The next week was spended with the police asking questions and training and by that point i made the peace with what happened, after all i was the proof that death was only be a new begining so i stopped thinking about it. Blue didnt know about that and seemed to take another angle and decided to train daily only eating and sleeping and we would talk or train together.
"hey Paul have you planned to go to the safari zone? its a reserve of pokemon where you can catch them, i heared that there are some rare and strong pokemon in there but the reserve forces you to not have any pokemon with you and it costs 10000$ and they give you 30 safari balls that you cant keep, they work as a safe mechanism to either launch against an agresive pokemon to run or try to catch and once you get out you gotta transfer it to a pokeball that you bought but i think its worth it, im going tomorrow wanna come? "
"sure, sounds fun and i need a new team member so its perfect"
and with that we continued training, during that week blue asked me if we could travel together since i was an alright training partner, in that week Blues kadabra showed slowpoke disable while slowpoke showed him psychic and his pidgeotto now pidgeot showed hoothoot air slash and together they maneged to learned tailwind.
Next day we woke up and ate breakfast before going to the safari zone, when we got there we signed a fourm that said that we would not damage the pokemon in the reserve and that we were giveing our pokemon willingly and that they would be returned to us once we get out of the reserve.
With all said and done we entered the reserve that had a bunch of pokemon wherever you saw i maneged to see some oddish and bellsprout in the grass and i saw a few staryus and starmie near the river takeing sun
'if the pokedex is to be belived if i get one i would just get an old police radio, i prefer something more expresive'
so we kept walking till blue stopped me
"look there, a Venonat, im gonna catch it"
"are you sure about that? i dont think thats such a good idea"
"what do you mean? Venomoth is plenty powerfull"
"yeah it probably is but Venomoth also is a poison pokemon"
"and? its not like im gonna get poisoned as soon as i go near him, im gonna be fine"
"sure, with venonat you are gonna be fine but Venomoth releases poison with every flap of his wings so unless you plan to be a poison specialist or keep him in his pokeball at all times you are getting a potencial hazard"
with that blue took his pokedex out of his backpack and went to the venomoth entry confirming what i said
"How do you knew that?"
"i read a lot and i always thought muk was cool so i read about him leading me to koga that showed me Venomoth that-"
"stop, i get it you like to read"
i smiled and we kept walking till we found an exeggcute and blue looked at me
"any wisdom you wanna say about this one?"
"besides the fact that although his name has egg in it he is more of a seed than a egg? not really"
"always so insightfull"
with that blue smiled and came near him with a berry in hand and after 30 minutes of talking he entered in the pokeball.
"that was pretty easy"
i just smiled and we splited and continued walking
'it feels weird to not have slowpoke or hoothoot near me'
after walking for a while and finding a scyther that was not feeling like joining a team and a chansey that i didnt feel like getting
'chansey is pacefull by nature and if fics are to be belived they are used to use gravity for training but that was just stupid, if you use the move although you could handel it it dosnt meen its any good, your bones are not made to handle the pressure along with your organs which could generate a high blood pressure along with problems breathing so its more likely that you would just pass out along with your pokemon generating problems in the long term, thats why its a move used in battle and not in training, battles are fast paced and take less than an hour to end and thats in stall teams so theres no permanent damage and with slowpoke knowing slack off and hoothoot learning roost so i didnt feel the need for a healer.
Dratini wasnt a real option, dragons take years to grow and i only had about 9 months and a half to make my team league worthy and even if it hurts to say it a slowpoke and hoothoot are far from it so i kept looking till i found it. For whatever reason it was separeted from his pack and when i saw it i could see a large scar covering his right eye.
when it looked at me it instantly went to a battle state and i just did what you would do when you find one of those in real life so i made myself smaller and moved slowly to my bag to take a berry and showed it to him, i stood still for a few seconds till it finally moved and ate the berry munching it leaving me with berry juice that it proceded to lick from my hand, and then it looked back at me and i took another one and while he was munching it i talked
"hi, im Paul and im looking for partner to battle in the conference"
that seemed to pick his interest
"wanna join?"
he didnt move for a few seconds and neither did i and after a while he laid down and put his chin where my hand was and i started scratching and that got a moan for his part
"allright welcome to the family"
we stayed like that for a while and then we started walking back to the entrance where i found blue that looked at us and took his pokedex out to scan my new partner and he whistle
"thats quite an specimen you got there"
when we went out we recived our things and gave the safari balls
'i wonder if i could ask for a discount since i didnt really use them?'
it didnt worked but the guy on the recption seemed to recognize my new partner
"well what do we have here? you caught quite a fighter, this tauros loves battles and usually bites more than i can chew, i dont know how but he always maneges to fight the strongest pokemon in the zone only to get his ass handed by our dragonair makeing more troubles than its worth in the last 7 years, you are doing us a favor takeing him out of here so you have my thanks."
'seven years? so he is quite old probably older than slowpoke and hoothoot together'
i put him on the pokeball i had bought and then let him out again and walked out of the reserve, Blue caught his exeggcute and a scyther that didnt seem very friendly at all and when i asked him how he did it he just smiled and didnt answer.
'keep your secret all you want blue but im gonna beat the shit out of you when we face each other in the conference and no scizor is gonna save you'
The next week it was spend putting our new pokemon up to speed with the rest of the team or in my case putting the rest of my team up to speed with tauros
'just what kind of monster was that dragonair for you to learn double edge ,zen headbutt and bulldoze?'
during spars he would just take damage and then hit back twice as strong that maneged to send most of blue pokemon flying, the only pokemon that had any chance to take him down where pidgeott and slowpoke till we ran out of teleports and just got beat up and i started to feel that the only reason he came with us was because i promeised to fight in the conference, it takes the combined efforts of hoothoot and slowpoke to take down tauros and that was because tailwind made hoothoot fast enough to dodge most of tauros attacks so it created a gimick in which hoothoot would attack and then slowpoke would come and launch a series of moves only to then dissapear again repating the pattern till slowpoke ran out of teleports but by then tauros would go down, by doing that we discovered his abillity and let me tell you anger point its enough to take both down before anyone could do anything and once both hoothoot and slowpoke went down and tauros calmed down he went to where i was and started rubbing against me expecting me to pet him, it was quite surreal but i did anyways and after a week they where finally capable of consistantly beat tauros together we went to 1 v 1 where they recived another beat down but at least slowpokes teleport went up to 13 and hoothoot became way faster after dodgeing all of tauros attacks, i feel like tauros gained the least of all of them but after seeing slowpoke preform iron tail enough he started doing it too which was a nice adition to his moveset but nothing beyond that.
During one of our walks as always tauros was pushing me to go faster so i talked
" i wont go any faster even if you push me so if you want me to go faster let me ride you or learn to walk at normal speed"
to my surprise he thought about it for a second before he laid down and looked at me as if saying, jump, so i returned slowpoke and hoothoot and slowly went over him till i was comfortable and he stood up
"ok tauros, lets go"
and i forgot something really important and it was the fact that tauros was fast, and he was going at 80km/hour and i was over him holding for my dear life because falling meant a couple of broken bones at best
"TAUROS listen to me i want you to go slower till you stop"
and what should have been a 30 minutes walk happened in 2.
When we got to our training space blue and his pokemon looked at me holding with all my might while tauros finally slowed down and i got down and he seemed happy
"first time rideing a tauros? you should know theres equipement for rideing pokemon with how much you like to read"
he said with a sly smile on his face meanwhile i had an amaizing chat with the ground about how much i loved him and i was sorry to leave him till i heared what blue was saying
"i didnt expect tauros to be that fast and neither that he would let me ride him, next time i will buy the apropiate equipament for tauros riding, but since you are such an expert in tauros what do you say about a battle? tauros seems to be dying for one right now"
and to make as if to make a point tauros looked at blue with a challengeing look and he looked back
" you want a battle? you got it"
and after 2 of blues 5 pokemon tauros finally got tired while you could see a wartortle and kadabra on the floor while a scyther stood over tauros as the winner fairly tired
"just what kind of training did you do to have such a strong tauros?"
"being compleatly honest that is all tauros i have yet to teach him something i spended the last week trying to put hoothoot and slowpoke up to speed with him so i didnt have the time the only thing he learned was iron tail copying it from slowpoke"
"well if thats the case i would like to see what does the rest of your team can do now i still have 2 pokemon and half to fight so what do you say?"
"sure"
while tauros rested i sended hoothoot to end scyther and when pidgeott came i returned him and sended slowpoke since i knew that pidgeott was still faster than hoothoot so i used the teleport strat and when pidgeott went too high for slowpoke to reach he would just teleport over him and ride him and launched multiple water pulse sending both to the ground but when pidgeott started eating dirt slowpoke teleported to a tree branch and since teleport makes it so everytime you teleport all the momentum stops and your speed goes back to zero nothing happened to him, and last was his exeggcute so i returned him and sended hoothoot to finish the job with an air slash.
"you got carried by your tauros you know that right?"
"oh i know but catching strong pokemon is part of being a trainer and i just resulted lucky enough to find a pretty strong one, besides we both were in the safari zone at the same time so you could have caught it too"
and with that we started healing our pokemon
"whatever, wait till next week where i get my leaf stone and new tms and we will have our remach"
i smiled
" im curious what did you buy?"
" i bought sludge bomb for exeggcute and sword dance and roost for scyther"
"talk about pay to win, a shame i wasnt born as oaks grandson"
he smiled
"skill issue, deal with it.
I plan to face the gym in a week and a half when my thing arrive and i get some time to practice with them what about you?"
i thought for a while and answered
"probably in 2 days i need to buy a few things and see if i can get tauros to learn a few things"
"suit yourself"
and with that we kept a more relaxed training while tauros started running and fighting with trees and wild pokemon that where around.
The rest of the day was spend looking for the adequate equipament to ride tauros while blue did the same for his pidgeott costing me 500$.
Something i didnt bother to consider was the fact that tauros was at least 3 times bigger and more heavy than slowpoke and hoothoot and therefore ate more makeing the cost from food go from 400$ to 1000$ and another 200$ for my food, i also bought a brush for 50$ since the mane of tauros was quite dirty and needed cleaning leaving me at 31370$ .
The next day was spend showing tauros the type chart and when to use each of his moves against each type and then started testing it against some trainers that were in the pokecenter and i maneged to make 500$ in a few battles in which tauros stomped everyone except a hunter since only iron tail worked against him but overall it was a good training day.