I got to incorporate the new foods into Ladon and Adamant’s meals for the first time when I woke up. I raised an eyebrow when I saw how enthusiastically the two dug into their meals, Ladon wolfing down a huge quantity of dragon and dark specialized food while Adamant absorbed chunks of metal.

“Alright, score one for Professor Rowan, bigger portions, specialized too, and harder metals. Definitely works,” I murmured to myself, smiling at the way Ladon’s little stubby tail wagged happily.

Once I’d finished taking care of their morning needs and returned them, I made my way downstairs to meet up with Dawn. She was sitting on one of the chairs close to the door, looking up as I walked over to her.

“What held you up?” She asked, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

“I was feeding Ladon and Adamant, which takes a little while. Especially with all the new foods I picked up last night.” Dawn laughed softly at the slightly pained expression on my face.

Jabbing my finger at her I spoke sternly, “Oh, just you wait little miss! I can’t wait until you have a huge pokémon you have to try and feed! Then I’ll be the one laughing as you wince at the costs!”

She held up her hands, still laughing, “Alright, alright! Fine, no laughing! It’s all good!” Her obviously suppressed laugh that followed right after she spoke wasn’t very convincing. After taking a moment to collect herself, she let out a calming breath and stood up.

I rolled my eyes, “Alright, so, what’s the plan?”

Dawn shrugged, “I figure we get an appointment for our gym challenge and then find the nearest trainer park, try and get whatever training we can in.”

She saw my raised eyebrow and huffed, “Well we’ve both been to this city a few times, and while it’s a lovely place, it’s not the easiest on the eyes. I figure we can save any sightseeing for some of the other towns and cities.”

When she said it that way, it was hard to argue with. “Alright, that’s a fair point actually,” I admitted, “So, Gym first and then trainer park? Sounds good, let’s get going.”

Without much further ado, the two of us set out, finding navigating to be a much easier task in the early morning and with more energy. Only fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves in front of the Gym, the large building ever so slightly imposing now that we were about to enter.

“Well, here goes…” Dawn muttered just loud enough to hear. Not wanting to be left behind, I quickly followed behind. Fortunately, we only had to wait in a small line to be seen.

I watched as Dawn made her reservation, getting slotted in for a badge challenge in four days. I made note of all the information the clerk needed in order to have it ready. When it was my turn, I ran through the questions quickly, with only one change.

The clerk stared down at my trainer license for a moment, before looking back at me, “You’re an A-rank?”

I pursed my lips slightly, “Yes sir, there were extenuating circumstances, but I’m relatively confident we can do it. And if not, well, that’s hardly the gym’s problem.” I shrugged. The clerk clearly had no idea how to respond to that, and simply finished marking me down for the same day as Dawn.

Only an hour after getting in line, we were both done. “Off to the trainer park then,” Dawn said, stretching out slightly. She paused and glanced once at my pokéballs, “I imagine one with private facilities? If you still don’t want to reveal Ladon?”

I shook my head, “You saw how much of a stir Adamant caused yesterday. I mostly did that to test the waters.” I let out a long sigh, “Ladon is about as rare as Adamant, but with his nature… I just don’t think it’d worth it until we’re a little stronger.”

Dawn nodded, making me grimace, “Sorry about the extra expense…”

She waved away my apology, “Nah, it’s alright. Besides, if I have a similar problem in the future I have no doubt you’ll do the same.”

I agreed immediately, “It’s the least I could do, thanks for this.”

She shook her head with a smile as we started walking out of the gym, “I told you, it’s alright. Let’s just find that trainer park, alright?”

It took us a surprisingly long time to find a trainer park we both trusted and that offered private facilities. Either way, we did find one and quickly rented out one of their rooms for the next three days for two hundred pokédollars each.

Moving into our room, I nodded slowly, looking over the equipment while Dawn made an appreciative sound. “This isn’t half bad,” Dawn said quietly, looking over specialized dummy designed to take heavy impacts and reset to be hit again, “Some of this is pretty similar to so equipment the professor has.”

I nodded as she spoke, spotting the set of increasingly heavy weights for pokémon to lift, either physically or mentally. The room was ringed with a running track and the door had a buzzer that would sound if someone was about to enter, to let any pokémon on the track to stop running.

There was a couple dozen more specialized pieces of equipment scattered through the space, along with a relatively big pool of water and a few bare patches of ground for the different types of pokémon to take advantage of. There was even an aerial obstacle course for flying types!

“Yeah, yeah this should do nicely.” I said after a few minutes looking around. Me and Dawn looked at each other before we each began releasing our pokémon.

Adamant immediately began looking around the room, seemingly fascinated by all the different equipment. Ladon on the other hand, looked around once, seemed to take it all in, and then sat down and waited to hear what we would be doing.

I let Admant float around for a few minutes before calling him over again. “Alright, we have our first gym battle in four days, in the afternoon. That means we have three days to train for it, then we have half the day to rest before we fight.” I looked over the equipment again before addressing Adamant, “Today we’re mostly going to focus on your psychic abilities, strengthening them and controlling them.”

I pointed out the set of weights, “I want you to work on lifting those. Start with the lightest one, and start moving it in a circle around you. Then, if you can, lift the next one up, and spin it in a circle the other way around. Keep going, alternating the directions, for as many as you can.” I waited a moment, thinking of any other rules I wanted to add, “Oh, make sure the weights don’t touch each other. Do you think you can do that?”

Adamant looked at the weights for a few moments, it’s glowing red eye panning across the set that encompassed a one kilogram weight, and went all the way to a one ton weight. After contemplating it for a couple seconds, Adamant bobbed in the air and started heading over to them. “Come get me when you find your limit, I want to see where we’re starting from!”

Ensuring Adamant was doing alright, I watched for a few minutes before turning back to Ladon. The king pokémon had finally reached his full growth, as a Deino at least. Coming in at five feet and two inches tall, with over seventy-five kilograms, Ladon was monstrously big, and he’d only get bigger. Luckily, that size came with an increase in not only physical might, but powerwise as well.

“Ladon, you’ve got plenty of options for dealing with most pokémon, but not as many for pokémon made of harder materials, rock and steel types mostly. So, I want to work on that.” Ladon tilted his head as he lifted himself to his feet.

“I have two moves in mind, both should be relatively easy to learn, since they’re moves Deino usually learn. Work Up and Slam. Slam should give you a way to deal out some heavy physical damage without having to Tackle, and Work Up should be a move we also want to use in battle. A general boost to your offense should be devastating, especially if they give us time to stack them.”

Ladon let out a pleased growl at the idea, the deep sound making me smile, “I looked up some descriptors, and Slam should be relatively easy to get down.” I started walking towards one of the dummies that were set up, making sure it was one rated for heavy impacts. “All you need to do, is try and channel the same energy as Tackle, but concentrated in only one limb, be it a paw or your tail.”

I stood off the the side, watching as Ladon glared at the dummy for a few minutes. Every once in a while, a shimmer of the white energy Tackle was made from would appear somewhere on Ladon’s body. When Ladon eventually swiped at the dummy with one of his forward legs, the telltale aura of Tackle bloomed, allowing him to batter back the dummy, but causing him to huff irritatedly.

“No, that was good!” I quickly reassured, causing him to glance at me skeptically, “Seriously, the first step to manipulating normal energy into Slam is using it without having to move, like you do with Tackle, that was good!”

Ladon looked at me for a moment before huffing again, but he did seem a little happier. After half and hour of encouraging Ladon as he slowly made progress on learning Slam, I felt Adamant bump into my shoulder, causing me to turn to look.

It bobbed its head towards the weights, indicating it was done. I let Ladon know I was going to work with Adamant for a little while and followed after it.

Arriving at the weights, I found a set of them set aside that equalled fifty-five kilograms. “Okay Adamant, bring them up.” I said.

Adamant’s red eye flared brighter as the six weights began to lift into the air, spiraling in opposite directions. I noticed that the final weight was wobbling ever so slightly, showing that this was definitely Adamant’s limit for now.

I took out a little notepad and quickly wrote down the weight and noted down the slight wobble. “Alright, so the plan until we take a break in,” I glanced at a clock on the wall, “Three hours is just to work on this, alright?” I pointed out the heavier weights, starting with a fifty kilogram one. “We’re going to start with strength, just practice grasping, and lifting them as quickly and effectively as you can.”

Adamant rolled in place, emitting a small artificial noise that sounded like an affirmative. I watched as a palpable dark-pink aura formed around the fifty kilogram weight and hoisted it into the air. “Good, good, now move it around a little and set it back down,” Adamant floated the weight in a little circle before setting it back down.

“Good job, after our break we’re going to start working on Confusion, and if you get it down, we’re going to see if we can try and teach you Protect.” Adamant let out a small inquisitive chirping noise.

“Yeah, it’s a little out of a Beldum’s normal range, but I think you can do it, and it would be very helpful to have as an option. But Confusion will be our main goal, so if that’s all we can do, that’ll be fine.”

I bounced back and forth between Ladon and Adamant, giving them hints and ideas here and there. Every once in a while I’d glance over to watch how Dawn was training Tidal and Zephyr. She seemed to have worked their training together. Tidal seemed to be working on its accuracy and firing speed for Water Gun, while Zephyr had to use Double Team and Detect to dodge and avoid as many as she could.

By the time we took a break, we’d made real progress. Adamant had managed to jump up to just below sixty kilograms, and Ladon was managing to channel Tackle into only half their body, I was starting to be able to visually see the energy shift and grow closer and closer to a proper Slam.

Me and Dawn chatted during our break, comparing some of our ideas on training and ways we could combine them like she had. I also expressed an interest in having Adamant take a turn at dodging Tidal, making the steel pokémon glare at me for a few moments.

Before we went back to training we decided to share our strategies for the gym, and we both seemed to have pretty much the same strategy. We both would try and use one pokémon to get through the battle if possible, Tidal for her, and Adamant for me. Other than that, with how short a time we’d been training, there was little else we could do for this gym, other than play for our type advantage.

Our time training slowly blended into itself, the three days blurring together. We had made some appreciable gains however. Adamant’s psychic ability had improved a lot faster than everything I’d read has said it should, but I wasn’t complaining.

Adamant had managed to increase it’s weight to just under eighty kilograms, as well as learning Confusion. I was certain we were just a few steps away from getting Protect too. Adamant had seemed to be using their psychic ability to help shape the normal type energy, speeding along the learning process quite a bit.

Ladon on the other hand, with just a few moves, had his offensive ability skyrocket. Having learned both Slam and Work Up, he was quickly becoming a dangerous opponent to give any time to.

I’d worked with both and come up with some simple commands I could give that would tell them what to do.

Adamant’s commands were Raise, Range, and Gravity. Raise referred to the strategy we’d used against Tidal, using Telekinesis to raise the enemy in the air and attack them that way. Range involved mostly dodging attacks, using defensive moves, and blasting at the opponent with Confusion. And Gravity was a nasty combination Dawn had helped me think up. Gravity involved Adamant knocking the opponent down, and using Telekinesis to press them down and then unleashing Iron Heads and Confusions on them.

Ladon had three general commands as well, Set-Up, Dragon, and Batter. Set-Up was a general command that consisted of him using Focus Energy and Work Up, boosting his abilities. Dragon focused on Dragon Breath and using physical attacks to keep opponents at a distance so Ladon could burn them. Batter was a simple but effective strategy; Ladon would simply get up close and start pounding away, Tackles, Slams, Crunches, everything.

So when our gym appointments came up, I felt rather prepared all things considered. Me and Dawn both let out long breaths, before looking at each other and laughing softly.

Dawn was going first, and she had given permission for me to sit in and watch, so I headed to the small stands set off to the side and watched Dawn step up to the trainer platform at one side of the rockstrewn battle field.