The way this exploit worked was as follows, Nerissa would syphon my aura to charge her tail glow beyond what she could do alone, boosting her internal power, she would then use heart swap on me transferring all of that stored power to me. I would then convert that power into more aura.

  Now before this I had a lot of aura, enough that I could power Nerissa and Nereus constantly using moves for a few hours, but it wasn't infinite, I would run out leaving me drained and tired. With this method, while still not infinite, significantly expanded the amount of aura I could use.

  The main bottle necks were Nerissa’s ability to store energy using tail glow, something that she was improving with every cycle, and my ability to efficiently convert the stored energy into aura.

  However when paired with my natural aura regeneration it did provide us with more aura than we could use so it might as well have been infinite.

  If there was one thing I had learned from my years of gaming, it's that if you can get one resource in an infinite amount then you should exploit that to get everything you can, in this case my uses for aura were limited to supplying my Pokemon with more energy to practice moves.

  The process also seemed to energize me, I assumed that some of this technique overlapped with the one Lucario had mentioned when he said I could use aura to fight off the need to sleep.

  Neressia was using all of the extra aura to practice tail glow, further increasing the effectiveness of our little exploit, while Nereus was trying something different.

  With the quite frankly absurd amount of water aura we had left over we needed a way to use it up, while we could have kept working on Nereus’s water gun that would have been loud and quite destructive, something we were trying to avoid, the less the league knew about this the better chance we would have of taking Lucario by surprise.

  So instead we were attempting to tackle what I saw as one of Nereus’s biggest weaknesses, his need for water. Most ‘fish’ water Pokemon could only move while in water unless they practiced something called ‘air swimming’. Cynthia had let me know about it although she mentioned it was a more advanced technique that required the Pokemon to have great control over water TE.

  Apparently they would manipulate water TE to coat their bodies, allowing them to move like they were always underwater, while simply coating ones body in water TE wasn’t all that hard for a Pokemon, doing so in a way that was thick enough to allow them to move yet thin enough that they didn’t immediately drain all of their energy reserves was much harder, as such it was normally only well trained Pokemon or older wild Pokemon who had build up large TE banks that could pull the technique off.

  Nereus however had an advantage, me. By providing him with basically unlimited water TE from my aura he was able to practice the technique, he wouldn't be able to do it on his own for quite some time, but this allowed him to get a much better feel for what would be required and thus get him to a point where he could air swim without my aura significantly faster than he would before, in fact I would bet that he would be the youngest Horsey to ever achieve the feat, something I told him which only motivated my starter even harder.

  It seemed that Nereus had a really strong drive to be the best, likely developed from seeing his mother’s domineering dragon aura and wanting to surpass her some day.

  We practiced late into the night, only stopping for a quick dinner break, eventually Neressia grew tired and wanted to sleep which I was totally fine with. I should probably watch that I'm not pushing her too hard, she is still a baby after all. Nereus wanted to continue practicing however I was quickly running low on aura, air swimming was a huge drain with our current level of efficiency, and so we all ended up sleeping in the middle of the Dojo, Nereus in the pool while Neressia was curled up with me on the floor.

  Lucario walked into the Dojo at the crack of dawn, expecting to see Roland meditating again, although he had told the man to make sure he got some sleep this time he didn’t expect him to actually listen, Roland could be stubborn, the beating he received yesterday had shown him that.

  He was actually interested to see how Roland would react today, he would be bruised and sore from the training yesterday, Lucario had been careful to control his strength, he hadn’t gone easy on Roland but if he didn’t hold back he would have killed the man, still he made sure to only hit him hard enough to leave bruises not broken bones. Roland would be in no shape to actually train today but that was fine, it would give them a chance to explore the restorative aspects of aura.

  Instead Lucario found the man curled up with his Manaphy, sleeping in the middle of the Dojo. This was only a minor surprise to Lucario, he had put him through some rigorous training the previous day so his student sleeping was in the realms of believability, what wasn’t however was the residual aura in the air.

  Roland produced a lot of aura, this was why he was receiving training in the first place but what Lucario walked into was something else entirely, it was like Roland had super charged his already absurd aura production, Lucario didn’t know how he had managed it but he was certainly going to find out.

  Methods of temporarily increasing one's aura production existed however they were dangerous, normally it was a result of burning one's life force, which would leave the individual in a frail almost catatonic state, which clearly wasn’t the case for the snoring man in front of him.

  For a moment Lucario hesitated, should he wake Roland up and demand an explanation now? No, he didn’t know much about the man on a personal level other than that he was stubborn and if he didn’t want to share he technique it was unlikely Lucario would be able to get it out of him, instead it would require a lighter touch, something he did not excel at.

  Turning around Lucario exited the dojo to go and find his trainer, she would want to know about this development.

  __________________________________________________________________________

  Cynthia

  Sitting in my office at the top of the tallest spire overlooking the Lilly of the Valley, I had been asked many times to install an elevator allowing people to travel quickly from the lower floors avoiding the spiral staircase. I had considered it briefly but no, it would ruin the ancient aesthetic of the building, to many compromises had to be made in the name of reason and greater good since I had become champion, so I would hold onto this as long as I could.

  Was it childish? Perhaps, but I was champion and what good would it be taking on all that stress and responsibility if I wasn’t even able to decide what the building my office was in looked like.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Legendries, I must be tired to be thinking about such trivial things at a time like this, I mused. Looking outside to see the sun rise I realized I had pulled yet another all nighter, I hadn’t slept since Roland's arrival, the information he provided on terrorist organisations was simply too important not to investigate immediately, and doing so without the government finding out, a government I couldn't be sure wasn’t compromised by said groups was tiring work, it meant I had to direct everything myself which on top of my already insane work load kept me very busy.

  I heard someone walking up the stairs towards my office, frowning. I glanced at my calendar, I didn’t have any meetings this morning, I had been planning on getting in a 20 minute nap so this distraction had better be important.

  “Lucario? I thought you would be with Roland this morning.” I said calmly while my mind raced through all the possible reasons Lucario was here, he knew Roland’s importance and would not leave him without good reason.

  “My apologies Mistress” Lucario said with a bow, “Roland is fine, he is currently asleep in the Dojo, however there was a new development that I felt should be reported in person without delay so that I could know how you wish for me to handle it.”

  A frown appeared on my face, “What development is this?” Lucario was more than competent enough to handle most situations by himself.

  “It seems that Roland has found a way to super charge his aura, please do not be alarmed, I do not think he has been burning his life force in order to do so, however I must say that I do not know how he has achieved this feat, I have not yet asked Roland about this instead choosing to report directly to you, the man is stubborn and I fear my prying may make him close up.” Lucario reported.

  “I see, is there anything else?” I asked.

  “Yes, yesterday I pushed him hard, hard enough that I was expecting to see him covered in bruising this morning, instead I only noticed small cuts across his skin, cuts that were not there when I left him yesterday.”

  “That's troubling, any idea what caused them?”

  “If I had to guess, super charging his aura to the point his body couldn't handle it? The aura may force itself through his skin leaving cuts, although to have an aura dense enough to cause physical harm across his whole body is a scary thought.” Lucarion said.

  “It seems that I will have to pay our resident world hopper a visit this morning, a shame I was hoping to get a nap in.” I said letting out a sigh.

  “You work too hard Mistress, Roland is still asleep so there is no reason that you couldn't sleep for a while until he wakes.” Lucarion suggested it to me.

  Putting on a smile I looked up at Lucario, “Thank you for caring but no, I have too much to do and that would put me behind at a time I can ill afford to be, lets go wake him up.” I said getting to my feet with a big stretch.

  “As you wish Mistress” Lucario said as he fell into step behind me.

  ____________________________________________________________________________

  Waking up to a beautiful woman was normally quite a pleasant experience, when said woman was champion of a whole region and wielded enough power both politically and literally to bury me without anyone ever discovering made the experience much more anxiety inducing.

  “I will be translating for Mistress Cynthia this morning.” Lucario said standing just behind the champion.

  Rubbing my eyes clear I noticed that Alakazam was absent and so there would be no telepathic link set up between us.

  “What's going on?” I asked unsure what had caused the early morning meeting.

  “My lady had some free time this morning and simply wished to check in on you, to see how the training yesterday went.” Lucario said not giving anything away from the tone of his voice.

  Well that's a load of horse shit, or Ponyta shit I guess, there is no way the champion just happened to have a free morning, I'm guessing that Lucario can sense what we were doing last night and she's here to investigate.

  “Please tell her that I am feeling very well, that the training was very informative.” I replied, trying to be careful with my words.

  Cynthia said something else to Lucario although I had only had one lesson on the language, half a lesson really considering I was exhausted at the time, so I wasn’t able to make out any of it.

  “She has asked if you would mind if she watched some of our session this morning.”

  That can’t happen, I could feel my control growing each time Neressia used heart swap, there is no way a master of aura like Lucario won’t notice the difference if we train together again, hells I bet he’s already noticed a difference hence why Cynthia is here.

  After a moments pause I finally said, “I’m afraid we wont be able to train together this morning Lucario, yesterdays session really showed me how I have been slacking on my teams training, and so I have developed a new training schedule for them that we will be working on until we are up to snuff.”

  Lucario actually looked a little taken aback by my statement however he quickly schooled his emotions as he replayed my message to Cynthia.

  “My lady asks if you are sure, that having a Champion ranked Pokemon teaching them will help them develop much faster.”

  “While I am sure she is right, she is champion after all, these are my Pokemon and so my responsibility. What sort of trainer would I be if I relied on others for everything, that's not to say your guidance isn't wanted of course, however the gap in power is simply too great right now, there are basic fundamentals we need to work on, once we have shored those up we will welcome additional tutelage.” I replied.

  Gods I hope the buy that, if Lucario is aware of heart swaps effects then our chance of landing a hit against him go from extremely low to zero, we need the element of surprise and him watching us train removes that.

  Lucario relayed what I said to Cynthia who smiled and nodded before speaking.

  “Would you still be willing to do daily language lessons?” Lucario translated.

  “Of course, however something so basic should not take up the time of someone as important as the Champion, perhaps it would be better to arrange a different teacher, at the very least until we have something worth your lady’s attention.” I was laying it on a bit thick referring to Cynthia as Lucario’s lady but that's how he was referring to her so I was hoping to play into it.

  Cynthia nodded again, “A new tutor will be arranged, in the mean time we would ask that you remain in the Dojo, some of the information you have provided us is of a sensitive nature, we were hoping to hide your existence until we were in a better position to act upon it.” Lucarion continued to translate.

  So I am trapped in here, I expected as much but the confirmation is good to have, they are also asking if im willing to comply with this imprisonment, right now I don’t have the power to forcibly reject them so it’s better to play along, if my options are the carrot or the stick I know which one I would prefer.

  “Global terrorist organizations are several orders of magnitude above my level of expertise, I am more than happy to refer to your lady’s judgment on the best path to progress, if that means staying inside of the Dojo then that is what we shall do. Would it be okay to request some target dummies, so that my Pokemon may practice moves, and some healing items like potions? I plan to have them spar each other once they are ready and want to make sure I am prepared to handle any injuries.”

  Am I pushing too hard here? No, I'm putting on the front of being a good trainer so asking for these supplies should be fine, right?

  After a quick exchange between Lucario and Cynthia I was told that supplies will be provided and a nurse joy would be assigned to come by at least once a day starting from tomorrow, they also said it would likely take the day to find me a language teacher so I would be free to train all day today.

  After that the pair bid me a farewell leaving me alone with my Pokemon. “Right guys, it looks like my bluff paid off enough for them to leave us to train, I'm not sure how long we will have without them snooping, so we better make use of the time we have now!”

  Nerissa and Nereus looked at me, not responding, and suddenly I heard my stomach make a loud rumble, “After breakfast of course.” I quickly added to my previous statement.