“Okay, Yo, that’s enough,” Claire called, ending the sparring match between Aura, my Riolu, and Yo, her Meditite. Since leaving Celestic Town three days ago, we had let the two of them train with each other every chance we got. Their training was very limited, with no actual moves being used to train, but that only meant that they were working on their basic skills and movements, without the added hassle of bringing their attacks into it.

The effects of that training had caused both Claire’s and my jaw to drop, especially the progress made by Aura. As one would expect from a newly hatched Pokémon, Aura’s whole style had been simple and straightforward, without any feints or tricks. On the other hand, Yo had quite a bit of experience, fighting in the Coronal Mountains and getting trained by Claire, in addition to her innate intelligence and tendency to meditate on her experiences and develop a somewhat profound style of combat.

But now, after only three days, Aura’s style had already shifted markedly, away from the simple attacks that purely relied on his innate strength but towards a more crafty and considered approach to combat. While he was far from being Yo’s match, the difference in level and the resulting gap in basic attributes was simply too large, he had grown a tremendous amount.

“He’s doing quite well,” Claire complimented, looking at the panting Aura, while Yo was already sitting comfortably, her eyes closed. She was probably going through the brief fight, training herself even as she trained Aura, both of them gaining insights and experience.

“He is. I doubt he’ll be able to truly match Yo, not if they take their full abilities into account, but he’s doing well,” I nodded, as I considered their future. Aura would always remain at a disadvantage in a serious fight, that was simply how the match-up worked, but that didn’t mean he would always lose. It would be a difficult slog to overcome the type disadvantage but from what I could see, my little buddy was working hard on it.

A grin appeared on my face when Aura studied Yo for a moment before copying her posture, sitting cross-legged and closing his eyes. I didn’t know if he was just mimicking her actions or if he was trying to meditate on the encounter as well, but I was willing to wait and see. If he managed to delve deeper into the secrets of combat, it would be a tremendous step up in his ability. Not that he was in a hurry, but given his parentage, I wanted him to be the best he could be. Otherwise, I’d let Cynthia down.

“We should have lunch soon,” Claire looked past me, to see what progress Cliff and Lucas had made with our lunch. We had instituted a rotation, making sure that everyone did their fair part and right now, it was time for Claire and me to relax, though watching our two companions, while our partners were sparring was quite entertaining in its own right. It wasn’t that Cliff and Lucas were incompetent when it came to preparing food, they just had a weird clumsiness and things just happened to go wrong. Things would get blown away by a sudden gust of wind, small rocks would drop just wrong and land in the food and similar events of pure bad luck, though their luck wasn’t made better by Lucas’ tendency to play the occasional prank on Cliff, or on any of us if he had a chance.

His pranks were never anything truly malicious, simply annoying little tricks that he licked to play, nothing that would waste more than a minute or five so it was mostly tolerable. In turn, the three of us had quietly decided to push more of the chores onto him, as he clearly had too much time and energy on his hands, so he could do more work. Up in the mountains, that didn’t mean much as there was simply no way to gather wood, leaving us with Champ and Charm as our only sources of heat and fire but once we were back in the hills and the long stretch of coniferous forest between the Coronal Mountains and Snowpoint City, he would be the one to gather wood. Maybe that would give him an outlet for his energy and if that wasn’t enough to cool his ardour, we’d have to talk to him.

“Dammit,” Cliff softly cursed, when Claire and I walked up, looking around with a frown on his face. Lucas wasn’t present, maybe on a small errand or something, leaving Cliff to finish things up.

“What’s wrong?” Claire asked, “Another prank?” she looked around, trying to see what was going on. Cliff just snorted in reply, before finally reaching under a small boulder and pulling out a shiny metal spoon, a frown on his face when he realised he would have to clean it before continuing to cook.

“Can you keep an eye on things here?” he asked, getting nods from both of us.

“It’s getting worse,” Claire softly complained, watching as Cliff walked away.

“The pranks?” I asked, a frown forming on my face.

“Yeah, it started becoming a problem when the three of us were doing our tasks and since we left Celestic, it has only become worse. I think he’s a little afraid of you so he mostly targets Cliff, though I’ve been subjected to a few, too,” she explained and my frown deepened, as I made a mental note to keep an eye on that. If he was afraid of me, I might be able to talk sense into him, before his shit strained the group dynamic too far. Not that I knew what to say, but maybe I would find the right words when the time came.

“Hey, where’s Cliff?” Lucas asked, walking up from somewhere beyond our sight.

“He’s gone over to the brook, cleaning up your latest ‘joke’,” Claire told him, a certain edge to her tone. Lucas just frowned, before shrugging and walking in the same direction, leaving us be.

“Strange,” I muttered, not quite sure why Lucas hadn’t said anything, normally he was quite proud of his pranks, wanting us to laugh at his jokes. At least that was my impression, that he didn’t want to truly prank us but that he wanted to lighten the mood and make us laugh, using pranks to accomplish that goal.

“As I said, his pranks have been getting worse. They at least used to be funny, but now he’s just getting lazy, or maybe he just doesn’t know what to do. Hiding stuff or putting old barries somewhere, things like that have been the vast majority of his latest pranks. Just lame,” Claire grumbled, watching Lucas walk away.

“If he continued like that for too much longer, I’ll talk to him. Maybe it’s going to help,” I promised before we shelved that particular conversation when the two of them returned, neither of them looking completely happy.

After the annoyance before lunch, we continued on our way, occasionally having to fight against wild Pokémon, but making good speed overall. The sky was slowly getting a little cloudy, making all of us rather apprehensive, as it looked as if there’d be a storm rolling through, nothing we wanted to get caught by in the open.

“I’ll have Snuggles look for a cave or something. Could you send Myna out, too?” Lucas asked, looking at Claire as he pulled out a Pokéball and sent out Snuggles, his Gligar.

“Sure,” she nodded, quickly pulling her Pokéball out and calling her Staravia out. Myna was a lot faster than Snuggles, but Snuggles had the advantage of his ultrasonic abilities, allowing her to determine the size of a cave from a distance. Both had their own advantages and with a bit of guidance from their Trainers, they both took off, searching for a cave that would allow us to hide from the weather.

It didn’t take long for Myna to return but even though it only took a few minutes, those few minutes were enough for the clouds to turn from somewhat grey and unhappy looking to turn into full-blown, dark storm clouds, with occasional flashes of lightning to tell everyone that nature wasn’t playing around.

“Looks like Zapdos is angry,” Cliff joked, as we quickly followed the chirping from Myna, getting off the path we had been on and scrabbling up a hillside. Luckily, we didn’t have to go too far and as we moved, Snuggles returned as well, getting called back into her Pokéball when she didn’t indicate that she found something.

“Who knows?” I snorted, quite happy to see the opening above which Myna had landed. It didn’t look like a large cave, barely big enough to allow us entry, but that might be for the best, it might mean that no Pokémon was already living there.

We managed to slip into the cave just in time, before we had put down our backpacks, the rapidly swelling wind brought the first drops of rain, the drops not so much falling from the sky but flying sideways with the wind.

“Well done, Myna,” I complimented the bird, or rather the Pokéball she was already resting in, “You found us a cave that’s sideways to the wind,” I grinned, looking out into the rapidly worsening weather.

“We’ll be here for a bit,” I looked at the others before calling out Charm so we’d be able to investigate our newly discovered shelter.