On Palkiday I did as I told my parents and had Xatu teleport me near the place we separated from the Lapras. There we took off to the sky and head in the direction they moved to. Using the high height we were moving in we scanned the area for the pod.
It took us nearly an hour of high-speed sky-running on my part to get a glimpse of the Lapras. Once I did I went a bit ahead and looked for a place we could teleport to with my parents. You know, since they couldn't fly/levitate or stand on water.
Fortunately, I did not have to look for long. After I found one we teleported home and returned with my parents. I briefly ascended to the sky to check if the school had already passed us. I spotted their silhouettes ahead of us, which meant they did in fact pass us already.
Thankfully, they were not too far away, so I called out Lapras and had her carry us to the school. She had no problems ferrying us at all since the three of us combined weighed less than 200 kg and even if we added Xatu to that we probably reached that weight.
She brought us in front of the pod leader and I moved in front of my parents to greet her before I introduced my parents to her. She checked them out just as she had checked me before she permitted them to enter the school as well.
We repeated the whole approaching group leaders for permission thing and surprisingly my parents got the okay from more group leaders than I did. I was convinced that it probably was like that because they were older.
The group leaders were more at ease with them potentially choosing a member of their group just because my parents were older than me. That was blatant age discrimination, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Besides, I already got my Lapras, so I ultimately got what I wanted. Anyway, most likely for the same reason, that being their age, older and stronger Lapras seemed to be willing to interact with my parents as well.
I naturally helped them keep an eye on the potential of any Lapras they seemed interested in. In the end, they each found a Lapras that was willing to follow them and that I gave the okay potential-wise.
They battled, my mother used Rivers, her Poliwrath, who had apparently reached the (high) silver stage while I was not watching, while my father used Azure, his Kingdra.
They won as well as caught their pick and we left after thanking the pod leader. As for their Lapras, my mother got a female at the (high) silver stage with green potential, while my father got a male at the (high) silver stage with deep green potential. Overall, a great haul.
The rest of the week went as always. I did my own training on Dialday while spending time with my parents during the weekend. During the next week, I decided to momentarily pause my exploration efforts and just focus on the training of my Pokemon.
I used the time I was not supervising their training to do some of my own as well. The training of my Pokemon was split into two parts, parameter training, and move training.
Each day they focused on another parameter while making use of weights whenever possible, mostly for their physical parameters. The training of their energy parameters involved their moves.
Using them to deplete their reserves, getting hit by them to increase their endurance, reducing the release gap, and so on. I thankfully knew enough exercises that helped with that aspect to avoid making the energy training dull.
I was naturally aware that constantly doing the same thing would get boring, so I tried to think of different exercises that trained the same parameter for all parameters not only the energy ones. My Pokemon also did not do more than two hours of training at once for one group.
No, they kept switching between parameter training and move training every few hours. Breaks were essential as well, and sometimes I had to remind them to take breaks because they got too into it. This especially happened during their move training.
My Pokemon all trained in both training types, but they were actually divided into two groups with a different main focus depending on whether they had started doing limit training or not.
Those that had yet to proceed with their limit-breaking focused more on their parameter training, roughly using 70% of our training time for that since they had an easier time raising their parameters until they reach the limit.
Those that already reached the limit and began doing limit-breaking training focused more on their move training, because training their parameters took much longer than before. So, they spent 60% of their time focusing on their moves.
As for their move training, there were two types here as well, learning a new move and increasing the mastery of an old move. It depended on the Pokemon which one was chosen.
I generally told them to focus on two moves, where one was the main focus while the other was trained when the Pokemon got a bit bored/stuck with the first move, or needed a change of pace.
Xatu was still trying to get down Miracle Eye, and he had made some progress. Unfortunately, it was still not enough to successfully use the move in any shape or form.
The second move was Roost and he could go to Pidgey for tips or if he was stuck, so the one was actually progressing smoother than Miracle Eye. On the other hand, Pidgey's main focus was Protect and she could go to Xatu for help as well if she needed tips or was stuck.
Protect was a new move for her, while her secondary focus was Agility, a move she already knew and simply had to improve her mastery of. I chose those moves to increase her survivability.
Another one that could go to Xatu for help was Nyx. I had her focus mainly on Stored Power since it had the potential to be overpowered, and as my resident Stored Power expert she went to Xatu whenever she needed help.
Work Up was her secondary priority, something she had to figure out without help from someone that already knew the move. I naturally did my best to help like I always did when one of my Pokemon was learning a new move, but it primarily depended on her.
The main reason I had her learn that one besides the boost it would give Stored Power was that the move boosted two of her parameters, namely her strength and energy capacity. Both were parameters that Umbreon was not too great at, so it would help her make up for that.
Contrary to Nyx who was trying to learn two new moves, Mothra focused on her old ones. She kept improving her mastery of Signal Beam and whenever she got bored or wanted to do something else she trained her Bug Buzz.
Her loyal number one underling Butterfree focused primarily on Signal Beam just like her, but his secondary focus was on learning Whirlwind. He was looking at Gust for inspiration while learning Whirlwind. He also went to Pidgey whenever he got stuck for too long.
The funny thing was that Mothra had made more progress in learning Whirlwind than he had, despite not even really trying to learn the move. Still, she got that far by just occasionally observing his attempts at Whirlwind. If that did not prove the brokenness of her talent I don't know what will.
There was also Teddiursa who was focused on trying to learn Swift to make up for his lack of long-range moves. He went to Nyx for help whenever he needed it which was not that often.
Dig was his secondary focus and I chose it to give him a move that allowed him to temporarily retreat or hide. He could get tips from Nyx for that one as well, but Seb and Gaia could help with Dig as well.
Those two were learning the same two moves and I chose both moves to cover their lack of any good long-range moves since both only had Poison Sting for long-range attacks until now.
Their primary focus was Sludge Bomb and they had enough poison-type moves to work out the Sludge Bomb on their own. They naturally helped each other, exchanging ideas and so on.
The second move they were trying to learn was Water Pulse, which was much harder to learn for them than a poison move since it had nothing to do with their typing or moveset.
Thankfully, each one of my water-type Pokemon knew the move, so they had enough friends whom they could ask for help. Actually, all Magikarps were primarily focusing on Water Pulse as well. They were trying to improve their mastery of the move.
Their secondary focus was improving the mastery of Aqua Jet. Whenever more than two of them were training their Aqua Jet, they would hold random Jet races to see who was faster/had a higher mastery.
It was always cool to watch and many would temporarily stop their training to watch the races. I kept mum whenever that happened since those short breaks did not do any harm to their progress speed at all.
The only one among the Magikarp that did something different/more was Ignis. Since he had learned Scald during his breakthrough to the bronze stage, he sometimes trained that one as well.
The only other fish among my Pokemon was mainly focusing on mastering Water Gun. That was kinda something I expected of my water Pokemon and except for Remoraid, everyone else had in fact mastered the move.
Remoraid's secondary focus was learning Ice Beam. He used Water Gun as well as Aurora Beam for reference while trying to learn the move, and whenever he needed help he went to Lapras since she knew the move.
As for Lapras, just like I had said I would, I was having her primarily focus on Rain Dance. That was her highest priority since it would help her with everything.
Rest was the second move she was learning, but currently, it couldn't even count as a second priority, since Lapras was too focused on Rain Dance. She was so into it after I told her how helpful Rain Dance was for her, especially after she unlocked her talent, that I had to make sure she took breaks.
Her enthusiasm was incredible but breaks were important after all, and I made sure she did not get bored when I forced her to take a break or do something else.
Someone who also trained a lot was Queen Bee, even if it was not as exaggerated with her. She seemed to have taken Mothra as her role model and personal rival, so she enthusiastically trained a lot to catch up to her.
I chose Toxic Thread as her primary focus since I believed that she could learn it by referencing/combining String Shot and Poison Sting. I chose her second move in a similar vein. Poison Fang was a move that I thought she could learn by referencing/combining Poison Sting and Bug Bite.
While she had to learn Toxic Thread on her own, she could ask Seb or Gaia for help with Poison Fang. The same was true for her sidekick, Weedle.
His second move was Poison Fang as well, while his primary focus was learning Electroweb. For that one, he could ask for help from Mothra, Butterfree, and Queen Bee.
This left only Cubone who tried to learn two new moves. The first, as well as the primary one, was Fire Punch, and he could always go to Teddiursa if he needed help with it since Teddiursa could already use Fire Punch.
Cubone's second move was Iron Defense and Mothra as well as Butterfree were available in case he needed help with that one. Overall, there was a lot to do and occasionally just focusing on training like this was great as well.
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