Chapter 6 - Chapter 6 : The best part of training is seeing the results

The problem with this experiment of a rotating water gun is , you know , rotating since when it does the water would just separate in samaller pieces

'so much for that idea'

but i cant say it was totally useless since i learned that slowpoke could make about 16 water guns before needing a rest of 30 minutes and noted how before the attack is preformed slowpoke cheecks would grow

' so theres a little visual clue before some attacks are preformed, i would need to fix that and pay more atencion to the rest of pokemon it might give me a few seconds of advantege'

and with that we where back to the drawing board and 9 days and a few hours of training today so i decided that we needed some sort of stimulation before we keep training so we went to face what would be my first challenge, money makeing, and if you wanna find money you go where the most amount of people are in this case that was the center of the city. When i got there 40 minutes had passed and it was around 2pm and it had a whole different vibe that when i was here at night

'not better just different'

and with slowpoke at my side we started walking and the i saw him

' no that. THATS IMPOSIBLE what is he doing here?'

my archnemesis was walking with what seemed to be his newly evolved raticate i was getting left on the dust by the discount youngster Joey and i would not allow it, so i did the most sensible thing and immediately went to where he was and he seemed to notice me

"Hi Paul what are you doing here? i was just going for a walk and perhaps a little bit of training with ratticate"

"Hello Max seems like bright minds think alike since i was thinking of training too so what do you say, wanna make a little bet of say 50$ in a 1 v 1 of my slowpoke against your raticate?"

he seemed to think for a little bit and then smiled

"well since you insist why not make it a 150$?, you know to give it a little more spice"

'crap, i cant back down now but i only have 160$ in total if i lose i would be left with 10$ and that would be about a day of food for me and slowpoke its clear that i should back down now'

"i accept"

'sometimes i wonder if i have multple presonality or i just hate myself that much'

"cool although at this time the battle arenas of the poke center are usually all in use so we would have to go to a little of the wild i hope you dont mind"

"not at all please lead the way"

'i have about five minutes to think of a plan that would allow me to beat his raticate and from what he told me he must battle quite a lot to be so sure that the arenas are full, does that mean that battles are the fastest way to grow strong going forward?

thats not fair! here i was with my lab coat doing reaserch doing never seen before techniques to have an edge on battle and you tell me all i had to do was just battle a lot?.

No i need to think on the problem before me, i can keep hateing myself later '

By the time we got to an open are a plan area he stoped and looked at me and i nodded an we started walking and before we started the battle i asked for a few seconds to talk with slowpoke and he didnt seemed to mind

"slowpoke here is the plan"...

Once i stopped talking slowpoke and raticate walked forward

slowpoke just yawned an stared at raticate

"Your slowpoke dosent seem to be to enthusiastic about this battle are you sure that you wanna keep going ? you could just forefit now it would be easier for everyone"
I just shrugged

"Whatever, lets start this! raticate tackle"

i just smiled and didn't say anything but if you payed close attencion you would see how slowpokes cheeks where growing every second and by the time it was Max realized it was already to late since raticate entered the range of a 100% accuracy for water gun.

"raticate dodge"

he did in fact not dodge, instead he was meet with a water gun in the face that sended him flying for about 2 meters before crashing face first with the ground only to stand up looking disorientated and fall once again

"what happen? i know raticate can take more than just that what did you do?"

i didnt answer insted i just asked

"do you forefit?"

"you wish. Raticate stand up!"

he didnt , so slowpoke started walking an got near raticate looking at his face

"come on raticate stand up!"

and slowpoke just started biting his wiskers of and when he did he just backed up and started chargeing a new water gun , he knew he would wake up in the next few seconds and when he did he shot another he blasted the presured water to his face an that send him flying again

"i dont know what you did but i still remember how i could beat slowpoke last time raticate quick attack"

and when he started takeing speed slowpoke created a slight psychic push that made raticate trip makeing him roll against a tree hitting face first. Usually that wouldnt be enough to create that lack of balance but when you consider that raticate is very dependent of his wiskers for balance which he dosent have now and the fact that he didnt seem compleatly used to his new form that would be the only possible result so i just recaled slowpoke while Max ran to see his raticate and he seemed pissed

"Take your money i gotta go and take raticate to a pokecenter to undo whatever it is you did"

and without another word he left

'cant really blame him if i just lost to the guy that i beat a couple weeks prior i would be annoyed too, in fact i was and that was why we battled in first place and im glad we did because i just proved that strength is not all in a battle and now im a little less poor that before so i would say it was a win overall and the best part, now i can say i won against youngster Joey so i was going in the right direction '

"Good job slowpoke i think that is enough for today you earned it so lets go to the river and let's fish for a while"

He seemed happy at what i said if his tail moveing was any indication so i took one bowl and put water on it for slowpoke to drink and i was petting him and his tail seemed to move faster makeing me smile even more.

while we where fishing or more specificaly slowpoke was fishing and i was looking another trainer came and asked me for a battle on a 1 v 1 in a best out of 3 and from what i could see he had a pidgey a rattata and a caterpie and a little look at them was all i needed to accept.

The battle wasnt really long and the one who created more problems was his pidgey since he could fly but all i needed was to order slowpoke to hold him with his psychic powers and the same went for rattata and they stayed compleatly still since they where in slowpokes range of weight while caterpie was even slower that slowpoke and they all went down in a few water guns and he left and i was 20$ richer

' i could buy slowpoke and i an ice cream with this'

and with that thought in mind we went back to the city and i bought a cream with chocolate chips ice cream for me and a chocolate one for slowpoke

' chocolate never goes wrong'

and i was proved right if the smile on his face while eating the ice cream was any indication.
When we finished our ice creams and went home the idea was already in motion and a search on my phone later told me all that i wasnt the first in thinking that an would not be the last since it was used in high level battles but made the pokemon very tired, but this was exactly what i needed the edge in battle and it would work in battle and not make slowpoke crush his face against the ground like the idiots that tried useing quick attack as a mean to dodge i mean what did they expected?

the reason why quick attack works in battle is because it always hits something transfering the momentum to the object, do you know what happens if you use it to dodge?

best case scenario the pokemon slows down in a few seconds but by that point the enemy already recovered, worse case your pokemon goes from a 100 to 0 and when he stops running the momentum keeps going and your pokemon eats the floor like it was no ones buissnes and you need to go to a poke center like that raticate but this?
this will work.

And just like that the last days before the start of my journey were spend trying to learn and optimize the move getting about 8 shots before slowpoke runs out of stamina and becomes a sitting duck , this time we tested in an actual battle in the pokecenters arena and the first times we even lost a couple of battles for testing our limits in actual battle costing me about a 100$ but the good news is that i made 240$ so it was actually 140$ but that means thet we got a high win/loss ratio and i was left with 470$ to start my journey with.

And now i was looking at the doors of the cerulean city gym.

'this is the first step and then seven more to go before the conference'

a look at slowpoke was all it took to know that we were ready and so we entered into the wolfs mouth