Inside Mike's temporary office, a hologram plays the recent fight Aurora had with her opponent.
After it finishes playing, Mike asks Lazarus, "What are your thoughts, now that you have seen the fight with a different eye. Is there something you would change about your decision if you were to do it again? Something you think you should have done differently."
Lazarus doesn't think for long before answering, "No. I think I chose the best possible option that was available to me. And Aurora also did her best. If I was to do it again, I would make the exact same choices. Aurora won the match despite being in a huge disadvantage, I consider this a huge win for her."
Mike nods, "I see. And if I give you a week to prepare for this match again, how will you prepare your Vulpix for the fight? And assume the Starly to be more experienced as well."
"There are two major things that I will do in this scenario. First, I will minimize the disadvantage from the desert environment. I can't do anything about the arena itself, and I can't teach Aurora weather manipulation in such a short time. So what I will teach her instead is to use her body to fight. I will put her under an exercise regiment that will build up her muscles, strength and agility. That will give me a fair bit of offensive power.
Secondly, I would teach her how to convert energy to ice, which would also help with environmental disadvantage, plus I can have her use the ice for offense. That should be enough to defeat Starly, especially since we already did it once."
"Is that so? Then, I guess you know what to do next. How do you plan to proceed with the training of both your pokémon?"
Lazarus thinks about the question properly before answering, "Well… Now that I think about it… Aurora is still a newborn, it will take a few months before she can build a strong body, so guess that's out of the equation for now. I will instead put all my focus on training her to generate ice. And as for Kamish, he already knows how to harness dragon force so his body is pretty strong, I'll train him to better harness it throughout his body. I will teach him Dragon Tail next, that shouldn't take long and will go a long way for his attack power."
Mike smiles, "Okay good. That seems like a solid plan. Let me know if you need help with anything."
"Yes, I'll do that." Lazarus nods and gets up to leave to train his pokémon.
"Oh, and before you go. I want to ask you something. When do you plan on getting your third pokémon? You really need a psychic as soon as possible. They are the heart of every team, you will need one to keep your team together. Ideally you'd be training one right now. Don't delay this anymore than you have to. Alright?"
"Yeah, I'm working on it. If things go well I will get my psychic sometime this week. Not sure when it will hatch though, but I have it covered."
—
Aurora howls inside a training room, trying to make some ice, but so far there has been little success. She can feel the energy course through her body, she can channel but when she tries to unleash that energy in the form of ice, it doesn't really seem to work for her.
She tries once again.
Just like her trainer told her to do, she closes her eyes and tries to draw as much as her tiny little body will allow, her cells respond to her command, each of them give her a tiny amount of energy, which then flows towards her throat, and she lets out another howl.
But… still nothing.
There is no ice, there isn't even a single snowflake anywhere in sight. This makes her feel sad, why did she fail again? Maybe she wasn't trying hard enough.
She looks at Lazarus, for confirmation and some reassurance.
Lazarus walks up to her and pats her on the head. "Don't worry about it, Aurora. You are doing really good. It's not supposed to work this soon. It's barely been an hour. We need to take our time with this. Just remember what I told you, belief is the most important aspect of training, you were born to do this. Sooner or later you will succeed, you just have to keep trying and never waiver in your belief. It will take some time, things don't work just because you want them to. They work because you never stop trying to make them work."
Aurora gives him a foxy smile with her teeth bared and nods.
"I'm gonna go check up on your brother. You keep doing this for a few more hours, then we can go and have some food. I'll also get you a grooming kit today. Would you like that?"
Aurora happily nods her heads as she snuggles against his hand.
Having put his fox on the right track, Lazarus heads towards the other half of the room, where his dragon is having way too much fun tearing through the some wooden targets.
Lazarus claps with his hands to get the attention of his overexcited dragon.
Kamish looks around after he hears the clap and notices Lazarus is done talking with his sister, so he floats towards him.
Lazarus can see the undisguised curiosity in his dragons eyes. He knows Kamish is very excited to conquer a new move today.
Ever since he showed Kamish the recordings of the Champions Cup exhibition match, Kamish has been in a state of unending drive. Always wanting to tear through the next obstacle.
Kamish slithers around Lazarus's body the moment he reaches his trainer, and then comes face to face with him as he coils around Lazarus's neck.
Lazarus smiles, "You're very excited I see. Are you ready to learn a new move."
He knows he didn't have to ask, he already knows he answer.
Kamish rapidly nods his head up and down.
"Alright, do you remember how you channeled dragon force throughout your body? You need to do that but instead of having all that energy divided throughout your body, you channel all of it in one spot, your tail. And what that will do is make your tail much stronger than the rest of your body, then you can attack your opponent with your tail."
Kamish looks at his tail, waves it around in the air and then looks back at Lazarus.
"Yes, that tail. If you do that, It will lead to less wastage of dragon force, you will get to unleash all your power more efficiently if you do it through a specific part of your body instead of just tackling them around."
Kamish imagines what that would be like, him tearing through the air, catching up to a pokémon and smacking it right in the face with his tail. Yes, he is very interested in doing that.
And without Lazarus having to ask, Kamish uncoils from his neck and floats a few feet away from him.
He then commands his body to release dragon force and his body complies. His body feels invigorated by the dragon force flowing through his body.
Kamish then thinks about how to get all this energy to his tail. Should he think about hitting something with it? Maybe that will work?
He looks at his trainer with confused eyes.
Lazarus chuckles, "What do you feel when you harness dragon force? If you focus on that feeling a little more, you should feel the energy flow through your body. You should be able to tell where it's coming from and going."
Kamish closes his eyes and tries to find what's going on with this energy business inside his body. He can feel the energy now that he focuses on it, but it's weird.
"I'm guessing when you harness dragon force, it probably comes from every part of your body and just goes from one place to another without a clear direction. Right?"
Kamish nods.
"That happens because you haven't directed the energy to go anywhere so it just follows it just goes everywhere it can. Now try to force all that energy towards your tail. Think about the energy in your body like you think of any part of your body. "
Kamish tries doing that, and it works. All the energy that was coursing everywhere through his serpentine body goes towards the the end of it.
There is swirling energy around the end of his body, his tail feels so much tighter and robust than it was before.
Kamish looks around to find something he can hit. He stops on a wooden target, one of few that he didn't get the chance to destroy before.
He dashes towards hit and smacks at it with his tail. And the moment his tail makes contact with the surface of the target, it cracks into two pieces, one piece falls to the ground and the other is hurled half way across the room, it hits a wall and shatters into tiny little wood chips.
This makes Kamish narrow his eyes and let out a giggling squeal.