Disclaimer: Pokemon belongs to Nintendo and Shogakukan Comics. I claim this on-profit, non-copyright infringing fanfic as my own.

Notes: <> for telepathy, ** for thoughts, italics if a pokemon talks

Ash: So I’m Giovanni’s illegitimate child?

Lance: Yes, but we won’t find out until later

Phantomness: ^-^

Kairo: Pity you don’t have a muse for this type of fic

Shoyko: Don’t say that!

Chapter 4

“Now what should we teach him first?”

“Well… a day has twenty-four hours… he sleeps for eight… if we train him for seven hours a day and each take one…”

“Then we’ll each teach him our specialties?” Aya asked.

Agatha nodded.

“Very well then. Let’s begin.”

They went in order of age. The next morning, after a breakfast of rice porridge and pickled cucumbers, Ash’s training began.

Agatha had left her staff and was holding a thin, flexible spear with a tuft of red fur right underneath the point.

“Today, I will teach you how to wield the spear. Your father specialized in this weapon.” Agatha said. “Bruno! Start the water!”

Bruno nodded, picking up a large bamboo bucket; large enough for washing clothes in, and threw the water at her. It was a good thing they were next to a pond, so there was no lack of water.

Agatha spun the spear quickly, deflecting every single drop of moisture. A few minutes later, she stopped.

“Do not worry, Ash. I highly doubt you can master the spear in an hour. Right now, I just want you to hold it properly.”

She spent half an hour adjusting his grip, and he spent the other half of the hour spinning it. Spinning would disperse the water, preventing soakage, but in a real fight, he doubted it would be good.

That had looked cool though…

At least spinning indicated he was holding it correctly.

The next hour, Lance sat with him.

“Ash, can you read and write already?”

Ash shook his head.

“Well, I’ve got my work cut out for me then…” And so, Lance began teaching Ash the basics of Chinese language, and the simplest characters…

Ash would later appreciate this hour of teaching, since he didn’t have to exercise. Now though, he just tried to pay attention.

To the black squiggly lines…

Then, it was Koga’s turn.

“Now, I don’t want you to do this entire exercise. The first three steps should be sufficient.” Koga said. Picking up his sword, he went into an intricate dance of flurries, parries, lunges, and blocks.

Ash stared, wide-eyed. The motions began to blur…

Afterwards, Koga handed him a short bamboo sword and told him to practice. Five minutes later, he was not feeling patient.

“No, no, no! Lunge forwards and jab, first step. Merciful Mew, just practice that for now…”

Even so, he found numerous flaws. This would take a while…

“You’ll fall over in an instant if you attack like that! Try again!”

Ash stood up carefully, and lunged.

“And if you do that, you’ll break a leg…”

Surge was waiting after lunch. He handed Ash a short whip, much shorter than his own. “Now! Using the two-tailed whip, you can break boulders! I will now demonstrate! Hyah!”

Sure enough, the boulder next to him cracked into dust fragments upon application of strength.

Ash gulped.

“Now you try.” Surge said, pointing to another boulder. Closing his eyes, he left Ash to his own devices. Four minutes later, Ash had almost choked himself when his whip had gone flying crazily.

Surge untangled him. “Argh… this is going to take forever…”

“I’ll keep practicing!” Ash promised.

“You’d better.” Surge sighed, before he went to go and check on his horse, ‘Fierce Yellow’.

At least that wasn’t a waste of time.

Bob wasn’t much better. He handed Ash the knife, and then attacked him. Ash was disarmed within seconds.

“You have _no_ natural aptitude for this!”

Ash gulped.

Bob huffily told him to stand in horse stance until he got better. So Ash did, being an obedient child.

Would that really help?

“You’re using metal already?” Koga asked in confusion.

“Hmph, well you’re just jealous.”

Koga’s eye twitched. * Me? Jealous of him? I hope he doesn’t undo all of _my_ hard work here… *

Now Ash was just flailing around wildly as Bob attacked him. Oh dear…

Aya was slightly better.

“A trident is slightly different from a spear, but you hold it about the same way.” Then, she taught him how to handle its weight. That took almost the entire lesson though. It was awfully heavy…

But he would get stronger, she said.

When?

He hoped it was soon…

Bruno… well, to say ‘bad’ was putting it mildly.

He hit himself in the face with the nunchucks about twenty times, giving himself a black eye and bloody nose.

Bruno sighed.

“Just… swing it around for now.”

After five minutes, Bruno just told Ash to stand horse stance…

Wild flailing was no good!

And so it continued…

“He’s so dense!” Bob complained. “He’ll never learn anything! At this rate we’ll lose the bet!”

Koga yawned. Ash was up to three moves, finally, after two weeks. He was slow, certainly, but hopefully not hopeless…

Lance had no complaints. Of course, he was only teaching reading and writing, no martial arts yet…

Agatha had tried splashing water on him, and he had managed to a little of it properly. So she didn’t feel too bad.

Aya closed her eyes, flopping down onto the grass.

Koga didn’t miss Bob’s lustful look. * If he dares… *

“Well, we can’t have lost that easily.” Lance ticked off on his fingers. “I mean, at least we found the child, right?”

“That’s true.”

“What if Giovanni has another son?”

“Well, it could also be a daughter. Assuming Giovanni has more children… about fifty percent chance it’ll be a girl, so, we wouldn’t lose that way. Plus, by Blaine’s skill level, he only has an 80% chance of finding the other. Then, even if it is a boy, he might be worse off than Ash, or die before ten years are up… so we have an eighty percent chance!”

“Have you ever seen a kid worse than him?” Surge asked incredulously.

“Well, I wasn’t the brightest as a child.” Bruno grunted. Agatha declined to comment that he wasn’t the brightest now, either. At least he could fight though – blindly, usually.

Oh well…

They would keep working at it.

Ash was now busy sheep keeping…

No wolves had shown up, luckily.

Delia came out with a basket of steamed red bean buns. “I’m sorry for all you Teachers, but my son is naturally stupid.”

“Ah, he’s doing okay.” Surge lied.

Aya nodded.

“Here’s some lunch for the rest of you.”

“You didn’t need to go to all this trouble.” Agatha said kindly.

“Well, you’re teaching him, so I feel I should do something. I’m sorry that our house is so small though…”

Currently, all but Agatha and Aya were sleeping outside in tents.

“It really is nothing.” Bruno grunted. “We’ll help you build another house if you wish.”

“Really?”

Agatha shrugged. “It would work…” So for the next week, the seven teachers and Ash helped build a new, larger building out of wood.

And that was that.

Then it was back to lessons…

End Chapter

Completed 8/26/04