CHP 10
	
	Soul awoke the next morning. The first thing she found was that Seth was gone. She was about to wake Sky but then she heard a familiar sound: the shower. She carefully got out of the bed, trying not to wake the sleeping espeon across from her. She found the bedroom door cracked and used her horn to pry it open. Just ahead of her was the source of the noise. The problem was that the bathroom door was closed. Thankfully the door had a handle instead of a knob. Soul hated knobs because of the way they essentially prevented her access. She hopped up slightly, taking the handle in her teeth and turning it. The door opened enough for her to push it open. The sound of falling water intensified, filling her ears. The curtain was drawn blocking her view and Seth's clothes were on the floor, giving her a good idea of where he was. 

	She went in, trying to keep her claws from clicking on the tiles. She went to the opposite end of the tub, where the water was not aimed, and stuck her head in. Inside, was a lucario, seated and facing the opposite direction. He was cross legged and his aura sensors were floating to the sides. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the movement above him. A moving shape of aura was catching and manipulating the falling water. It was first a bowl, catching a large amount of water, before shifting into a spout, pouring the water down. Other shapes formed below that, moving the water around in complex spirals until it eventually reached the end, where it poured onto Seth's head. The path the water took along the aura was changing constantly, though the goal seemed to be to keep the water going to the same place. She smiled mischievously as she came up with a way to make it a little harder for him. 

	She took hold of the curtain with the back of her horn, as suddenly pulled it back. Seth's eyes popped open. "Shit!" He shouted, the aura vanishing. "Soul, you scared me." He said, turning to her. "Close the curtain, you're gonna get water everywhere." 

	"I have a better idea. You keep the water out, and do what you were just doing."

	"I could use the practice I guess." He shut his eyes again and his sensors drifted back up. A large wall formed, replacing the shower curtain, and a sphere formed in the air, its shape changing. 

	"Uh uh. Not like that." She said, with a taunting tone. She lifted a paw a made a spinning motion. 

	Seth got the hint and formed a cone around the shower head and all the way down to his original water catcher. He also closed in the spirals, fully containing the entire flow of water. Soul left him alone for a bit, until she felt he was comfortable with this. She hopped up, her front paws on the edge of the tub. Now she didn't have to get wet. She reached out with one paw, and began to poke at Seth's aura sensors. 

	"Stop it." He said, without moving. She did not. The bottom part of the contraption, the spiral tubes, began to quiver. She kept it up, poking different ones and sometimes scratching his ears. The bottom part vanished, the cascade of water pouring down on him. She quickly pulled her paw back, dodging the incoming water. His eyes opened and he looked to her, but his aura remained there. "I'm trying to practice, do you mind?" 

	"Don't mind me. I'm just sitting here~" She said, trying to sound innocent. He gave her a suspicious look, before getting back to it. She was back to poking at him the moment the structure was reformed. 

	"I'm trying to practice manipulating aura, not maintaining it. You can go now." He said, his aura wobbling a bit. 

	"That's where you're wrong. You can't just practice one aspect of your skills. You have to train them all at once. And do you think you'll be left alone in a fight?" She said, puffing her mane proudly. 

	"Yeah, you should let us train you. We have a lot more combat experience. The movies humans like to watch don't really tell you much about how to really fight." Sky said as she came into the bathroom. 

	"Sorry, did we wake you?" Soul said. 

	"Yeah, but it's fine. He's right. We do need to get stronger, all of us." Sky said.

	"Well then we should get ready to-" Soul suddenly yelped as a small amount of water was dumped onto her head. Above her a small cup of aura had just disappeared. Seth laughed quietly to himself, but Soul caught on. "Why you little-" She growled at him.

	He reached over and turned off the water, funneling the rest of it down the drain. A towel was tossed onto his head by Sky and he used it to dry off while standing up. "I can understand why you don't like water Soul, my fur is annoying to dry out too, but a warm shower just feels so good." Seth said, using the towel to dry her head off.

	"Look at me." She said, stepping back. She shook herself around, her long furred coat shaking and flowing from the wind she created. "I look too good to ruin my coat." 

	He got out of the tub and grabbed his collar off of the toilet seat. It took a bit of fiddling due to him not having thumbs, but he managed to get it on properly. He made sure to pack away his clothes and then, with bag in hand, they departed.

	On their way out of the city, Soul asked the important question. "Where are we going?" 

	"What a bit, I'll show you when we get out of town." Seth told her, speaking in pokemon. He was true to his word, so when they reached the forest they had passed through yesterday, they broke off from the path. In the woods they found a stump and Seth used it to unfurl his map on. "Okay, so we are here," He said, pointing to Etral City, "And we came from here." He traced a line from their location back to Everlive City to the south. "We going back that way. The only other thing out this way is what they just call End Town. They call it that because it's known for breaking most trainers. It's the last gym in the league and some say it's even harder than the elite four. I've never seen it though. From Everlive, we can either go east or west. To the east are the starter towns. Most new trainers began their journeys there. There's also tons of small towns out that way. I was born in Breeze Town." He said while pointing to it. 

	"To the west of Everlive are all the other gym towns. I think we'll head for here." He said, pointing to a big square that was four stops away. "It's officially called Emone town, but most people call it the city of romance. And then from there I wanna see Stross City, it's this port city here." He moved his finger over to the furthest point west on the map. "Oh then we should go to the frozen peaks." His finger drifted south of the cluster of towns, to a large mountain range. "I hear the snow is beautiful. After that... I have no idea." 

	"What's this here?" Sky said, using one of her forked tails to point at a square to the south of Everlive. 

	"That's the battle castle. It's a place for trainers and people to see professional battling with unique conditions. Like some matches only allow certain types to enter, or other matches require a team of all the same species. Most of the battling on TV happens there. We could go there sometime." He rolled the map back up and stowed it away. He went to leave the area and get back on the road, but Soul stopped him.

	"We need to train. This is a perfect spot. Now I have a plan here. You are going to turn human and then turn into a pokemon again, right now." 

	"Can I even do that?" Seth said, not sure.

	"I don't care. Just do it." She responded in a serious tone. 

	Seth complied, sitting down on the stump. He closed his eyes and tried to remove all emotion from his mind. He sat there, making good attempts to clear his mind, for about 20 minutes. He was quickly growing bored now. It just wasn't working. An idea began to form in his head. Most times when he transformed alone and without stimulus, it wasn't the emotion that sparked the transformation. It helped to speed it up but it wasn't the start. What often would start it, was picturing himself as a pokemon. He imagined himself turning human again, his fur receding back into his body. He kept it up and suddenly it began. His fur began to very slowly retreat into his body. It was so slow that it didn't even seem to be happening at first, but after a bit it had made enough progress to be seen. It took a full five minutes to be human again. 

	"Good. Now, absol. Anthro absol." Soul commanded.

	Seth saw himself as an absol, much like Soul. He tried to imagine what a anthro absol would look like, but... he had never seen one so it wasn't too clear. A human body, covered in white fur. A blue horn extending from his head and a similar one on his rear. Hands that had fingers, but the nails were extended, like claws, and his feet were similar. Also there was a claw like spike extending from his elbow. He opened his eyes to find Soul staring at him. "What?"

	She said nothing, closing in on him with a twinkle in her eye. When she was just before him, she dove at him, burying her face in his crotch. He followed her down, looking past a fluffy white mane around his neck and down to his fur covered sheath. He had done it and Soul seemed pretty happy about it, already licking at him. Her tongue began to touch his erecting flesh and that speed up its growth. His feline-canine hybrid cock reached its peak and he let out a quiet groan. Then she backed away. "Where are you going?" He said quickly. 

	"If you want more, you'll have to work for it~" She teased, turning around and shaking her rear at him. She lowered her tail to tickle at his meat. He got to his feet, trying to reach for her rear end, but she stayed just out of reach. 

	"Sky, a little help?" He said, pointing to his predicament. 

	"Nope." She shook her head. 

	"Ughh, fine then. What's the plan?" He said while trying to ignore his raging erection. 

	"Let's try cutting some wood." She put specific emphasis on that last word. Seth let out a groan of displeasure. Soul ignored him and went over to a tree. Her horn began to glow and she drew back, held for a second, and swung, her attack cutting right through the tree in one clean slash. With a deafening creak, the tree fell back into the clearing. It wasn't large enough to be a huge threat, forcing only Soul to move out of the way. "Now, cut this log up." 

	Seth smiled. "Easy." He said while moving to it. He took an experimental swing with his horn, whipping his head down. He reared back for another swing, this time charging a slash attack in his horn. He slammed down his horn. "Fuck!" He shouted out as he stumbled forward. A hand shot to his neck, holding the ache. 

	"Yeah, not as easy as it looks, huh?" Soul said, a definite feeling of superiority emanating from her.

	He picked himself up off the log and looked down to inspect the damage. "Come on!" The log barely had a nick, at most an inch deep. The rest of the log was two feet wide. "I have a better idea." He said, mostly to himself. This time he used his claws to hold the attack. He heard Soul snicker a bit as he did this. He considered confronting her but decided against it. The cutting still hurt, his nails scraping into the bark but not as bad as the last time. The trade off was that the five cuts hardly breached past the bark. 

	Sky came over to him. "Pokemon don't innately have the ability withstand the recoil from their own attacks. They have to build up a resistance and get used to using stronger attacks. Humans often classify this by levels. You are no exception. To get any use out of your moves you have to practice them, over and over."

	"Makes sense..." He responded. He got back to training, his erection having fully retreated into its fuzzy hiding place. Twenty minutes and hundreds of attacks later, he sat back down on the stump before lying his back on it. "God damn, this fur is hot!" He said, panting while waving his tail in an attempt to create a cooling breeze. 

	He heard the grass rustle close by and leaned his head up. "Soul, don't you dare." He said to the absol that was closing in. She tried to put on a innocent face but he wasn't falling for it. 

	"I'm back." Sky announced as she came back into the clearing, two jugs of water floating behind her. 

	"Yes!" Seth shouting, running to her and taking one, breaking her psychic grip on it. He immediately put it to his lips and began to drink, spilling water onto himself in his fervor. He only removed the jug from his mouth to breath, his panting much heavier but he felt refreshed and renewed. 

	"Well, you probably have realized this by now, but PP is basically a measure of how much a pokemon can use a move before it starts to cause strain. You passed that threshold a long time ago." Sky explained. 

	Soul remained sitting off to the side, content to allow Seth to continue chipping at the log at his own pace, though she couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm for water. Now rehydrated, Seth was ready to get back to it. He took position at the log again, though his fur was still matted with sweat, and once again began carving at the log with his claws. He was in the zone, only the log in his mind. He was hardly making any progress but he had scrapped all the bark off and created a crater two inches deep in the middle. His next slash glanced off the log as his focus was shattered. He moved forward to try and escape but all he did was force himself against the fallen tree. Behind him, Soul had delivered a lick to his sack, and now with him pinned against the log, she briefly took one of his balls in her mouth. Just as Seth was coming to accept her actions, and wanting more, she backed off. 

	"Soul! Please just finish it or stop doing that." Seth said, spinning around to face her.

	"How about this? If you can beat me, I'll do whatever you want~ But if you lose..."

	"If it will get you to let me train, fine. Just don't kick my ass too bad." 

	They went to opposite ends of the clearing. *I don't want to hurt her any.* Seth thought. *She feels the same but how much is she going to put into this.* He had to admit, he was a bit worried. She was definitely trying to push him with all her actions, but to him, his training was something he had to alone, that way they would all have different fighting styles. Soul and Sky certainly had this, allowing them to cover each other's weaknesses. Soul was specialized in physical attacks and Sky was good with special ones. He desired to be unorthodox in his fighting style, not letting his opponents anticipate his actions. That was what part of his training in the shower was. In his lucario form, he had a natural ability to use aura, the tough skin of a steel type and the natural strength of a steel type. So far that had been enough, but the encounter with Eclipse had shown him something: raw power only gets you so far. And in terms of raw power, his mega evolution, from what little he could remember, could trump any pokemon he had seen so far. But even that would have been worthless against a fighter like the zoroark. And even then the consequences of using it made it unreliable as best.  

	He was jolted out of his thoughts when Soul began to create several mirror images. They all began to charge at him. He panicked briefly before getting his thoughts under control. He had to find her weakness. He charged a slash in both hands and in his horn. He also charged a night slash in his tail, the black aura it created blending in with his blue tail. Soul reached him, her clones surrounding him. They had a brief standoff, before she came at him. He rolled to the side immediately dodging a lunge. He raked his claws at the clone as he tumbled, it vanishing on contact. A problem quickly became apparent, his muscles straining from the sudden movements. He grimaced and fought through it, this dance continuing until the real one attacked. It was easy to tell as it was the only one with a shadow. He dodged, pretending to not know that it was her. She fell for the bluff, and he swung his tail at her while she was mid pounce. While the attack wasn't terribly effective, it did catch her by surprise, sending her to the ground. A puff of dust followed her impact, giving Seth enough time to leap at her and hit her with his horn. She rolled away and hopped back up, panting lightly. 

	"Alright, time to play hard ball." She said as her horn began to vibrate slightly and her eyes glowed a faint red. Seth waited for her to make a move, and vice versa. Seth eventually realized that she wasn't going to do anything, so he would have to go on the offensive. He slowly stalked around her, watching for an opening. When none presented itself, he used her own strategy, using double team. Several mirror images appeared next to him, mimicking his movements. He continued stalking, hoping that the additional clones would distract her. They did not. Her eyes remained locked on his, no matter what he tried. He knew now that he wouldn't break her defense so he launched an attack, firing a psycho cut, hoping that it would make her reflexively dodge. All of the flying purple slashes missed, Soul not even flinching. He reached her, swinging his claws and attempting to use his horn and tail. Combined with his clones, he launched a storm of potential blows.

	Soul's body flowed gracefully around the attacks, dodging every single one. The most he hit was the edges of her fur. Through all of his attacking, Soul stayed cool and eventually, she swung her horn around, hitting everything in front of her. All of Seth's clones vanished and he went flying, rolling on the ground a few times until he came to a stop on his side. He considered getting up, but the exhaustion he felt was too persuasive. He relaxed onto his back and looked up to the clouds. Soul came over and put a paw on his chest. 

	"I win!" She chirped happily, while pressing him down, though he wasn't really trying to get up. 

	"What... was that?" He asked between pants. 

	"Once again you underestimate me. If I were an enemy, you would be dead."

	"You don't have to keep him in the dark you know." Sky said, approaching the pair. "Seth, you have to learn about the abilities of each of your forms. You certainly know that each pokemon has an ability as well a species traits. For example, all absols can sense variations in the atmosphere and land, and Soul has the ability super luck, which makes attacks hit weak points better. However, the commonly known abilities are only the basic level. With that zoroark, all zoroarks can change their body to look like other things, but the way you described her, she could make you see changes in the world around you. You've already done this advancement as a lucario. The training you were doing this morning was a variation of normal aura. Aura is often used for the aura sphere attack and as a sensory supplement. Using it the way you were, is a much higher level skill. Even powerful abilities like my magic bounce can do this. One of my favorite tricks is to bounce an ability back. Like with Soul's sensory abilities, she would sense herself better instead of the environment. You need to learn about what it means to be a pokemon."

	"I prefer your teaching method, Sky. Soul seems to just kinda throw me in and try to push me harder. I mean that can work, but I'd rather know what the hell I'm doing first."

	"There's a method to my madness." Soul said pertly. "I've found that a lesson you learn on your own sticks better than one that's taught. Now as for our wager, we'll get back on the road, but you have to carry me, in human form. Think of it as building muscle." 

	"You know you weigh about a hundred pounds, right?"

	"Well you should have won then." She said, dismissing him completely. 

	He let out a sigh and packed everything away. It only took about a minute of focus to return to his human form this time. He put on some clothes, as he was still naked, before picking up his pack. Soul walked right up to him and sat there, with an expectant look on her face. Seth leaned down, wrapped his arms around her and heaved. He managed to get her off the ground but the weight of his supplies on his back and the absol leaning into him made him tumble back. Before he could do anything, Soul curled up on his chest. He tried to get to his feet, or even roll over but he was holding too much weight. 

	"Soul, could you-"

	"Nope." She interrupted him. "You're just too comfy." She said, snuggling deeper into his chest. Seth slid his arms out of the straps of his backpack and from there he could roll over, forcing Soul to get off. 

	"I have an idea. Sky, can you carry the stuff?" 

	"I could use the exercise." She said, as the bag lifted into the air, covered in a purple aura. 

	"Thank you." He said. "Now as for you," He got down on all fours. "Hop up." Soul gave him a curious look before doing so. Once she was on his back, she felt his hands wrap around her rear, holding her up. She also took hold of his shoulders, careful not to shred his clothes with her claws. "When I did this with Sky it wasn't too bad. You're a lot bigger though." He said with a huff as he stood all the way up. He had to lean forward to really support her weight but it was enough. So they set out like that, with a floating backpack and a human carrying his absol on his back.