When I arrived back at my room in the Pokémon Center after buying TMs, I found Mawile and Ponyta passed out, leaning against each other. It was Mawile's turn to watch over Ponyta since I had taken to leaving him out while I was gone. I didn’t want him to stay in a ball so often while he was young and experiencing the world for the first time. Not wishing to disturb them, I simply put my backpack on my bed then left to call Laura.

Laura had finally finished her closed-chamber training and her team was now stronger than ever. Everyone on her team now knew all the elemental punches, and had exchanged different types of punching moves, tutoring each other. I congratulated her on her success, and asked her if she could provide me tips for teaching Belly Drum to Azumarill. She stepped away for a moment to get someone to help, then returned with Brawly, of all people.

The Fighting Type Gym Leader provided me with a huge amount of advice for teaching a Pokémon Belly Drum. Azumarill had already done the prep work, so she was more than ready to follow through with what he shared. Brawley’s help would let us start training the move with minimal risk to Azumarill.

Once he was done, I said goodbye to both him and Laura, and returned to my room. When I entered, the two Pokémon had already woken up, and Mawile was quietly chatting with Ponyta while he calmly listened. Ponyta didn't speak much and wasn’t that active outside of when he played, but he was an adept listener and paid attention to everything around him. I could tell he would be a fast learner once we started training for battles.

I called for Mawile and Ponyta to follow me, and they stood up to walk with me down to the field behind the Pokémon Center. There, I sent everyone else out to discuss training for this week.

“It’s nice to see everyone relaxing already, but we’re not just going to sit around doing nothing while we’re in Mauville,” I said. “I’ve bought TMs for most of you, and we’ll work on incorporating those moves into how you battle, and continue working on simple strategies to improve my commands.

“To start, Azumarill, you’re the only one who won’t be learning any TM moves. I’ve managed to get some advice on how to teach you Belly Drum, so we’re going to get started on that. Florges, you’re similar in that I’d like you to focus on practicing the non-TM move, Synthesis, but you’ll be learning Calm Mind alongside Ninetales as a buffing move to help you two in battle.

“Altaria, I’ve bought you Flamethrower, so don’t burn anyone while practicing it, and Mawile, you have two moves to work on: Thunder Fang and Psychic Fang. You won’t have any options against ranged moves with your set up, so we’ll also work on approaching enemies safely in the meantime.”

Everyone looked excited to learn new moves with little effort on their part, except for Azumarill. She wasn’t upset that she wasn’t learning any TM moves, but was instead practically ecstatic to finally learn Belly Drum.

The one Pokémon I hadn’t mentioned, Ponyta, stood quietly while everyone else made happy noises while discussing their new potential moves among themselves. I didn’t have any specific goals for him, but that didn’t mean I planned to leave him alone.

I didn’t want to rush Ponyta into training since he was so young, but I wanted to make sure he was developing properly. I only needed to help Azumarill with Belly Drum and Florges with Synthesis since everyone else would learn their moves automatically thanks to their TMs and TRs. I would have plenty of time to spend with Ponyta.

I had done research on the Pokémon Center PCs to find out the best way to exercise a young Pokémon, and came up with two different games to play with him. The first was Tag, which would help improve his speed and physical capabilities, and the second was Hide and Seek, which would help develop his Psychic energy since he would need to rely on mental sensing to find people. It was nice that the games would train him, but I was more happy that I could let him have fun at the same time.

As for the rest of my team, I had to teach them their TM moves. I returned everyone and went back into the Pokémon Center, and one by one slotted in their Pokéball and the respective disc into the Pokémon Center PCs. Each disc gave the Pokémon within the Pokéballs memories of using the moves, as well as a bit of the corresponding Type energy to let them get familiar with how the move felt. The TRs were completely drained after I used them, but the TMs had plenty of energy left to use many times in the future. I did note that TMs weren’t technically infinite, but contained enough energy to teach their move many times over, and could be recharged at certain TM stores. I doubted the ones I had would ever run out, but it was nice to know just in case.

I finished teaching all of the new TM moves, then went back to the field and released everyone. It was time to practice their new moves.

For the rest of the week, I spent time on and off training with everyone and playing with Ponyta. However, I didn’t just spend time training. I also made sure to give everyone plenty of time to relax since that was my main goal for staying in Mauville. It ended up just being frequent trips to the rooftop park on top of the mall, since there wasn't that much else to do for a team like mine. The attraction I thought my team members would have the most interest in was an indoor laser tag park that allowed Pokémon, but my Pokémon either were scared of the technology, couldn’t hold the laser guns, or were too upset the rules stated that it was no contact. Surprisingly, that last complaint was from Altaria.

When the week ended, neither Florges nor Azumarill had learned their new moves, but everyone who had been taught TM moves had a strong handle on how to use them in battle. I was also able to further develop some of my commands with my team, and everyone had at least one general strategy completely down to use without me needing to say anything. As for my traveling companion, I had expected to see Wally around sometimes, but I actually didn’t see him at all until the time to meet back up came around.

When I saw Wally, he had an unfamiliar Pokémon floating next to him in the air. It was made up of three metal bodies and had two magnets on each one. It seemed that Wally had caught a Magneton somehow while he was away.

“I see you’ve made a new friend,” I said to him.

His face immediately lit up in response.

“Yes! Magneton is incredible! Did Wattson ask for your help, too?”

I furrowed my brows.

Why did Wattson need Wally’s help? Did something go wrong?

“No, I haven’t talked to him since after our encounter with Team Magma. Did something come up?” I asked.

Wally’s eyes sparkled and he began to tell the story of what he did over the past week.

Apparently, beneath Mauville was an abandoned complex called New Mauville that was an old expansion project that turned into a habitat for Electric Type Pokémon, similar to Sea Mauville. Wattson was in charge of managing it as the local Gym Leader, but was having an issue with one of the generators getting drained of power unusually fast, which was a sign of something going wrong down there. Wattson had encountered Wally when heading underground, and invited Wally to assist.

The two of them spent the week down there camping out while Gym Trainers filled in for Wattson, and tracked down a specific Magnemite that seemed to be causing the issue. It eventually turned out that the Magnemite wasn’t the one causing the problem, but was actually trying to stop an improperly released Electabuzz that was draining too much electricity for the other Electric Types to consume. Wally ended up befriending the Magnemite, which then evolved when it fought off the Electabuzz at the end of the week. Wattson caught the Electabuzz to care for it properly, and Wally caught the Magneton. The group then returned to the surface with Magneton at Wally’s side.

After I got over the shock of finding out about Wally’s impromptu adventure, we went to the Pokémon Center to give Magneton one last check over, then left Mauville to head to Slateport.

Since Wally and I had money to spare, we were able to rent bikes to travel down the Seaside Cycling Road. We passed by a few low-level trainers battling on the sides with their Electric Types, and Wally actually battled one with his new Magneton. The battle was interrupted when Wally's Magneton got stuck to the trainer's Magnemite and we had to chase around the Pokémon levitating around erratically due to the uneven magnetic waves they were giving off. The amount of trouble those two Pokémon got into was rather ridiculous.

Outside of the magnetic troubles, biking from Mauville to Slateport was significantly faster than walking along the path underneath. Last time, it took me a few days to travel between the two cities, but this time it only took us until nightfall. We could have gone faster, but the mess with Magneton took up a decent chunk of our time.

We ended up staying in the same Pokémon Center I had stayed at last time, which brought up... memories.

Honestly, I was just embarrassed thinking about how panicked I acted in the past. Wally tried to coax the story out of me, but I just acted smug and said I had breakfast with Steven without going into further detail.

Wally wanted to explore Slateport, but I was getting antsy. It was currently early November, and the Ever Grande Conference began at the start of February, so we only had less than three months to earn three badges. They were the toughest badges to earn, so I wanted to obtain the sixth badge as soon as possible to have enough time to train for my next two badges, and then the Conference.

We ended up compromising. We would stay in the city for two days, and once that period ended, we would take a ferry that went straight to Sootopolis and not one that stopped at a few of the randomly-appearing mirage islands. There was also the option of going island-hopping to reach the city, which was what Ash had done in the anime, but we could always sight-see in the city itself once we got there.

Since we had those two days to spare in Slateport, I decided to go and follow through with my plan to catch a Cottonee. Upon hearing my strategy to do so, Wally became upset that he had somehow made it so I had to give up one of my team members. He was wrong, of course.

"Alex, we could have made a detour!" he said emphatically.

I patted Wally on the shoulder in a friendly manner to calm him down.

"It's okay, Wally,” I said. “Visiting Petalburg Woods might have meant we wouldn’t have had enough time to train for our upcoming Gym Battles. I said I was going to trade for a Cottonee, but that doesn’t mean trading one of my team members away."

Wally was mollified after I said that, but looked confused when I mentioned not giving up a team member.

"Huh? But you said you were going to trade for a Cottonee. How are you going to get one if you don’t have a Pokémon to trade?"

“Simple. I catch one.”

Wally just looked even more confused after I said that. I couldn’t help but to smirk.

“There isn’t just one way to trade Pokémon,” I said, starting to explain. “Pokéballs are registered to trainers, and the registration has to be swapped for the trade to be complete. The easiest method is simply to exchange balls in person and note the exchange with a Nurse Joy, but I’ll be doing something else. I plan to connect to someone else online, and trade with them over the Pokémon Center computer. I’ve already done something similar to that with a friend, when I sent her a Hitmonchan.

“I’ve actually already made a post in the Hoenn generalist forums detailing that I’m looking for a Cottonee, and noted that I was in Slateport and able to catch any nearby Pokémon in exchange. The second someone states they want a Pokémon that lives nearby, I can go out and convince a Pokémon of that species to be traded so I can get a Cottonee in return. It’s simple, easy, and I won’t be giving away any of my friends. So there’s no reason to freak out, okay?”

Wally nodded, satisfied with my answer and memorizing all of the new information I gave him. He was as attached to his Pokémon as I was to mine, so the idea of trading any of them felt like a betrayal of trust.

Since our conversation reached its natural conclusion, Wally soon left the Slateport Pokémon Center to head to the beach. He hadn’t had the chance to visit a beach in the past since there weren’t any public beaches nearby both his home in Verdanturf and his old home in Petalburg, so he was really looking forward to today.

After he left, I sat at a PC to browse the generalist forums while I waited for a response. It was much of the same classic nonsense and memes, as well as a few threads dedicated to people answering the question “How far did you get this season?” Reading through people describing their short journeys, teams, and Gym Battles was actually a decent time killer.

It didn’t take too long for someone to respond to my post. I wasn’t too surprised someone had one available to trade because Cottonee was relatively common within Petalburg Woods, and could even occasionally be found around Oldale. The reply on my post explained that the trainer had caught a Cottonee the previous month, but never had time to properly train it or truly make a connection to it since they decided to become a Water Type specialist instead soon after it joined their team. They wanted to trade it for a Staryu, which originally only lived in Lilycove, but spread to Slateport Beach due to the Aether Foundation's attempts to increase biodiversity. If I could catch a Staryu for the trainer, they would trade me their Cottonee.

I sent a message accepting their request, then logged off the computer and stood up to head out. Since Wally had already left for the beach, I could potentially meet up with him to see if he wanted to help. I doubted he would be doing much else right now considering how cold it was out.

Hoenn was normally a warm region, but since it was almost winter, today was one of the rare days where the clouds were gray and it was mildly cold out. The beach was practically empty, so I was able to recognize Wally's green hair pretty easily.

I stepped onto the sand from the boardwalk and sent out Ponyta to walk next to me. He took careful steps inline with mine, and initially struggled to walk over the sand until he adapted to the new environment. The beach was emptier today, but Ponyta had never seen so many people around, and didn’t stop taking in his surroundings even after I found and approached Wally.

Wally was standing in the sand with almost all of his Pokémon. Magneton wasn't out since it was easily damaged by sand getting in the wrong place, and Flygon wasn’t out because it still barely listened to Wally. Honestly, it acted like it only stuck around because Wally fed it a lot. The rest of his Pokémon seemed fine, however.

Right now, Wally was wearing a pair of swim trunks he bought in the city, and was looking absolutely miserable. He had been so excited to go to the beach but the cold weather was making him shiver.

"You should put on a shirt. Comfey won't be happy if you caught a cold," I said.

Wally unhappily acknowledged my request and bent over to grab one from his backpack. Comfey shot me a thankful look from where she was resting around Gallade's neck.

Once Wally was a bit more dressed, he spoke up to complain.

"I didn't even get a chance to go in the water. I was already too cold just from being on the beach, and Comfey wouldn't let me."

Comfey looked a bit smug at being able to make sure her trainer would stay healthy. Even though Wally acted a lot better, he still had a weak constitution and none of us wanted him to get sick.

"I'm sorry you weren't able to properly enjoy the beach,” I said, “but maybe you can help me with a fun activity that still involves it?"

Wally looked at me, interested.

"Oh! Is it a treasure hunt? Sand castle building contest? Beach volleyball?"

I hummed in response.

"Hmm, I guess I would say it's closest to a treasure hunt? I need to find a Staryu to trade for a Cottonee. If you're willing to help, we can make a competition out of it."

Wally cheered when I mentioned a competition. I wasn’t planning on making it anything serious, but I was glad I could at least improve his gloomy beach day regardless.

"First one to convince a Staryu to be traded wins,” Wally said. “What's the punishment if we lose?"

I blinked at that.

"What? Punishment?"

"Yup, Punishment!" Wally said excitedly. "My cousin Wanda says that if there's ever a competition, the loser has to suffer a punishment. Otherwise it's not worth doing."

And his Uncle thinks I'm the bad influence.

I tried to think of something, but it was Wally who came up with the idea.

"How about the loser has to prepare everyone’s meals for a month?" he said.

I blinked again.

"That’s a long time for something as simple as a single catch. A week would be a lot better."

"Okay, a week it is!” he said, interjecting before I could say anything else. “We can message each other once we catch one, then meet back up here. Alright, ready.... setgo!"

Wally turned and stumbled off through the sand as fast as he could. His Pokémon chased after him, and Gallade shot me an apologetic look before he left. I didn't mind that Wally was so energetic. He was so sad when I first met him, it was nice to be constantly reminded how much happier he was.

I didn't send out any other members of my team, but turned to Ponyta.

"All right, are you ready to search?"

Ponyta gave a firm snort of readiness as a response. It stopped looking around to face me determinedly. This would be the first time I asked him to do anything other than play.

"Let's use this as your first official training exercise. What can you sense using your Psychic powers?"

Ponyta closed his eyes and focused, presumably tapping into his innate Psychic potential as a Psychic Type. He had trained this a bit when we played Hide and Seek back in Mauville, so he wasn’t doing something completely unfamiliar. His breathing slowed while he focused, and he unconsciously dug his front hooves into the sand.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and breathed out, then trotted a few feet away and started to dig in the sand.

I walked over to see where he was digging, and promptly fell on my rear as a large white and purple horseshoe crab scurried out from the hole and fled, startling me in the process. I glanced over to where the Wimpod dug itself a new hole a distance away, then stood up.

"Huh. I didn't even know they brought that species to Hoenn," I said.

I wiped some sand off of my clothes and tried my best to pretend that didn’t scare me as much as it did.

"Alright, Ponyta. Let's try this again but closer to the water. Staryu can evolve into a Psychic Type, so look for something... brighter? Denser? Stronger? I'm not sure, but lead me to anything that stands out. Don’t feel bad if you can’t find any."

Ponyta gave another snort of acknowledgement, then closed his eyes and carefully walked forward. I followed by his side, making sure to help him keep his balance on the uneven ground. He meandered around, probably detecting more buried Pokémon, but when he got close to any strange mounds, he would steer away, clearly not thinking they were what we were looking for.

I had done research online into how to properly train Ponyta, and the best way I could describe the Psychic Type forums was to say that the people on it bought into mysticism a bit too much. I knew that human psychics were a thing, since both Gym Leader Sabrina in Kanto and Elite Four Member Caitlyn in Unova were psychic, but the posts on the forums were a bit too esoteric for me to fully understand them. It almost read like a conspiracy forum, except there were still a good number of posts asking "am i Psychic???" with little to do with Pokémon. It seemed to be relatively unmoderated compared to other forums, which I found strange. I did manage to find a thread for tips and information for beginning Psychic Type specialists, which I followed to help out Ponyta.

The most basic Psychic skill was simple detection. Just feeling the presence of something was important to actually interact with it, so all Psychics needed to train that skill to be useful in battle. From there, Psychics needed to develop basic telekinesis, then their own specific skills based on their species. Galarian Ponyta were best at kinetic manipulation, which generally meant self empowerment and increased speed. The species was also skilled in healing and empathetic sensing, which only a few Psychic Type species could do. I chalked it up as a benefit of being a unicorn.

In his search, Ponyta tried to lead me to fellow cloudy-day beach-goers a few times, but I helped steer him away to not disturb the other people on the beach. He did find a missing electronic watch, which was weird since it didn't have a mind, but then I remembered that Rotom existed, and steered him away from the potential Ghost. Eventually, he led me to a large rocky outcropping near Slateport's lighthouse on the north-eastern side of the beach. He opened his eyes and whinnied, nodding his head to gesture at the rock.

I looked at the large gray boulder worn smooth by the waves.

"Huh, at least now I know where the ‘Slate’ in ‘Slateport’ comes from. Ponyta, are you sure there are Staryu nearby?"

He snorted and nodded his head.

Rather than approach the boulder and distrust the Psychic, I rotated around to see if I could see anything from another angle. There was a sudden shift as a darkened line from a shadow appeared on the boulder before fading away, and I realized Ponyta was right.

"So there are Staryu here. They're just blending in with Camouflage. Good job, Ponyta."

Ponyta let loose a happy whinny.

Now that I knew what to look for, I realized there were dozens of Staryu attached to the rock. I still wasn't comfortable with forcibly catching a Pokémon, and I wasn't sure what to say if I was going to trade them away, so I needed to figure out how to catch them.

I walked back over to Ponyta and plopped on the ground next to him. I leaned my head onto my fist and began to think. In the end, I only managed to create a really stupid option.

"Hey, so do any of you want to go to another city?" I yelled out at the boulder.

I immediately scrambled backwards as several Water Guns aimed where I was sitting. Ponyta galloped to hide behind me. He was still too young to battle.

Undeterred, I called out again. That sudden set of attacks revealed their numbers, and there were enough of them that simply asking should get at least a handful of positive responses.

"I'm going to try to catch one of you, so if you don't want to be sent to another trainer, just run away and don't battle me!"

Immediately, it seemed like almost the entire boulder shifted as the mass of Staryu either moved to be on the other side, or crawled over to enter the water. A few of them hopped down onto the sand to face me.

Since the Staryu were so weak, I would have sent Ponyta to try to fight if he was a month older, but he was just far too young. Florges would have been a good option since she could easily tank their attacks and use super effective Grass Type moves, but I ended up sending Mawile out instead. While her opponents were weak, she needed more battle experience and this was a good opportunity.

Mawile appeared from her Heavy Ball and looked around to see the three Staryu that would be her opponents. She glanced back briefly and noticed Ponyta watching, then puffed up her chest almost imperceptibly, wanting to show off for our newly hatched team member.

The Staryu started off by bending their top legs forward and shooting out a compressed stream of water in a Water Gun at Mawile. She easily sidestepped to avoid the attacks, and moved inwards to get close. One of them stopped its Water Gun attack, jumped up, and launched itself in a spin at Mawile. She brought her jaws forward and enhanced them with Iron Defense, using them as a shield. The Staryu hit with its weak Normal Type attack, and practically did no damage to her. She proceeded to easily faint it by sneaking in a Feint Attack as a retaliation.

Mawile looked down at the fainted Staryu, clearly not expecting the Water Type to be so weak, then turned around to see Ponyta standing there with sparkling eyes, watching her fight in the first battle he’d ever seen.

Facing forward to hide her smile, Mawile ran forward at the other two Staryu, where one of them used Rapid Spin like the previous one, but this time she managed to knock it out with a Sucker Punch before it could even touch her.

Two Staryu were now unconscious behind Mawile with their gems dark. She stepped towards the last one, filled with cockiness with how easily she was able to faint the other two. However, instead of using Rapid Spin, this Staryu's gem glowed purple and sent out a beam not unlike Ninetales's.

Mawile was hit with the Confuse Ray and, strutting forward the wrong way without realizing it, slammed an Iron Head down into the sand a distance away from the last Staryu.

She glanced back to see if Ponyta saw her "faint" her opponent, but the Psychic Type merely looked at her and cocked his head, not understanding what she was doing.

Mawile turned to face the Staryu (looking the wrong way again) and ran at nothing, trying to attack a different illusion.

Meanwhile, the last Staryu also stood back and watched Mawile as she ran around and attacked the illusions only she could see. After Mawile assaulted a few more illusions, Staryu casually walked up to me without fighting.

"Do you want to be caught now so I can send you to a new trainer?" I asked it while Mawile ran around in confusion.

It gave a single, positive “HYAH!”, and bent its top leg to resemble a nod. I pulled out a basic Pokéball and held it down to catch the Staryu. It tapped the ball with a leg, and was quickly caught within it. The Staryu probably wanted to fight before getting caught like some Pokémon tend to do, but seeing Mawile so easily knock out its friends probably encouraged it to give up.

I called out to Mawile to hopefully get her to stop.

"Alright, Mawile. I caught the Staryu!"

My voice snapped Mawile out of her confusion, and she looked around, embarrassed. I knew it seemed cruel to let Mawile spend so long under confusion, but considering how weak her opponents were, it was a safe way to let her experience that debilitating effect to be more ready against it in the future.

Mawile trudged back next to me, disappointed in herself, but Ponyta walked forward to comfort her by nuzzling his face on the side of her head. She gave a small smile and ran her hands through his mane.

I recalled Mawile now that she was feeling better, and looked down at the two fainted Staryu. Ponyta looked up at me pleadingly, and I reached into my backpack to bring out Potions. It wouldn't be right to leave them here, injured like this. However, both Staryu ended up fleeing after I healed them with medicine. I didn't mind since it was my Pokémon that knocked them out.

I walked back to where I first encountered Wally to meet back up. I had already called him to tell him I found one, which made him pretty disappointed. Apparently he had found a Starmie, but no Staryu, so this competition was my victory.

When we met back up, Wally didn’t seem upset at all that he would need to prepare food for the next week. In fact, he almost seemed excited to do it.

“Why do you look like you’re looking forward to the punishment? You’re acting very suspicious.”

“Oh, no reason,” he said, smiling. “You haven’t figured out Ponyta’s favorite flavor yet, right?”

I gasped dramatically.

“You planned this! You knew that I was waiting until he’s older to do that. So you really just wanted to spend more time with Ponyta then, huh?”

Wally hummed happily.

“Wanda says it’s best to make it so that even if you lose, you win. It’s not my fault you didn’t know her advice.”

I grumbled at his sudden deviousness, and Wally just continued to smile. We split up soon after that, Wally heading to the ocean since the afternoon sun was peeking through the clouds and warming it up, and me heading back to Pokémon Center to make my trade and to meet my new team member.