A lot has happened in the world of Pokemon in a span of 2 years, projected challenger to the throne of Blue Oak as the Indigo champion Red sucessfully snatched the crown and because Blue Oak wanted it back as soon as possible, he issued challenges every week for 3 months straight, which caused him to be banned from that champion feature and only be able to do that when he plowed through the Pokemon League again. According to Anthony's mom and dad, Prof. Oak further punished him by putting him on an expedition team to chart an unknown island 2 regions away from the Indigo Plateau; Anthony felt like this is the in-world explanation of how Blue will start liking researching more than training.
Also, Anthony calculated that his journey starts around 1 year before the Johto region story will happen, which means in his second year as a trainer, he will be crossing fires with Team Rocket, since he is about to become an associate field researcher after the results of the Breeder's exam put his name up there. While there is a chance to fail, in the past two years, champion prospect Cynthia also became a champion as expected, and as her job as a champion-researcher, she was given the task to give 5 questions for this year's breeder's exam and as a previlage for being a testgiver, she recieved a copy of the whole breeder's exam for the past 10 years including the one Anthony is about to apply.
Of course, Anthony has principles and didn't ask for an exam leak; Cynthia has too, so she would've become angry if Anthony even tried. Anthony, however, did ask for the official exams from the previous 9 years, which became his primary material for his last 9 days of review before registering and taking the exam, excluding today, of course.
Speaking of Cynthia, she doesn't have as much of a challenge as Red due to the fact that the first 3 challengers can't get past her Milotic and Gastrodon, which are more game-accurate than anime-accurate. While no elite 4 is yet to challenge her, Anthony can see that she would still be Cynthia, the longest-tenured champion of Sinnoh in this real world of Pokemon.
Going back, this is also the reason why Cynthia has been sending her a lot of photos with gigantic Pokemons that are just standing still in a certain place and needed some rituals to wake up, though they would wreck havoc and Cynthia doesn't want to do that to herself, so she has been holding back, she is also holding back publishing her findings of the ancient language so she can't become an indirect cause of a calamity of 'some nasty plan of some lunatic with lots of money'. Right now, Cynthia is looking for the individual sites of sleep of the Regi siblings in Hoenn, apparently with plans to go to Galar to see the other 2 and uncover why they are so far apart.
Anthony, however, did see that Cynthia has a new research paper under her name on the scholar website, which is about a fossil and its implications for the fossil history and theories regarding Mt. Coronet.
While everything above is something of interest to Anthony, the most interesting thing he have heard is the news about the capture of Giovanni, and while in the official outlets everything that happened before his capture except the epic helicopter shot of the fight between Blue, Red and Giovanni was omitted because protocol, Anthony have 3 people he's close with that can request to be privy of that information, 5 if one included Prof. Oak and Elite 4 contender Karen.
Anthony specifically got it from Cynthia to find a wild Delibird in Hoenn because she doesn't want evidence of her leaking confidential information to an outsider, and she even requested that Anthony burn it, with a special reminder that his mom and dad knew that he received a letter of explanation of such confidential information. Anthony believed that it was a reminder that if Anthony, in the off chance, wanted to use anything within that information against her or the world of Pokemon, the closest people to him would immediately know that it was him.
Anthony, of course, doesn't mind, as he's really just curious about what would happen. And apparently it was a part of a very elaborate plan of letting the sucess of escaping the pursuit of Interpol get in the head of Giovanni who was very, very cautious and letting it explode in a single moment using many 'failed attempts' and a sleeper agaent with one mission: make Giovanni fall in love and be worried about her safety and bank on the 100% sucess rate of his in escaping Interpol on a wreckless move.
That reckless move turns out to be the attempted kidnapping of Anthony to learn about the circumstances of the retirement of his father, one of the Dover couple that caused the start of the economic downfall of his syndicate. This blunder also caused Giovanni to lose his double spies in the communication department of Interpol and double spy nurses in the medical unit of the Kanto Pokemon Research Center.
That one mistake led to the shrinking of their long defense line over 1 and a half years until only Sylph Co. was left, and then the epic showdown of the champion, the contender, and the crime boss of Indigo happened atop their Helipad. Antony is not one to regret interfering with the plot or even worry about not being able to predict things; first of all, Pokemon is not a tightly knitted series of games, and only cameos and mentions of regions and their events are their ties with each other, so there's hardy any reason to stick to the plot as long as he have a general idea of what will happen.
Anthony did, however, conclude that the double agent should be the mom of Silver, the rival in the sequel to the first 3 Gen 1 Pokemon games. He also concluded that since one of a field associate researcher's job description helping Interpol do stuff, Anthony may be able to catch Team Rocket's resurgence before his second year if he really put his mind to it.
However, for now, what he's focusing on is his rookie year, which is anchored on his two Pokemons: Zubat and Miltank, who are also hard at work all this time.
Zubat continued to train underwater, making its current and wave control much better than it already was, as well as its stamina, while also continuing the idea of using Confusion attacks autonomously depending on the situations, and improved the bond between it and Anthony, as they need to coordinate what Anthony needs to command when Confusion hits the enemy to maximize the debuff and vice versa.
Miltank also has established itself as the heavy hitter and receiver of the early team of Anthony, having very, very vast stamina, muscular strength, and endurance, and not to mention its own battle IQ from being a battle-oriented Miltank. It spent most of the time learning non-normal type moves. Anthony knew a Miltank can learn moves that go well with the Rollout-Defense Curl-Bide combo in a way that... well, they don't know that Miltank can do; Anthony wanted to withhold the names of these moves for now.
Besides that, Miltank spent most of its time in the weight room lifting things; as of now, it lifts 3 times its own body weight and curls its own. It also learned some acrobatics and how to activate moves without needing that much of a head start, without losing any power as much as possible. Anthony, seeing that its once prodigal Pokemon has become such a hard worker and is using its genius for its proper purpose, is quite proud.
The two Pokemons, besides fighting with their individual fighting partners independently, fighting with Anthony individually against either his mom or dad, and training to improve their fighting skills, have also been independently fighting against each other, with Anthony only intervening as a referee. This is a devised training technique by Anthony to foster independence so they won't be anxious when Anthony can't command them and, even though Anthony hopes it never happens, when Anthony needs to be saved.
As of now, Miltank is ahead of Zubat in terms of wins by 2.
Of course, Anthony will not be negligent about his own training, especially when his mom and dad, whose only help is their weekend battles, gave him a training plan which doesn't involve that much weight training so as not to hinder his growth spurt. Actually, his training involves only two things: a session a day of Pilates and an endurance test on a rotating wall-climbing machine. All just had small external weight requirements, and the only real test is the increasing duration for both exercises, which are done every day, and have a personal record setter every weekend for rock climbing.
Anthony's record is around 40 minutes of continuous and spontaneous rotating wall climbing, which is outdoors and comes foldable and retractable underground. This caused Anthony to have very strong hands, capable of making him able to do handstands (from what he experimented on for fun) from his room to the battleground of Zubat and Miltank, which is around 150 meters apart, though he almost passed out when he did that.
This is good, because as his parents said to him when he was training, the first weight that he would carry in his journey is himself. Anthony plans to add more muscle to his body through proper weight training when he turns 15.
As a side note for Anthony's development, he has now fully let his hair grow long up to his neck and split it in the middle with long forelocks that graze his cheeks on both sides; he has also successfully endured an earful from his mom and earned prescription glasses. Anthony's previous life's 10-year-old self needs a glow-up in the far future to be popular in his work, but right now he seems not to need one.
Which is a weird thing to come from the mind of a middle-aged man.
"Ah, I will be of service for the venue of the registration of the breeder's exam, so I will leave for now and go outside to prepare Pidgeot's saddle."
Melissa suddenly raised her hand slowly and went out of the counter hurriedly, seemingly knowing that the parting words of Anthony were soon to come, though the latter couldn't really say anything that heart-churning. This point is already known by the boy's parents, so instead, they clutch several items beneath the counter and put them in the desk.
Hana put on a white lab coat, a belt with 6 metallic cylinders around it, and 4 Pokeballs, while Ben put on a simple bag with an unusually large number of medium-sized compartments on the sides. To be honest, Anthony had already prepared everything inside the bag, which Ben already knew, so he just silently put it in front of him and smiled whilst letting his wife, Hana, present her home-made modifications of Anthony's request.
"Like my son requested: a lab coat with buttons and collars modified to look like a frock coat, a belt that doesn't need to cling to clothes to put on, which I did by putting magnets inside the leather belt and magnets in the waist of the coat. Of course, here are your Pokeballs and your holsters for it, too."
Anthony nodded slowly as he smiled slightly, not forcing his neutral face to form any sort of unnatural expression as he immediately destroyed the frock coat/lab gown's perfect fold and put its full splendor in front of him before putting it on and buttoning it up, alongside this, he put on the magnetic belt with very strong magnets and the two pokeballs in the cylinder holters while the empty ones were put in his gown's waist pockets.
"I... thank you, but I will put it on after I pass the breeder's exam and after I get the slacks inside my bag; I look ridiculous with shorts and a T-shirt inside."
Hana and Ben smiled.
"It would've made a great headline in the news tonight."
As Ben scooted over the bag to let Anthony put his trainer's attire into his bag, he sighed alongside his wife, Hana, as they silently watched Anthony put back the fold of the long coat perfectly as before and put it in his bag silently with no tippy toes this time.
_Anthony... has grown so much..._
After Anthony zipped his bag and made sure that everything he needed and wanted to put in there was present, he finally put it on his back.
"Good luck. Go back here if the coat becomes too small."
As Anthony was about to sigh, his eyes widened suddenly; for the first time, he felt his tense facial muscles loosen before once again smiling.
"I will. I hope I can bring back a cup with my coat.
Anthony then walked towards the counter and kissed both the cheeks of his parents without shame about being a middle-aged man inside. After all, loving parents are loving parents regardless of age.
Anthony finally walked outside their automatic door, and as he did, he saw a boy in a baseball cap pointing at him. Glen was smirking.
"Anthony, I challenge you to a Pokemon battle!"
Anthony sighed and pulled out an already enlarged Pokeball.
"Let's go."
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Volume 1: The First Steps, end.
If you read all the way here, that means you read a total of 192, 688 words or 2,214 words per chapter.
It's not the most blood pumping volume, but it's a very long training arc, so. Also the fanfic is resarch-based, so of course it won't be that action-packed to begin with.
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Read my novel Sophia Demiurge, remove the open and close parentheses
http://wbnv.in(remove this)/a/3ak49Kj