The Trainer's Guide to the Pokémon World: Volume 1; Kalos

Filling out the Team

Now, unlike the rest of the time spent in Laverre, this chapter didn't have much of a plan. But I didn't want to stick the rematch in the chapter right after Bonnie lost, so I put this in as a bumper. But anyway, enjoy.

Max leads Bonnie out of Laverre and into the forests surrounding it. Unfortunately for him, he'd left his bag in the hotel room in his haste to leave this morning, out of fear of what Bonnie may see if he stayed long enough for her to wake up. He'd honestly felt really bad about leaving her like that, and his cold remark of "Just being there to collect his winnings" had been said because he kind of wanted her to know how it felt, even if he didn't mean it. Now he feels utterly terrible for saying it, and figures that helping her catch this Magneton and coming up with a plan for using it against Valerie is his chance of making up for that. However, without his bag, he's walking through the forest with only his notebook, which he has safely tucked away in the inside pocket of his jacket. If they are attacked he'd be utterly useless, which he explains to Bonnie, who laughs at his carelessness.

"For such a clever strategist, you sure are extremely forgetful!" she tells him, which makes him blush a bit. "Hey, I have my notes when I make those strategies!" he counters. "So they don't require memory at all!" Bonnie rolls her eyes and takes the lead. "Well, since you're completely defenceless, I guess I'll just have to lead the way" she says. "Do you even know where you're going?" Max asks. Bonnie shakes her head. "No, but Magnetons don't exactly have certain places they're unable to leave," she points out. "Just because you spotted this thing doesn't mean it'll still be there now!" Max want to argue, but then he realises that that somehow hadn't crossed his mind. "Alright Bonnie," he says, laughing a bit, "you win this round!" Bonnie rolls her eyes again, then leads the way into the forest.

The pair search for hours through the paths surrounding Laverre City. They don't venture too far away from it, lest they end up stumbling back to the city in the dark, or worse, having to share a tent together. Neither of them think they could bear the embarrassment of sleeping right next to their crush. So, they settle on searching no farther than a 10km radius, since the pair could easily walk 10km in about 2 to 3 hours. After the 1st hour of searching, they have no luck. They'd run into a bunch of Fairy type pokémon, as well as a handful of others, but no Magneton to speak of. So, Bonnie tries to use an incense to attract more pokémon to her, but all that does is make her have to pull out some of her pokémon to fend them off.

After another 2 hours of looking, Bonnie has an idea. "Do you still have the log that you recorded the notes about Magneton on with you?" she asks him. Max rifles through his pockets for a few seconds, before pulling out the device. "Here it is!" he announces, handing it to her. "But why do you want it?" Bonnie takes it and puts it to her ear. "I'm going to try to listen to the background noise of the recording," she explains. "See if I can narrow down our search a bit." Max stares at her as if she's gone mad. "But I made that recording yesterday," he points out. "There's no way it'll still be there." "It's better than wandering around here blindly, hoping to find it by chance," she snaps back. "Now be quiet and let me listen." A look of worry quickly crosses her face a few seconds later. "Oh, sorry Max, that was uncalled for!" Max smiles at her. "Nah, don't worry about it," he says. "I know what it's like to try to concentrate when someone else is talking." Obviously glad that this time, her words didn't hurt him as much as last time, Bonnie goes back to listening to Max's recording.

She has to listen to it so many times to finally be able to get a clear picture of the background as Max spoke these notes, that Max is beginning to suspect she must just like the sound of his voice. But before he can make that joke, Bonnie stops the recording and throws the device back to him. "I think I've got it," she says. "It sounds like you were surrounded by trees and walking on a gravelly path." Max scoffs slightly. "Oh yeah, that narrows it down," he says sarcastically. "It's not as if that describes this entire route!" Bonnie ignores him and carries on. "There also seems to be the sound of a small stream as well," she says, "and I think at one point you brush off a rock, but I'm not too sure about that one." That last point jogs a memory. "I think I know the place you're talking about," he says, before pulling out his navigation equipment and looking through the map. "Here! There's a small stream there, and I do remember a big rock, my bag knocked against it." He points to a part on the route that's halfway between Laverre and the edge of their radius. "Then let's check there!" Bonnie agrees, before heading off in that direction.

As Max feared, there's no sign of the Magneton he spotted the day before. There are a bunch of other pokémon, but none of them are Steel or Poison types. So, she tries to use her Aura to sense for the Magneton. But all that does is remind her that Ash had said there was no point in trying to search for an Aura when it's one you aren't familiar with or you're too far away from it, and in this case, she's probably both. So, they're back to square 1. However, it is slightly easier for them than before, since all they have to do is pick a direction and wander down it until they reached the max distance a Magneton could theoretically go to. But if that's wrong, they may let the pokémon escape.

That's when Max comes up with another plan. "Bring Dedenne over to me will you?" he tells her. Bonnie looks at him with confusion but does what she's told. "Uh, hey buddy," Max says, somewhat awkwardly. "I'm going to need you to broadcast your electric energy through your antenna for me, and send it out to find a Magneton. Think you can do that for me?" Dedenne nods immediately and charges his whiskers. Once he's done, little jolts of electricity start to span across the forest, in search of a Magneton. He stands there for a few minutes, stretching his static out to find it. A few large bird pokémon try to swoop down and pick him up, but they're either chased away by Max or sent flying of by Bonnie's pokémon.

Eventually, Dedenne finds something and starts scampering off in one direction. Max and Bonnie follow after him as quickly as they can. Dedenne ends up running for nearly an hour as he chases after the Magneton. Max and Bonnie begin to tire out, but they keep running, afraid that something might happen to Dedenne if they lose sight of him. At last, Dedenne stops moving and indicates to a clearing in the forest. Before the two kids can look however, they sit down on a nearby rock and catch their breaths. After nearly 10 minutes resting, they stand back up to see where Dedenne is pointing. Sure enough, there's the Magneton they're looking for, floating merrily around the field. Bonnie looks down at Dedenne, ready to send him into battle, but then she notices how tired he is from both all of the running and using a lot of his electricity like that. So instead, she decides to try to just catch it. After all, it worked with a lot of her other pokémon.

Max sees her pull one of her last balls out and begin sneaking towards the Magneton. He tries to whisper to her that this is a bad idea, but she either can't hear him or is choosing to ignore him. Once she gets close enough, she throws the ball. It sails through the air, colliding with Magneton's back. Magneton is sucked in, then the ball begins to shake, once, twice... then Magneton breaks out. It wheels around and looks eyes with the two of them. It growls, then attacks. As quickly as she can, Bonnie sends out Luxio to do battle against it. Right before Magneton can hit Bonnie, Luxio runs up to it and bites down on it, hard. Magneton cries out from the attack and blasts Luxio with electricity. It hurts Luxio, but not too much. Luxio throws Magneton to the ground, and hits it with Spark. It bounces off the ground twice after being hit by the move, and Bonnie uses the opportunity to use another ball. This time, when Magneton is caught, it stays caught.

Once Bonnie retrieves the ball, she releases Magneton. She heals them quickly, and they look to be rather grateful. "Hey little guy," she says. "I'm going to need your help with a Gym Leader, ok? So will you help me?" Magneton most likely has no idea what a Gym Leader is, but nod their heads, or rather, body, all the same. Bonnie thanks them, then returns them to their ball. Once she returns to Max, she hugs him tightly out of joy, which causes him go go bright red. She lets go of him quickly and turns away, hoping that he doesn't see how red her own face is. Then, she adds Magneton's ball to her belt, and she and Max set off back to Laverre. Along the way, Max starts coming up with a strategy Bonnie can use against Valerie with Magneton. She gladly listens, both to show Max how much his support means to her, and because she's so happy that their little disagreement is truly behind them.

Yeah, that was a mess I'm not going to lie. But now both of them have a full team. I was originally planning on having her catch a Klang, but then I found out that those aren't electric, so I changed it to Magneton lol. Now, I do not have anything else to say in this note, for once, so I'll see you all tomorrow with the next chapter.