“Oh my legends, you’re so cute!” Misty took Artis’ face into both of her hands and squished his big blubbery cheeks.
Seeing someone else fawn over my Pokemon this much was kind of a lot, and there was a small but vocal part of me that wanted him to get annoyed. Instead, Artis rumbled out a noise of contentment, melting into Misty’s hands.
Wisp and I shared a look. With a nod, we agreed. Artis was a traitor.
“Anyways, Misty, did you want to start the battle?” The girl had seemed all fired up to battle me just moments ago, but that thin veneer had vanished the moment that Artis had been released. We both stood in ankle-deep ocean water, our pants rolled up to our knees and shoes left on the beach so that we could stand in a proper training field for the Cerulean Gym.
“Oh,” Misty looked up at me, having genuinely forgotten about me. “Yeah, we can do that! Actually, since you’re trying to train him, do you have a kind of strategy that you want to focus on? I don’t mean to toot my own Horsea, but I’ve got some options.”
I rolled my eyes when Misty flexed a nonexistent bicep. “If that’s the case, I was actually hoping to focus on water types that attack from underwater, like Dewgong, Goldeen, or Starmie if you have something similar. From what I’ve seen, that’s the kind of Pokemon they use at Cerulean Gym.”
Misty’s face twisted with amusement, though I wasn’t sure why. She considered something before she spoke next. “Yeah…” she said with a sly grin. “That sounds like them. Lucky for you, I have just the Pokemon for this that needs their own training!”
She stepped back and ripped one of the Pokeballs off of her belt, brandishing it high in the air. “Come on out, Staryu!”
The ball popped open with a flash of red light and a brown creature materialized in the water in front of Misty. It stood on two of its five star-like appendages at just under a meter tall. The creature had no face, only a bright red gemstone where each of its appendages met that glowed and flicked with light.
“Hiyah!” Staryu resolutely shouted, its voice coming from… …somewhere. The Pokemon posed with two of its appendages like they were arms, hitting a stance similar to an old sentai hero. The water behind it exploded into a mini vapor cloud, completing the look.
A grin split my face. I couldn’t have picked a better trainer to battle with. Staryu was the first form of Starmie, the Pokemon that I’d seen the Sensational Sisters using the most this season to knock out first and second badge challenges.
“You’re right, that’s the perfect Pokemon!” I gave Misty a competitive thumbs up. “You ready?”
“Always!” Misty’s smirk took on a fierce edge. “I’ll count us in!”
Misty and I took our spaces about thirty meters apart, wading out to be about waist-deep in the ocean and leaving only water between our Pokemon. It was cold, but something about the chilly burn of the sea added to my excitement. I couldn’t think of the last time I was this excited to battle a stranger.
“Three!” Misty shouted. Her voice echoed over the waves. Artis paddled with his flippers underneath him, drifting out from in front of me like a big blue mini-fridge. I had been a little worried about Artis, since I wasn’t sure he’d ever swam somewhere with even moderate waves, but he was doing okay so far.
“Two!” Artis and Staryu pushed their way to the water’s surface, taking their spots at the normal starting positions. Since both were shorter than us, what was only waist level for us had them both treading water.
“One!” Both of our Pokemon tensed up in the water. Artis swirled his flippers, and I got the feeling he knew what my first order would be. On the other hand, Staryu was swirling its body slowly, rotating its appendages like a fidget spinner. Its little red gem was glimmering in the sunlight and I couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the light or not, but I could have sworn the glow was moving like a pupil of an eye.
“Go!” Misty yelled, not missing a beat before following it up with “Staryu, Rapid Spin!”
“Glacier up, bud!” My voice competed with Misty’s, but I winced as I was just a second slower.
Artis knew the plan and had readied his best attempt at an Aurora Beam below him, but with Misty’s faster call and Staryu’s better speed, it was a forgone conclusion who was going to hit first. Staryu’s limbs picked up even more speed in the water, cutting through it like a ship’s propeller and spraying water in every direction. That force pushed them forward and slammed them into Artis.
Artis snarled in pain, and I saw him rear back to rear back to retaliate. “Stay on target!” I called urgently. “You know the plan!”
He whined as he missed his chance to strike at Staryu, the starfish disappearing under the waves. Artis opened his maw, pushing his body to the surface of the water and pointing his head underneath himself. A swirling ray of purple and blue light fell from his mouth, freezing the water on contact. It was sloppy and incomplete, not even the best we’d been able to manage these last few days, but it still caused the surface of the water to crystalize and condense. In less than a moment, a chunk of ice that was slightly larger than him popped into existence underneath him, giving him a semi-stable platform that lifted him out of the water. It wasn’t at all what we wanted the final product to look like, but it was a start.
I spared a glance at Misty, who was watching our movements carefully. Instead of immediately calling for Staryu to continue their assault, she nodded her head.
“I see what you mean,” Misty said with sage-like confidence. She brought her hand to her chin as if she was thinking hard before her next move. “Staryu, Swift!”
Meters away from Artis’ ice, the surface of the water burst open again, this time revealing a dozen twinkling bursts of light that condensed into tiny stars. They swirled in the air for a moment before dashing toward their target like heat-seeking missiles. That moment’s pause gave Artis enough time to rear back his head, though I frowned when I saw the cerulean glow of a water type move in his throat.
“Aurora Beam only for attacks!” My yell was insistent. That was what we were here to train, after all. “Shoot ‘em down!”
Artis swapped mid-move, the deep blue transforming to a bright baby blue light that once again spiraled into a purple-blue swirl. The swap had cost him, though, and the beam was only able to stop the first few stars. Staryu’s Swift exploded into showers of gold against the false Aurora Beam, but seven of the remaining stars sped through the small explosion, impacting against Artis and shattering into fragments of light. They left behind tiny burns across his fur and blubber that didn’t do too much damage on their own but would take him out if this kept up.
“Keep it up, Staryu! Then disappear!”
“You can tank ‘em! It’s a waiting game!”
Staryu released another volley of stars, this time from a completely different spot under the water, and Artis didn’t take the time to shoot them down. Instead, he’d heard the trigger phrase that I’d given him. The water just underneath the ice began to swirl every so subtly into a ring, ideally out of sight enough not to tip off our opponent. Even as more gold sparks shattered off his fur, the pink patches of burns slowly started to disappear.
Rather than let Misty notice, I called to Artis again. “Try the beam again, bud! Cut off its movement!”
The cold colors appeared in his mouth again, but I couldn’t miss the small noise of confusion as he looked around for Staryu. I couldn’t blame him, because the creature’s brown form had completely disappeared, even in the mostly transparent water.
Part of my brain buzzed, kicking my research back into my head. “Damn! It’s Camouflaged! Shoot toward the right, cut off its movement!”
Across the battlefield, Misty chuckled. “Wow, you did do research for this gym! Staryu, Bubble Beam barrage!”
Artis’ Aurora Beam cut across the waves, forging a solid path of ice between himself and the beach. Since we were in shallower waters than the gym’s battlefield, I knew that ice would be thick enough to completely block that section of the water. If Staryu wanted to maneuver around Artis, it was either going to have to hop the gap and expose itself, or swim all the way around him and give him more of a shot at spotting it.
Staryu took the first option. Its five-legged body was still almost invisible as it propelled itself above the water. The Camouflage move that it had used was functionally useless for its intended effect, changing the typing of the user to the current environment, but it had a particular upside when used in water: Camouflaged Pokemon were almost impossible to see since their bodies took on the transparent and liquidy composition of their surroundings.
The clear star’s limbs burst into action as they crossed over Artis’ barrier, each of their tips expanding to release a torrent of shimmering baseball-size bubbles in strong beams. They rippled across Artis’ body with a ton of force, but his natural type resistance and constant unseen healing helped him shrug it off.
Artis bellowed his third attempt at an Aurora Beam, still lacking in power and direction, and it sprayed across the transparent Pokemon while it was still inches from the surface of the water. It knicked one of Staryu’s limbs, leaving a chunk of ice stuck to the Pokemon and sending it reeling into the water.
I grinned as I saw the chunk of ice drifting through the water, letting us see where Staryu was swimming. It was moving more sluggishly than before. “Great job, boy!”
Misty grinned too, though it flickered when her Pokemon took a hit. “Not bad,” she said approvingly.
Our excitement came from that chunk of ice, as small as it was. Aurora Beam’s secondary effect often impeded the target’s ability to physically attack, since it seized up the Pokemon’s muscles with ice. It wouldn’t do us almost any good against Staryu’s energy-based attacks, but it did mean that his move was resembling the real thing.
“Follow it up! Wall off the left!”
Just because we’d had a minor step forward, I wasn’t going to let it go to our heads. Artis conjured his fourth swirling beam of blue and purple energy and released it to the opposite side of his first wall, sending it off into the sea. The edge of it was a few dozen meters away, so far that Staryu would have to travel farther than any formal battlefield would allow it to. We’d effectively limited it to the half of the battlefield that was closest to me.
A small glint of red light flashed from under the water and Misty beamed. “He’s analyzed! Staryu, Psywave!”
“Damn! Lo-” Before I could call out to Artis, only now realizing what ability the Pokemon had, the transparent star reappeared as its brown self in the water before my Pokemon. Staryu flung itself forward, shaking off our ice chunk and the facade of slowness that it had put on, and released a wave of psychic energy in Artis’ face. The air between them rippled like a heat mirage and Artis groaned in pain, his eyes squeezing tight from the impact.
Analytic was a tricky ability that allowed a Pokemon to break down all of the physical characteristics of their opponent and determine the best possible strategy to harm them, but all that computing took a lot of power and time. Staryu had pretended to be weighed down by our attack to give itself time to use its Analytic ability, figuring out the exact moment, power, and positioning that would deal the most damage to Artis.
I grimaced. I should have seen it coming.
Artis’ head reared back and I saw the deep blue of a Brine appear, but it changed to a baby blue before I could correct him. The only downside of Staryu using a psychic move with such a short range was that it put them right in front of Artis, and my boy was getting faster at his Aurora Beam.
The ripple of blue and purple erupted across the front of Staryu’s gem, leaving a shell of frost in its wake and blasting it backward. The water type skipped across the surface of the ocean like the stones I’d been throwing earlier. Even from ten meters away, I could feel the drop in the temperature of the ocean around my legs.
“Hell yeah!” I shouted. In that last blast, I’d seen little flecks of green and pink, which were two colors that had been noticeably absent from his version of the move. “Keep it up!”
“Don’t let him, Staryu!” Misty was looking a little worried, though she still wore a mostly confident grin. “Disappear and Recover!”
“Ugh,” I sighed. That was the technique I was dreading from the potential Starmie in my gym battle. Artis could outlast most Pokemon at his level in an endurance fight, but a Pokemon that could heal was a problem, especially since Artis didn’t have any singularly powerful moves that would take out a water type. It was more than likely I would have to rely on Wisp in the gym for that, but I didn’t have that option here.
Luckily, I had a plan.
“Swap to Rest, bud! Heal up first!” Artis grumbled as he canceled his Aurora Beam, flecks of blue, purple, and green leaving his cheeks as he snapped his mouth closed. His eyes grew pink for half a second before he fell to his side and slumped onto his glacier.
I couldn’t see Staryu since it had Camouflaged again, but I knew that it was hurt. Even in the best-case scenarios that I’d watched online, Recover couldn’t quite heal a Pokemon from that level of injury in one go, unlike Rest, which always fully recovered a Pokemon. Under normal circumstances, Misty wouldn’t have to worry about that since Rest would keep Artis out for longer than it would take Staryu to Recover multiple times. Normally, there would be no way for us to interrupt Staryu’s healing.
Normally.
It was a little against the spirit of our training, but Artis was already impressing me with his growth, so I was okay showing off a little in front of our new friend.
“Artis, Snore!” I yelled, my grin splitting wide as Misty’s face dropped. Our same trick that we’d used against Brock was coming in handy again.
A unique quirk of Snore was that its user would always understand an order to use it, even while asleep. Moving purely off of unconscious instinct, Artis’ sleeping form rolled over, placing his face directly into the water, and he Snored.
Fun fact about sound: it moves better through a liquid than it does moving through a gas, so it didn’t much matter that Artis had no idea where Staryu was given that, you know, he was asleep. A visible wave of sound rippled through the ocean waves, muffled to our ears through the medium transfer. My leg bones chattered at the feeling, though, and I immediately felt like I’d done a dozen squats.
As bad as I was faring, Staryu was doing worse. The shock of the sudden damage caused it to reappear underwater, its red gem flickering in urgent flashes. It looked less injured than it should have, but definitely not as healed as Misty wanted it to be.
“Get out of there Staryu! Onto the ice wall!” Misty called to her Pokemon. “Recover once you get up there!”
“Hiyah!” Staryu glowed with red light and it pushed itself into the air from below the water. Its Recover was faster now that it wasn’t also focusing on Camouflage.
“Snore!” I cackled as Artis pulled his head from water and honk-shooed another blast of sonic energy. With Staryu now aware of the Snore and no longer underwater, it wasn’t doing nearly as much damage. The water type weathered the attack and clung to Artis’ ice wall, its wounds slowly disappearing.
Artis’ eyes cracked open at the end of his second Snore and I could not suppress my smile. Our secret Aqua Ring had sped up his healing, just like I’d hoped. When he stretched his neck forward, I could tell that he was feeling a little cocky too.
“Go for it bud, the big one!”
Artis knew what I meant, because how could he not? It didn’t matter that Staryu was finished recovering because we’d earned ourselves our own full reset on the match, and my Pokemon now had confidence in his new technique.
“Back in the water!” Misty ordered Staryu after she heard my order, and I couldn’t blame her.
In a motion that he’d practiced a thousand times, Artis pulled his body into a sphere and began to spin. Unlike all those times, though, his open mouth wasn’t releasing a wave of powdered snow. No, this time a solid, albeit sloppy, beam of blue, green, purple, and pink energy was spraying from his open maw. It was a bonified Aurora Beam, not the weak thing that we’d been using all battle.
This is where we put our plan and technique to the test. Using his natural spinning motion, Artis swirled the Aurora Beam around himself in massive sweeping arcs with very little overlap, freezing large swaths of the water in his immediate area. Unlike what we’d been doing early, it was only enough to freeze the surface of the water, but it was enough. It was a solid sheet of ice, completely seamless other than a purposeful opening in the center that was about half a meter wide. I couldn’t stop myself from counting under my breath as I watched him successfully cover more than enough area for the Cerulean Gym pool to ice over.
4 seconds. Take that ‘48 seconds’!
“Holy shit…,” I couldn’t stop myself from swearing. Our idea was viable. We could make this work!
Misty’s clapping pulled me from my amazement. “Wow!” She exclaimed. “This is crazy! My- The Sensational Sisters definitely aren’t going to expect this. Not during a second badge challenge.”
I’d smiled a lot during this battle, but my grin softened as I felt genuinely touched. “Thanks, Misty. I really appreciate you letting us practice against you.”
“No problem! This has been really cool!” Misty laughed. When she stopped, though, her grin morphed back into a cocky smirk. “And while I’m glad Artis has his move down, it’s time for you guys to lose.”
Her words triggered half a second of panic in my chest as I remembered that we were still battling, but I knew what was coming next. She’d telegraphed the attack. Her Pokemon did surprise me, though. Artis had set up his ice the way he would during the gym battle, with a single exit in the center of the sheet, forcing any Pokemon that wanted to attack him to either pop out in front of him or force their way through his ice. Staryu did neither of those things, taking advantage of our informal battlefield and its lack of clear boundaries, and they burst out of the water at the edge of the ice.
“Psywave!” Misty confidently shouted. They’d had even more time for Staryu to function under its Analytic ability, so this move was going to hurt way more than it had before.
The air warped around Artis once again, rippling and shaking with the force of the psionic wave that blasted through it. The power was enough to physically force Artis backward, causing him to almost buckle under the pressure. Staryu kept the move up for almost a whole second, way longer than it had before, and it dropped to the ice as it finished.
Misty didn’t give Staryu another order, instead looking confidently at me like she’d just won the battle. Her brow furrowed when I started laughing.
“That was awesome! Seriously, you’ve been a really great opponent, Misty.” I reigned in my laughter to pick up the cocky grin that she’d dropped. “And that was a really cold line. The problem is, Artis isn’t limited to ranged attacks anymore.”
Misty blanched, quickly looking back at Artis. My Sealeo was picking himself up off the ice, his Aqua Ring slowly patching the bleeding nose and ears that he’d gained from Staryu’s Psywave. His expression mirrored my own. He’d had the time to heal himself up to full, and he was a Pokemon that had taken a full-on hit from a Rhydon before.
There was no way Artis was going down in one hit to Staryu.
Artis tucked his flippers under his body, already knowing what I was about to ask him to do, and he started rolling forward. Staryu’s red gem blinked and it turned to hop back into the water, but Artis was faster on land than they were.
“You got this! Wombo Combo time!” I pumped my fist at what would be my final order of that battle.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Seal-Eo!” Artis grunted in response, spinning out on the ice with an Ice Ball. He hit Staryu at full force, launching the little water type almost three meters into the air, and he didn’t stop there. Artis kept rolling forward to hit the spot where he’d frozen his initial glacier, bouncing off the raised slope on the ice to launch himself into the air. Staryu hadn’t finished falling yet, and Artis wasn’t going to let them. His flying body slammed into the brown star again, launching it further into the air. As they both began to fall, I saw Staryu’s red light flickering and I knew that Artis was about to finish up. My Pokemon turned in the air, flipping out his body and encasing his tail in brilliant silvery energy.
Artis’ Iron Tail knocked Staryu out of the sky.
The little water type impacted the ice sheet with a heavy boom, barely causing it to crack and sending a cloud of ice crystals and mist into the air. Artis hit the ice less than a second later, but his blubber absorbed the hit better than Staryu’s muscley appendages could ever hope to. Artis released a trumpeting bellow of victory. Wisp cheered from the sidelines.
I beamed, smiling across the way at Misty’s outraged face. I found myself inclining my head to her. “Thank you for the battle!”
----------------------------------------
“And she was so pissed!” I exclaimed with a laugh. “Misty basically demanded that we would have a rematch before I left town! To be fair to her, though, she did say that her Staryu was still below the power of her other two Pokemon.”
Mrs. Clara smiled at my story. She had an amused expression on her face, like I was telling the most hilarious joke that she’d heard before, but I didn’t get what it was about.
It was two days later and I couldn’t wait to tell my therapist about my run-in with a local trainer. Misty and I had exchanged numbers after that battle, though she’d said she would be too busy with work or something to battle me again until after my gym battle. It was okay, though, because Artis had taken his breakthrough and ran with it. Now that we could consistently use Aurora Beam, it was all about getting our fine control down and practicing our combos off of our battlefield control. Wisp had even gotten involved with the training, practicing her spectral motion through water and her two new moves.
“Well,” Mrs. Clara said. “I am glad that you have had a positive experience with one of our local trainers. I’m even more glad that you’ve made another friend. To be quite honest, I was worried that your ‘isolation training’ would only lead to social isolation, so this has been wonderful to hear.”
My smile faltered. “Oh, uh, yeah, I guess.”
Mrs. Clara and I hadn’t really talked a whole lot about the current stuff in Cerulean City. Our previous sessions had been spent mostly talking through the events of Pewter and Mt. Moon, and, I had to be honest, it felt completely different than when I’d talked to anyone else about it. When I’d talked to my dad or the Professor, I’d been recounting the events to let them know what had happened. This was more like… well, it was more like I was telling myself about what I’d experienced.
It was weird how many details I just seemed to gloss over when thinking about everything I’d been through, and Mrs. Clara mostly took a back seat while I spoke. She asked little prompting questions and statements that guided me to parts of my own story that I’d forgotten or overlooked. It didn’t make me feel good about anything that had happened, but the fact that I was given a space to just exist lightened the load, I think.
One of the things that I’d picked up on was that Mrs. Clara would never directly ask me to elaborate on a topic that she felt was important to discuss. She wasn’t afraid to let a comfortable silence settle over us when I held back information or didn’t answer in a satisfactory way.
Like she was doing now, actually. Mrs. Clara gave me a kind half-smile and placed her wrinkled hands on her lap.
I nodded, resting my chin on my palm and thinking about her statement again. How was my training going, really? Well, no, how was I feeling about my solitary training?
I’d started training on my own because all of my friends had split up when we’d gotten to Cerulean and I hadn’t wanted to pull them away from their own battles and growth. We had trained together constantly for almost two months now, so it didn’t feel great to ask them to battle me because I had put the limitation on myself of avoiding all the other groups of trainers in the city. My goal had been to keep my distance and fly under the radar here, hopefully letting people cool off toward me in the meantime, while I trained for my gym battle.
It was hard to objectively say that I’d actually gotten anything done in the time I’d spent training alone. While Wisp had no problem picking up her moves, Artis’ struggles had meant that the real meat of our progress had come after I’d gotten to spar with Misty. I doubted that we’d have Aurora Beam by now if we hadn’t.
As for flying under the radar? It had kind of worked. Not in the sense that I didn’t still get side comments and frosty glances in the Center, but in the way that people seemed content to leave me at arm’s length. I’d absentmindedly taken the route through the town center to get here today and most of the trainers I passed just gave me a wide berth. I didn’t catch anybody even really thinking about challenging me, at least not visibly.
So, was my approach working?
I wasn’t sure.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, debating what I would say next. “Mrs. Clara,” I asked, “Do you think I’m doing the right thing here? Ya know, avoiding the trainers and everything?”
My therapist soflty sat back in her chair, giving me a serene look that I couldn’t place. “It is not my place, I think, to determine what is right and what is wrong. What I am here to do is to make sure that you are taking actions and forming thoughts that are healthy and constructive to you. So, I will answer you this: Do you think that your isolation has been constructive toward your mental heath?”
I debated it for a long second before I answered. “I’m, well- I think that I’m glad that I made a plan.” When she once again didn’t answer, I elaborated. “I wasn’t in a good place, when we got here a week ago, and I think I needed to pick a strategy and stick to it. So far, while I don’t think things have gone exactly how I imagined them, I have been doing better with making decisions, right? I mean, I figured out my whole sponsorship thing with the Oak Lab, I started seeing you, and I’ve changed how I approach my training. Those are all things I think I needed to do, and I don’t know that they would have gone as well if I was out pissing off the locals.”
Mrs. Clara nodded along as I spoke, making it clear that she was absorbing each point as I listed it off. She was careful to wait to make sure that I had finished speaking before following up with her question. “And your isolation from your friends?”
I grimaced at her question. The thought had occurred to me on the second day of training by myself. I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t come up here because I didn’t have any great answers.
“I mean, I didn’t want-” I sighed, glancing down at my hands. I’d started fiddling with my thumb without noticing. “Things are kind of weird there. You know everything that’s been going on with Hana, and I know she’d said that the other two weren’t mad at me for what I did in Mt. Moon, but stuff has been off with Yuji for other reasons. And Amy, well-”
I paused without saying the next bit, instead shrugging my shoulders. The reason I hadn’t been challenging Amy was because they weren’t on the same level as the rest of us. It wasn’t a great feeling to have about your friend, but battling against Amy wasn’t going to help me prepare for stronger fights. They were still at the point where drilling the fundamentals would actually help them train, unlike where me and Artis were at.
Mrs. Clara’s smile drifted into a more neutral expression. “Your relationship with your friends is complex,” she admitted, “but do you believe that these feelings outweigh what would be their want to help you? I seem to recall several times when your friends chose to take measures to ensure you would achieve a goal of yours, including choosing to cross the Viridian Forest several days early so that they might travel with you.”
I shook my head. “That’s the problem, I know that they would help me if I asked. I just- I don’t-,” I sighed again, letting my forehead rest in my hands. “One of the fundamentals of Pokemon training is to battle as many different trainers and Pokemon and strategies as you can, because that’s the only way to prepare for anything that can get thrown your way. It’s not good to battle the same people over and over, because you build terrible habits. When we choose to train against each other when we have access to all the different trainers of a town, we’re limiting our experiences and how much we learn and how much we get stronger. That’s just the truth.”
I wasn’t looking at Mrs. Clara, so I could only hear as she shifted in her chair. “And you believe,” she said in a measured voice, “that because of your circumstances, you are disadvantaging your friends by spending time with them?”
I shrugged. “How am I not? And I could normally work myself up to do that- I mean, that’s basically all we did in Viridian and Pewter. But now, with everything how it is, the fact that I put them in danger without thinking about it-”
I paused and glanced up as I felt a small movement in front of me. Mrs. Clara was holding a small box of tissues out to me. I hadn’t even realized I was tearing up. My eyes felt hot.
“Thanks,” I said in a small voice, to which Mrs. Clara nodded. I took one and wiped my eyes. The tissue smelled like lavender.
Mrs. Clara gave me a minute to collect myself but surprised me by speaking first. “If I may, I’m going to attempt to summarize the situation as I understand it.” When I gave her a tiny nod, she continued. “You have decided that, while there was some initial success, your plan to avoid Cerulean’s trainer scene has not been successful and needs to be amended. You feel as though you are disadvantaging your friends by monopolizing their time, a feeling that you have been given no reason to believe is mutual, and that has been exacerbated by your internalized guilt over your actions within Mt. Moon and has meant that you have chosen to avoid asking them for help.”
I chuckled, though it felt a little hollow. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Kind of stupid when you lay it out like that, right?”
Mrs. Clara smiled but shook her head. “Not at all.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her, feeling the stiffness on my cheek from where my tear had dried. “No? But, it’s like you said, I know that my relationships with my friends are okay, but I don’t want to reach out.”
“And rationally knowing something is not the same as believing it,” Mrs. Clara explained. “You simply are not ready to have those conversations with either Yuji or Hana, and that is fine, dear. You are not going to solve something as deep-seated as interpersonal guilt in a single week.”
Mrs. Clara let that statement sit.
I let out a long breath, sinking into the comfy lounge chair. I didn’t let my gaze focus on anything in particular, instead I let it drift into the distance. Absorbing that information felt like a big pill to swallow.
Damn.
On one hand, that sucked. On the other hand, it made feeling bad suck a little less. I didn’t like that I couldn’t just go to my friends when I needed help. I’d spent three days wasting training time rather than asking Yuji or Hana for, like, two battles. It had been frustrating and boring and awful, but now that a professional was telling me that it was okay? It meant that my problem, even if it was just in my head, was a real problem.
Without focusing my vision back in, I felt some hoarse words tumble out of my mouth. “So, what do I do now, then?”
I could feel Mrs. Clara giving me that same look that she gave me when she wanted me to talk something through, even if I wasn’t looking directly at her.
“Well, I need to keep battling somebody,” I said slowly. “And it’s not Yuji, Hana, Amy, or Misty. I can’t talk to two of them, not right now, and Misty’s too busy. I don’t know anyone else in the city, either. I should battle some of the randos around town.”
“But…” Mrs. Clara prompted me.
“But that needs to come with some caveats,” I agreed. “My first instinct was right, I shouldn’t just walk up to the town square and let people challenge me. That might just cause me more problems. I should do something more controlled.” A thought occurred to me. “That bridge- the one that Hana goes to. That should work.”
“But…” Mrs. Clara said again.
“But I do need to tell at least one of my friends. Hana was mad that I didn’t come to her back in Mt. Moon and Yuji went out of his way to give me a heads-up about the angry trainers, so I wouldn’t be respecting their wishes if I went without telling anyone. I need to tell one of my friends, maybe even take them with me, before I go. That way if something bad happens I have someone in my corner.”
“And…”
“And I have a friend who needs more training than I do, one who would also benefit from battling, and I haven’t argued with them almost ever, so that gets rid of my two biggest problems with reaching out to my friends.” As I put the pieces together, a small grin slowly started to drift across my face, tightening the spots where I’d let my tears dry. “Dang, Mrs. Clara, you’re really good at this.”
My therapist gave me a satisfied smile, one that had a little bit of pride in it. “It helps to be old, dear. Therapy is just like Pokemon training; I have seen more than a few different situations, and that has helped me prepare for most things that my clients could face.”
I nodded. “Thank you, though, for all this.” I glanced at the table where my Nav was sitting. Even though the display was off, the image of my calendar crossed my mind. “I know we only have two more sessions before I have to travel, but this has been really helpful.”
“It will continue to be helpful,” she corrected me. “Our sessions will be continuing online, though at less regular intervals if my experience with Pokemon journeys is anything to go by. For today, though, Derek, we are over time. I have another client who is waiting for me. Think on what we’ve said today, as I expect you’ll act on our conversation before long.”
I looked up from where I’d already picked up the Nav and sent a text message. “Oh, yeah,” I said with a small laugh. “I’ll have something to report in two days. I mean, that’s the day of my gym battle, after all.”
As I stood to leave, Mrs. Clara held her hand out to me. “Good luck, Derek. You are doing good work here, and I am sure that your training is going at least as well. Things will get better as long as you keep at them.”
I gingerly shook her soft and wrinkled hand. “Thanks, Mrs. Clara. I really hope so.
----------------------------------------
“Duh! I have been waiting for you to ask, like, all week!” Amy rolled their eyes when I finished speaking. “Yes, of course I want to come help you kick some butt!”
After I’d sent them a text from Mrs. Clara’s, I’d returned to Route 24 where I’d found Amy waiting for me. They’d appeared with Gong floating over one shoulder and a big sack that they had yet to explain slung over the other. Well, it was big for them. Amy looked happy and comfortable, probably because I’d decided that today was one of the few occasions that warranted putting Wisp in her Pokeball. I’d already bought her some treats to make up for it later.
I shrugged, nodding. It would take a lot for me to explain everything that Mrs. Clara and I had talked about, so I settled for just accepting that Amy had been waiting for me to come talk to them.
“Sorry about that,” I sighed, mourning lost time. “I had to figure some stuff out first.”
Amy gave me a sly grin before exchanging looks with Gong. “Yeah, we figured. I’m just giving you a hard time, Derek! We could tell that everything wasn’t right -not that we were looking on purpose- but I figured something was up. I’m just glad that you finally come around.” Amy tilted their head happily, their oversized beanie flopping to the side as they did.
“I am too.” I meant that. I hadn’t realized how quiet my days had gotten without them.
Amy gave me another big grin and hummed. “Alright, let’s not get too sappy! Gong and Pennywise have been working all week and they’re rearing to go!”
Their Pokemon vibrated above them, matching their hum with the same exact frequency of sound. The little metal disk was already rubbing off on them, it seemed.
The two of us walked the rest of Route 24, finally going further than I had dared to go this past week, and made our way to the bridge that crossed the Cerulean River and into Route 25. As we got closer to the end of the peninsula, the trees started thinning out, revealing pockmarked fields and hills beyond them that surrounded the entrance to the bridge. People had been battling here almost every day of the season so far, and it had left its mark.
As the dots in the distance grew into a crowd of trainers, I couldn’t help but feel a little sick. After a whole week of this, it had become second nature to avoid people, and now I was actively walking into a crowd and, if things went how I wanted them to, would be battling soon.
I felt something gently grab my hand and I jerked a little to the side before looking. Amy was giving me a reassuring smile and they’d wrapped their hand around two of my fingers. An image of the scared little psychic in Mt. Moon flashed before my eyes before being quickly dispelled by their confident grin.
I let out a long breath. If Amy had grown that much, there was almost nothing that I couldn’t do. I nodded my head and we approached the crowd.
Very few people paid us any mind as we walked up. There were almost thirty trainers here, and they’d started crowding around a table where a guy a few years older than me was writing down names and taking entrance fees. From what I’d heard from Hana, people would pay a small sum of money, maybe a hundred Poke, and take a crack at five battles against other trainers in a row. If they won that ‘gauntlet’, they’d get a prize that was often worth way more than the fee, like a nugget of gold.
For that reason, the sign on the table read: Nugget Bridge Sign-Ups: 150p
I felt it when the first person noticed me, though maybe it was because Amy’s grip on my hand tightened. They’d be sensitive to negative emotions, after all. It was a guy at the back of the crowd, somebody who’d probably already signed up because they were glancing through their phone with a bored expression. He glanced up at me and his face fell. Moments later it tightened and his eyes narrowed.
Another step forward, and another person noticed me. This time it was a girl near the front who’d just managed to look up at the right time. Her jaw tightened and she nudged the girl next to her.
And just like that, it was like a wave of displeasure had rippled outward from me. Heads turned and people stared. A few of them even whispered, and a couple had hands go to their Pokeballs.
My grip on Amy’s hand tightened and I ignored them. I’d intended on waiting my turn in line, but as I stepped up people seemed determined to keep their distance from me. Amy and I got all the way up to the guy at the table, who seemed to be the only one not mildly displeased at my existence. Instead, he had an interested look in his eye, like he was amused at whatever energy I’d brought and wanted to see where it went.
I placed 150p onto that table and did my best not to clear my throat before speaking, not wanting to show how much the thirty pairs of eyes were getting to me. “One sign-up for Derek Tracy, please.”