The first few days following Bugsy’s late-evening text messages pass swiftly. Ran starts out by spending half a day visiting the Charcoal Kiln, where Josie casually displays her father’s deep pockets by buying six fire-type boosting Charcoal pieces at once. Ran’s old part-time employer is so pleased by the major sale that he throws in the commissioned work to fit each piece in a suitable accessory for free.
For Ginger, they settle on an elaborately braided neck rope, the piece of charcoal sitting snugly against her neck. The effect is obvious, as the moment the Charcoal touches Ginger’s hide, her mane glows brighter and her hoofbeats throw off visible sparks when she trots in place.
Josie’s other two fire-types, Chief the Growlithe and Soot the Houndour, get matching handkerchiefs around their necks, with special knots to ensure that they can be refitted upon evolution. Like with Ginger, both pokémon are visibly empowered by the curious item’s inherent power, as the temperature around both pokémon is noticeably elevated for a few hours, until they figure out how to control their newfound power boosts.
Next, Ran takes Josie along to Kurt’s house, as he happily explains the benefits of Kurt’s specialty balls, like the Level Ball and the Friend Ball he used to capture Spinarak and Zubat. Kurt, like the Charcoal couple, is happy to see Ran and even happier for the business, as Ran finally dips into his own winnings to buy a Moon Ball, the prize object one he’d long desired but could never afford in the past. Josie is initially intrigued by Kurt’s work, but ultimately doesn’t buy anything when she learns that there are no particular specialty balls to help with catching fire-types.
With their business in town done until evening, when Josie will join Ran and his father for dinner, they move towards Ilex Forest and start training hard, assuming that the Bug-types there are the best preparation they’re likely to find for Bugsy’s Gym. They aren’t the only ones with the same idea either, as the woods are nearly swarming with eager trainers, most roughly on the same level as Ran and Josie, though there are also more than a few complete beginners who are hoping to win their first badge off of Bugsy, as well as some more experienced trainers who are either hunting for elusive bug-types like Heracross and Scyther, preparing for a higher-tier challenge against Bugsy or doing both at the same time.
It leads to more than a few battles both on that first half day and on the days after it, as there’s only so much prime training space to be had, but between the pair of them, Ran and Josie generally manage to secure a sufficiently large area free of wild pokémon and interfering trainers to work with every day. Though they do end up having to cut their training short on the third day, when a slightly older trainer chases them both off by flashing Kanto’s eight badges and sending out an angry Golduck the moment it seems like Josie’s about to object.
Between its water-typing, ability to learn some strong psychic moves and the clear disparity in experience between them, Ran decides that discretion is the better part of valor and he even manages to drag Josie away from that particular confrontation before any foolish challenges can be thrown around. That he then has to suffer the brunt of her displeasure until he manages to distract her by bringing up the next day’s planned scouting excursion to Bugsy’s Gym is a burden he bears gladly.
The scouting trip in question, which occurs a few days after an uneventful dinner with Ran’s father, is really little more than them arriving at the Gym early, buying tickets for the day and making their way into the spectators’ stands with their pokégear set to the notepad feature. Bugsy clearly has an extremely busy day, possibly due to the Gym not being open for challenges the next weekend. There’s a match scheduled every ten minutes, starting at nine in the morning and only pausing for an hour long break at noon, with matches continuing until six in the evening.
Only the matches just before lunch and at the end of the day really stand out, with both billed as high level challenges that might go over their time limit. Though they won’t be useful fights for Ran’s own preparation, he still looks forward to them eagerly whilst the first few hours pass slowly, with Ran and Josie taking notes all the while.
From a practical standpoint, the main takeaway is that Bugsy exclusively accepts two-against-two battles for first-, second- and third-badge challengers. The second point they both take notes on, is Bugsy’s surprising tendencies when it comes to which pokémon he uses. Starting out with Caterpie or Weedle, as Bugsy does without fail,is reasonable enough for a first badge challenge , but for second and third badge challengers the weak bug-types which tend to evolve very early are clearly woefully outmatched time and time again.
Still, Bugsy’s logic becomes apparent soon enough, as without fail his first pokémon is sent out to battle with a single clear goal. To slow down its opponent as much as possible. Without fail, the small bug-type that Bugsy starts out with lands at least one or two, and often more, String Shots aimed at both coating large swathes of the field in sticky threads whilst also hindering and slowing its opponent down. Caterpie or Weedle without fail then gets beaten without landing any actual meaningful damage on its opponent, but that isn’t Bugsy’s goal.
Because then his second pokémon gets sent out and the step up from facing a Caterpie or Weedle to facing a Pinsir, Heracross or rarely Scyther is enough of a shock for some challengers to lose the match then and there. Because for some, the shock is so great that they take too long to shift gears, allowing Bugsy to further buff up his new pokémon with moves like Harden and Swords Dance before steamrolling their slowed initial opponent and the challenger’s next pokémon shortly afterwards.
It takes some frantic research and urgent whispered discussion, but the pair of Ran and Josie eventually agrees that Bugsy went through the trouble of selecting for Pinsirs and Heracrosses with the Moxie-ability, which further justifies Bugsy’s set-up heavy approach to the lower-level challenges. Fortunately, although challengers aren’t allowed to switch, there are ways to counteract Bugsy’s approach, as more than a few challengers showcase.
Generally, those trainers that beat Bugsy tend to fall into two categories. Firstly, there’s those trainers that clearly came by earlier or looked up Bugsy’s matches online and scouted his battle style, as they do whatever they must to prevent even a single String Shot from connecting. Some use flying-types to evade the attacks, others rely on fire-types to burn right through the bothersome webs. Still others rely on raw speed, or opt for pokémon that are naturally slow anyways, that won’t be hindered by further speed decreases due to their raw power or great defenses. One particularly noteworthy sponsored trainer goes so far as to have his clearly recently-caught Slowpoke use Trick Room to turn Bugsy’s strategy completely against him.
Second, there’s also a handful of winning trainers who aren’t clearly aware of Bugsy’s strategy in advance, or possibly they simply don’t care enough to change their own approach to counter him specifically. Either way, they manage to overcome Bugsy either through type advantages, very strong pokémon of their own or simply through not letting the shift between Bugsy’s first and second pokémon throw them out of their own battle rhythm. Already well-aware that he’s susceptible to such tricks himself, Ran is quite happy to have all of the information in advance, though Bugsy’s consistent approach does ultimately make for some pretty boring viewing.
Fortunately, just before they can really start to get bored, the final match before noon rolls around, a trainer who ended the previous circuit with five badges having her first go of the new season at earning her sixth badge. The fight is a four-against-four, with three free switches allowed to both trainers. The girl, a year or two older than Ran, uses Politoed, Misdreavus, Snubbull and Stantler over the course of the match.
It’s a team that doesn’t have a particularly clear logic behind it, but she puts up a good fight in spite of that. Not that it proves to be enough, as Politoed and Snubbull are dispatched by a Forretress that dominates the field with Toxic Spikes and Zap Cannon before Misdreavus finally manages to overcome Bugsy’s first pokémon. The Yanmega that gets sent out next starts out fast and only gets faster, blowing through the girl’s remaining team with little trouble.
Bugsy moves to the middle of the field, looking to exchange some polite pointers, but the pretty one-sided dismantling clearly did a number on his opponent, as the brunette storms out with tears flowing down her cheeks, the crowd’s applause for their Gym leader awkwardly dying down at the less than glorious sight. Ran begrudgingly has to give Bugsy some credit for his crowd management however, as the young Gym Leader politely thanks the crowd before defending the girl’s behavior as he expresses his understanding for her emotional reaction to her loss.
After another round of applause, the crowd starts to dissipate as Bugsy departs for his break, Ran and Josie joining their fellow spectators as the crowd drifts apart into small groups either heading home, to some form of restaurant for lunch, or as is the case for more than an unfortunate few, back to work. For their part, Ran and Josie exchange looks, before heading back out to Ilex Forest once more. It’s a shame to miss the other high-level fight at the end of the day, but with seventeen low-level fights that all stuck to the same pattern, neither wants to spend the afternoon spectating even more fights to see if there’s any further minor details to be gleaned.
Instead they return to training once more, the Golduck trainer from the previous day fortunately not crossing their paths again. They split up again, Josie’s want and need to quite literally play with fire necessitating plenty of room to work with. Ran doesn’t mind however, as soon enough his team is once more diving headfirst into their training.
For Golbat, training is twofold, as Ran sets the flying-type to flying improvised obstacle courses, relying on Ilex Forest’s naturally present bug-types, as well as some webs produced by Spinarak, to provide a sufficiently challenging course for the large flier. Primarily, they’re continuing to work on Golbat’s speed and agility in the air, his larger wings enabling greater feats of speed than he ever managed as a Zubat.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
They’ve seen solid results already, as by this point Golbat has clearly completely adjusted to his significant change in size, flight speed and general agility far better now than when he’d been newly evolved. However, his evolution doesn’t just require a general change to his deliberate movements, but also necessitates some significant changes to his ingrained reflexes, as what used to be enough of a dodge to turn an attack into a comfortable miss is now only enough to turn a full hit into a glancing one. It’s those subconscious estimations of incoming threats which Golbat is still working on, a lifetime’s worth of ingrained habits not proving that easy to change.
As a secondary goal geared specifically at overcoming his bad habits, throughout Golbat’s practice, Ran has Spinarak occasionally launch a Shadow Sneak towards her flying teammate, with Golbat having a standing order to try and use the new move Quick Guard. By working to truly incorporate Quick Guard’s larger juking reactions compared to the smaller dodges he got away with as a Zubat, Ran hopes to sooner beat Golbat’s currently insufficient reflexive movements out of him.
That part of training is far less smooth sailing however, as neither Ekans nor Spinarak are particularly renowned for their speed, which often gives Golbat too much time to act, preventing his reflexes from being triggered in the first place, but incremental bit by incremental bit, Golbat makes progress in learning the defensive fighting-type move nevertheless.
For Ekans, things are slightly more complicated. Ran’s pokégear is very clear that Ekans doesn’t generally learn Scary Face in the wild and that generally a TM is the way to go, but that’s an expense he desperately wants to avoid. Instead, he’s experimenting, hoping that between Ekans already knowing Glare, showing him footage of the move being used by another Ekans and some pointers from Spinarak, his starter will be able to figure the move out naturally. It’s not smooth sailing at all, but they are slowly making some progress, leaving Ran confident that they’ll get there.
That’s not all however, as Ekans’ increasing proficiency with normal-type energy has Ran add another three moves to the to-do list for the dutiful poison-type. Unlike Scary Face, the trio of Stockpile, Swallow and Spit Up do come naturally to the Ekans line, but the page Ran found on his pokégear also makes it clear that the moves generally aren’t learned until after evolving into Arbok. When Ran double checked with Ekans whether his starter was willing to try and master the moves early however, his immediate failed attempt to pull Stockpile off on the spot had been answer enough.
Finally, for Spinarak, things are a fair bit simpler even as she’s arguably the most industrious of them all. With her two new ghost-type moves well and truly mastered, in between ambushing Golbat and giving Ekans pointers, she’s freely wandering off into the forest to hunt and to battle any wild pokémon she finds lurking in Ilex Forest. Over the course of the afternoon she returns with some minor visible injuries twice, whilst needing Golbat’s interference when she’s chased back towards the team by a hungry Noctowl once, but other than those few moments, she’s clearly largely successful, as her happy chitters and excited wiggling whenever Ran addresses her show.
The next few days pass like that, with them heading out into Ilex Forest early and working hard all day, with any breaks from training either being to eat, patch up any injuries or battle other trainers. Then, by the time evening falls each day, they stumble back into Azalea Town, with them both heading to the pokécenter to have their teams healed up before Ran splits off to have dinner at home whilst Josie, after that first meal, prefers providing for herself for the evening.
It’s more exhausting than traveling in a lot of ways, as Ran makes and lugs around impromptu targets every day, hustles from one training pokémon to another and throughout the day accrues a litany of small scuffs and scratches from just being active in nature. He wouldn’t trade it for anything however, as his team improves with every passing day. Though he enjoys battling far more than training, the benefits of a mixed approach are hard to argue against.
A week and a day after Ran first returned to Azalea Town, they don’t head out to Ilex Forest. Instead, after a lay-in and a rare, leisurely breakfast, they slowly head to the Gym once more. Ran’s reservation is deliberately half an hour ahead of Josie’s this time, so that they can both watch and support the other. Because of this, when they eventually arrive at the Gym, Josie heads right for the bleachers, whilst Ran follows the receptionist’s directions and ends up in the challengers’ waiting room.
It’s one of a limited number of rooms in the Gym he’s never been in before, its interior not yet updated to Bugsy’s preferred styles and instead still in the old-fashioned steamboat style from the previous ownership. Unlike in Violet City, it’s also clearly a singular communal room for all the waiting challengers, meaning that Ran joins another rookie who is scheduled directly ahead of him. She’s a younger girl, her age clearly marking her out as a sponsored trainer with an SGC-license, a Sponsored Gym Challenge license, but she’s got headphones in and is clearly focusing on her own stuff, so Ran leaves her alone and simply sinks down in a seat of his own before patiently twiddling his thumbs.
After a few minutes the girl gets called on, shooting Ran a cheeky thumbs up before confidently striding through the double doors at the other end of the room. Doing his very best to catch some sounds from the arena, Ran soon has to conclude that the soundproofing is definitely up to standard, not one sound from the ongoing battle leaking through the doors. Before he can get back to the tremendously entertaining time waste that is twiddling his thumbs however, there’s a purple flash in the center of the room.
Ran nearly topples off of his seat in surprise, as a female trainer roughly his own age is teleported into the waiting room by the Jynx that’s holding her hand. As the girl looks around, she scoffs derisively at her surroundings, before her eyes land on Ran, examining him like he is her.
She’s got dark brown hair, part of it falling down to just under her shoulder blades in dark waves, but most of it caught up in a complex crown braid. Her eyes are a striking blue, almost sharp enough to make a shiver run through Ran when he meets them with his own brown pair. Her pale skin is accented further by a very tight bordeaux turtleneck sweater over which she wears an open, thin dark blue jacket.
He realizes he’s staring just a moment too late, as her expression turns sour when his gaze stays stuck on her distractingly well-contoured figure. Apologetically, Ran raises a hand in an embarrassed greeting, but the slight sneer he receives in return is less than encouraging.
Still, not wanting to leave her stuck with a bad first impression, he presses on, “Hi, I’m Ran Carr. What tier are you challenging at?”
The girl frowns, but does at least answer even as she recalls her pokémon, “Karolina Brandt. I’m challenging at an eight-badge-level.”
“Oh,” Ran winces in sympathy, assuming that her challenging for her eight badge this early in the season means she just barely missed out on participating in the previous Conference, “Do you mind if I ask, did you run out of time last circuit or what happened exactly?”
“I don’t mind you asking, though you’re making a wrong assumption,” Karolina replies with cold confidence, “I’m debuting, I’ve just sent ahead word of my team’s composition and attached some video footage of my training and been granted an exemption to challenge at a tier of my choosing. This Gym was the only one that made such an acceptable offer, which is why I’m starting here.”
“That’s a thing you can do?” Ran asks in surprise, drawing an aggrieved sigh from the other trainer.
“It’s standard procedure for trainers who’ve competed in at least one Conference to start at a higher tier even if they’re moving to a new League or if their original badges’ validations expire. For debuting trainers it’s certainly rarer, though as I said, an exemption was made. I assume you’re challenging for your first badge, then?” The dismissive attitude with which she ends her explanation bothers Ran something fierce, her eyes visibly falling to the three pokéballs at his side before she seemingly classifies him as a rank amateur.
“My second one, actually.” Ran responds shortly, now far less interested in keeping the conversation going than he was before.
Karolina’s answering with an unimpressed ‘good for you’ does her no favors in his mind either. Because of this, the final two minutes before the double doors swing open are spent in a frosty silence hanging over the room.
As he strides out into the arena, Ran dismisses the brief interaction from his mind, his gaze moving to the bleachers as he seeks out the familiar figures of Josie and his father amongst the significant crowd. For a moment, he’s surprised by the sheer numbers of spectators, before he remembers that the scheduled Gym matches are openly available to anyone with an internet connection and an interest.
Though his own match undoubtedly didn’t drum up anywhere near this much attention, a debuting trainer immediately challenging at the highest badge-tier likely did. So now, due to an unfortunate scheduling coincidence, Ran gets to be the boring appetizer in front of a massive hometown crowd. It would be enough to sour his mood in most circumstances, but his father’s proud smile as Ran enters his trainer’s box is enough to keep him eager and motivated, as he finally turns his attention to Bugsy.
Standing on the other side of the arena with that stupid bug catching net of his in one hand, Azalea Town’s Gym Leader offers Ran a smile, which Ran ignores by looking down at his pokéballs, running his hands over them once more in a feigned maneuver meant to be seen as him reassuring himself. It provides a convenient cover for his unwillingness to return Bugsy’s smile and if it leads to him being underestimated, then so much the better.
He tunes out the referee as the older man goes over the typical rules, already knowing that he’s once more facing a two-against-two singles battle with no allowed switches. He does his best to tune out the rising crowd noise, as the announcer starts hyping up the battle between two hometown trainers. Ran is under no delusions that the crowd’s on his side, Bugsy having brought great honor to Azalea mere months ago and now doing a great job breathing new life into a once stagnant Gym.
Still, even if most of the crowd is against him, Josie cheers audibly when the announcer calls out Ran’s name whilst Ran’s father visibly receives a few congratulatory pats on the back from some of the nearby spectators that are friendly with him. Pride, at making it this far after nearly having given up right at the start of his journey, wars in his gut with embarrassment, that he’s fighting a former classmate who is now a Gym Leader whilst Ran is only challenging for his second badge.
Finally, all the necessary formalities are out of the way, as the referee counts them down. Though Golbat has the most favorable match-up, Ran’s plan does not include him. Instead, Spinarak will handle Bugsy’s first choice and then turn the tables against whatever intended sweeper he sends out next, slowing it down with String Shot and Scary Face before either finishing the job herself, or giving Ekans a slow and vulnerable opponent to contend with.
Or at least that’s the plan, but when Spinarak appears on the field, she doesn’t face the expected Caterpie or Weedle. Instead, to Ran’s surprise and significant displeasure, Bugsy sends out a Venonat as his first choice. His eyes shoot to the Gym Leader in disbelief, but Bugsy’s expression is inscrutable, not showing anything to hint at his motivations for suddenly deviating from the approach he’d used for the seventeen fights Ran and Josie spectated mere days ago.