“I know I said we can do anything for your birthday, but is watching us train really how you want to spend the next six hours?”

  It was June 29th. Which is to say, it was the day my best friend was turning thirteen.

  The birthday girl herself sat casually atop the seawall blocking the black, iron sands off from the concrete paths lining the shore. “Not really,” my best friend admitted, “but Wilma said that if she caught Pikachu or I doing any training today, she wouldn’t bake a cake for tonight.”

  I had to suppress a shudder. That was a dire threat. “And so what, watching us train is the next best thing?” I asked her, nonplussed.

  “You know me so well,” the girl-now-teen replied with an unrepentant grin. “Hanging out with my best friend can hardly be called training. And if I just so happen to watch some of your training and derive some practical value from it? Sheer coincidence.”

  Mrs. Peters never struck me as the sort of person to adhere to the letter of the law over the spirit, but Alyssa seemed so pleased with her perceived loophole that I couldn’t bring myself to rain on her metaphorical parade.

  “Well, I can’t promise it’ll be interesting, but I’m happy to have you along,” I turned to face the black sands, covered in smatterings of quickly-melting snow. “Come on out everyone!”

  I released my partners onto the iron sand, three flashes of light coalescing into ten wholly distinct bodies.

  My knights hopped eagerly up and down, all six of them raring to begin. Mana was more subdued, staring out into the surf, her normally expressive face currently inscrutable, but her body loose, and ready for action. If Mana were the metaphorical middle, then Maushold was the opposite end of the spectrum, unsure and tense on the shifting sand. They’d agreed to training earlier in the week, but now that it was actually here, I was pretty sure I could see them getting cold paws in real time.

  I clapped my hands together, getting everyone’s attention. “We’ll get started in just a second, but first things first, say hi to Alyssa everyone!” I directed my partners’ focus over to the grinning brunette. “She’s going to be watching us training today, and maybe offering some advice. She and her partner, Pikachu recently won the junior promotion tournament, which is sort of a big deal.”

  At the mention of her name, the electric rat poked her head up from around Alyssa’s shoulder, glancing down at me and my various partners. I couldn’t read what was in the cantankerous Pokémon’s expression, but her trainer was much less opaque.

  Alyssa’s hazel eyes were firmly fixed on my newest partners, and the only warning any of us had was a noise not unlike a kettle coming from her throat, before she burst into motion, throwing herself off the seawall towards my suddenly-panicking partners.

  “So cute!” Alyssa shouted as she practically dove into the sand next to the alarmed Maushold. The three of them dove in turn, looking for cover. They settled for hiding behind my knights as Alyssa tried to shuffle around the clearly uncomfortable Fighting-types to get a better view. “Don’t be shy,” she cooed, “I just want to say hello!”

  “Cool it,” I snagged my best friend’s arm and hauled her backwards a bit. “They’re still getting used to people, and you’re freaking them out.”

  “But they’re just so adorable,” my best friend objected with a pout.

  “And you’re making a terrible first impression,” I refuted. “Was she like this when you guys first met?”

  That question was directed at Pikachu, who offered a tired, “Piiiikaaaaah” by way of answer.

  “No wonder she shocked you so much,” I accused my best friend with an eyeroll.

  Huffily, the other girl crossed her arms, about to grow properly Mudbrayish, but after taking another look at my newest partners, still cowering behind my oldest, her expression softened. “I may have been– a little too enthusiastic,” she admitted, “but can you blame me?”

  “Yes,” I said without remorse. “They were still wild just a couple of weeks ago. Control yourself.”

  Alyssa blinked a few times. Something in my words or my expression must have finally gotten through to her, because she actually began to look chagrined. She peered again over at Maushold who were just now working up the bravery to peer around my knights at the stranger who’d almost assaulted them.

  And now she looked properly, actually guilty. “Sorry,” the tall teenager muttered, as she pulled her arm free of my grasp. “I guess I didn’t really think about that. Most people never partner up with Pokémon that were ever truly wild.”

  “I’d accept your apology, but I’m not the one you scared half-to-death,” I told her with a gesture towards the nervous Normal-types.

  Alyssa nodded, and then knelt down, taking a knee in the black sand. “I’m sorry I scared you–” she trailed off, clearly unsure how to address the unusual Pokémon.

  “Maushold,” I supplied.

  “Maushold,” my best friend continued, barely missing a beat. “I didn't mean any harm, I promise. I just have a lot of appreciation for your appearance.”

  The compliment seemed to catch their attention more than the apology, which the cunning brunette picked up on. “I mean, your fur is so spectacularly clean! And your incisors, perfectly shaped. It must have taken a lot of work to get them to exactly the right dimensions.”

  The bait was set, the hook cast. And her admiration was so completely, disarmingly earnest. Slowly, my newest partners emerged from hiding, doing their best not to preen under Alyssa’s unending barrage of compliments. “I’m sorry for scaring you, really. You all just look so incredible, I couldn’t help myself. You must work so hard to take care of one another! The patterns in your fur are maintained so expertly.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that the littlest one was blushing underneath their gray fur, as the three of them edged a little bit closer.

  I shook my head ruefully as the foul temptress reeled the skittish Normal-types in, her effusive praise apparently sufficient to get them to forget her earlier faux pas. I knew that Maushold was fastidious, but I hadn’t connected that with just how much pride they apparently put into their appearance. It was definitely something about my newest partners that I’d need to remember and account for going forward.

  For their part, the Maushold had almost lapsed within striking distance. Their guards were down, and Alyssa took the opportunity to strike. “You know, I have a lot of experience brushing Pokémon with short fur from taking care of Pikachu. I bet Fe has a grooming kit on her. Would you let me give you just a little bit of care?” she practically begged, eyes shining.

  “Hey, we’re supposed to be training here,” I said, injecting my voice with some false sternness, only to have that pleading expression turned on me instead. It was followed moments later by three identical looks from my traitorous partners as they promptly switched to Alyssa’s side.

  I let loose an exaggerated sigh, “Then again, I suppose a small delay before we get started couldn’t hurt too bad.”

  I went over to the pack of supplies I’d brought, an ever-expanding collection of training tools, food, and other Pokémon care material, and pulled out the grooming kit I’d bought a couple of weeks ago.

  I handed the various brushes, bristles, and cloths to Alyssa, who looked over them with an expert eye. Her experience caring for Pikachu apparently carried no small weight, because it only took a few minutes to have the usually-nervous little Maushold melting in the palm of her hand.

  For my part, I set my knights and Mana training in the interim. I’d developed some ideas for some improvements to our old routines after going through Juan and Arte’s journals, and it was time to start exploring them.

  First, my oldest partners, since what I had in mind could mostly be handled without my guidance. “Alright knights, today, we’re testing your limits.” The dramatic phrasing had my partners perking up, obviously eager to hear what I had to say.

  According to Arte, the best way for Fighting-types to improve wasn’t just to train their physiques. No, they had to work on their ‘fighting-spirit,’ as he put it.

  His recommendation for developing this mental component was to have your Pokémon push themselves to their limits, and then past them. Apparently, the ‘easiest’ way to accomplish this was to have them fight other Pokémon constantly until they couldn’t move anymore, and then force them to go on, having onlookers and comrades there to shout encouragement and share their determination all the while. I could sort of imagine that style of training, it had a real ‘gym’ feel to it. Unfortunately, it was hardly viable for me, or even most trainers I’d assume, given your average battlers available resources.

  So I’d have to improvise. Luckily, having a Falinks as a partner meant that, in a way, I did sort of have multiple Pokémon to work with.

  “Alright, line up,” I had my knights set up along the sea wall, out of the sand and its potential wiggly danger. “We’re going to start with shuttle runs, like usual, but this time, instead of just warming up, we’re going to see just how many you guys can do.”

  I tried to put a note of challenge in my voice, to get their competitive spirits up. The gleam in Lance’s eye told me I’d succeeded. He’d get the rest of his brothers on board, sure as anything. “Instead of all six of you going at the same time, do it in groups of three, one set running, the other counting. Don’t stop running the shuttles until you literally can’t move anymore, understand? When the first three are done, swap who’s counting and who’s running. This is going to give us a baseline.”

  I got affirming nods from my knights, who set themselves up for the exercise. After watching for a few moments to make sure they fully understood my ask, I walked away, well-aware that it might take them upwards of an hour to truly exhaust themselves. I was going to need to invest in some resistance training tools in the near-future, but that was a concern for another time.

  “Mana, your turn next.” My piscine partner gave me a determined nod. It wasn’t our first training session since the resolution to start ramping up the Yowashi’s training, but I’d told her that I had some new ideas for today, which clearly had her excited.

  I took my shoes off, throwing on some beach sandals instead, and walked to the edge of the shore, bidding Mana to follow. “Alright Mana, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to swim in the surf, building up as much speed as you can. Then, you need to leap out of the water, and try to use your hydrokinesis to keep moving at the same pace. As soon as you feel yourself slowing down, dive back under the water and start building up speed again. Does that make sense?”

  My little protector looked down at the lapping waves, nervousness clearly writ on her expression. I reached out a hand, gently stroking her scales. “I’ll be right here with you,”

  I promised her. “These beaches are patrolled. Just stick to the shallows, and there’s nothing to be scared of.” Other than the Wiglett infesting the beach, but the little garden eels didn’t often go for fish, preferring less slippery prey.

  Mana visibly mustered her courage, before diving determinately into the frothing surf. I followed behind her, trying my best not to wince as the frigid water soaked my feet and ankles. “Alright, now like I said, swim as fast and hard as you can!”

  The little fish followed my instructions, tearing through the water at a pace that was, while not breakneck by any means, still far faster than her conveyance through the air. “That’s it, Mana, you’ve got it! Now– leap!”

  My shouted encouragement had the little fish emerging from the water in a brilliant spray of azure, ascending up into the air more readily than I would have thought. “Great! Now push as hard as you can to keep that momentum!”

  It actually worked, for just a bit. A few seconds where Mana was flying through the air just as fast as she swam through the water. Six… seven… And then, her control slipped, and her pace slowed rapidly, until she was back to hovering along at her normal speed. Dejected, she turned to face me, only to be confronted with my wide grin.

  “That was exactly it!” I encouraged her. “We’ve just gotta keep doing that until you get the feel for it.”

  The tears that had threatened to spill from my piscine partner’s eyes receded, just a bit. “Washi?”

  I shook my head. “You’re not going to get it right away, but that’s alright. What matters is steady improvement.” I walked back to the shore, and then planted one of our training flags. I went down the coast another thirty paces, and put down another flag. Thirty more paces, and back into the water I went. With that, the course was set.

  “Start at that flag, and build up as much speed as you can. Then, when you reach the second flag, jump out of the water and keep going until you reach me.” I held up a small, ticking device. “I’ve got a stopwatch, and I’ll be timing how quick you get from the second flag to me. Understand?”

  Mana nodded, and dove back into the water, swimming over to the starting line.

  “Ready!” I called out. “Set… Go!”

  -

  Mana and I worked on her hydrokinesis for about twenty minutes. Every time she reached me, I complimented her, and gave her little bits of advice.

  I did have to step out of the water after a few minutes, it was too cold to stand in for any real length of time, but my suffering was minor compared to the way my piscine partner exhausted herself, fighting for better times.

  I wish I could say that every run went better than the last, but the truth of it was that improvements came in fits and starts. Small bits of inspiration half-grasped for one attempt might have been forgotten, or reinterpreted the next. Still, by the end of the hour, based on the notes I was taking, she definitely was moving- on average- at least a little bit faster.

  “Ok, before your next run. let me go through something with you first.” I sat myself down in the sand, and beckoned my exhausted partner over. She hovered through the air, eventually coming to rest in my arms, and soaking my shirt through in the process.

  I did my best to ignore the sudden sodden nature of my outfit as I dug out a syringe– sans needle– that I’d borrowed from mom. “I think you might be falling into a trap that most Water-types fall into, at least, according to Juan.” Mana’s too-bright eyes looked up at me in confusion, so I hurried to elaborate. “You probably think of the surface, and the air for that matter, as this foreign, unknown thing. Sort of– taboo, or anathema, in a way? Different, at the very least, from the water.”

  Mana thought over my statement for a few moments, pondering her own feelings on the atmosphere around us. Eventually, she gave me a sort of half-nod. Some amount of agreement, though she wasn’t wholly aligned with that perspective. “Well what if I told you that the air around us right now, just like the water in the ocean over there, is a fluid?”

  My response was a few confused, bright-eyed blinks. “Washi?” she asked me, the tone of her voice making the question clear.

  “Yes really.” I responded with a grin. “Here, watch this.” I used the syringe to suck up some ocean water, filling the device’s cavity with the saline liquid. “See how the water gets sucked into the syringe and fills the space inside?”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Slowly, Mana nodded, as if unsure about what point I was making. I quickly emptied the syringe, expunging the water and leaving the plunger down. “Okay, now come close to the business end and feel what happens when I pull back on this plunger.”

  Unsure, the little fish floated over to the syringe, placing her head right near the opening.

  Once she was in position, I yanked back on the rubber stopper, causing a rush of air to enter the device.

  Mana startled, as the air around her whooshed for a moment, moving to fill the empty space in the syringe. She blinked a couple of times, eyeing the device with evident confusion.

  “You see, just like water, air also rushes to fill any openings it's given. They both act this way because they’re both fluids. And when I push down on the plunger,” I demonstrated what I was talking about, forcing the air back out of the device in a rush that caused Mana to close her eyes with a little noise of complaint. “All the air gets forced out, just like the water.”

  Wide eyes looked at me, slow comprehension dawning in them. “You’ve probably seen birds and dragons flying through the air, and thought you had to do the same, but you get to do things differently. You’re not a bird, you’re a fish, which means instead of flying through the air, you should swim through it.”

  Now Mana’s eyes were glimmering, as comprehension came to her in a rush. With an excited chirrup, she dove into the water, swimming back towards the starting line for one last try.

  As she went, I heaved a sigh of relief. Luckily, Mana was very trusting. The truth of the matter was, while air and water were indeed both fluids, that had little to do with Mana’s ability to travel through either of them. The real explanation for how Water-types moved through the air, and even indeed how they swam through the water, was fiendishly complicated, and rather beyond my ability to understand, let alone explain.

  Fortunately, according to what I’d been able to decipher from Juan’s journal, actually understanding the mechanics at play was far less important than feeling and believing that you could do it. So if I had to tell a little white lie to Mana, about what allowed her to swim through the air, well, hopefully she’d forgive me, if she ever found out.

  This time, when Mana came soaring out of the water, she didn’t just glide through the air like she’d been doing before. Instead, her tailfin motored back and forth as her whole length undulated in that distinctive swimming motion shared by most fish. For five seconds, six, she maintained her momentum, easily eclipsing her earlier progress, and even by the time she made it to me, she was still traveling almost twice as fast as her previous attempt.

  I clicked the stopwatch’s timer with a satisfying clack, and then showed her the time. She let out a cry of celebration that had me grinning. “Just like that Mana. You’ve got the feeling for it now. Keep that sensation locked in your mind.”

  Her whole body wiggled excitedly, and she turned around to do another run. Once again, progress didn’t come instantly. The next time was slower, and the one after that, but the attempt after saw improvement.

  We passed another half hour like that, before I finally called a stop to things, Mana’s whole body heaving with exhaustion. The combination of exercising her muscles along with manipulating so much type energy had clearly worn her out, and while she wanted to keep going, I made her stop for fear of her overexerting herself.

  We returned to the rest of the group, where my knights were running themselves equally thin, the second group of them just now reaching the tail end of their stamina. After they were finished, I got their individual counts and took some more notes, filling out a spreadsheet with their scores. Lance, unsurprisingly, ran the most, followed by Bers. After him came Percy, than Galad, and then Kay. Tristan brought up the rear, though his score was closer to the median than I would have expected.

  “Great job knights.” I told my exhausted partners. “We’re going to take a small break, and then you’re going to run it again, with a goal of beating your previous score.”

  My knights looked up at me, surprise writ on their faces.

  “But next time, you can use your moves to do the shuttles. Tackle and Headbutt should give you the extra oomph you need to get some more runs in.”

  They looked back and forth, momentarily unsure, before a dramatic call of agreement from Lance got the rest of them onboard.

  I left them to their break, and walked over to where Maushold were watching the proceedings. Alyssa had finished grooming them, leaving the gray-furred rodents practically glistening under the morning light. “And as for you three, I figured we could spend today getting you used to listening to commands. Sounds good?”

  They shifted uncomfortably, clearly unsure of how that sounded, but eventually, they nodded in acceptance.

  I gave my best encouraging grin. “Nothing too strenuous, I promise. We’ll ease you into things, you’ll see.”

  Another hour passed quickly, Mana and my knights resting while I checked Maushold’s ability to grasp basic instructions. My knights were always quick to follow orders, Lance, notwithstanding, as was Mana, but I wasn’t sure my newest partners would be quite so amenable.

  My concerns proved prophetic, as Maushold, clearly unused to listening to or following commands, stumbled through my orders with clear confusion. It’d be nice if there was some shortcut to getting them to follow each of my commands perfectly, every time, but if I’d learned anything from training my other partners, it was that sometimes, sheer Tuaros-headed repetition was the only solution.

  And they did improve, gradually, over the course of the hour. I alternated between asking for moves, directing their positioning, and warning them to dodge. Once they were sort of used to it, I directed them to face away from me, and started weaving thrown balls in with my directions. They didn’t hurt anything but your pride, but having that little extra impetus to avoid something or turn around and hit something proved helpful.

  Alyssa stopped in to watch us for a while, before returning to my resting partners to chat. I also caught her and Pikachu wandering up and down the beach, and playing around in the surf, though that didn’t last long once they realized just how cold it was.

  Once my hour with Maushold had passed and my knights and Mana finished with their rests, it was back to working with my older partners.

  I recruited Alyssa’s help for keeping track of my knights’ various move-assisted shuttle scores, and encouraged Mana to beat her previous times on our impromptu course. And then it was back to Maushold again, working with them to figure out how comfortable with each of their moves and which ones could benefit from some additional work.

  After getting into the groove of things, the hours passed quickly, and it felt like hardly any time had passed by the time we reached lunch. I unpacked the prepared meals I’d made, passing them out to my ravenous team, before taking a seat next to Alyssa, who’d pulled out her own boxed lunch.

  “Thanks for being a good sport and helping out,” I told her. “I hope it hasn’t been boring for you.”

  Disbelieving hazel eyes turned to face me. “Boring? What are you talking about? This is fascinating. I hadn’t really thought about how training three Pokémon really is so completely different from training just one.”

  I blinked, a bit taken aback by her enthusiasm, but I also couldn’t help the grin that sprouted on my face. “You can say that again. It’s a lot to keep track of. Can you believe people in other regions do this with a team of six? Or more?”

  She shook her head. “It’s pretty unbelievable. Where do they find the time?”

  “Drake told me that for the best of the best, it’s a full-time job, just like for top-level Battle Trainers.”

  “And you have to feed them,” she nodded towards the prepped meals my partners were currently consuming. “It’s one thing when your Pokémon are small, but imagine making meals for a bunch of huge partners. That’s another full-time job.”

  “No kidding. According to this book I’ve been reading, that’s part of why people become ‘type specialists,’” I took a hefty bite of my sandwich, scarfing down the mouthful, before realizing that Alyssa might not know what I’m talking about. “Are you familiar with that term?” I asked her.

  Alyssa’s brows furrowed in thought. “I think so? That’s what they call trainers who focus on only one type of Pokémon, right?”

  I nodded in confirmation. “Yep. Apparently, most high-level trainers end up being type-specialists, for a whole list of reasons, actually. One of the big ones though is that it makes preparing food easier, since most of your team will have similar needs and tastes.”

  “That does make sense,” Alyssa said thoughtfully. “It’s probably easier to train them too, since you can have them focus on similar moves and strategies.”

  “Right. Plus, you get to prioritize covering the same weaknesses. Really, it lets you eke a bunch of extra value out of each training strategy since they’re likely to be useful for each of your Pokémon.”

  “And what about you, Fe?” Alyssa turned to face me, “how are you dealing with having three partners to train.”

  I leaned back with a sigh. “I mean, it’s a lot,” I admitted. “It feels like I’m constantly running between different things, but it’s not unmanageable. I might struggle with six partners, but three, I’m pretty sure I can do.”

  Alyssa blinked a few times. “Don’t you mean ten?” She asked after a couple of moments.

  I tilted my head at her, and then turned to look at my team, then back at Alyssa. “I mean, it’s not quite like having ten different Pokémon to train,” I hedged.

  She gave me a look.

  “I’m dealing with it, alright?”

  The brunette let out a snort. “If you say so.”

  -

  After lunch came the next few hours of our training block, which meant it was time to focus on our battle strategies. My knights were good at following orders, and had taken well to me using chess openings to dictate their general battle strategy. The struggle was, as usual, in the detail work. It only took a few repetitions for them to get a command down rote, but getting them to display the necessary flexibility afterwards was a struggle. Pokémon battles were dynamic, ever-evolving things, and I couldn’t be on top of micromanaging every one of my knights’ actions. Really, it was the same problem we’d been running up against since I started training them.

  There was no doubt things had improved, but the coded commands introduced another whole bit of confusion to the equation, since if they focused too hard on them, they’d fail to adapt to the changing battlefront.

  For Mana’s part, it was time to combine her training to move faster in the air with working on one of the most important elements of battling, not getting hit. Mostly, that boiled down to us playing a two-person game of dodgeball, me trying to tag her with the soft training ball and her trying to use her hydrokinesis to dodge out of the way.

  It was– slow going. Something about needing to dodge made it hard for her to focus on the ‘swimming’ thing, though by the end of the session, she was starting to get a better hang on it.

  Finally, was Maushold. I took the afternoon session to get a baseline on how well they handled their various moves.

  They had a good grasp on Double Hit and Super Fang, both attacks coming seemingly by second nature. Echoed Voice and Helping Hand were at similar levels of mastery, but things got a bit murkier after that. They could produce a weak Bullet Seed as a ranged option, but clearly didn’t have the same proficiency with it as their other attacking moves, and their Baby-Doll Eyes and Follow Me were both severely underdeveloped. They also had access to what they insisted was a move that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.

  It involved the three of them running around in a circle, sweeping the ground with peals of energy that sent sand and dust scattering away from them in a few waves. When they were done, the ground sparkled underneath them, and they seemed a bit sharper and faster with their movements.

  It looked like a buffing move of some kind, but it took a long time to resolve, and the sweeping motions that accompanied it mystified me. It almost appeared as if they were cleaning? I wasn’t really sure how helpful that would be during a battle, but I wasn’t about to discount the power of any move that could buff my partner's strength, so I decided that it would be a good place to focus for today.

  After setting them to working on it, I went back to my knights, and then to Mana again. From there, I checked on Maushold’s progress, back to my knights, ad etc. until the clock chimed four and packed things up for the day.

  My partners were tired, so I recalled them for the trip back, leaving Alyssa, Pikachu, and I walking back to her apartment.

  “Thanks for letting us watch you train today, Fe,” my best friend spoke as we trudged through the snow-brushed streets. “I think we learned a lot.”

  I shrugged. “No problem. I just hope it feels like a worthwhile way to spend your birthday.”

  The other girl nodded. “I wouldn’t have preferred doing anything else. Well, other than our own training.”

  “No breaks, huh?” I asked rhetorically. “Being the first twelve-year old in the Green League isn’t good enough for you?”

  The brunette girl shook her head. “Of course not. It'll never be good enough. Not until we’re at the very top.” Her eyes stared off into the distance, some far-off summit glowing in her gaze. “We’ve taken the first step, but there’s still so much further to go.”

  For a second, it felt like my best friend was impossibly far away. Off in another world. One I’d never reach. Then, she turned to me and grinned, and the moment passed. “I’ve actually got my first match scheduled already. I’m competing this Sunday in the Vortex Arena.”

  “Good luck,” I offered her the best smile I could muster. “You gotta make sure to win that debut match, keep the momentum going.”

  She smashed one fist into the palm of her other hand. “That’s the plan. I’ve got ten months before the promotion tournament for red to blue. I gotta stay on top of things if I want to make it to the cutoff before then.”

  Most competitors didn’t. It took a rare sort of battle trainer and partner to reach the cutoff in the first year in the primary leagues.

  And yet, I had nothing but faith in my best friend. “Hey, this is for you,” I pulled the gift I’d pocketed from my bag earlier out of my jacket, presenting the small, wrapped package to the other girl, “Happy birthday.”

  She blinked a few times, surprised by the non sequitur, before a grin overtook her face. “Thanks Fe,” snatched the small box away from me. “Can I open it now?”

  “Of course,” I laughed. “Please. I want to know what you think.”

  She peeled the wrapping paper off, stuffing it in her own jacket pocket, before looking with evident confusion at the hinged box contained within. “Hold on, are these–” She opened the container, revealing its contents, a pair of gleaming, yellow earrings. Studs shaped to look like the silhouette of a Pikachu’s face. “Fe,” she looked up at me, expression conflicted, “they’re adorable, but I don’t have my ears pierced.”

  I couldn’t help the grin that took over my face. “Well, usually on our off days, we actually train for eight hours, but we had to cut things a bit short today so you and I can make an appointment at the mall before dinner.”

  Her eyes widened. “No way. Does Wilma know?”

  “Don’t worry, your cake is safe,” I reassured my concerned friend with a laugh. “I spoke with her about it a few days ago, and convinced her that now that you’re thirteen, you should be able to get piercings if you want.”

  My best friend stared at me, eyes still wide, unreactive for a second, then two, then three.

  The confidence I’d felt in my choice of gift slowly drained out of me with each moment of silence. “Um, you did want to get your ears pierced, right? I could swear I remember talking about it last year, before school ended?”

  That same high-pitched sound came from my best friend. The one she’d made when she first saw Maushold. “Fe!” She shouted, leaping at me in a rush. I barely had time to stiffen before her arms were wrapped around me in a crushing embrace, the taller girl apparently trying to squeeze the life out of me.

  I hugged her back, careful to avoid brushing against the sleepy Pikachu still draped across Alyssa’s shoulders. “So I did remember correctly?”

  “You did, you idiot,” she laughed, her voice bright and cheery. “Thank you, I love them!”

  I let out a tiny sigh of relief. Honestly, I was worried that the earrings were just a tad bit tacky, but they very much seemed like Alyssa’s style, so I went with them anyway. Now, I was glad that I hadn’t heeded that kernel of concern.

  “C’mon,” I told her, “we should get moving, if we want to make it to Cutie & Beauty & Fly before they close.”

  “Why’d you wait so long to tell me then?” Alyssa complained as we disentangled, and she started hurrying down the street.

  “I was waiting for the right moment!” I told her, as I hustled to catch up. “We have plenty of time, we’ll make it no problem.”

  -

  We barely made it. Really though, it was hardly my fault. There was some sort of cordon set up on our path, with security officers that directed us around to a detour that ended up eating way more time than I’d expected. We did have to run the last few hundred meters, but we made it to our appointment only a teensy tiny bit late.

  A bit of Stun Spore from the shop’s namesake Cutiefly, a small pair of pricks from the professional saleswoman at the counter, and my best friend and I had matching holes in our ears.

  Also, less matching earrings to fill said holes.

  She, of course, went with the Pikachu-face studs that I’d gotten her. She’d also insisted on picking something out for me, hemming and hawing over a few options before settling on a pair of studs covered in some sort of synthetic crystal that reflected the light in interesting ways, creating a prism effect when you shined something directly on them.

  Afterwards, we went back to Alyssa’s apartment, where Mrs. Peters complimented our new jewelry with a conflicted look on her face. Montressue, at least, was wholly enthused, as were our partners, who admired the shiny new additions with excited sounds.

  Mana especially kept flashing her eyes at my earrings, and then letting out little giggles as fractal, multicolored light spilled off of them.

  We were all soon distracted, however, by Mrs. Peters amazing cooking, and then even more by the incredible cake she’d baked. The whole thing was shaped like Pikachu’s face, proving that great minds think alike. Personally, I would have found having a cake of my face mortifying, and also a little disturbing considering how it got cut into, but Pikachu was only too excited by the massive desert.

  As resplendent as the cake looked, it tasted even better, and when I finally went home for the night, my partners and I were practically stuffed to the gills. Literally, in one of our cases.

  It would have been nice to stay over again, and Alyssa had offered, but I knew that if I stayed, I'd have a hard time leaving in the morning, which wouldn't have worked out well, since I had an early shift at the ranger outpost. Much easier to set off from our apartment, empty as it would be tomorrow.

  I had to make sure I got my hours in this week where I could, since we needed as much training time as possible before this Sunday. I had to get Maushold and Mana up to speed after all, if they were going to help my knights beat the second Underleader.