We eventually entered the Battle Hall stands with the crowd. The trainers weren’t even in place yet, and that meant that this was probably a publicity stunt or some kind of rivalry, perhaps. Whatever the case, they were waiting for a crowd, and while we were forced to wait, I picked from the surrounding conversation the names Aiden Hageshi and Hazel.

I didn’t know these two, so either they never made it to the Conference or they were first-year trainers. Cape and I watched the Conferences every year since we met two years ago, and I didn’t remember those names.

Not to say that I knew nothing about at least one of them.

“So Scott, this always happens when two famous trainers battle?” Jess asked. “The entire Battle Hall stops to see them?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never used the Battle Hall too much before... I’m a first year too, remember?”

“Hum. You know anything about those two, at least?”

“I heard their names. Hageshi is the name of one of the four dragon clans of Blackthorn. They are famous for their training of the Gyarados line.”

Jess frowned. “Gyarados are not dragons.”

“The Hageshi clan was created three hundred years ago,” I said with a smile. “Pokemon Professors began measuring type energy in pokemon and sorting them eighty years ago. Good luck explaining to them what is or isn’t a dragon.”

“That is interesting, I guess. Gyarados does learn dragon moves... Wait. They begin with a Magikarp as a starter?”

“They journey later than the other trainers from Blackthorn after the Magikarp evolves. Normally, they only need to wait one year.”

“That’s fast.”

“Yup, trade secrets of ancient dragon clans.”

After a few more minutes of waiting and with the Battle Hall halfway full, both trainers appeared at the double doors.

Aiden Hageshi was the first one to enter the arena.

From here, I can see that he appears to be fourteen years old and has blue hair. He’s dressed in the typical attire of trainers from Blackthorn - a clan fleece sweatshirt, baggy travel pants and hiking shoes. The colour scheme was all black, with light blue lines to show what clan he belonged to. I remember Alice telling me that this was the new fashion of the Blackthorn youth.

He had three pokeballs on his belt.

The teenage girl that came after him, Hazel, looked more plain and older, sixteen maybe. She had medium brown hair tied into a ponytail, wore a green T-shirt, blue hiking pants and boots.

There were five pokeballs on her belt.

He walked proudly, head high and body straight. An exemplar Blackthorn, would say both the people who loved them and people who hated them. The girl walked with purpose, but her eyes never left the boy as she walked to her place.

When they were ready, an arbiter got closer and spoke the instructions, which echoed over the arena for the crowd. The only notable one was that it was a three-on-three.

Both nodded to the arbiter, and the match began.

The first pokemon that Aiden used was his starter, a small Gyarados, a recently evolved one. Hazel responded with a fully grown Noctowl. They exchanged some moves.

The owl pokemon hit harder, and the Gyarados collapsed in minutes.

The dragon trainer released a Swablu next, this one young too. It got a few hits in but fainted in one minute against the larger owl. At last, a Horsea appeared as Aiden’s last pokemon. The water pokemon fainted the Noctowl with precise strikes but easily lost to Hazel’s next pokemon, a Natu.

The pokemon won by using Teleport, Confuse Ray, and then finishing it with a Peck.

For me, it had been fast; it had been boring, and the crowd seemed to agree. A third of the people in the stands were booing the match. I got the feeling that they were booing the Blackthorn boy more, which made me think he was the one who began this mess.

When everything went back to normal in the Battle Hall, we had lost an hour. Jess and I were able to get some tokens for the first badge battles. I used Jungle and Mesa the most today, with Valley sometimes coming out.

Over the next few days until the match, I wanted to get as much battle experience as I could into the two pokemon that would fight the Gym Match with Cape, Jungle and Mesa.

Since Cape was so advanced in fighting, we decided he would do fewer battles and focus more on mastering his moves, especially Rock Tomb and Pin Missile, which would be good against Whitney. We also decided to not fight with Cryogonal just yet since he couldn’t fight for long without Rain Dance to make Snowscape.

This first day was a positive.

Jungle fought seven battles and won five, mostly because of the strength of his whips and Razor Leaf. Mesa fought five battles and won five by adapting to each opponent with his many moves. Of course, we were fighting against other first badge trainers, kids mostly, so I couldn’t let it get to our head.

At the end of the day, we left the Battle Hall with our pockets a little more full, and more importantly, a little more confidence for our match against Whitney.

-

“So what? You think that there is something spiritual about pokemon training?” Jeremy’s icon blinked as he talked.

“Maybe.”

It was morning, and I just had breakfast.

I sent a message to Jeremy asking when we could talk, and he said that he could talk now. He was in the library, but since it was empty and he had finished with most of his morning tasks, he could talk right now. I then linked to his computer at the library.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

This poetry was crawling in the back of my mind for some time now, and I needed a fresh take on this. I told him the details behind Brian’s journal and the poetry. The sound of his fingers tapping on the wooden desk as he thought about all of this made me feel a little nostalgic.

“This poetry is long?”

“At least six pages.”

“Well, read for me a passage that you think it’s important then.”

I looked through the pages of poetry I copied from Brian’s messy journal. Since the poetry seemed to have been building up to a revelation at the end, I read the last page for him. Big paragraphs full of twisting and contradicting notions about dark types.

“Interesting. Have you tried teaching dark-type moves to your pokemon yet?”

I blinked. “... Not yet.”

“Maybe all of that is just that thing that you talk about when there is meaning...?”

“Aspect?”

“Yes, that. You always say that moves use aspect. Maybe this Brian fellow is just trying to get in the mental state to teach his pokemon. Maybe poetry is his meditation.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I was sceptical, or in this case, confident that there was something more here.

Jeremy read my face. “Look, if you really want to test this, try to teach your pokemon a new move, then try to ‘get’ into this... Aspect with them. And do try to rest a little. You’re looking tired.”

“Just woke up too early.” I yawed. “Thanks, Jeremy, I will try the advice.”

We talked a little more and got off the call. I turned back to my pokemon. Cape, Valley and Mesa were outside while Jungle and Cryogonal were in their Pokeballs.

“Let’s go, team.”

I sent a message to Jess that I would train in a pokemon park. She was probably sleeping, but it wouldn’t hurt to let her know.

I returned all of them, except Valley, who hopped on my shoulder. We left the Pokemon Center, and I opened my Pokedex to follow the instructions that I put there to a pokemon park that had a space for water types, a space for grass types and a space for ice types. The last one was the one where we would train.

Since Goldenrod, being a massive metropolitan city, was always full of trainers, it didn’t have just normal pokemon parks, it also had specific parks for specific types. I was able to find one with ice type where Cryogonal could train for a long time.

We had to take a bus and spend almost one hour to get there since it was on the other side of the city.

We entered the park and walked to the frozen and snowy space. It was not a lake; it was just a very thin pond of water that the ice pokemon that inhabited this part of the park occasionally froze. Those pokemon could not be caught since they were considered workers of the city.

I walked to the surface and released the rest of the team. A Heracross, Bulbasaur, Baltoy, Minccino, and a Cryogonal appeared from red lights, my pokemon.

“All right guys, you know what to train. Cape, continue to work on Pin Missile. Jungle, you are going to spar with Mesa, just long-range and vines.” I took a little metal cube from my bag and gave it to Valley, who looked at it like it with sparkling eyes, literally. “Your battery, you remember how to use it?”

She nodded and set off first, already climbing a tree. The others spread out, and then it was only Cryogonal and I.

“Okay, I want to try something different from Rain Dance today.”

Cryogonal’s plates shifted slowly, curiosity.

“You know Slash, right?”

The Cryogonal’s flat body turned around and then it spun around while its edge glowed grey. The pokemon released a wide, fast, and sharp line towards the sky. It didn’t go too far before dissipating.

“Nice. We will use that as a base to learn Night Slash.”

I put my bag on the ground and took out the copy journal. I leafed through the pages until I found the description of Night Slash in Brian’s words. Night Slash was an interesting attack because until it got close to the enemy it was invisible, and just showed when the dark energy that hid it dissipated, which left little time to react.

I read the description and the entire content two times before closing the journal.

“Slash is an attack with no other purpose other than cutting. It’s a frontal attack, an attack made with no other motive other than striking the enemy and dealing damage. Night Slash, however, carries the aspect of surprise innately found in the dark. Dark types are predators, more precisely, ambush predators. They wait for the night and when their prey is ignorant of the surrounding danger, that’s when they strike. The only thing that the prey should feel if the hunter is good is surprise.”

Less eloquent or pretty than how Brian wrote in his description or his six-page poem, definitely more practical though. The expression of consideration in the Cryogonal’s eyes told me that it served its purpose.

“When you bring the dark energy, remember that you don’t want to hurt. Well, not just hurt. You want to hide and surprise.”

The Cryogonal turned to the emptiness of the ice ‘lake’ and its sharp edges glowed with normal type energy. A minute passed, then three, then ten, and nothing. Finally, the ice type lets the energy dissipate.

The Cryogonal turned to me and shifted one part of its body, a negative.

I hummed. “Let’s try an approach that some pokemon trainers use then.”

I turned around to look at the rest of the team, more specifically, Cape.

“To learn a move imagination sometimes just isn’t enough.” That’s why Cape needed Jungle and Quake to train Counter. Now was his turn to help. “We need to practise. You know how to turn into mist, right?”

The Cryogonal nodded. Having been born in a warm place, Cryogonal was forced to learn it, unlike others Cryogonal born in freezing places that had to learn this interesting natural power of theirs.

I motioned with my head to Cape.

“You see Cape over there.” The Cryogonal nodded. “Turn into mist, get into range and try to use Night Slash into him, a very weak one.”

The Cryogonal eyes narrowed in protest.

“That’s why I said a weak one, but don’t worry, you are going to use a new move that will also be slow, and Cape has freakish reflexes. He will not get hit, but you will learn the perspective of a dark type. Before releasing the slash, imagine Cape’s face if you did strike him. Go.”

The Cryogonal sagged but soon dissipated into a snowy mist. If I didn’t know he was there, I wouldn’t even notice the cloud against the ice and snowy surroundings of the frozen and snowy scenery.

The mist moved through the air and stopped when it reached close to Cape, maybe thirty meters. I, knowing Cape, saw his shoulder twitch, which told me he already knew something was wrong and was just waiting to strike back.

The cloud stopped, and while I waited for the Cryogonal to try his Night Slash, I thought about the surprise that Night Slash was supposed to inflict.

I remembered the times when I would come home and Cape would be so immersed in the matches and fights on the television that he rarely failed to be surprised when I opened the door of my room.

The mist was still.

That one time when two top-level trainers were fighting with their powerful pokemon. Cape didn’t react even when I opened the door and stopped by his side. I remembered the fright on his face when he looked up after I touched his shoulder.

The realisation that he was not alone in the room’s darkness. I felt it.

Cryogonal’s cloudy body released something invisible to the eyes. Seconds later, a thin and slow slice of dark-type energy appeared behind Cape.

Cape turned and batted it away with a grey claw as if he were slapping a paper ball. His narrowed eyes locked onto the cloud that was Cryogonal and then flicked to me. From where I was, I saw him huff before turning around and spreading his wings to give Pin Missile another try.

The cloud came back to me and gathered onto ice plates that shifted into place.

“Well, I count that as a success.”

The plates shifted with reluctance, approval with a tint of concern.

“If you are so worried, just offer to teach him Night Slash later and you’re good,” I said. “Now that you know how to do it, you just need to practise. That first one wasn’t only slow and weak, it was also visible halfway through. Let’s try it some more and then we will go back to Rain Dance.”

The Cryogonal slumped but followed as I walked towards a big rock covered in snow, a rock that was about to gain fresh cuts.

I considered what I had learned from this experiment.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt... Something.

I don’t know what that was, but it’s probably related to Cryogonal’s attack. He took a long time to release that Night Slash, and that happened right when he released the move.

People, commenters and trainers alike talked a lot about advantages.

This trainer has more advantage because he has a more ‘powerful’ pokemon, this one has more experience, this one has more TMs. Many terms that meant the same thing, advantage, vantage, lead, and my favourite, edge.

Of course I would need to test more, but I think I just found mine.