Chương 124: Chapter 120

The best part about having Altaria on the team was that I didn't even need a disguise. His presence on my head meant that when I walked out to train, all I received were amused looks and a few laughs rather than anyone recognizing me. Sure, I could push him off, but I owed him this time due to unconsciously cutting off his promised hat-time after the Wallace Cup. I had promised a week of not pushing him off, but, after receiving Togepi, I then sent him back off to the ranch without realizing what I had done.

I felt guilty, of course, but for Altaria, this was a blessing. One of Sycamore's assistants reported to me that he had been unusually well-behaved at the ranch, spending the days on the ground simply relaxing with Dedenne whispering into his ear. Almost the moment I retrieved him once I got to Hearthome, he had broken out into a game of avian charades to express his desires.

Not only did he demand a full uninterrupted week in recompense, but for every day that he had been in the ranch, he was to have another day where I couldn't interfere with him sitting on my head. Recognizing my mistake, I had no choice but to accept. Altaria then immediately tried to suffocate me with his fluff. It certainly wasn't the worst thing in the world, especially with how soft and comfortable his feathers were. The constant weight of such a large bird Pokémon on my head did wear me down at times, though.

Personally, I blamed Dedenne for this. I had no clue how a Pokémon managed to learn the basics of interest, but he seemed to have a firm grasp of it. So, even though I wanted to train, Altaria was on my head instead. I had hoped that spending time at Amity Park as a break would have given him ample time to enjoy his divine perch, but, alas, he was still on my head by the time I had found a place outside the city bounds to train. The rest of my team seemed to appreciate the park, at least.

Unlike the games, this large park in Hearthome was far less restrictive about what Pokémon were allowed. The biggest factor was if the Pokémon was well groomed, not if they were cute. Considering I had grooming kits for every one of my team members (even Togepi, for whom I managed to pick one up as part of my years-old deal with Steven), no member of my team was forbidden. They all got plenty of time to run around, explore, and relax before we left to train.

With our training set to start, I sent all of my Pokémon out of their balls. With me were Ninetales, Ponyta, and Togepi, and switching in were Dedenne, Altaria, and Mawile. Kirlia was sticking around as well for now, as he still had tons of training to do to catch up with the others. The newest member of the team was fitting in quite well. Mawile and Dedenne tended to hang around Togepi at almost all times, in fact.

When they first met her, Mawile herself seemed hesitant to approach, but Dedenne had almost immediately ran right up to her. He presented Togepi with a berry he had "acquired" in one place or another and was met by a very large and friendly handshake from Togepi herself. She then marched right over to Mawile and shook her hand, too. Mawile was surprised at first but soon gave Togepi a soft smile in response. She was a lot less nervous after that.

The only exception to this friendly greeting was Altaria, who Ponyta seemed wary of letting get too friendly with Togepi. It wasn't that Altaria would hurt her, it was just that he would almost definitely offer a ride on his back, which would be too far outside of Ponyta's telekinetic range if she fell. Since all my Pokémon were now out of their balls and sniffing or exploring the space we were in, I clapped my hands and began to speak in a muffled voice through Altaria's fluff.

"Move practice today," I announced.

"You know what you're working on." Ninetales wagged her tails and jumped to the side to begin working through the list of moves I wanted her to keep in good shape, while the rest of my team partnered up. Altaria let out a disappointed squawk and went with Dedenne. Mawile hurried after Ninetales, as both of them had recently learned Dark Pulse from a TM, and then the remaining three all moved together. I approached the trio of Ponyta, Kirlia, and Togepi to help them out first.

Kirlia and Ponyta had the basics of Psychic down, which hadn't been too hard as it was just a more advanced Confusion. However, while Kirlia had the power and Ponyta had the control, that wasn't true the other way around. The pair were helping each other with their further move development, leaving Togepi to me.

"Hey," I said, kneeling.

"How are you feeling?" Togepi happily chirruped her name and began to wag her arms. I quickly picked her up to stop her before a Metronome could happen. She blinked in surprise before smiling once more and thankfully not using her Metronome move.

"We've been in Hearthome for about a week now, which means that you've been out of your egg for several weeks at this point. I want to start practicing your moves. Are you ready?" Togepi went wide eyed then rapidly nodded her head. I placed her back on the ground as she hurriedly toddled over to Ponyta and tapped him on his leg to get his attention. Unconsciously, he began to grab her telekinetically and place her on his back, but she squirmed under his psychic grip to force him to release her.

That caught his attention. Ponyta turned to glance at Togepi as she gestured wildly and squinted her eyes closed. Ponyta seemed to realize what she meant and dashed over to the side to retrieve Ninetales. It didn't take me too long to realize what was going on. Togepi demonstrated Growl, Charm, and Pound easily enough, although both me and Ponyta both quickly stopped her before she used Metronome.

Everyone but Altaria and Dedenne had stopped what they were doing to keep an eye on her, as the pair were still practicing for the upcoming Contest. At the center of everyone's attention, Togepi moved onto her next move, which she had specifically asked Ninetales for. She sent a glance over to the Ice Type before squinting her eyes and looking at a nearby pebble. There was a brief, flickering blue tint around her eyes.

The stone did not move for several long seconds before it shifted to the left slightly and Togepi let the move drop. She smiled brightly and cheered her name. She hadn't used Extrasensory before, but, for a first time use, it wasn't too bad. Getting a physical reaction like that was incredibly good, especially since she didn't have much power to her just yet and didn't share a Type with the move either. Ponyta gave Togepi an approving nod, then glanced over to Ninetales to signal her to walk over.

The Ice Type smiled and made her way next to Togepi, then began to demonstrate Extrasensory herself. Ninetales focused, closing her eyes, and a bright blue glow appeared around them. Rather than just one pebble-sized stone moving, dozens of stones began to lift themselves up off the ground. This effect wasn't as effortless as a Psychic Type could do, which was why she didn't use Extrasensory too often, but it was still quite impressive.

After a few moments, Ninetales finally used the move the way it was meant to be used, and every stone cracked in half. She let them fall, then opened her eyes. With such a simple demonstration, it didn't take much effort from her at all. Togepi clapped and cheered enthusiastically. Ninetales lifted up a front paw to pose proudly. Mawile clapped politely on the side alongside Kirlia. Ponyta had no hands so he just tilted his head down to thank her.

After that, there were a few more attempts at Extrasensory by Togepi, none of which were as successful as the first, until I spoke up to interrupt her.

"Togepi, you still have two more moves to try out. How about those, instead?" I said. Togepi blinked and let her extremely weak Extrasensory drop. She then looked around nervously, her eyes lingered on Dedenne.

"Ah, uh, don't worry about Psycho Shift for now. It would let you shift any status condition you have to your target, but I don't want you to suffer one right now. Maybe in the future once you're stronger. Not right now." Togepi looked a lot less worried now. Personally, I was excited. I had seen that Togepi knew how to use Aerial Ace, but I had never seen her use it before. In my mind, it was a move that only actually flying Pokémon could use, not something stuck on the ground.

I had to prevent myself from smiling from how much I was looking forward to this. My curiosity was getting the best of me.

"Aerial Ace, when you're ready," I said. Togepi gave me an extremely serious expression and began to walk forward. She then tilted her crested head down slightly and moved to build up speed. Her stubby arms swung back and forth wildly as she moved as fast as she could forward. This open space outside of town we were in wasn't the largest, so she had to run in a circle to build up speed, but soon enough, white streaks started appear at her side. This story originates from a different website.

Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"So it's delivered via running instead of flying," I mumbled. I was surprised how well the moderately difficult to use move was going. Then, it happened. Togepi tripped. Ponyta was able to catch her before she hit the ground, so Togepi wasn't injured. However, she was still hit emotionally as tears began to well up in her eyes. I immediately felt awful for putting so much pressure on her and took a step forward to try to comfort her, but Ponyta did so instead.

Since Togepi had imprinted on him, she would find his presence a lot more comforting than mine. I needed to be aware that Togepi wasn't a Psychic, Bug, or Ghost Type Pokémon; she wasn't one of the three Types that matured incredibly quickly after hatching. Her tears weren't wails, but she was quite upset. Ponyta's presence served well to calm her down, so she quickly returned to quiet sniffling instead of full on tears. I took this moment to approach.

"You know, Togepi, that was really good," I said. Togepi stopped sniffling to look up at me.

"Aerial Ace is an incredibly difficult move. I saw streaks appeared in the air next to you! That means you were in the middle of using it. Considering it was your first time ever attempting it? I'm proud of you. We all are." She stared at me with wide eyes and glanced up to Ponyta. He nodded to show that he agreed with me. Clearly taking my words to heart, she pushed her way out of where Ponyta had laid down next to her, then began to run again. She ended up tripping again, but she didn't cry.

Instead, she pushed back to her feet and tried again. With this kind of determination, Togepi was for sure going to become a powerful Pokémon. With Ponyta returning to his own training, but still keeping a close eye on her, I turned to Altaria and Dedenne. For some reason, both of them were blackened and smoking. I immediately covered my face with my hand.

"Looks like we've got work to do," I mumbled. Later, I found out a possible reason why Togepi was struggling with Aerial Ace. It was kind of a mixed piece of news in that it could either be interpreted as good or bad. On the good side of things, Togepi was already developing her first ability, which had the effect of greatly increasing the power behind her physical moves.

However, on the bad side of things, that ability was Hustle, which meant that she would frequently overextend herself and vastly decrease her accuracy. From what information I'd picked up over time, Hustle was a mix of a detrimental ability, like Slaking's Truant or Archeops's Defeatist, and an ability that could be chosen to be used, like Mawile's Sheer Force.

For now, Togepi would put in more effort than needed in her attacks and most likely miss quite often, but as we developed it, she'd be able to minimize its negative effects on her fighting style and even ignore it completely at times. Once she was ready, I'd have Mawile train with her, but for now, she'd just be working on her basic moves and capabilities. My team was going to take part in the double performance Contest in Hearthome.

Not only did it involve two Pokémon performing together, it also involved double battles. Personally, I was really looking forward to it, as Altaria and Dedenne would make a great performance together, and Ninetales and Mawile had dozens of strategies to try together in a double battle. We'd actually missed one Hearthome Contest when we first entered the city, as it had happened just a few days after we arrived. I didn't sign up for it since I didn't think we were ready.

Contests happened in major cities every two weeks, which meant we had plenty of time to train and prepare. Towards the end of that two week break, I actually left the city for a while to train on Route 208. Most of the days in Hearthome were spent exploring with my team, training, and visiting Amity Park, but I felt like we had earned a decent break.

There, I found a nice spot near a rushing waterfall where Altaria and Dedenne worked on perfecting their performance while the rest of my team worked on their general skills and power. Dedenne had requested to learn a specific move before we left to work into his performance. I was a bit worried on how much my team had been relying on TM moves recently, as moves learned that way were harder to train and perfect. However, the move he asked for was relatively simple and would fit perfectly into the team.

I easily found a single use TM for sale and taught it to Dedenne, who quickly learned the move before we left. As the Contest approached, I made my way back to the city with my much more prepared team. It didn't take long for the Contest itself to roll around, and Robin made their first appearance in over a month. When I entered the waiting room before the Contest, I didn't recognize anyone. There was no Ash, no Dawn, no Zoey, and no Kenny.

Of course, there were a few other Coordinators that showed up in the anime, too, but I didn't recognize any of them. It seemed that today would be a normal Contest uninvolved with anything from the anime. Well, normal as far as Hearthome Contests went. Here, the Contests were extremely popular. From my spot in the back, I near-perfectly mimicked Steven's elegant way of standing to help myself stay in line with the mindset of Robin.

A few people sent me nervous glances, but the majority looked more determined than anything else. I supposed that being in the same Contest as the Wallace Cup winner either lit a fire under them or freaked them out. Ahead of me, on a screen hanging on the wall, a few other Coordinators were already performing. Doubles Contests were completely new to me. I found that what the Coordinators could get up to with two Pokémon far outclassed anything individual Pokémon could do.

A Tropius and a Meganium created a garden on the stage, a dual Beautifly and Mothim coated the stage with powder from their wings, two Gengar pretended to be the same Pokémon and effortlessly drifted around and through the other to unleash an onslaught of terrifying Ghost Type moves. The memory of both what happened in Sea Mauville as well as the story I read about a Gengar stealing a woman's child lingered in my head. I still found Ghost Types to be rather creepy.

Soon enough, it was my time to perform, and when Robin's name was called up, I could hear the audience cheering before I even emerged on stage. When Valerie made the Robin outfit, it hadn't even crossed my mind to request hidden pockets in both my gloves, but she had done so anyway. Little things like that made me really appreciate her genius and were what allowed me to pull off what I was about to do.

Stepping onto the stage, the moment our performance began, I raised up my arms and crossed them, tilting my head downwards. I purposefully kept my hands flat to show that there was nothing there. Then, with incredible force, I swung my arms down to my side and let Dedenne's Fast Ball and Altaria's Love Ball fall down into my hands. From there, it was a simple, dual, underarm toss that sent them out, running and flying over the stage.

To start, Dedenne let sparks emanate out from his body before releasing an Electroweb into the air in front of him. Altaria, who had been keeping pace above him, let himself fly around and have the move wrap around his neck. A lot of the training Dedenne and Altaria had done together was about making sure Altaria could properly resist Dedenne's moves. Altaria was a dual Dragon and Flying Type, a combination that left him with no special resistance or vulnerability to Electric Type moves.

It took a lot of effort on Dedenne's part to make it so his attacks weren't strong enough to hurt Altaria but were still strong enough to exist. That combined with Altaria flying as if he wasn't taking any damage at all allowed both Pokémon to demonstrate the considerable amount of effort that went into this performance. Dedenne, from the ground, leapt forward to grab onto the hanging web as Altaria pulled upwards and took into the air.

Rather than directly climbing onto Altaria, he purposefully stayed on the net to show off the move. In reality, he was forced to keep holding onto the electric net as even though he had the ability to climb onto Altaria, he had to personally supply it with a source of electricity to keep it from dissipating. As Altaria climbed in height above the crowd, dark, thunderous clouds formed over the arena.

I admit, Dedenne's Rain Dance wasn't the fastest or most spectacular use of the move, but the motions he went through to use it while hanging on the net were impressive enough, albeit a bit hard to see. Altaria was a bit annoyed to be flying in the weather, especially since the rain started to soak him. Dedenne finally moved to sit behind Altaria's shoulders before Altaria pulled in his wings and rocketed towards the ground.

His speed meant that bit of water that had coated him was now flying off of him in a stream. He added a bit of a twist to his fall, such that he almost looked like a drill. With the speed the pair was reaching, it almost looked like they were about to crash into the ground. A few members of the audience gasped in worry, but, of course, Altaria pulled up at the last minute. Then, both he and Dedenne used moves.

Altaria himself used his infrequently used Dazzling Gleam, lighting himself up in a brilliant sheen of iridescent light. To add to that, Dedenne released some of his electricity—not all—to use Discharge around Altaria, making the light even more brilliant than before. The combination of Electric and Fairy Type light caused the pair to shine brilliantly over the field. The water droplets falling from raindance reflected the light to make the field almost act like a disco ball.

Even more, Dedenne's Discharge zapped from water droplet to water droplet, bursting what was there and coating them in a fine mist that just added to the attractiveness of the whole combination. The audience clapped and cheered, but we had one more step to go through. The timer was low, but since this was so simple I wasn't worried about going over.

On my end, I made sure both of their Pokéballs were in my hands, and, on their end, Altaria finally got to do what he wanted to do from the start: make the most out of his ability to clear the skies. Cloud Nine came into effect as gusts of wind emanated from his outstretched wings to "collect" the clouds together. At the edges, the weaker, thinner sections of clouds dissipated, while in the center, the heavier clouds were compressed into a ball.

That ball of clouds moved to sit above them, and I tensed, ready myself to act at a moment's notice. Of course, the audience was all focused on the sphere in the sky, which gave me an opening to act without them seeing. The cloud crackled with electricity for just a moment before Dedenne released all the electricity he stored up with Charge while the audience was distracted. An incredibly strong burst of Thunder stuck down onto the pair, blinding the arena with its power.

That attack contained every little bit of electricity Dedenne had within him, which meant he'd probably be out of commission for the rest of the day. For now, however, it served as the perfect end to the performance as I quickly returned the pair of them while the audience was blinded by the lightning strike. Once everyone regained their vision, both my Pokémon were gone. The crowd burst into cheers at that performance, and I smiled under my mask.

The Hearthome Contest tended to hold itself to a higher level over other Contests. The Coordinators who competed in it were far more skilled and far more determined to win. Even more, it tended to have more Coordinators than others competing in it every time it came up. All that combined meant that getting into the limited final eight Coordinators would be a challenge. However, after this performance, I knew my Pokémon had properly shown off their skills.

There was no way we wouldn't make it into the battling rounds.

"The performance of Robin was très fantastique, but something it was missing. The other coordinators displayed such elegance that oblige Robin, I could not," Fantina spoke in an interview after the Contest. I stared at the screen blankly. My Pokémon sat around me in the Pokémon Center bedroom in silence.

"The Wallace Cup winner or not," she continued.

"Robin just did not quite match up with other Coordinators. Perhaps doubles are not their excellence. I saw two Pokémon performing on their own, not two Pokémon performing together. Another month, another Contest, they shoe in, non? The competition was too strong, the other judges agreed." Dedenne was silent on the bed. Out of everyone here, he was taking our loss the hardest. In his first performance, he had almost cost us the round. Here? We hadn't moved on at all.

Togepi tried to walk forward to pat him on the back. Before she could reach him, he ran forward to jump off to hide in Altaria's fluff. Despite Altaria having the right to nest on my head whenever he wanted, he was choosing to sit in the corner and make himself look as small as possible. I turned off the recording of the post-Contest interviews, not wanting to subject my team to it anymore. I would watch the rest on my own later.

"I'm sorry," I said. Altaria brought his head further down.

"I should have made a better plan. There was only one moment of you two using your moves together; the rest of it was you two using moves on your own. I should have realized double performances were based on teamwork more than anything, not just making both Pokémon look good." I rubbed the side of my head in frustration.

"At least this is a good learning opportunity. The Grand Festival at the end of the year is a double performance all the way through, too. We can at least consider this practice for that." I sighed, but then I let a smile slowly grow on my face.

"At least, there's one piece of good news that might make the two of you feel better," I pointed out. Altaria moved his wing slightly to let himself peek up at me. On his back, the white feathers of his closed wings shifted a bit as Dedenne moved, hidden, to better hear me.

"Fantina is the local Gym Leader," I said.

"She might have judged us unfit to proceed to the next round, but we can prove her wrong in battle. She said we were lacking in teamwork in our performance. Battling? That's our game." Dedenne finally poked his head out of Altaria's feathers. The rest of the team shifted closer to me to listen in.

"So, I'm thinking it might be time to put some proper weather manipulation to use..." We might not have had a successful Contest, but for this upcoming Gym Battle? I really liked our chances.