Morning sunlight was already spilling across the snow when Jun woke, turning the frozen forest outside the cave almost golden.
Ralts had apparently been awake for a while.
She stood near the entrance beside a shallow hollow she’d melted into the snow with Fire Punch, dipping her hands into the water and carefully washing her face.
When she noticed Jun stirring, she turned and waved.
“Ra-ru-ru~” Jun smiled, grabbed a towel from his backpack, and crouched beside her.
“Come here.” Ralts fidgeted when he dampened the towel and started wiping her face properly, but she didn’t pull away.
If anything, after a few seconds she seemed to relax into the attention.
Watching her stand there with her eyes half-closed, Jun found himself wondering whether he’d ever actually confirmed that Ralts was a girl.
He’d simply started thinking of her that way somewhere along the line.
Cute, tiny, short-tempered, and happiest when punching something.
It suited her.
Once they were both cleaned up, Jun set out breakfast and lightly pinched one of her cheeks.
“Eat.
We’ll train for a little while, then we’re getting out of Dappled Grove before this place finds another way to kill us.” “Ra-ru!” Ralts bent one arm and puffed herself up as if showing off a nonexistent bicep, apparently trying to tell him there was nothing to worry about with her around.
Jun pushed the food closer.
“Very intimidating.
Breakfast first.” “Ral!” After they finished eating, Jun sat cross-legged with his notebook open while Ralts stood a few steps away.
He wanted a clear idea of what she could actually do before deciding how to train her.
“Show me everything you’ve got.” Ralts immediately raised her right fist.
Flames wrapped around it as she planted one foot, turned her hips, and drove Fire Punch into the cave wall.
The impact left a scorched crack across the stone and sent a small shower of dust to the ground.
Jun stared at the damage for a moment before writing something down.
If she’d hit him like that yesterday, their relationship would’ve ended considerably sooner.
Fire Punch was an odd move for a Ralts to lean on.
Her species naturally excelled far more with psychic attacks, while her small frame made prolonged close combat a bad idea.
The move could still be useful as a surprise, though, and before deciding anything Jun wanted to know how Ralts herself felt about it.
“Do you actually like Fire Punch?” Her answer was immediate.
Ralts started shadowboxing with ridiculous enthusiasm, bouncing from foot to foot and throwing quick little combinations at an imaginary opponent.
Jun laughed.
“Alright, alright.
I get it.” That settled one part of the problem.
He wasn’t going to force her into the most statistically efficient style just because it looked good on paper.
If Ralts loved fighting with her fists, then his job was to find a way to make that work without ignoring the strengths she was born with.
The rest of her moves were much more conventional.
She knew Growl, Disarming Voice, and Confusion, while Teleport stubbornly refused to appear no matter how hard she tried.
Jun wasn’t surprised.
Yesterday’s Teleport had happened while they were falling to their deaths, with Ralts desperately trying to protect him and apparently drawing on strength she couldn’t normally control.
For now, Confusion was the obvious priority.
Improving her psychic strength and control would benefit far more than a single move, while Fire Punch could remain something she developed alongside it.
Jun also wanted to work on her stamina and mobility once they were somewhere safer, since yesterday had made it painfully obvious how quickly exhaustion could become a problem.
The only real obstacle was that Ralts enjoyed psychic training considerably less than punching things.
Pushing her power too far left her exhausted and gave her headaches, so having her repeatedly throw Confusion at targets until she hated the move didn’t sound like a particularly good training plan.
Jun tapped his pen lightly against the notebook while he thought.
“Ra-ru-ru?” Ralts had apparently grown tired of being left out of whatever fascinating activity was happening inside that little book.
She grabbed Jun’s sleeve, climbed his arm, and settled herself on his shoulder with the satisfaction of someone returning to her rightful throne.
When she noticed his furrowed brow, she reached over and pressed one small hand between his eyebrows before leaning her cheek against his and peering down at the page.
“Ra?” “You want to know what I’m writing?” “Ral!” Jun glanced over the notes.
Most of them were cramped, abbreviated, and written for his own benefit rather than anyone else’s, so Ralts had little chance of following them even if she recognized individual words.
He turned to an empty section and wrote her name slowly and clearly.
Ralts.
“There.
That’s you.” Ralts leaned closer, studying the letters with complete seriousness.
When Jun handed her the pen, she accepted it confidently, only to realize almost immediately that holding one was much easier for a human than for a Pokémon with small rounded hands.
She tried one grip, then another.
The pen slipped each time.
“Ruu…” Her mouth curled into an offended little pout as she compared her hands to Jun’s fingers.
Jun watched her struggle for a few seconds before the answer finally clicked.
“Why are you trying to hold it?” Ralts looked at him.
“You’re a Psychic-type.
Use Confusion.” Her expression changed instantly.
“Ral!” A faint blue glow appeared around the pen, lifting it out of her hands and into the air.
Ralts guided it carefully toward the notebook and tried to copy the name Jun had written.
The first letter leaned badly to one side.
The second came out even worse, and by the time she reached the next one, the pen was wobbling so much that she had to stop and steady it before continuing.
Jun watched quietly as the idea fell into place.
Moving the pen itself wasn’t difficult for her.
Keeping it stable while making tiny, deliberate adjustments was.
Writing forced Ralts to control exactly how much psychic force she used, where she applied it, and how steadily she could maintain it.
It trained precision rather than simply asking her to throw more power at something, and because she actually wanted to learn, Jun didn’t have to convince her to keep going.
That was far better than making her fire Confusion at a wall until she got a headache.
“Ruu~” By the time she finished her first crooked attempt, Ralts was breathing a little harder.
Jun grinned.
“Harder than punching rocks?” She immediately gave him an annoyed look, which only made him laugh.
He lifted her from his shoulder and set her down beside the notebook.
“Keep practicing.
I’ll get you something.” While Ralts went back to wrestling with the floating pen, Jun searched through the backpack for the better Pokéblocks the previous Jun had packed.
She was still recovering from yesterday, and training her without replacing the energy she burned would be completely backwards.
Behind him, Ralts paused.
Her eyes wandered toward the front of the notebook, and after making sure Jun was still busy, she quietly flipped through the pages until she found his name near the beginning.
She couldn’t follow most of the notes around it, but she knew that word.
Jun.
Ralts stared at the letters for a while, then carefully brought the glowing pen down to the page.
By the time Jun returned with two Pokéblocks, she’d already flipped back to her practice page and was working very seriously on another shaky attempt at her own name.
“Here.
You earned these.” Ralts’s concentration disappeared the moment she saw the food.
“Ra-ru!” She took both Pokéblocks in her hands and happily started eating while Jun sat beside her, rubbing the top of her head as he looked out toward the snowy forest.
They had enough of a plan now.
He knew what moves she had, what she liked using, where her weaknesses were, and how he could begin improving her psychic control without turning training into something she dreaded.
It wasn’t much yet, but for their first morning together, it was enough.
“Finish those and we’ll head out.” Ralts nodded while chewing, looking entirely innocent.
Jun never noticed what she’d added near the front of his notebook…
Jun’s Pokémon Research Notes: Jun Pressed close beside it, in crooked and uneven handwriting: Ralts [End of chapter]