"Aye," Marco gently smoothed Toby's hair and reached out a finger to the trickle of blood to try to get Toby to stop biting.

"Your Mom and Espio think that we should train everyone more before sending them out like this, but the Commander... She and I know there isn't enough time for that sort of thing. The Time Compression seems to be getting worse and maybe that's because it's building up for something major, eh? Something big could always happen at any second and then it'll be much too late to say we wish we'd given everyone some real world experience before the bad things happened, eh?"

"Don't be scared," Marco hugged Toby around both shoulders with gentle blue flaming wings. "If I thought you were in real danger I'd kill anyone who tried, eh? But I know I have to trust you to be strong enough to give your best. So I want you to do me a big favor and protect those you can during this mission, okay? You need to stay back and heal the other cadets, and use your GFs like your Pokemon, but I know you can do it, okay? Trust me?"