In just over a month, Scyther's move work had shifted a lot.
Defog was up 4%. Scyther barely trained it; anyone who's played the games knows it's for clearing hazards, and it can blow away Screens too.
Night Slash was up 5%, but that wasn't a focus either, and it was a Dark-type move.
Its Steel-type work jumped 19%—during obstacle-flight drills, if it couldn't thread past branches cleanly, it would slice them off with Steel Wing, basically weaving Steel Wing into high-speed flight.
Air Slash climbed 20%; when it sparred with Poliwhirl on perception training, it used that to pressure its target.
Acrobatics rose 13%; that was the move it used against Charizard. With no held item, Acrobatics hit harder, so it was still useful for now, but the moment Scyther started carrying an item, that bonus would disappear.
Bug Bite went up 16% because it used it even during meals—Reiji's rule, not Scyther's.
X-Scissor was up 9%. It was Scyther's own STAB, and its proficiency was already high, so Reiji hadn't demanded extra training, but Scyther still worked it.
Fury Cutter climbed 11% and stayed a priority.
Brick Break rose 7%, and Scyther probably dragged it along during extra sessions since it used its scythes for that one. Slash went up 8% for the same reason.
Quick Attack jumped 12%—one of its cleanest, most reliable moves, and something it used constantly to dodge obstacles.
Double Team only rose 5%, but after Darkrai showed off clones right in its face, Scyther had been practicing it on the sly.
Tailwind was up 21% from morning obstacle-flight drills, while Agility rose 18% from morning runs; compared to Tailwind, Scyther liked Agility and Quick Attack more.
Swords Dance climbed 14%—it trained it during perception sparring and even during runs.
Reiji had been drilling one core habit into it: dodge first, and while you're buying space, steal a moment to set up Swords Dance and Focus Energy. Fights didn't wait. Whoever powered up first usually got to decide the pace.
Focus Energy was up 18% for the same reason. Any time Scyther was weaving past obstacles or slipping attacks, it trained Focus Energy too. If it could sneak it into a real battle, it would.
On top of everything else, Scyther had learned a new move: Protect.
It had used Protect during a battle on the cruise ship, so it had probably picked it up while sparring with Poliwhirl. A move like that was never going to stump Scyther.
Reiji's training plan for it had always been simple: fast, accurate, and ruthless.
Fast meant flying as fast as possible. That was why he had it training multiple speed-boosting moves together. Accurate meant Focus Energy, plus moves that reached critical hits more easily. Ruthless was the Fury Cutter route: stack speed, stack Swords Dance, stack Focus Energy, then keep Fury Cutter rolling until it peaked. Add critical hits on top of that, and most opponents wouldn't survive the sequence.
For Scyther's future, Reiji was looking at two paths for now.
The first was the critical-hit build.
The second was the Fury Cutter build.
As long as Scyther stayed fast enough, it could build Fury Cutter quickly. At full stacks it hit 160 base power, and with STAB on top, almost anything would buckle.
To stack all those boosts safely, Scyther also needed higher evasion. Morning obstacle-flight drills and afternoon perception sparring were both aimed at making it harder to touch. No wonder Luana had said Poliwhirl and Scyther both had scary evasion.
Reiji wasn't changing his plan. Until Scyther evolved, the high-attack, high-speed package was brutal. If you weren't faster, stepping into the ring mostly meant taking hits.
To counter the current Scyther, you needed one of three things: it couldn't break your defenses, you could outspeed it, or you could clamp down on its speed.
It wasn't impossible to deal with—just difficult. Unless you were throwing a legendary at it, "can't break defenses" wasn't a realistic problem for Scyther.
Outspeeding it was hard too, and once it became Scizor it would be worse. With Light Metal and a Float Stone, even if its raw Speed stat didn't change, cutting its weight still translated into better speed in practice. After all, once Scyther evolved, it would be a Steel-type Pokémon.
As for restricting its speed, that depended on what the opponent did. On the ship during that match, Scyther could dodge Flamethrower just by hiding behind rocks. It just hadn't needed to in that situation.
Reiji closed Scyther's proficiency panel, and the matches stopped. Scyther hadn't run out of energy—it had run out of patience. The challengers were too weak to be worth the time. After a handful of bouts, it wasn't interested in beating up rookies anymore. Sparring with Poliwhirl actually pushed it.
So Reiji sent Hanhan in. Hanhan charged around the field like it owned the place, ramming anything that stepped up. Most challengers' Pokémon went down after only a few hits.
With Hanhan busy, Reiji stopped paying close attention to the Gym battles. If someone couldn't get past the first Pokémon, there was no point treating the match seriously, and no reason to bring out a second.
And if they gave up on battling entirely and turned it into Water Gun target practice instead, he'd still humour them. Either way, these beginners weren't doing much.
Before long, his shift ended. Cissy still hadn't returned. Reiji said goodbye to Senta, picked up his dinner from the back kitchen, thanked the woman working there, and clocked out.
Outside the Gym, he climbed onto Pelipper and headed back to the lakeside cabin. One day away was enough—he wanted to see how the Pokémon there would react.
As soon as he landed, the ones left on guard swarmed him. In the lake, the usual fool and a school of Magikarp started leaping as well, slapping their tails and spraying water like it was a celebration.
Reiji released Poliwhirl and the others so everyone could spend a little time together. The grass filled with footfalls and chatter. A couple of minor squabbles flared, but Poliwhirl shut them down before they could turn into anything. Once things settled, Reiji started setting up dinner by the water.
"Poliwhirl, go check the lake. See if that group of Tentacruel has come back," he said, sending it on the same routine task as always—make sure no wild Water-types had wandered in.
"Yobo," Poliwhirl replied, then dove straight under.
Reiji finished preparing dinner before Poliwhirl resurfaced. It popped its head up, came ashore, and shook its head. The lake was clear.
"Good. Better that way. Everyone, come eat," Reiji said as he laid out the meals. Hanhan's portion sat in a bathtub—Hanhan ate well over a hundred pounds of ore a day, and a normal bowl wouldn't even make a dent.
Mudkip didn't need to be held and fed anymore. It ate on its own, squatting by Reiji's feet.
"Kip," it chirped between bites, and when Reiji stroked its head, it leaned into his palm as if it had been waiting for that all day.
"Zzzap," baby Zapdos squeaked from Reiji's arms. It was still small enough that he had to hold it while feeding.
"Slowly. Don't rush," Reiji murmured, offering it Electric-type Pokéblocks. The little one could handle charged food now, but Reiji still fed it carefully, giving it time to adjust to the current running through its body. If it adapted early, charging later would come naturally.
After dinner, Reiji held them for a while and watched the sun sink toward the horizon. His mind drifted back to the notes he'd made at the Gym—plans for Poliwhirl and the rest.
He wanted them to lock in the fundamentals, but he also needed them to pick up more moves. Battles only got messier from here.
Which left the real problem: where was he going to find teachers for all of that?
TMs had already shown their limits. A Pokémon rarely learned a new move just by "watching" a disc. They needed a proper tutor—someone who could demonstrate, correct mistakes, and drill the details.
The more he thought about it, the clearer it became. If every move meant him tracking down a new teacher, he'd never get anything else done. So he decided to flip it around and make the teachers come to him.
He could post tutoring jobs: name the Pokémon he needed and the move he wanted taught.
Say Poliwhirl needed Belly Drum. He could recruit a Trainer with a Poliwhirl or Poliwrath that already knew Belly Drum, then have that Pokémon teach his Poliwhirl directly.
One-on-one. Hands-on. And payment only on success—no learned move, no money.
It was easy to set up. He just had to go to the Pokémon Center, submit the requests, and attach the reward. The offer would draw Trainers who needed cash. The Pokémon Center was where Trainers gathered; someone qualified would show up.
He'd hired tutors back on Kinnow Island, and a move usually cost anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000. That worked out to a few thousand per lesson, with the rest basically paying for travel.
Even in his previous life, private lessons weren't cheap. A few thousand for ten sessions wasn't outrageous.
So he set his rate at 50,000 Pokédollars per move. This time he was the employer, and he could set the price.
If nobody accepted, he could raise it and let the market decide. But he doubted it would come to that. Fifty thousand for safe work was already generous—security at an orchard paid 30,000, and that meant long hours and constant overtime.
Teach the move and collect 50,000. Two or three days if things went smoothly; a week at most.
A week sounded long—until he looked at the list.
Poliwhirl alone needed Bulldoze, Focus Punch, Earthquake, Hydro Pump, Ice Beam, Surf, and Belly Drum. Seven moves confirmed, and out of those, only Bulldoze was something Hanhan already knew.
Asking Hanhan—who couldn't be bothered to think unless it had to—to teach Poliwhirl felt unreliable, especially when these were all off-type moves. Reiji would rather pay someone competent.
Seven moves came to 350,000 Pokédollars. That wasn't pocket change, and he'd still need to specify Poliwhirl or Poliwrath as the tutor for those jobs.
Hydro Pump and Surf could be learned from Cissy's Blastoise, which would save him some money. That left five moves still needing tutors—five off-type moves, and Poliwhirl was going to be busy.
And it wasn't only Poliwhirl. Kingler needed a lot as well: High Horsepower for burst power, Stomping Tantrum to widen coverage, X-Scissor, Ice Beam, and Rock Tomb.
That was another five. Hanhan knew High Horsepower and Stomping Tantrum, but expecting it to teach Kingler properly was wishful thinking.
For Kingler, all five were off-type too. Learning them wouldn't be easy. The quickest route was to find another Kingler that already knew those moves and learn by copying a similar body and rhythm.
Beyond that, Kingler also needed heavy finishers like Hyper Beam, Giga Impact, and Guillotine.
And it would eventually need more moves that could trigger Sheer Force—Razor Shell, Rock Tomb, Liquidation, Scald, Blizzard, Ice Beam, Rock Slide, Bubble, Bubble Beam, and others. He'd deal with those later.
First, he would patch the obvious weaknesses. The rest could wait.
Right now, the only moves Kingler had that could trigger Sheer Force were Metal Claw and Mud Shot.
Ice Beam and Rock Tomb—two of the moves it was about to learn—would also trigger it, and Kingler could pick up Bubble-type moves from Poliwhirl.
Scyther had plenty to learn as well. If it was going to commit to a critical-hit build, it needed moves that landed critical hits more easily.
Pelipper wasn't exempt either: Hurricane, Hydro Pump, U-turn, Stockpile, and Spit Up were all on the list.
Once Reiji finished writing everything down, he decided to move before the sky went dark. He recalled Poliwhirl and the other main partners, climbed onto Pelipper, and headed into town to post the tutoring jobs at the Pokémon Center.
He went straight to the task counter and wrote out each request in detail: what kind of tutor he needed, what Pokémon they had to bring, and which move they had to teach.
He set the location as Mikan Gym. Any time from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. worked. The condition was simple: the move had to be learned for the job to count. He also specified which postings required a Poliwhirl or Poliwrath tutor and which ones needed a Kingler tutor.
Each time he submitted a job, the staff handed him a task voucher, and he paid the reward up front.
When a Trainer completed the job with him, Reiji would give them the voucher. They would bring it back to the Pokémon Center to close out the task.
Each tutoring job paid 50,000 Pokédollars—equivalent to 5,000 League contribution points. The conversion was ten Pokédollars per point. One of the requirements for rookie certification was 10,000 points, which worked out to 100,000 Pokédollars.
A Trainer could also choose the 5,000 contribution points instead of the cash. Those points could be exchanged at the Pokémon Center for training supplies.
Most of the exchange stock was basic—Pokémon food, evolution stones, and similar items. Nothing rare, and most of it topped out around the Advanced tier.
You could buy the same things with money elsewhere, but the Pokémon Center's exchange rates were cheaper, which mattered if you were scraping by.
If you wanted better rewards—valuable items or starter Pokémon like the classic three lines—a normal Pokémon Center couldn't offer them. You'd have to go to League headquarters, and you'd need enough contribution to qualify.
After collecting more than a dozen task vouchers, Reiji also had Poliwhirl and the others take a free checkup. At least he got to enjoy one of the League's perks. Everyone was healthy, so he left without lingering.
He'd become a minor local celebrity—people called him the "gatekeeper" of Mikan Gym. To avoid getting mobbed, he came masked and kept his head down, purely so nobody could recognise him.
Even so, the moment his jobs went up, they caused a stir. Fifty thousand per move for safe tutoring work, and the location was Mikan Gym.
Trainers who had the right Pokémon—and whose Pokémon already knew the required moves—immediately rushed the counter to apply.
The staff screened them first, checking that they actually had the requested Pokémon and that it really knew the requested move. Only then did they let someone accept a job.
Reiji had no idea any of that was happening.
But as he left the Pokémon Center, someone watching closely spotted him—and slipped into his wake, following at a distance.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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