that awful glare. And with it, went my syn, surrounding me. Only me, because Alyssa had already fled, throwing herself off the bench and dragging her body free from the line of fire. Even in the face of mortal terror, she had the presence of mind to get out of the way. She always was the smarter one, of the two of us.

The stare intensified further, somehow, my opponent's attention burning like the sun. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. No, like the night sky. Like the empty void, the spaces between, gazing down and seeing me in all my insignificance. A yawning portal to the abyss threatening to drown out my song and swallow me whole. And the humming grew louder, swelled to match the unceasing gaze.

My mouth was open now, and Ink was straining, sweat beading his fur as he dampened my hum, deadened his trainer's technicolor eyes. And the stalemate continued. One minute, two. His gaze grew no more intense, stretched to its absolute limit, and my song gained no more volume, because going any further would rip my vocal chords to shreds. Another minute. The horrible, awful fear was a thing of the past. Now it was just strain. Pressure on my mind and in my throat.

An unceasing vice clamp that was slowly, so slowly, but oh so very surely emptying me out. Once I ran dry, the fear would return, the awful, inescapable attention. But, piped up a little piece of me, I didn't need to wait that long. I just had to last until I almost couldn't anymore. Which was right, about… now. I looked away. The world came screaming back. Wait, no, that was me. And it wasn't really screaming, it was… a note. High, and piercing. Just a moment ago it'd been something more than that, but now?

It was just an embarrassingly shrill cry. Chagrined, I shut my mouth. And then opened it again to spit out the familiar taste of iron (the globule of blood vanished in midair, but I didn't worry too much about that since I knew where it was going). I looked back up, and in place of the crushing, all-seeing eye, was a wilted-looking man straightening his tie and unrumpling his navy suit.

"Well, that took quite a bit more effort than I was expecting," Mr Gima remarked dryly, his normally teasing tone tinged instead now with something I couldn't place.

"You, miss Fione, are quite the strange one indeed." I felt my face redden, and I crossed my arms in a way even I could admit was rather petulant.

"Takes one to know one," I replied sullenly. The Unovan man stared at me for a few moments, and just when the silence started getting uncomfortable, he let out a single, incredulous chuckle.

"I suppose it does. I suppose it does. And that's everything? You're all tapped out?" I considered the question, instinctively feeling around that interior well of energy that I was becoming more and more familiar with.

"I've got a little bit to go, but just enough that I'm not whiting out. Does that make sense." Mr. Gima nodded stiffly.

"It does. I'm…" he visibly hesitated, and then continued, "I've got about half a tank left, give or take."

"Damn, really? Even after all that you're only halfway out?" I complained, a little bit outraged." Only?" Mr. Gima asked with an incredulous tone.

"I'm probably at least seven years your senior and you pushed me to half gas. I don't think you know how crazy that is."

"Exactly! You're only seven years older than me. Why do you have so mu–""WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" The shouted question interrupted me, and drew a wince, along with an arch look, from Ink the Zoroark. Surprised and confused, Mr. Gima and I turned to face Alyssa. My best friend was standing a few feet away from us, her face ashen and her body trembling.

Pikachu had either been released, or had released herself, and the yellow mouse was perched on Alyssa's shoulder, running a concerned paw up and down the brunette teen's cheek. In spite of the outward signs of terror given by my friend's body, her expression told a wholly different story.

"Seriously? What is going on? You were like, a monster, for a little bit!" she pointed at Mr. Gima, who blinked a few times as my friend's rant continued in one uninterrupted breath, " and I felt, I felt like I was about to die until I got out of the way. And then you started humming," this time she was pointing at me, "and how the hell did you stand that for so long? What is going on?" The Unovan Dark-specialist tilted his head, and then turned to me his eyebrows furrowed.

"She's probably never seen someone using syn actively," I informed him with a shrug.

"Most people in Ferrum aren't able to do stuff like that. Even strong Battle Trainers." The people who populated the underpasses were an exception, so it might make sense that Mr. Gima had warped expectations.

"So that was you two using your syn to do those things?" Alyssa asked, her tone incredulous.

"I told you about this, didn't I?" I distinctly remembered discussing covering this with a few months ago while Alyssa was bedridden, after she'd whited out performing a synergy burst for the first time.

"I mean, hearing you talk about it is one thing, but that was…" she trailed off, apparently unable to find the words.

"Sorry, I should have given you a bit of warning. Your partner was pretty strong, so I guess overestimated you a little bit." Mr. Gima rubbed the back of his head, visibly chagrined.

"I didn't realize you wouldn't be able to put up an active defense."

"That's probably pretty common in Ferrum actually," I said quickly, before my reddening friend could get a word in.

"It has to do with the way our battling framework is different from the rest of the world. It encourages Pokémon to develop a lot faster than the trainers. A coworker of mine just explained this to me, exactly." That got both of them looking at me in askance, and I suppressed a relieved breath as Alyssa's complexion went from apoplectic to merely blotchy.

"In Ferrum battles, the trainer donates most of their syn to their partner, and the connection is completely one way, so Alyssa can give her energy to Pikachu, but she doesn't get any back. I'm pretty sure that means Pikachu's capacity gets super stretched, while Alyssa doesn't develop hers at all." My explanation had the Dark-specialist nodding in understanding, but my best friend had a frown on her face.

"Wait, so hold on, humans can train and grow their syn just like Pokémon? I nodded, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Gima doing the same.

"Yep, that's why I could last longer than you under Mr. Gima's stare." My friend nodded, but her expression was twisted up in confusion.

"Okay, so if that's true, why the heck don't we have a regime to improve the trainer's syn here at the dojo? If I could feed more energy to Pikachu, we'd get even stronger, right?" Alyssa asked. I… don't really know the answer to that. Luckily, my best friend's question had been rhetorical.

"They wouldn't train us wrong on purpose, so there must be a reason they don't have us develop our syn. It could just be that it's a waste of time? But if we could both get stronger together, we'd get stronger faster. That'd be more efficient." Her musings continued, and then accelerated, Alyssa reasoning through the problem at a frenetic pace as her partner nodded along with the teen's proposed explanations from her perch on the latter's shoulder.

"Something about me getting stronger would hinder Pikachu in some way. That's the implication. Think about it in percentages. No, flat values. Pikachu is one-hundred. I'm one-hundred. One-hundred plus one-hundred is two-hundred. If Pikachu is three-hundred and I'm one-fifty, together we're four-fifty. If I'm fifty whatevers stronger, then so is Pikachu, right? Why wouldn't she be…" she paused for a few seconds, her eyes shut as she worked through the problem.

"A cap!" she suddenly shouted, causing Pikachu's ears to flatten against her head.

"There must be a cap to the amount of energy Pikachu can handle at once, and if we go over it, bad things happen. That's why most Ferrum battlers don't use moves to power up, they're already as strong as they can safely get!" My friend was practically vibrating with her realization, and I felt like I could see connections forming in her mind in real-time.

"But then, why don't we just improve our syn, and then train to not overwhelm our partners? It must be possible, we've had foreign trainers come to Ferrum and compete in the league before. Powerful ones. Maybe… maybe it forms bad habits? Is it easier to train people to give their all then it is to control their output? Maybe so, but is that really better, or just simpler?" My best friend trailed off, and she looked up at Mr. Gima, a question writ on her face. The Unovan man offered her a shrug.

"Don't look at me, I've got no idea. You've been speaking complete gibberish as far as I'm concerned." She turned to me, but I wasn't really sure either, and the best I offer was a shrug.

"Useless," the brunette teen muttered.

"I've got to go find Master Raul. I'll be back in just a bit." She took off, running off into the dojo, startling a passing trainer and his Magby when she exited Ink's area-of-affect and seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Mr. Gima turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, and all I could really offer was a mareepish grin.

"She'll be back in no time. I think." - Alyssa returned a half-hour later. We'd gone from the courtyard to the training room in the interim, though I'd left Mana in the former to let my best friend know where to find us. When she walked into the relatively small space, it was to the sight of my six knights all squaring off against one of Mr. Gima's partners (sans Alister the Bisharp, who had two of the little Falinks in front of him).

Joining Neirah, Scrafty, and Ink was BB (short for Big Bite) the Krookodile, a species of Pokémon I was familiar with. I'd never seen one in person before, but I knew populations existed out in the Nacal Desert, making their home amongst the blistering sands. BB was just as proficient in Sucker Punch as the rest of Mr. Gima's team, and he was demonstrating that to good effect against poor Tristan. The rear brass' experience reflected that of the rest of my knights.

He'd futilely throw a weakened Rock Smash with just enough energy to be considered a move, only for the wily Dark-type facing off against him to bop him on the carapace with a claw coated in umbral energy. We were hoping that one of my knights would get frustrated enough by the experience (and become familiar enough with a retaliatory move at priority speed) to figure out how to use Upper Hand.

From there, the one who got the move could teach it to the rest of his brothers, like Bers had done for No Retreat a few weeks ago. So far, it was a work in progress. They didn't need much oversight, so Mr. Gima and I left them to it and had been discussing other moves I should be teaching my partners. We had to break it off, however, as Alyssa returned to the room. Mostly because she was already breathlessly explaining her findings to us.

"Ok, so I Houndoured Master Raul into explaining it to me," she began.

"There's… he said there are a few reasons why most people don't develop their syn during their battle break. The first is that, like I thought, there's a sort of cap on how much syn any Pokémon can hold, and on how quickly they can convert that syn into TE or BE to power their moves. Going over those limits overwhelms them, and can cause synergy burnout." That made sense.

"And when they're stronger, they have a higher cap, and they can convert the energy faster?" I asked the obvious follow-up question.

"Exactly," my best friend nodded.

"So if a trainer's syn is too developed, it'll make it hard to synergize with their partner, unless you train extensively to limit how much power you put into your connection, which adds a lot of overhead to your training." I felt a frown creep over my face.

"Even if it's hard though, people would work for that advantage. You said there were other reasons?" Now, Alyssa's expression grew dark.

"Yeah, I had the same thought." She took a deep breath, and then looked at me, her face intent and serious.

"He said something that was— a little alarming. He told me that— that training your syn early in life can be dangerous, because it can have dramatic impacts on your personality and mentality." My best friend's expression went from no-nonsense to stricken, maybe because of something in my face.

"Not that there's anything wrong with you Fe, he just said—."

"O-kay, I think I need to stop you there." Mr. Gima interrupted, his voice stern, but not unkindly.

"I'm not going to say your mentor is necessarily wrong Alyssa, but I will say that this 'Master Raul' is taking a rather more negative view on the topic than he probably should." I expected my best friend to bristle a little bit at the interruption and at the words therein, but if anything, she looked somehow relieved by the Unovan man's statement. As for me, parts of my psyche followed the conversation, but the bulk of my fragmented self was recontextualizing a lot of things in light of Alyssa's revelation.

"It's true, Pokémon training, which is how you improve your stamina by the way, does cause changes in the developing mind," he held up a finger to forestall any comment, "but, so does practicing a skill, or forming a relationship, or even just learning. Everything impacts you while you're young, and saying that growing your stamina has a definitively negative impact on your brain is just flat-out wrong."

"He didn't say it was necessarily negative," Alyssa reminded him quickly, "just that the changes are usually– dramatic. That it can affect you before you get a chance to figure out who you really are." The Unovan man mulled that over for a few moments.

"I guess–" he paused, and then levered a sigh, "okay, he's not wrong about that. But it's also a question of degrees. Personally, I think thirteen is plenty old enough to start the sort of training Fione has been doing. The majority of folks in Unova are doing the same at fourteen, and a lot of the lab trainers and family scions get a head-start even on them. For the most part, we turn out fine."

"What about ten?" part of me asked, interrupting the conversation. Both Alyssa and Mr. Gima looked at me in askance, though I saw some recognition in the latter's face.

"My CO is from Kanto-Johto, and she told me that kids over there start out at ten years old." Alyssa's eyes widened in shock, but the Dark-specialist just let out a sigh.

"And that's what I mean by a question of degrees. Most people back home would say that's too young. Hell, I would too. But, there are places on Ideal's blue earth where kids are given a Pokémon companion to train with from the day they're born. You guys are just on the other end of that cultural spectrum, I guess." He looked me in the eye, making sure I was following along with this part.

"None of these are right or wrong, though. Yes, strengthening your stamina changes your brain chemistry, yes the degree to which it does so depends on how early you start, yes it has an impact on who you are and who you become, but none of that means there's anything wrong with you." He didn't need to specify who 'you' was. The room grew quiet after the Dark-specialist's proclamation.

Well, it didn't really, the sound of my knights getting batted around was still plenty loud in the background, but our little corner of the training cubby was silent, all of us alone with our thoughts.

"So when do they teach you how to improve your syn?" I finally asked, breaking the silence.

"There's got to be an age or league level where it's standard, right?" My best friend nodded.

"Yeah, he told me that anyone who graduates from the Blue League gets this explained to them. By that time, most competitors are close to eighteen, and that's when it starts to become important to train your own capabilities, along with your partner's."

"That's only one-hundred twenty-eight people and Pokémon every year," I muttered.

"I guess that's a pretty select number when it comes to keeping a secret."

"Plus, why would you go around sharing an advantage?" Alyssa nodded.

"No reason to help the competition level up."

"Well if I'm going to train you two on how to notice a Zoroark's illusions, you're going to need to get a head start on your peers, Alyssa. After everything you've heard today, are you still on-board?" Mr. Gima asked, his expression uncharacteristically serious.

"Absolutely," my best friend didn't hesitate.

"Pikachu and I are already ahead of the curve. No reason not to put in some extra effort to go even further." Whatever the Unovan man's reply might have been, he was cut off, as a sharp, determined, "Falinks!" rang out in the background. The battle cry was accompanied by an indignant yowl from Neirah the Liepard, and a meaty thwack as carapace hit flesh.

We all looked over to see Kay, looking down at a glowing shield in wonder, even as the irritated feline he was facing off against batted him faux-indignantly with one claw-sheathed paw.

"Well, well, well, your Pokémon are already seeing progress," Mr. Gima said with a grin.

"I guess it's time to see if you two learn as fast as they do."