All for You

Chapter 31

" . . . That's it?" Ash asked suspiciously

"That's it." Gary said reassuringly.

"No firing attacks at me and Lucario?"

"Nope."

"No life-or-death scenarios to get my blood pumping?"

"Nada."

"No crazy, adventurous-"

"Will you just get on with it already!" Gary snapped.

"Alright." Ash sat down tenatively. He was glad he wouldn't be doing anything reckless or dangerous, but it felt so... strange.

All he was doing today to learn about aura was replicating the aura-sight, without even going into the aura-plane. He was to find where Pikachu was hiding. No pokemon attacking while he was doing it, no distracting schenanagins. Lucario was just sitting on the grass doing nothing, for crying out loud!

They planned on doing aura-training after school every day. Ash still had to work on talking to Lucario, being able to leave the aura plain on command, and who knows what else, but for now they were sticking with aura sight since Ash had recently made a breakthrough with that.

Ash felt the cool grass, sighed, and closed his eyes. He felt the energy pulsing in his chest; the aura. He debated whether he should 'reach out' with it, like he had to find Pikachu and Gary, or send it out like he had to see most of the school. He ultimately decided to try reaching out first, since it was less tiring.

He felt around before finding Gary and Lucario. It was a lot easier than last time since this time he knew what to do and expect. He noticed that Lucario's aura was a lot brighter than Gary's, and that Gary's had more of a blue tint than Lucario's. He then felt around for Pikachu, finding him hiding behind a bush. His aura was a bright white, like Lucario's. 

"Pikachu's over there!" Ash said while pointing and opening his eyes. 

Gary grinned. "Rightio, Ashy-Boy. Alright, did you use the reaching-method or the send-out-all-you-aura-method? Y'know what, that's a mouthful, so from now on, we're just gonna call the send-out-aura-wave your 'aura radar'."

"Yeah, that suits it pretty well. I just used to reach-method, though. And it was much less tiring than last time."

"That's interesting. Alright, why don't you do four more reach-method hunts, then we'll do some aura radar hunts?"

"Sounds good." Ash gave Pikachu some time to hide before reaching out again with his aura. This time, he was hiding extra-close to Gary. Their plan was clearly to try and confuse him with the aura's close together, but it didn't work.

After doing this a few more times, Ash finding Pikachu after moments each try, they moved on the the aura radar method.

Ash gave Pikachu some extra time to hide, since this method had better range, before sending out a large ray of aura. He was suprised to find that his range had increased; before, he could see the student dorms and the battle field and performance stage. This time, though, he could see all the way to the classrooms and administration building. It was a strange feeling; he could sense so many auras at once.

He focused on Pikachu, though. He thought about how PIkachu's aura felt, and searched for it. After a couple of moments, Ash found Pikachu by the dorm rooms.

"Found him! He's outside of the 7th dorm building."

Gary was impressed. "Wow, that only took you seconds! You're getting pretty good at this."

"Yeah. Since I'm so used to PIkachu's aura, it only took me a second to find him."

"Hmmm, well, in that case, why don't we work on finding a target who's aura you're not so used to? Why don't you find, oh I don't know, Paul?" Gary said with a grin. Hopefully, Paul would be able to feel Ash poking around in his mind. Even though there was no proof that it worked like that, Gary still crossed his fingers.