“Well thats not very nice.” Roland deadpanned to Isabel, hoping to catch her off guard with his dry humor, however her stunned face did not change.

  “I have some clarifying questions if thats okay?” She asked in response.

  “Go ahead.” Roland conceded, disappointed that he would not be able to tease the Joy.

  “Neressia’s signature move, it works similar to Baton Pass correct?”

  “Thats right, it’s called Heart Swap, it switches any altered states between Neressia and her target, so using tail glow to raise her special attack she's able to pass those boosts on to others, however in theory if she was hit by a stat reducing move like growl she could pass the lowered status effect onto an opponent, or if the target has boosted a stat that she is not able to then she can get the boost from them. Eventually I would like Nereus to learn dragon dance which would give us access to an attack and speed boost.” Roland explained.

  “Your horsey is far too young to learn dragon dance.” Isabel warned.

  “Of course, I knew that… actually I didn’t, there is a lot about Pokemon I don’t know and I'm hoping you could help fill in those gaps but that's another topic.” Roland replied.

  “Right, anyway back to the subject at hand, she was using the move on you, so all that stored power is going straight into your body? How is that not killing you?” She asked.

  “Killing me? It certainly hurt to begin with but it’s not the worst thing that's happened to me, I have a lot of aura so I think I've been using that to reinforce my body, it helps to contain the power, the more aura I use for reinforcement the less it hurts to store the power.”

  “What could have been worse than turning yourself into a poorly contained explosion?” Isabel asked in disbelief.

  “Now your just exaggerating, if I feel my control over the power slipping I just start converting it into more aura, which my Pokemon syphon off me to empower their moves, honestly the current bottleneck in our training isn’t how quickly we can use the power or how much I can store but how quickly Neressia can produce and transfer it to me.” Roland saw Neressia’s face fall at this so he quickly added on, “But we have only been doing it for a day, and the rate at which she's able to build up power is growing at an incredible rate so I don’t see that being the issue for long.

  “As for what was worse, Kingdra using heal pulse for sure, I got clipped by an Ursaring’s hyper beam which left my back pretty messed up, then along came this Kingdra, scared the Ursaring off and used heal pulse to fix me up, while im grateful the healing hurt a hundred times more than the hyper beam did.” Roland said.

  Isabel didn’t respond for a few moments, standing there lost in thought before she finally decided to ask, “Can I see?”

  “See what?” Roland asked.

  “Your back, your story doesn’t make sense, getting hit by a hyper beam should kill you, a glancing blow would leave horrible marks and a mountain of normal TE, a heal pulse would have to remove all that normal TE then infuse you with psychic TE to repair the damage, each stage of this should be more than the human body could handle, its why using Pokemon moves on humans is so tightly controlled.” Isabel explained.

  “Tightly controlled? I don’t know anything about that. I'm afraid, and as I said it certainly hurt, I ended up passing out from the experience. Come to think of it, I passed out a lot these days which probably wasn’t great for my health.” Roland mused to himself as he rambled.

  “But to answer your previous question, yes you can see my back, although I don't know if there is much to see.” he said as he took his shirt off and turned around.

  Roland wasn’t sure what he expected Isabel's reaction to be, but a scream was certainly not it.

  “What's wrong?” He said, quickly turning around to see Isabel’s face had shifted into one of horror.

  After taking a moment to compose herself Isabel spoke, “Since I entered this room I have had my expectations challenged and proven wrong time and time again. A trainer with a legendary Pokemon in isolated training is not someone who would be happy to have supervision from a clan as large as the Joys, and they would certainly not be happy to discuss their training techniques let alone have their Pokemon fully examined by said clan, yet you were happy to greet me and almost keen to have your Pokemon looked at.”

  “I then noticed that your Horsey scales were growing to fast for its age so I challenged you, saying that I would examine all of your Pokemon, growth beyond there age is normally a sign that a trainer is pushing there Pokemon far to hard, that or it is a clear sign of abuse, if this was the case you would have pushed back and not let me examine your Horsey, yet again you were more than happy to have them looked at.”

  “Then you went and showed me a training method that should be impossible for a number of reasons, for one it requires access to a specific legendary Pokemon, and on top of that you need to have a body that can contain immense amounts of TE, something that would kill anyone else but you apparently.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “And to top it all off you tell me this insane story about not only surviving a hyper beam from an Ursaring but then having a Kingdra heal it, a tale so tall that it could have only been cooked up by a trainer having too much to drink and wanting to show off, but again you prove me wrong by showing me the awful scar across your back.” Isabel said, the words pouring from her and she tried to come to grips with her current situation.

  Roland for his part was partially stunned from the outburst, his circumstances were unique to say the least so he could understand why Isabel was having troubles getting a grip of his situation, “Wait a moment, I have a scar on my back?” he asked.

  Isabel burst into laughter, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh” she managed to get out between breaths, “it’s just this entire situation is so absurd and then you come out and tell me you didn’t even know there was a scar there?”

  “Believe me this situation is far more absurd than you know, but no I didn’t know I had a scar, what does it look like?” Roland asked.

  “Like someone set your back on fire, melting your skin then rapidly cooling it while stretching it back together, I'm sorry but it's not exactly pretty.” Isabel explained.

  Roland responded with a shrug, “I didn’t expect it to be pretty based on how you screamed, learning you have a scar isn't fun but it doesn’t hurt so thats good at least, and considering how I got it from what you have said I should be thankful for the result I had.”

  “If you would like I could take a photo of it to show you?” Isabel offered.

  “Please if you would, It would help to see what im dealing with.”

  The picture was not pretty, his skin once fairly pale had turned a deep red, most of the texture lost, leaving a smooth finish, there were small pockets of untouched skin dotted throughout, sports that hadn’t been burned as badly but close to 80% of his back had been burned, much worse than he had thought.

  No wonder it hurt too much. Roland thought to himself.

  Putting his shirt back on Roland decided to file this away, I will likely have to do a lot of therapy once everything settles down, will I even be able to or are they going to classify everything about my origins? Questions for another time, right now I need to just focus on what I can do.

  The thought was one that had stuck him a number of times since arriving in Sinnoh, Roland was emotionally intelligent enough to know that he had been through some trauma and that he would have to process it eventually or it would become a festering wound, he was also aware that he certainly did not have the skills to process said trauma without professional help, and so he had decided to put all his attention onto becoming a Pokemon trainer, what else was he supposed to do now that he had been transported into a world full of Pokemon than train to be the best there ever was after all?

  “So, im sure you have a million questions.” Roland started bringing Isabel’s attention back to him, “but if its okay would you indulge mine first?” he asked.

  Isabel simply nodded for him to continue.

  “Okay the first and most important issue is the health of my Pokemon, this training method is unique as you mentioned, but will it have any adverse effects on the development of my Pokemon, I also had to supply a large amount of aura to Neressia’s egg to help her hatch, this was when I only had around a month of aura training from a wild Kingdra so my control was less than perfect, there health is the most important thing and I want to make sure nothing I am doing is compromising that.” Roland said.

  “As I mentioned before my records of Manaphy as a species are basically non existent, but from my examination I cannot find any issues with Neressia’s condition, as for the training method it appears to be causing Nereus to develop faster than he normally would, this isn’t necessary a bad thing although it could be depending on how fast he develops and how long you do this for, I would advise some moderation, for a specific breakdown I would need to do a lot more research and see his progress overtime, at which point I could offer a more detailed report.” she explained.

  “Thats good to hear, and if you would be willing to monitor our training progress and provide expert opinions we would be fools to turn you down.” Roland responded.

  “For me it would be an opportunity to study a legendary Pokemon, something many people would kill for so I would be more than happy to help you.” Isabel said with a smile.

  “Excellent, you hear that guys, for now Isabel will be acting as our official team doctor, that means you have to listen to what she says, if she wants daily check ups and exams she gets them okay?” Roland addressed his Pokemon who were more than happy to agree, it seemed that the pets Isabel had snuck in between different parts of her examination had made her two new friends.

  “My next question is one Pokemon care, the knowledge I have is… I'm not sure what the right word should be but I'll go with specific, I know most moves and what they do, such as dragon dance raises a Pokemon’s attack and speed, yet I don’t know why I shouldn't teach it to Nereus until he's older. There is also the question of diets, right now we have all been eating grilled Magikarp and berries as that's what Kingdra would provide to us and what I have access to in the fridge, there are other ingredients but I don’t know what they are and how to use them.”

  “So I was hoping on top of language lessons if you would be willing to give me lessons on Poke - Care covering everything from development stages, proper diets and what moves are appropriate to learn it would help greatly.” Roland finished his request with a small bow, he felt awkward asking so much of Isabel who would already be monitoring the health of his Pokemon but he was aware that it was information he lacked and desperately needed so he didn’t really have any choice but to ask.

  “I take it you never went to trainer school?” Isabel asked with a smile.

  “I did not” Roland confirmed.

  Letting out a sigh Isabel responded, “Well since your letting me study a legendary Pokemon I suppose I could give you some lessons, perhaps we can work them into your language lessons.”

  “That sounds fantastic!” Roland responded with enthusiasm.

  “You have given me a lot to think about, why don’t you go back to training and I will get started on a lesson plan, since you clearly don’t know anything about cooking if all you are serving is fried Magikarp ill also take over there, at least until you learn more, go on I will call you when lunch is ready.” Isabel told him as she made a shooing gesture.

  Man I really lucked into something here if she's also going to be making our meals. Roland mused as he walked back to the center of the Dojo to take up a meditative pose.

  “Alright guys, let's take it from the top!”