Chapter 44: Method to Break Through the Aptitude Cap (Patreon)

Pale blue light shimmered around the boy's pupils. Lily watched it appear, and a flicker of surprise crossed her face. "A psychic?"

Renan didn't answer right away. He adjusted his breathing, shifting from Thunder Breathing to Meditate.

Another half minute or so passed.

Only then did the black-haired boy beside the pool exhale a long, turbid breath and dispel the Light Screen he had stumbled into learning.

"Gym Leader Lily." He looked at the pink-haired girl across from him, a trace of helplessness in his voice. "This Gyarados is your so-called test? Then there probably aren't many Breeders in Kanto who could pass the Cerulean Gym's job interview."

The barb barely ruffled Lily. She stayed quite calm.

The three Cerulean sisters spent their days on everything but gym business, thinking only of their underwater ballet shows.

Yet the League had never shut the gym down, nor sent a new Gym Leader to replace the three of them. The reason was the Gyarados standing at Lily's side.

A Gyarados whose strength was Elite Four-grade at the very least, and might even have brushed the edge of Champion-grade.

"This kid is a Pokémon my father left at the gym before he had his accident." Lily stroked the scales of the Gyarados in the pool as she spoke. "As for what happened afterward, I think everyone in Kanto knows. He walked into an ambush while hunting down some underground organization. He and a lot of the League's best investigators were swallowed up by a huge explosion."

Renan's eyes dipped slightly. He thought of the original Renan's parents.

Counting back the time, unless something had gone wrong, they had died in the very same incident as the Cerulean Gym's former Leader.

Lily had skimmed through Renan's file a moment ago, but she couldn't possibly have looked into his parents' circumstances in so short a time.

So she simply went on explaining, caught up in her own thoughts:

"Gyarados was originally a member of my father's second team. Its starting talent was middling, just Gym-grade. But, well... it's an open secret among the League's upper ranks that you can forcibly break through a Pokémon's potential ceiling by developing its Ability further."

"This kid took exactly that road. As it dug deeper into its Ability, Intimidate, it climbed step by step from Gym-grade to near-Elite Four, and then from near-Elite Four to Elite Four-grade. If my father hadn't died and the Cerulean Gym hadn't lost its core inheritance because of it, Gyarados could very well have mastered Intimidate completely, able to use it or hold it back at will."

"Then it would have reached full Champion-grade strength. Instead, under Intimidate, only we, my father's daughters, can get near it, and we have to do all the feeding ourselves."

What Lily meant was already plain enough.

The reason the Cerulean Gym had posted a temporary caretaker quest on the forum was, in the end, to find a Breeder who could feed this near-Champion-grade Gyarados while the three Cerulean sisters were away.

But after hearing all this, Renan was puzzled.

"Couldn't you just take it with you in a Poké Ball when you leave?"

At his question, a bitter smile tugged at the corner of Lily's mouth. She stroked Gyarados's scales again, her tone tinged with self-mockery. "Gyarados was my father's Pokémon. It's usually fine with us getting close, but it doesn't acknowledge us as its Trainers. Several times when we went to other regions for shows, we tried to put it in a Poké Ball, and it dodged every single time. Besides, it watched us sisters grow up, so there's a limit to how far we can push it."

Renan asked, "Then how did you handle its meals before?"

"That was our youngest sister. Because of some things that happened when she was little, she's afraid of Gyarados too, but her fear isn't the instinctive terror that Intimidate stirs up. At the very least, she could manage to approach its pool, barely. But she just came of age this year and went off on her journey." Lily paused. "Honestly, if you hadn't taken the quest and passed the test, I was about to phone her and have her come back for a few days."

"Now there's no need."

Renan looked over at the Gyarados.

It was his first time seeing, in person, a Pokémon raised through deep Ability development.

The original Renan's uncle, Lance, seemed to have taken another path. Every time he came to visit and let out his partners, he had never made the original Renan feel pressure this terrifying.

Of course, it was also possible, as some speculation from his past life's internet had it, that Lance's Pokémon had already reached Champion-grade, with their use and development of Abilities polished to near perfection.

Thoughts flickered through his mind one after another. Renan took a handful of water-type Pokéblocks, which the original Renan had made, out of his bag and used Confusion to float them over to the hulking giant.

Unlike wild Gyarados, the one at the Cerulean Gym was quite friendly toward people.

Though it was used to gourmet fare, it didn't turn away Renan's offering.

Its enormous maw gaped wide. With a single chomp, it swallowed all the Pokéblocks.

Then, for the first time, a look like a smile spread across its calm face.

"Looks like you've earned Gyarados's acknowledgment." Lily stood to one side, watching the scene with a smile.

Renan shook his head. "I'm nowhere near that."

Through his outward-projected mental power, he could tell that Gyarados had eaten the food he offered, but that was all there was to it.

At bottom, they were still just a stranger Trainer and a stranger Pokémon.

As for building a good relationship with Gyarados over the coming month, or even leading it off with him... Renan wouldn't even indulge a daydream like that.

"I'll take the quest," he said. "Naturally, the Cerulean Gym will cover the food expenses."

Lily nodded. "Of course."

She was generous about it. "Also, I saw you pick up a Cerulean Gym badge at the entrance earlier. I assume you're planning to enter the Indigo League. In that case, the Cerulean Gym will cover your Pokémon's food costs for the next month too."

As she spoke, the pink-haired girl handed over a business card. On it was the phone number of the Cerulean City branch of the biggest Pokéblock distributor in Kanto.

"When the storeroom runs low, just call this number."

"Okay."

...

The next day, Renan, who used Meditate in place of sleep, "woke" in a guest room at the Cerulean Gym.

He said goodbye to Lily, who was due to fly out to Hoenn that night. Her two older sisters, Daisy and Violet, had already left a week earlier. Then, following the quest's instructions, he fed breakfast to the Pokémon in the gym's dozen-odd pools. After that, he strolled with his three little ones to the nearby Pokémon Center.