Training and discussions

Pikachu hit Pele with his tail gaining a pale grey sheen causing the Numel to go skidding back on her hooves with a surprised expression on her face. He lept back as she released some Ember at him and looked at Vali as she called for the practice match to end. She looked into her pokedex before grinning at him, "Looks like you managed to learn Slam, Pikachu. Let's practice it a bit more then work on Wild Charge, okay?"

Pikachu nodded and turned to Pele with a grin on his face. The faster he mastered the attacks Vali wanted him to learn, the better his showing during the next gym battle would be. He had to show his trainer just how worthy he was of becoming a Raichu.

Vali looked over the tutorials that she'd found for Wild Charge one more time before saying, "Alright, so the basis of it is similar to slam where you use your innate non-elemental energy to slam your tail into whoever you're battling at high speeds and heavy force. Instead of focusing your non-elemental energy into the attack, you need to use your innate electrical energy," She bent down to show Pikachu a video of a Raichu racing forward covered in a cloak of electricity, "What I'm going to have you do, is use Quick Attack while also charging up your electricity. This should give you a base for using Wild Charge, okay?" Pikachu nodded as he watched the video carefully, "For now, I just want you to get used to having your electricity charged up while you're going at fast speeds. Everything else can wait until you get it down."

Pikachu watched the video two more times before he went to start training himself too use Wilde Charge. Vali watched him start running around slowly with his cheeks occasionally sparking before slowly beginning to increase his speed. When his cheeks stopped sparking, he slowed down and waited a few moments before restarting. She looked down when she felt Eevee lean against her legs and showed him the videos Pikachu was watching, "He's learning Wild Charge. It's one of the moves he has to learn before evolving otherwise he'd never have the ability to learn it," Eevee looked at her with a bit of confusion in his eyes, "During evolution, Pikachu's body gains mass and muscle which reduces their speed in exchange for an increased electrical storage, defense, and attack. If they learn speed attacks such as Agility, they'll be able to use them due to the fact their body already knows how and will compensate for the speed via extra energy to the muscles needed for it," Eevee nodded slowly and looked at Pikachu with a small frown, "Pikachu wants to evolve and I'll give him that chance even if a Raichu isn't exactly suited for my battling style. A Charizard of all things isn't exactly suited for it either, but I'm not going to prevent any of my pokemon from evolving if they want to."

Eevee looked up at her with a question burning in his eyes. She bent down to get mostly eye-level as she said, "Eevee, if you choose to stay with me, I'd love you no matter what evolution you chose or even if you choose to stay like this. Evolution is a choice after all though most would probably disagree."

Pikachu let out a surprised yelp and Vali looked at him to see the mouse pokemon rolling around with Pippin. Taking a quick picture with her camera, she rushed over to seperate them. Clearly, Pippin had thought this was a game rather than training and wanted to play too.

The date of Vali's gym battle with Koga drew ever closer with her pokemon working their asses off to get ready for it. Vali had decided on Pikachu, Balto, Arwen, and Idril to be her battlers this time around. It was high time for Idril to have her first gym battle. If it weren't for the fact Terra still needed a lot of work, she would have been on the roster alongside Idril. Smaug was still getting used to his bigger body and wouldn't do well in an enclosed space for his first gym battle as a Charizard. Celina wasn't suited for the battle and everyone else needed a lot more training before she deemed them anywhere near ready for an actual battle let alone a gym battle. Of course, Empress looked about ready to bash her skull in when she'd made that announcement. Over-confident dragons for the win and all that, she really needed to see if Lance had a pokegear if only so she could pick his brain about how to deal with her Bagon.

Pikachu, Balto, Arwen, and Idril were put through their paces with the latter two getting the most attention of the four. Idril especially getting her attention as the shiny Sandshrew began to shed her timidness. With her added attention, Idril managed to learn Rollout and Poison Sting with the former leading to the Sandshrew learning Rapid Spin. It wasn't long until she noticed parts of Idril's back scales beginning to shift slightly and small dark red spots beginning to form in those areas. With that in mind, she took Idril to Nurse Joy. Nurse Joy announced that Idril was in the beginning stages of evolution and depending on what Vali did from now on, the shiny Sandshrew would likely be evolving in a month. The pink haired nurse advised the fire-type master-in-training to keep Idril inside as much as possible after the gym battle because the snow that would soon begin falling would harm the ground-type. With that in mind, she passed along the warning to Steven.

Arwen wasn't showing any sign of evolution though that wasn't too surprising since the Ponyta-line grew a bit more slowly compared to most fire-types. It was mostly due to their genetics and how their bodies had evolved over time. Ponyta took longer to evolve due to their bodies being built to withstand the wear and tear of keeping up with their herds. Even when a Ponyta worked with a trainer, it took them upwards of a year to evolve if caught wild. If bred, it took even longer especially when the Ponyta was newly hatched. Despite what most trainers would believe, Vali was actually happy that it would take Arwen longer to evolve.

Vali wasn't ready to be forced to have multiple pokemon sleep in their pokeballs because there wasn't enough room in her pokemon center room. It was difficult at the current moment to figure out where Smaug and Celina were supposed to sleep on top of where her newer pokemon slept. Pippin had a habit of sleeping on her chest with Pele somehow managing to end up on halfway on top of her left leg from where she usually slept next to the wall. Empress tended to migrate in her sleep to lay on her right leg despite falling asleep beside Smaug. Despite the fact she ended up with numb body parts by morning, she loved not having to use a blanket due to her pokemon providing more than enough warmth to not need one.

Relatively speaking, Vali sometimes woke up sweating heavily mostly due to the fact Pele's body radiated quite a bit of heat. Not as hot as the magma inside the Numel's body, everyone probably would've been burned at some point if that had happened. Pele's body naturally sealed in a majority of the heat save for when something actually managed to piss off the Numel which hadn't happened since she ended up capturing herself. She was both looking forward to and dreading the day it happened. Numel may be some of the more even tempered pokemon, but when they lost their temper, it was scary especially since they tended to evolve when that happened. Before that happened, she was going to ensure that Pele loved and cared for every member of their family if only to prevent any accidents from happening once the evolution occurred.