6 First Impressions (3/3)

But a declaration was just that, a statement. Words.

She needed to back up that resolve with action. To fulfill her destiny, she needed strength.

It was obvious, however, that her master was holding back on her. Her earlier performance must've been so pitiful that he decided to keep their training slow for now.

She was perfectly fine after their first training session, after all. She could've kept going after that berry.

Though she did like his worry. It felt nice to be cherished. To be doted on. Yet it was also annoying.

A truly vexing problem.

Or maybe… Yes, that was it! It was all a test! A test to see how firm her willpower was in the face of constant strife.

And through failure, her master taught her a valuable lesson.

Even if her mind was strong, it wasn't enough if her body couldn't keep up.

Her master was truly the greatest. Even such a small training session showed that his wisdom far eclipsed her own.

Maybe that's why he was so strong. His mind was just so beyond his body that he must have to train often to keep up.

She had to follow in his footsteps. To prove to him that she understood his subtle but profound lesson.

So she stood while the master slept. She maneuvered her way out and raced through the streets and buildings, ending up at the same training spot as before.

Her claws gleamed in the moonlight, her body filling with the energy that connected all beings with a semblance of life.

The energy that sought to stay still. To be ordinary and calm.

She planted her feet. And began digging.

To both prove her strength and to improve herself, she would dig a hole through the world!

Her claws would then come out the other side, and pierce the heavens!

[}-{]

Izan was having a very odd day.

Sandshrew, for some reason, looked worse for wear than before she went to sleep. Plus she ate quite a bit more than the Pokemart guy told him she'd have to.

If whatever this was kept up, he'd need to buy more Pokemon food before the month was up.

From there the day was going fairly normally until his high-intensity training ended. Instead of almost collapsing like before, Sandshrew suddenly bowed at him before going off to dig a hole with ferocious zeal.

Most likely just a Sandshrew thing. Though the bow was cute.

So instead of interrupting whatever she was up to, he sat down under a tree and played with his Pokegear.

Despite his financial circumstances, his new life never felt like a struggle. That feeling of desperation and ambition just wasn't there.

Sure, he had a goal. A lofty one at that.

But for whatever reason, he couldn't help himself from feeling calm ever since Sandshrew came along. A part of him was screaming to find out why. A part of him that was mostly just curious at the rapid change.

So he satiated his curiosity differently.

And that's when the day got even weirder.

See, he'd decided to check out the app that the League installed on his Pokegear, thinking it was a bootleg Pokedex or something.

In reality, it was just the League website again but in app form. On top of that, he also had an account with access to the numerous trainer-only forums.

With his account finally made, he had insider information about how the league worked and how Pokemon in general worked.

And upon checking out the league's inner workings, he came to his first conclusion of the day.

'I have no idea in what version of the Pokemon world I'm in.'

See, the first thing he noticed was that you could look at anyone's profile page. And each one had fairly intrusive information.

For example, he found out that there were numbers associated with each rank and that Volkner- the eighth gym leader of the Sinnoh region, was A-Class Rank 22.

In essence, he was the 22nd best A-Class trainer according to the League.

And considering that everyone who wasn't in the top 999 was relegated to C-Class, he was not to be fucked with. It even listed his seen Pokemon and their average level of 63.

So Izan did the reasonable thing anyone in his situation would do, he looked up every notable Pokemon trainer he could think of. And the results were… off.

Blue Oak existed, for one. Though he wasn't that strong yet, it seemed. He was a C-Class trainer who'd only recently started his journey. He was rising fast at least.

The confusing part was when Red didn't show up anywhere. Not even as a D-Class or unranked. Nothing. He'd even tried his really old Japanese name, Isamu Akai. Still, nothing.

On top of that confusing revelation that Red just didn't exist, Ash somehow did.

How the hell was that possible? Misty and Brock were already established and powerful trainers who'd inherited their respective gyms. Who would Ash even travel with?

It was giving him a headache trying to theorize what the hell was going on.

So he stopped, deciding to look through some of the forums about how Pokemon worked and the specifics of each detail.

He skimmed through the threads of actually useful information before his eyes landed on one about Pokemon and leveling up.

Clicking it, his eyes opened wide as he read on.

'Pokemon are like Saiyans.'

It flipped his thought process about training Pokemon on his head.

The first detail that caught his eye was that Pokemon leveled up when you trained them.

That was because levels were just a culmination of the Pokemon's physical prowess and energy capacity compared to others of the same species.

So obviously, working out would increase their level eventually.

The second most prominent way made him have the thought about Saiyans.

Pokemon increased in power and broke through their limits whenever they recovered from great injuries derived from battle.

Due to this, the thread mentioned that Pokemon training was a balancing act of pushing your Pokemon to the very edge without actually hurting them. That method was much faster than just simple training.

Training normally like they were, it was estimated that it would take them around a month to hit level 10 with a standard starter Pokemon.

And training only got slower from there.

That's why people travel most of the time. So they can go in the wild and battle dangerous Pokemon, leveling up fast when they scarcely succeed.

If he wanted to speed up Sandshrew's training without doing that, he'd need more food. And better food. Training items, too. Now he understood why people say Pokemon training costs a lot.

It wasn't that you couldn't do it with little money. It was that the results you'd get would be staggeringly slow.

And taking in the fact that his weekly stipend was 125₽…

'Maybe I should go work as a Fisherman man. At least then I'd have a bit more money.'

"Hiya!"

He was startled out of his thoughts when a high-pitched girlish voice came from above.

Looking up, he saw a pale girl with short green hair and red eyes staring back at him. The first thing he noticed was that her wardrobe was… very green.

Under her kimono was green while the kimono itself looked green somehow but was just white. And all of that was accented by red.

[Image]

There was a theme there that he wasn't getting.

"Uh… hi?" He waved awkwardly, unprepared for randomly appearing girls.

"YOSH!!! A most magnificent greeting on a beautiful day such as this!" She suddenly yelled, raising her fist into the air dramatically.

The digging stopped. Sandshrew's head popped out of the hole, staring at the strange girl like she was an idiot.

'…What the fu-'