Hey all! *Waves*

Anyway, another chapter!
Disclaimer: Pokemon belongs to Nintendo, not me. Other restrictions were mentioned in earlier chapters.

Chapter 4

“Can you levitate other objects too?”

“I can float with my backpack on, since I carry it.” Ash said. He was still practicing levitation, while in the afternoons he would study. Lance was teaching him elementary biology and some basic algebra.

It was so boring sometimes, but Lance kept saying it was necessary. And the problems weren’t too bad.

Lance was a pretty good teacher.

But what did 3x – 2y = 7, have to do with pokemon training? Lance just laughed and said it would come in handy when he didn’t expect it.

Whatever that meant.

Still, school was important, his mom had always said, and it was like school.

“Here,” Lance said, taking an orange out of his pockets. “Try levitating this without touching it.”

Ash concentrated, screwing up his eyes and focusing hard… but the orange exploded, juice splattering on both of them.

That had not been what he wanted!
“Well, that’s different.” Lance remarked, wiping his face clean with a towel while Ash did the same.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“Power is all about control in the end.” Lance said. “Were you trying to make it float?”
“My mind just blanked.”

“Maybe you should concentrate on imagining it floating, that’s what a lot of psychics do.”

“But I’m not a psychic!”

“No, you’re a mixture, but that’s fine, we’ll deal with your abilities one at a time. There’s no point in rushing things, you just have to fix them later. Running too fast makes people trip and fall.”

“…” Ash wasn’t quite sure he got the analogy, but he nodded.

The instructions didn’t make sense, as he faced a rubber ball this time. He imagined the rubber ball floating.

Nothing happened.

He picked up the rubber ball and floated with it for a few minutes, trying to sort things out. Then, he slowly edged away.

The ball floated for a few more seconds and then dropped. Interesting.

So what does it mean? Squirtle asked.

Bulbasaur caught it with a vine, she was so glad to be out of the pokeball. It could be emotions too.

“I float by emotional stress, why wouldn’t a ball?” Ash mused out loud. He imagined that the ball was a bomb and tried again.

This time, it smacked into the ceiling.

“Wow…”

You must have been really scared. Squirtle commented.

“Well, yes…”

But it worked! That’s great!

Ash grinned, and worked on slightly heavier objects. Lance returned sometime later, and Ash proudly showed off.

“It’s very good…” Lance said. “So which method are you doing?”

“I’m imagining them as death.”

“Death?”

“Well, you know, things that cause death. Dangerous things.’
“Interesting…”

“Isn’t that good?”

“Yes, but you will get stressed out if you base all your magic on anger.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Ash asked, feeling annoyed.

“You could try thinking happy thoughts.”

“A la peter pan?”

“Why not?”

“Nothing to lose, I guess.” Ash said, as he tried to conjure up a happy memory. However, he really couldn’t think of any recent ones that didn’t evolve training, and that wasn’t completely happy.

He finally settled on the day when he caught Caterpie, his first pokemon.

He rose slowly off the ground, until he was about four feet in the air.

“See? It works better.”
Ash opened his eyes, panicked, and fell. Lance caught him, holding the boy in his arms for a second before putting him down.

“I wonder why? Everything seems so new and unclear.”

“That feeling never goes away.” Lance nodded. “But it’s not that strange. The principle is quite simple.”

“Huh?”

Ash still wasn’t too sure. He was learning, but at the same time, there was always more to learn.

Maybe life was just a continuous school? But this was nice, better than sitting in a classroom all day.

_Much_ better.

“You’re a child of light, so you work better with happiness, joy, those kinds of emotions.”
“So you’re angry all the time?” Ash guessed.

“No, just cold.”

“Darkness is cold?”

“I guess you could say that.” Lance said, a caesura later. * He has no idea how right he is… *

This little one couldn’t fall to the dark, shadow was fine but pure darkness was no good…

It would break a world.

Negative emotions would wreck and destroy and unleash the anger of the dream pokemon. And then, that would be the end.

So he had to keep the little one shining and happy, and if it was light, well, he didn’t mind.

“Are you cold then?”

Lance deliberately misunderstood, not wanting to reveal the full depth of him. It was much too early, and knowing information before its time could break people.

“No, I’m quite warm. This cloak is made out of Mareep wool and dark dragon scales.” Lance said, drawing it around himself.

Ash nodded, accepting the answer, and ate a snack of fudge brownies and milk before he went back to levitating.

“Don’t worry, we’ll start something else soon, you’re nearing the end of this skill, its becoming quite good…”

End Chapter

Complete 5/12/04