“Natu, was that a future vision?” Larry repeated himself to his teammate, since the bird hadn’t responded. She instead simply stared up at their trainer.

  She slowly turned to him, looking him up and down with a peaceful look in her eyes as Valerie turned away from the two. Her eyes sharpened when she took in the comment, “My name is Sybil, and I would like you to address me as such, Larry.”

  The combative tone took Larry's focus, “O-Oh, sorry…Sybil…”

  “Good.” It nodded its entire body and then turned towards their trainer, who had returned with her phone in hand. In the split second before Valerie began talking, Larry realized how Sybil had expertly changed the topic just now, ‘So she really is hiding something!’

  “So we’ve finally got some names for the two of you!” She put out a hand to each of them in greeting, “Nice to finally meet you two, Larry, Sybil!”

  Larry let Valerie's fingers pinch his arm into a handshake, while Natu did the same with one of its wings. Valerie turned back to her mother, “Howzzat’ for some normal trainer activities, hmm?!”

  “You’re doing great, honey.” Michelle called back to her daughter, looking over her phone with a barely hidden smile, “Muuuch better than exploring the most dangerous mountain on the continent.”

  “I had guides!” Valerie counters, “It was a guided tour! Very normal!”

  “Tell that to your shoulder.”

  “Hmpf!” She turned away with an overacted huff, back to her Pokemon, “Still, I’m happy you guys got some names, let’s keep getting along from now on!”

  “You bet it!” Larry replies with a flex of his arms.

  Sybil bowed gracefully, “A pleasant thought.”

  …

  “As I said before, I went looking for training regimens and advice to train you two. More specifically, I looked everywhere for advice for raising a Larvitar, Pupitar, and Tyranitar, and unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with much…” Valerie explained to the two of them.

  “Now, advice about Natu and Xatu, that was far easier to come by. They’re rare Pokemon, but not crazy rare.” She pulled out her phone, “The Xatu Line of Pokemon are very effective support Pokemon, they can work wonders in helping out teams. Magic Bounce was mentioned a lot online for all the uses people have found for it.”

  ‘Wow,’ Larry couldn’t help but have a smile tugging at his face when he heard the girl's tone harden as she got into the training mindset, ‘When it comes to training, Valerie does get pretty damn serious.’

  Valerie went on to explain further about Natu and Xatus' niche in many competitive fights, which boiled down to a lot of similar strategies as the ones in the games. Natu and Xatu in modern metagames were primarily used for their ability, with their moveset consisting of a lot of Status Moves to support other Pokemon in the team. They were particularly effective in double battles.

  One thing Larry hadn’t known from the game, though, was something Valerie read off her phone, “Apparently, there are Xatu in competitive leagues which have trained their future sight and Psychic abilities so much that it makes it possible for them to basically predict future moves of the opposing team and dodge accordingly. They can even see the results of a match before it begins.” Sybil's eyes went wide as Valerie continued talking, “Doesn’t that sound crazy?”

  Larry had to nod back seriously to that, “That is wild!” He turned towards Sybil, “Is that normal?”

  “I have never heard of a Xatu with such abilities. Our abilities are far more…esoteric in nature.” Sybil shook her torso from side to side, her eyes were still wide-open as the possibilities washed over her, “That does sound…amazing…”

  “Ooh~” Valerie cooed at the Flying-Type as she poked its side, “I think someone just found their motivation for training, didn’t she?”

  Sybil slapped the finger away from her side in embarrassment before taking note of her actions, “Excuse my behavior…”

  “Aww, nothing to be sorry for.” Valerie answered correctly, “It's logical for Pokemon to be excited for their growth.”

  Valerie once again rose, hands on her hips, “So for you, Sybil, once we have the basics down, we’ll try and train your Psychic side primarily. Many people online guess that your evolution to the next stage is somehow connected to it. If you become a better Psychic, your future sight might also become better. For today, though, we’ll start by just working with your current moveset and getting our teamwork down.” She turned her head to the side like a big golden retriever, “That sounds good?”

  Sybil bowed again, closing its eyes regally, “I am in your hands.”

  “Great!” Valerie tapped away on her phone as she turned to Larry, “Now, Larry!”

  He did a little salute, slapping his ankles together with a CLACK! “Yes, ma’am!”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The girl's mother giggled behind her, “When’d you teach him that?”

  “I didn’t,” She looked back towards her mother, “I guess he must’ve picked it up somewhere? Anyway!” She clapped her hands together, “As I said, I didn’t find much for the Tyranitar-Line of Pokemon.” Slumping and shaking her head disappointingly, she straightened right back up again, “But! I still put together a training regimen as best as I could. It's based on more commonly available Pokemon, which are similar to your evolutionary line and what's available about Tyranitar online!”

  An index finger rose as she read off her phone, “First, Tyranitar are absolute beasts on the battlefield. Nigh unstoppable once started, with extremely powerful attacks which hurt even the most defensive Pokemon on the circuit. Their powerful attacks, coupled with the Sandstorm conjured around them, make them very formidable.” She knelt next to him and turned her Pokemon horizontally, “I found a clip from a fight of one. Here, check this out!”

  A clip on Chatter started playing in which a giant sandstorm buffeted against the invisible walls of an arena. In a single second or so, all the sand particles suddenly stopped dead in the air and fell, revealing a Tyranitar on the right side of the arena. It was charging itself up with brownish energy, which almost rolled off of its body like a blanketing white smoke out of a smoke machine.

  It shifted its weight, leaning to the side like a sumo wrestler until its foot came crashing down so harshly the stage light of the arena briefly flickered off and back on. A huge row of dangerously sharp stones jutted out of the ground at incredible speed, shooting so high into the sky, Larry feared they might smash straight through the closed ceiling of the arena.

  The jagged wave of rock traveled to the other side of the arena at top speed and began converging back into one at the exact spot where a Scizor stood, the Bug-Type anticipated the attack and started a dodging maneuver, but the rocks simply caught up with it instead, accelerating even further in the last second before smashing into the Bugs back at record speed and launching it into a rock formation in the arena, which dramatically shattered into pieces on impact.

  When the video looped back around, Valerie quickly pressed the pause button, and only then did Larry realize that his breath had quickened involuntarily, “Woah…” ‘I knew Tyranitar got strong, but that wasn’t like the raging and thrashing my mom does at all…it was precise and controlled…’

  “Crazy, right?” She smiled back at him with a catty grin on her face. Poking a finger into his chest, his trainer continued, “That’s gonna be you one day. It's gonna take a while, but we’ll get there.”

  A smile crept on Larry's face as he looked up at Valerie. He was already committed, he wouldn’t weasel out now just because of a bit of hard training in the future. He nodded back eagerly, “You can count on me!”

  “Great!” Once again, she tabbed through her phone as she rose from her hunched position, “For now, we’ll train the same stuff as with Sybil, we have to get our synergy between trainer and Pokemon down before we can even think about training seriously.” She took on a more serious tone, “Our fight against the Magmar in Mt. Silver was already pretty insightful, we work pretty well together, but getting everything down perfectly is important. So that’s what we’ll focus on for now.”

  “Also…” She snuck back in close to Larry, whispering into his ear as she looked over her shoulder towards her mom, “You remember the stuff that happened when we found your mom? The whole emotion-feeling thing?” Larry nodded back seriously, “Yeah, I also wanna explore that sometime in the future, but I can’t find much of anything about it online, high-level trainer secrets, I guess, so I’ll probably be forced to ask someone. I’ll make sure to do that. I think it could be really useful in a fight.”

  “After we’re done working on our teamwork, I’ve got some training tips for Rock and Ground-Types, which we’ll follow. A lot of Tyranitar also use Sandstorms and their Sandstream ability religiously, so we’ll also be working on that in the future.”

  Larry himself considered what he wanted from training, ‘Hmm, I am pretty strong as I am right now. I wiped the floor with that Poliwag. What I want is some actually useful Status-Moves, Screech and Scary Face are neat, but I think something which powers me up instead would be far better.’

  After a bit of pantomiming from Larry and a guessing game by Valerie, she understood what he meant, “Status-Moves to buff yourself? Hmm, it sounds like a good idea. I’ll write it down for now, alright? It's gonna take a while though, Larvitar doesn't naturally learn any other Status-Moves besides the two you know, so I’ll have to buy TMs for them when we go on our journey.” Larry nodded to that, he didn’t know what other moves Larvitar learned either, so he couldn’t teach them to himself either, like he had with Dig or other similar moves.

  Most of them were already somehow in his movepool, like he’d assumed was the case with Pursuit, because he might’ve inherited it from his mother. Dig was also a shoo-in since it was something Larvitar naturally did, it simply hadn’t made it into the Pokemon's movepool in-game. Moves outside of the logically Dark-Typed or Rock and Ground-Typed ones, though? He had absolutely no idea which he could and couldn’t learn, so TMs were going to be his best bet, ‘Guess I can only be so smart…’

  Their trainer gave another once over to the information on her phone again before she shook her head, “There’s a lot more I have written down here, particularly smaller things, like Dark-Type Moves for Larry and stuff for Sybil, but I don’t wanna overwhelm you two, so we can keep the rest for a later day.”

  “For today, we’ll work on team synergy and coordination! Let’s go, team!”

  …

  Training mostly consisted of attacking on command and testing the limits of communication between the trainer and the Pokemon. Larry tested if he could still hear commands underground, with very little success. It would make issues for him if an opponent managed to change up their strategy while he was underground, since he wouldn’t know what to expect aboveground. The same was true for Sybil, as teleporting to safety also made the Pokemon quite susceptible to disorientation.

  Conjuring a small boulder, Sybil and Larry took turns attacking it, taking instructions from Valerie at alternating times while trying not to trip over each other. Valerie also created a few simple callouts for the two of them, with Larry earning a “Down!” command, which, instead of the logical dodging one might assume, actually was a command for him to dodge with Dig, much like Sybil's “Away!” was meant for evasion using Teleport.

  With the two fighting together most of the time, his Sandstorm didn’t see much use today. It turned out, though, that Larry and Sybil worked wonders together, with Sybil's hit-and-run fighting style meshing really well with Larry's more physical, in-your-face style of fighting. It meant that if they were ever fighting together, Larry would keep their attention with big moves and big hits as Sybil wore them down with little hits from the side.

  Valerie wanted to workshop more stuff, like custom moves and special callouts for specific moves, but the time had passed far quicker than the trio anticipated. As the sun was already well on its way towards setting when Michelle called out for them to stop.