diamondpearl876
Well-Known Member
LOVE AND OTHER NIGHTMARES
chapter nine
a heavy dose of atmosphere
*
Floaroma Town certainly lives up to its name, though the view surprises me. I may be remembering wrong, but history classes had taught me that Floaroma used to be an infertile, uninhabited land full of bleak hills. Trainers, who had hoped to see the sights when passing by, were shocked and, undeterred by disappointment, began planting flowers. Nothing came of this, but the trainers didn't give up. After a while, a tradition of sorts was set in place. Those with rock-, grass- and water-type pokémon came by, the idea being that a creature possessing the forces of nature would be able to help the land prosper. To them it made sense. If researchers had declared all fossils embedded into the earth to be immortal, the bulbasaur line to be the controllers of sunlight, and starmie to be alien creatures capable of unpredictable powers... then anything was possible.
A legendary pokémon named Shaymin saw from above what the trainers were doing and decided to reward them for their gratitude and perseverance. The hill flourished suddenly, and in a day Floaroma had enough sustenance to maintain all forms of life. Amazed, the blessed trainers who wanted to contribute to the land's growth decided to retire and build a community for themselves and their pokémon. More time passed, and so came everyone's happy ending.
Of course, Shaymin's existence is mere speculation, as is the story as a whole. That's not the mysterious part for me, however. Why anyone would put forth so much effort into a grief-stricken wasteland is, I suppose, what I'm trying to figure out.
Kephi and Virokoe would feel a sort of euphoria they could find just about anywhere, if only they had been looking...
Right. We're in Floaroma to start over. To heal, and to train. Temporarily avoiding Kyurem's ice storm threats is an added bonus.
The soft but strong scent of flowers brings me back to reality. Floaroma, which is more a field than it is a town, radiates passion and cheerfulness, and for a moment I wish I was attuned to nature myself. I bend down and scrape the tip of my fingers across a pink chrysanthemum, afraid to hold it and accidentally crush it. The petals are wet with the fall morning's dew, and the damp feeling makes me shiver. Beside me Kephi scuttles over the flowers without a care, and Virokoe sits on a group of them like it's a chair. When Kephi passes by and when Virokoe moves out of the way, the flower stems are bent, but are still able to provide support to the petals. In the sunlight the colorful assortments glow, steadfast and spirited.
Kephi comes closer and hovers over me, his shadow making the flower I'm touching blush a deeper shade of pink.
“Looks like it's time to cause some trouble here,” he says, motioning toward the town with his antennae. In the direction he's pointing I can see a courier delivering flowers, as if Floaroma didn't have enough already. The scene reminds me of being at home in Sandgem, where there's always an excess of something (expectations, ambitions, trust...) that you have no real use for.
“Define trouble,” I say to Kephi.
“A rude awakening.”
“Sounds like the life of a trainer with a poison-type starter.”
Virokoe's eyes widen as he bounces over to us, saying, “That's not funny! You know when your body jerks itself awake as it's trying to fall asleep? It happened to me three times last night.”
“That kind of thing happens when your heart rate drops too fast,” Kephi says with an expertise I don't anticipate. “Better watch out.”
Virokoe stares at him, then a grin plays at his lips. “It won't happen while we're training.”
“I guess.”
Training requires exertion, which for Kephi requires an immense amount of determination and for Virokoe, agility. What one excels in, the other one lacks. At any rate, we're stuck here until Gregory shows his face, but I'm confident he won't keep us waiting too long. For now it's time to head to the Pokémon Center to guarantee a place to sleep for the night, and maybe to take a nice bath. Standing up, the air around us is warm. I look down at my pokémon, and I want to ask if something's off, or if something feels different in a good way, because this is the first time I've seen them get along for an entire conversation.
*
Gregory Holster is, if nothing else, a man of his word. Inside the Pokémon Center he's standing by the counter, talking to the Nurse Joy on duty. He's wearing a casual business outfit consisting of khakis and a striped, collared red shirt, and he's holding a backpack filled to the brim with whatever occupational therapists bring when on the road. His face gleams with confidence, and when he sees me, he smiles, which only adds to his exuberant demeanor. He has the appearance of a man who's ready to embark on some adventure, one in which he presumes to come out of alive, when that might not necessarily happen.
I walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder. “Don't tell me you've been waiting here since I called you,” I say as a greeting, motioning toward the pokémon beside him, which he had used to teleport away from us last time. After getting a better look I can see it's a smeargle, a species capable of copying other pokémon's attacks. Smeargle is native to Johto, while Nate is native to Unova and Spectra is native to Hoenn...
Gregory turns and says simply, “Tracking device.” He shrugs and follows my gaze.
I stare at him now, unperturbed and actually rather comforted that I could be found should anything terrible ever happen. I shake myself out of my reverie and say, “Do you have any idea what you're getting into here?”
“A day of pokémon training, seems like.”
“Oh, how fun,” Nurse Joy chimes in. The only way I can tell her apart from her relatives is through her voice, which is a bit deeper and not as friendly. “Are you...?” she adds, but she trails off.
“This is Annie Willems,” Gregory says, resting a hand on my back. “The one with the venipede.”
“You're telling everyone about me?” I ask, but there's a more important matter at hand. Virokoe's been at my side, purring quietly, but Kephi's not here and I don't see slime anywhere... “Speaking of Kephi, where is he?”
“Over there,” Nurse Joy says, pointing down the hallway, toward the bed and breakfast room. And sure enough, there he is, going back and forth across the marble floor to find a way to reach a sandwich platter.
“Not surprised.”
Nurse Joy folds her hands and pays attention to just me. “My sister from Jubilife City told me about you.”
I'm reminded of the conversation about Kephi's possible surgery, and I try not to cringe at the memory. “...Not surprised,” I say again. With a family like that, there can be no secrets. I think about distracting her by causing a scene about Kephi's slime, but it doesn't seem fair, considering he managed not to be a nuisance for once. Virokoe shrinks back at the mention of Jubilife City as well, and it occurs to me that this nurse might recognize him and accuse me of stealing, which would be fair.
We're interrupted by a pink, plump blissey ambling from the hallway to my left and into the lobby. She's wearing a nurse's hat, and I get the strange image in my head of Nurse Joy having to put that small hat on her head every morning, since the blissey has stubby arms. As if on cue, the blissey bends over slightly to bow to us, and the hat slips off, landing on the floor without noise. Virokoe runs over and picks it up in his mouth, extending it upward toward the blissey, who, of course, can't reach far enough to take it.
Gregory whispers to me, “I thought you said Virokoe wasn't very sociable. Seems the opposite to me.”
“I don't get it, either.”
After a moment of confusion, Virokoe gives up on waiting for the blissey and takes the hat to Nurse Joy, who retrieves it with a bland smile but does nothing with it and instead gives the blissey an order in incomprehensible medical jargon. The blissey nods and flees back toward the hallway.
“Happiny used to come by the school to cheer up the kids when they were stressed during exams. Darn baby pokémon stole my spotlight a lot,” Virokoe explains, and the explanation elicits a purr that's more like a slight growl.
“Virokoe, you...” I tell him, having to hold myself back, torn between fixing my pokémon's lack of tact versus revealing to Gregory about how I can understand pokémon speech.
“Doesn't miss Jubilife City, does he?” Nurse Joy asks.
“Not at all,” I say, rubbing the back of my head nervously. There's an awkward moment of silence, then I add with a sigh of defeat, “Aren't you going to call the police or something?”
“Why would I?”
“When a famous TV star goes missing and is finally found, oh, a month and half later or however long it's been, you should probably get excited and claim the reward.” I glance over at Kephi after speaking those last words, wondering still what goes through that critter's mind when it comes to his various problems.
“But he went with you willingly. You're not keeping him confined in a pokéball for too long, and you're not keeping him from being healed when it's needed.”
And that's all true enough. I can't deny any of it, not after Virokoe's latest conversations with me. “I just asked because...” I say, trailing off again and realizing there's nothing to hide from this Nurse Joy. Anxiety wells up in my chest whenever I see the family, especially now that I know how fast the gossip spreads. “Well, you're a mandated reporter and all that.”
“So I am,” she replies, her smile fading slightly. If there's some kind of secret she's hiding, I know I'll never figure it out. “But he seems happy enough,” she says, bending down to pet him on the head, in between the ears as Gregory does. Virokoe's tail raises in contentment, and his growl turns into a genuine purr.
“We passed through Jubilife a couple days ago and he didn't run away, so I guess that says something...” I say, running my mouth as usual.
“Nothing happened?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. She places her hands on the counter in front of her and taps to a rhythm.
“No,” I say quickly, “nothing happened. No one saw him, but he didn't hop out of the backpack and leap into the arms of his old life, either.”
“I see...”
Gregory, who's let me ramble on this whole time, checks his watch idly, his mouth parted open a bit as if he wants to say something, but can't. I'm not sure why he hasn't interrupted yet, honestly.
“Anyway,” I say, taking a deep breath and turning to Gregory, “you wanted to show me around Floaroma, didn't you?”
“Hmm. That is true,” he replies, checking his watch again. “We should get going. We'll head to the fields first, then the windworks, and from there...”
I wait for him to continue, but he doesn't. “And from there...?” I say, prompting him with a hand motion.
“The rest will follow.”
“Cryptic,” I say, remembering the conversation between Obieme and Kephi about weird, half-hearted comments. If Obieme were here now, he wouldn't accept Gregory's answer. As it stands, though, I have few other options. Those other options are still available, sure, but they're not favorable to my pokémon for several reasons. And I guess being a pokémon trainer means going along with what they want rather than what I want.
“I know,” Gregory says, giving me a bored smile.
I wave to the Nurse Joy, not daring to look her in the eye, but telling her I'll be back after our session to heal my pokémon. Then I yell for Kephi to follow us, which earns me a glare from Gregory, even though the lobby is nearly empty. When we leave, he asks me how much trouble I'm going to cause for everyone in Sinnoh.
I shrug and say, “Just enough. Besides, it's really only you and the Nurse Joys I'm bothering.”
“And your pokémon.”
I look down at Kephi, who's trying to hide a smirk, and Virokoe, who, fortunately, isn't paying attention. I reach down to pet him in between the antennae and he hisses at me.
“See what I mean?” Gregory says.
“That was a sign of love right there. Didn't you see it?”
But he knows, and I know, that that couldn't be further from the truth.
*
Gregory leads us to the northern end of Floaroma Town. The flowers have shadows cast over them by the afternoon's darkening sky. A light mist falls, but it doesn't stop us from getting done what needs to be done, least of all Gregory. He motions for a few passers-by to spare a minute so that he can ask what wild pokémon are in the area. The passers-by only go on with lit up faces to describe the amazing field of flowers we're going to, though they think we should wait until the rain passes. The passers-by speak as if the concept of flowers is entirely foreign, and then they move on to put a roof over their heads.
When Gregory finally leaves the passers-by alone, I ask him if he remembers what I told him over the phone about Kephi's disability. Kephi himself responds with a myriad of angry curses, but I tell him it's for the best and he just mutters to himself after that.
“I knew about Kephi having apraxia, but not hypoxia,” he says, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“What.” It's not even a question. Gregory's turned to his crazy lingo already and we haven't started the real training yet. “A-prax-ee-uh and—”
Gregory interrupts me to say the words again. “Apraxia, hypoxia. Hypoxia is the name of the condition that encompasses a lack of adequate oxygen in the body. This, of course, was caused by the... incident,” he says carefully, glancing at the poison-type, who's practically glaring daggers into the man. I don't think Kephi's truly mad about asking Gregory for help, or at least, he'll forgive me once this is all over.
“Depending on the severity of the oxygen deprivation...” he goes on, “the patient can have lasting side effects. In Kephi's case, apraxia still effects him to this day, it seems.”
“Which is?”
“A cognitive disorder that prevents him from moving properly, to put it simply.”
“And the longer version?”
Gregory sighs. “In short, apraxia is associated with damage to regions of the brain that regulate motor skills. Kephi in particular suffers from ideomotor apraxia, which infringes on his ability to carry out common, familiar actions on command. For example, he can scuttle along just fine, as I saw him do on the walls at Oreburgh Gate. But when you call out a poison-type attack, he may know how the attack is supposed to be executed, but his brain can't process how to turn that image in his head into reality.”
“So that's why telling him to use poison sting has been useless?” I say, lowering my head and my voice, and wondering what this means for the TM attack he learned a few days ago.
“Not just poison sting. It could be any attack.”
“Oh. Right,” I say. He'd also failed at using his rollout attack during the gym battle against Roark. Now I'm even more worried. Isn't Gregory supposed to make things better, not worse?
“When pokémon training first became a sport and the League was created, the League noticed certain trends and strategies used by newer trainers as they worked together to learn the powers of different types and species. Names were given to those simple attacks. As time went on, the strategies became more complicated, and they were named as well for the sake of tradition. Even today people can usually gauge how strong a pokémon is just by knowing what attacks they've practiced. Combining attacks and thinking outside the box is allowed and highly encouraged, but in general, pokémon training and the idea of calling out commands is specifically geared toward movement and procedural memory.”
I sigh, exasperated. “Is procedural memory as simple as it sounds?” I ask.
“Yes. Fine motor skills and procedural memory go hand in hand.”
“So Kephi has the memory capacity to know what I'm talking about, but his body doesn't cooperate,” I say, trying to understand.
“Precisely.”
A thought hits me. “You said you knew about the apraxia,” I say, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “Why didn't you say anything?”
“My job is to help you with your stroke recovery and to prevent further mishaps, Miss Willems. ...Annie,” he says, correcting himself. “Your pokémon are your responsibility.”
“Can't all the stress caused by this hurt me?” I say, half-sarcastic and half-serious.
He ignores me and continues, “Now, if a nurse or gym leader had noticed and provided the proper referral needed for me to work with Kephi himself as a patient, that might have been a different story. As it stands, either you neglected to mention this to someone before, or you simply didn't know. With the latter, you have to know that one of the main rules of being a therapist is to work in the patient's best interests. For me to simply make assumptions without a proper assessment and to force you and Kephi into treatment... Well, that would have been wrong.”
“So it all had to start with me.” Of course, and how blunt. How appropriate. “And since Roark and Nurse Joy both know...”
“Yes,” Gregory says. “A functional assessment of Kephi's daily life is essentially more important than the presence of the apraxia itself, so I didn't say anything because of that, either. Everything seemed well for him. But then Roark told me what happened at the gym, and Nurse Joy heard the argument in the Center...”
“Does everyone know about me?” Kephi says, speaking out loud enough for us to hear him.
“Yes,” Gregory says again.
“Fuck you, too.”
*
The rest of the trip is relatively quiet and, thankfully, short. When we get to the field, I'm hit by a heavy dose of atmosphere that triggers all my senses. The rain is light, as before, but now droplets hit like hail, feeling as hard and cold as used bullets. I see a colorful assortment of flowers—which is no surprise—but what bothers me this time is that there are wild, innocent pokémon wandering about, undeserving of whatever havoc Kephi will cause soon enough. There's a sour taste in my mouth, as if I just drank lemon juice, or as if I swallowed Gregory's explanations and accepted them as the truth. I wrap my arms around my body to shield myself from the rain, until I realize it's useless and I should have brought a damn umbrella
Gregory breaks me out of my reverie when he says, “We'll work on your problems first.”
“What,” I say for the second time that day. For a moment I think Gregory's figured out my whole hidden persona and Kyurem's plan, ice storm and all.
“Were you ever told to keep quiet a lot as a child, Annie?”
“No,” I answer immediately. Renee was the quiet one. “I talked too much.”
Gregory looks away, then nods. “I asked because your body looks tense most of the time, and your posture is poor. This could have become the norm during childhood, or it can be brought on by emotional pain felt in the present.”
Mentally, I curse myself. Without realizing it, I had walked into a trap. “What's this got to do with anything?” I ask, defensive, feeling my jaw tighten as I speak.
“It means you're ugly,” Virokoe butts in, unashamed and completely serious.
“Who asked you?” I say, glaring at him, but he ignores me and pounces on a nearby flower, unperturbed as ever.
“Let me be frank, here,” Gregory says, also ignoring Virokoe's quipping. “Tension causes you to slouch, which puts unnecessary pressure on your neck, which, in turn, affects your voice. You lose acoustic opportunities when you speak, and you need good voice resonance for when you make commands.”
“Ah. Back to commanding, I see.”
“It's important, is it not? Also, your chin juts out when you look down at our pokémon or bend down to see them closer. Virokoe said it looks... unfavorable, but in truth, we use that technique unconsciously to hide the fact that most of us have a double chin, which is equally as unfavorable.”
I scowl at him. “And your point?”
He walks over to me, giving me a glance that asks for permission to move closer. I look away but nod, and he straightens my back and positions my neck so that I'm looking down rather than up.
“Free your neck and the rest will follow,” he says, the phrase sounding familiar. “Your head should feel lighter, but not in a dizzy way. This encourages movement rather than making it static and tense. It also allows energy to flow freely through your spinal cord, which ends at the middle of the back of your head, not at the neck like most people might believe.”
If I let go of the emotional pain, the rest will follow...
And, with Gregory standing there, forcing me to feel how I should feel rather than the way I've felt for years, the rest does follow. Virokoe laughs at me again and Kephi calls us lunatics, but when I tell them to shut up once more, I don't recognize the voice that comes out of my mouth, harsh but honest and not at all like the voice of someone trying to hide.
“You might be on to something,” I say to him, somehow bitter, but he just smiles.
*
After a while, practicing strange-looking, unnatural postures and yelling out random obscenities gets boring, which is unusual for me. Kephi, Virokoe and Gregory are pleased to have a break from hearing my obnoxious voice as well. All goes quiet and the wild budew and roserade that had previously scattered come crawling back through the prickly bushes at the edges of the field. The wild pokémon are wary, but unafraid to confront us to defend their territory if they have to. Kephi stares them down and his antennae perk up every few moments.
“Shall we get started, then?” Gregory asks, noticing Kephi's defensive position.
“You haven't told me what we'll be doing yet at all,” I say, looking at Virokoe. The purrloin's sitting beside me, disinterested and continuing to lie on the flowers like training's no big deal. I know he'll help Kephi if he needs to, and the image of them working together toward a common goal is more appealing than I expect.
“We'll be seeing more of how Kephi's apraxia affects his life on a daily basis, particularly with battling. Then we'll implement at least two intervention strategies for you to focus on when training.”
“On a daily basis, huh? ...How often should we be training, exactly?” I ask him, because so far, all Kephi and Virokoe have done between cities is ward off weak enemies with an attack or two.
“A thorough training session should happen once or twice a week,” Gregory says. “Think of it like scheduling a set of regular therapy sessions,” he adds, nodding his head for emphasis. “The rest of the time is more laid back training, so to speak. Kephi can apply what he's learned to real battles and other daily activities.”
“Such as...?”
“Such as trying to retrieve the plate of food he was trying to reach earlier.”
“Uh, okay.” I don't mention how Kephi's a small bug-type and the table was three times taller than him, but Gregory seems to read my mind as he notes several ways in which Kephi could have gotten the food: using rollout to knock it off the table, climbing up the table's legs... “And then Nurse Joy might have kicked us out before we even rented a room.”
“Does Kephi seem like the type to care about that?”
“...No.”
“All right. So train every week, and make a point of keeping him out of trouble. Just know that after the first few months of recovery, progress unfortunately will most likely come to a standstill.” I wait to see if he's kidding, but he's not. He puts his hands in his pockets and pulls out a normal pokéball. I would expect something extravagant from him. Something foreign. “To counteract this, you should have Kephi practice less powerful attacks. I understand you taught him poison jab, but practice poison sting, too, and whatever else you think is appropriate. When he's injured or simply having a bad day, he will benefit from using an attack with a body part—such as his antennae—that he's accustomed to using more often than, say, the feelers on the lower half of his body.”
“Makes sense,” I mumble, still waiting for him to release the pokéball's contents. It does make sense, though, however little I'm paying attention. Patting Kephi in between his antennae probably makes him feel better about himself than having me point out his flaws all the time.
Finally, Gregory throws the pokéball and out pops another pink blob that would resemble the blissey from earlier if it weren't so... small, and shapeless. Its limbless body bobs up and down excitedly, and its beady eyes glance back and forth between its trainer and its surroundings.
“A ditto,” I deadpan. From Kanto, I don't say. Everyone knows about ditto being a popular pokémon used for breeding purposes or even in circuses or carnival shows. Not everyone knows a ditto's origins, but that's what matters most to me.
“Call her Eureka.”
Gregory's team baffles me for more reasons that one. “Any story behind this name?”
“No, except eureka is what people say when they get something right after practicing for a long time.” Before I can interrupt him about ditto being genderless and about how literally no one says that anymore, he goes on to tell a story that inspired the idea he has for Kephi. “There's some articles out there about the relationship between seviper, zangoose, and their breeding habits. When criminals get hold of seviper, trying to breed special, deadly poisons, the seviper refuse to breed with anyone, including with dittos. The dittos usually transform into zangoose and claw them until they obey, which they eventually do, if only to save their own lives.”
I say nothing, shocked and somehow worried about not only Kephi, but also Virokoe. I have to trust him, though. He's all I've got in terms of human companionship.
Suddenly his smeargle peaks out from behind him, seemingly on cue. “Banshee here,” Gregory says, “and Eureka will copy Kephi's moves and perform them as they're supposed to look, and then Kephi will try to imitate what he sees...”
And with that, training starts.
As Gregory said, Banshee and Eureka take turns using Kephi's poison sting, rollout, and poison jab attacks. The idea is to have Eureka transform and display an attack as a venipede would use it, and having another pokémon that doesn't look like a venipede at all offers Kephi another perspective and encourages generalization. So I watch as Eureka turns into a venipede, albeit an oddly colored one, and I watch as it spits out several pin-like projectiles from her antennae. Banshee uses poison sting as well, though the projectiles are fired from his mouth instead. Then the two of them curl up into a ball and roll around, first in a straight line to build up speed and then in zigzag patterns for direction. The two of them crush the flowers underneath them, much to the wild pokémon's dismay. Kephi laughs, but I don't know why.
When it's his turn, Gregory instructs him carefully. Remember the feeling of poison in your body before you release the attack.. Move yourself forward bit by bit... It's okay to start off slow... But of course, Kephi doesn't heed Gregory's last piece of advice. Like he does when he scuttles along floors or walls of caves, he thinks he can do everything in a matter of moments. He falls over on his back in the middle of a rollout attack and has trouble turning himself upright.
Virokoe runs up to Kephi and rights him, then scolds him, and Kephi scowls. Gregory mumbles something about how Virokoe's presence will be vital to Kephi's recovery. Something about positive punishment, a term used to describe when a reinforcer is added following an undesired behavior, thus decreasing the likelihood of that behavior ever happening again.
I might have been sleeping in class that day, but the concept registers, somewhere in my brain.
Gregory also makes use of partial reinforcement schedules, where Kephi's behavior is sometimes reinforced, but not one hundred percent of the time. For some reason this is supposed to motivate Kephi work harder for those times where he is praised. I suspect that the performances he's not praised for are supposed to be opportunities for self-reflection. At any rate, I do know that partial reinforcement schedules elicit the highest rate of responses, and are most resistant to extinction, otherwise known as the disappearance of progress made in earlier sessions.
Gregory makes the most use of a variable ratio schedule, which means he compliments Kephi or prompts me to compliment Kephi after two correctly-maneuvered attacks. Then he changes that number to five correctly-maneuvered attacks, and the number keeps increasing the better Kephi gets. For once I don't hear Kephi muttering curse words, and if venipede didn't have dull eyes, he might have shown some sign of contentment, even happiness.
Eventually, though... Kephi gets tired, and Kephi gets angry.
“What happens now?” I say warily, seeing my starter start to struggle more. He's toppling over, ramming into wild pokémon on accident—I give him the benefit of the doubt, here—and he's hurting himself mentally and physically more often than not.
“Take out his pokéball,” Gregory says flatly but firmly.
So I do. The friend ball feels heavy in my hand, even though it's empty. If Gregory's solution is to return Kephi to his pokéball and call it a day, neither me nor Kephi are going to be happy.
“You caught Kephi while he was still conscious, yes?”
I nod.
“Then for him, being in a pokéball, especially a friend ball, will be helpful to you when training him.”
I blink. “Yes, locking him away when he's angry is a sure way to raise his self-esteem.”
“No,” Gregory corrects me, not amused. “When a pokémon is conscious and caught inside a pokéball, the pokéball automatically reconstructs itself so that, whenever the pokémon is recalled, they will be able to see an ideal environment, fitting to all their needs. Friend balls are special. Friend balls provide images of the people in the pokémon's life, particularly their trainer and their teammates. This creates an atmosphere of compassion and teamwork that transfers over to real life when the pokémon is released.”
“So if I recall him, let him sit for a while, then release him, he'll be calm?”
“You don't want to leave him in there too long. Or, if he needs to rest longer than normal, press the button on the middle of the pokéball and let it expand. Let it stay that way. When the pokéball is expanded, this creates the sensation within the pokémon inside that they will soon be released, and the view they're envisioning fades away slowly rather than abruptly, making it a smoother transition.”
I recall Kephi and watch as he assumes the perfect form of a sphere. I hold the ball in my hand, and though it's full now, it's still not heavy. The top of the ball, which I had never noticed before, appears translucent, and I can see Kephi inside, his eyes closed and hopefully dreaming something peaceful.
“Don't dwell on this,” Gregory says, seemingly reading my mind again. “If there's no obstacle to overcome, they can't grow.”
“Isn't this some kind of mind manipulation?”
“That's an argument best left to philosophers.”
Gregory takes a black and white board out of his backpack, which has a drawing with thin lines of a child sitting on the beach. He asks Banshee to use the brush on his tail to color the drawing. He asks Banshee to stay inside the lines. Seeing my skepticism, he tells me that Kephi can hear and understand what's going on in the external world, even when in the pokéball.
“Oh, right.” I had almost forgotten. It had caused a lot of trouble for Virokoe that one night, after all... I wonder, too, if Gregory knows about the incident with Kephi messing up the Jubilife school's calligraphy box. I hope that failure won't be replicated here.
With Gregory's approval I release Kephi again, and Kephi's instructed to use his antennae to follow the white lines, just as Banshee had done. The reinforcement here comes in when pressure is applied to the picture and the white portions are replaced with silver glitter, which tells him where he succeeded and where he messed up. Also, according to Gregory, pokémon like shiny things.
“Tell me about it,” Virokoe says, as if Gregory is a close friend of his. He talks more easily with the occupational therapist than with me, anyway.
The whole calligraphy scene goes on for about an hour, until the drawing is complete. Though Kephi had to be recalled over six times and there's poison stains on the board, meaning that it has to be destroyed and thrown out so no one gets hurt, he seems proud enough. He asks what the hell Gregory was thinking, bringing in a picture of something so lame, and Gregory admits the board is meant for kids, but it worked well.
It worked well... didn't it? Kephi's had one thorough training session now. That's probably more than he's gotten in his entire lifetime, given his poor luck with trainers, past and present. With that thought, I realize that I'm not the only one who has to let go, so to speak.
Once that happens, the rest will follow. So Gregory says, but will it really? I don't know. Not yet. I guess I'll have Kephi go through this training thing a couple more times before heading back to Oreburgh. Gregory had mentioned going to the windworks, after all, but it's getting dark now. Too late to do that this week... And Virokoe's attacks need some fine tuning as well... Basically, this isn't over yet. We're still weeks away from the rematch with Roark, and even further away from the end of this journey.
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