For a moment both pokemon glared at each other after the arbiter began the battle, Alice and Spike as always waited so it was our job to take the initiative.
“Get close,” I said the phrase that would make Cape move toward Spike slower than normal, we were very aware that going fast was not good here because of Spike’s favorite move, Poison Sting. Cape, as agreed between Alice and I for almost a year now, couldn’t use Aerial Ace, but he could still fly. His blue carapace opened and his wings flapped as he leaped off the ground and began a slow flight towards the other side of the field.
“Poison Sting to keep him away,” Alice ordered, her most frequent tactic, the one that had made me exhaustively train Cape in dodging projectiles.
The Ariados’ spike began to gather poison type energy and glow with a sickly purple, seconds later six spike-shaped stings made of poison energy began to be shot one after another from the Ariados and rush towards the Single Horn Pokemon.
Cape tensed his body to dodge as always but I cut him off. “Don’t stop, Harden your hands and parry them.” That was a gamble as we had never done or trained that specifically before, we had just seen videos of pokemon using this tactic and had talked about it. Cape, true to two years of hearing my commands, didn’t hesitate for even a second and adjusted his body to those of the pokemon in the videos.
I grinned, let's see if our hand-eye coordination training would pay off.
Cape’s arms glowed with grey light as normal type move coated his hands, he flew forward and began to hit the spikes one after the other on the lateral surface of the cone-shaped Poison Stings, avoiding the barbs and at the same time knocking them to the side, not even slowing down his advance as he passed the white line that divided the two sides of the battlefield.
“What?!” Alice shouted and even the Ariados took a step back in surprise, meanwhile Cape was closing in fast, “String Shot wide open and Poison Sting.”
A pale green web shot out from the Spike’s mouth and threatened to engulf Cape, followed by the first two Poison Stings, we had lost to that String Shot two times when Spike had first learned it more than one year ago and had been fighting around it, but now, with how much Cape had grasped Aerial Ace, we had another card up our sleeve.
“Gust it away,” I said.
The Heracross’ wings began to glow light blue with flying-type energy, they did a very hard beat and wind rushed forward from that single action, bashing the web away. Maybe if they had fully mastered String Shot, which would have made it come out thicker and heavier, our pitiful imitation of a real gust wouldn’t have worked.
My blood heated up and I felt a grin come up to my face when I saw that both Alice, the arbiter, and even some people in the stands who knew anything about pokemon were surprised by it, Heracross, after all, just didn’t learn Gust. The Poison Stings, however, were still on their way and this time they were too close for Cape to prepare Harden to parry them.
“Roll away and dodge!”
The Heracross flapped his wings once more, this time flipping over to the side by his back, dodging the first two stings, then he flew to the side passing close by the other four stings who had somewhat turned to follow him and closed on the Ariados by its back who being an Ariados quickly realigned to face Cape.
“Fury Swipes,” Alice said as Cape approached Spike. Her voice curiously lacked emotion, she was planning something, a trap probably. I smiled a bit wider now, Cape had been too arrogant this last week because of all this new and frequent training, let's see if Alice and Spike can get him off his Rapidash.
Spike’s glowing legs began an attacking dance where two of them were on the ground while two were attacking, and then they changed places as the spider pokemon moved around, unfortunately, it showed inexperience with the move as it was slower and not as coordinated as it should be.
Cape counteracted Fury Swipes with Fury Attack, and he had trained his move. Arms hit legs as he parried three strikes in a row and hit the Ariados on the side of the head with a punch, then parried two more to the sides, unbalancing its disoriented opponent.
“Horn Attack!” I shouted and he went for the finish, grey energy had accumulated on his horn while he had been exchanging attacks and was now ready to be unleashed, Cape took a step back, lowered his head, and began to ram his cross-shaped horn on Spike center.
“Bug Bite!” Alice shouted and the Ariados’ body bent down even lower than it already normally was, almost scraping the floor, to try and let the horn pass while he lunged forward to bite Cape on his face but the Heracross just jumped and flipped his body up into the air, then he moved his neck allowing his horn to go even lower and hit his opponent in the head.
The arachnid slumped to the ground and fainted.
I sighed silently. If Spike had trained more his body with strength and speed exercises it would have been fast enough for it to work, unfortunately, it was not today that Cape was going to take a reality check. Of course, I would love for him to always win but alas it was impossible and so I would prefer that he was brought down in a low-stake battle like this one instead of in a Gym.
The arbiter stepped in as the psychic barriers came down and we recalled our respective pokemon, then he raised his hand in the direction of my side of the field. “The winner of this battle is Scott Wood and Heracross.”
There were some claps from the stands as we began to leave the area by the opposite gate from the one we had entered as in the battlefields, we entered by one side and left on the other, in total the battle had lasted almost three minutes.
The last thing I saw when I turned back to look at the field was two people entering to begin their battle, I turned back as the field vanished and released Cape as soon as we began to walk away from the field, he turned to me and held my gaze.
We agreed then.
Alice and Spike had been formidable opponents these last couple of years but… Yeah, we were not satisfied.
---
We briefly visited the mini pokemon center inside the Battle Hall to see if everything was all right with our pokemon. They said after a fast examination that our pokemon would just need to rest, after that, we went to a snack bar inside the arena of the Battle Hall to eat. We sat at one of the various tables on the mini food court.
I then released Jungle and Mesa and introduced them to Alice who was fascinated with them. After she stopped petting the little Baltoy’s head, which she liked because it looked like a doll, Cape, Jungle, Alice and I began to eat some snacks while Mesa, who just eats one time a day a special mixture of inorganic pokemon food made of minerals, watched us. Spike rested in his pokeball, sleeping.
“Seriously what tauroscrap,” Alice sighed as she pinched Cape’s cheeks while he laughed, “That even looked like a weak Gust, how can a non-flying type pokemon use pure flying energy better than flying pokemon! Trauroscrap it's what this is.”
The sound of Cape’s laughter was contagious and I laughed with him, Alice was seriously mad about that little gust and the jump to the air to hit the horn attack, she knew that she wouldn’t have won anyway, Spike simply didn’t pack the punch needed to faint Cape anymore, and poison, its only effective weapon, had only one method of being delivered that only worked with distance and even if he did get poisoned Cape would just end the battle before the poison would do its work.
She knew that but didn’t care.
“And you!” She turned and pointed at me. “Why did you wait for me to be in front of the cashier to tell me that you’re now a pokemon trainer, I didn’t even know you wanted to be one.”
She had always thought that I wanted to be a pokemon battle analyst or a trainer advisor and I didn’t bother to correct her, I never told anyone that I wanted to be a trainer in case it didn’t work out, I had just told to Jeremy because he had deduced it, of course, with how many training books I read in the library it was not hard to guess it.
I also didn’t want the pity that other kids in the orphanage got when they said that they wanted to compete in the Conference or become Champion. The adults, and me when I researched it, knew how rare it was for an orphan to get the money to even begin the journey.
I took a piece of the chocolate cake I had ordered. “I’ve always wanted to and would have waited for two more years if a good opportunity hadn't presented itself.”
She tapped her chin. “That's why you never wanted to go to the Battle Hall, you needed to save money right?” I nodded. “Well, I always thought you were just a cheapskate.” Then she began to drink her milkshake.
“Rude,” I said.
Cape nodded in support with a mouth full of little treats. Alice rolled her eyes at me, looked at Cape, and pulled one of his cheeks. “I guess someone doesn’t want any more treats.”
He stopped nodding and was now shaking his head and waving his arms, when we both laughed at him he crossed his arms and grumbled.
Alice turned to me. “Well, what was that great opportunity?”
I briefly told her about how Professor Oak had contacted me, interviewed me, and offered a sponsorship. I just left out the intelligence work done by two Elite-level psychic pokemon, the tense interrogation, and the talk about my life story, so it became a very fast story. Just as I finished she, amazed at the story, was about to say something when a little girl’s voice interrupted us.
“Osu!” We turned towards a young maybe twelve years old girl. She had medium-length black hair that was tied in a high ponytail and brown eyes, was wearing a black shirt and black shorts on top of black leggings, the clothes also had yellow sidelines to give some contrast with the black, it reminded me of the style of Unovan clothes, they usually had a primary color and the a secondary to give highlights or contrast.
She stood near our table, sported a big grin, and had one arm raised as if to greet us.
Since she was a stranger I didn’t feel any inclination to say anything and just looked at her, as the silence stretched she began to lose the big smile and her arm started to tremble. Alice’s surprise wore off as she noticed the nervousness of the girl and took pity on her.
“Hello, Is there something we can help you with?”
Her body went stiff at Alice’s question, her face then took a determined look and she pulled her raised hand to her mouth to clear her throat. “Yes! Can I sit here?”
“Huh…” Alice said as we looked at each other, I shrugged. “Okay?”
She pulled the last empty chair around our table and sat down. “I'm sorry to interrupt your talk, but as I was sitting behind you.” She explained as she pointed to a table behind me, “I couldn’t help but overhear that you’re a trainer sponsored by Professor Samuel Oak, right?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Alicia looked at me and this time I had to speak. “Yes?”
“I knew it! I was in the stands and saw your guys battle and I knew you had to be someone special. You see! Everyone knows, even in my homeland of Paldea, that trainers sponsored by the League Professors are strong battlers, one only needs to look at the last ones!” the girl said, referencing Blue and Red, “even better, I see that you have a Heracross, a fighting pokemon! I, Dendra, aim to become a fighting type specialist and so was wondering if I could interest you in a fight between your Heracross and my Makuhita!”
I stopped a little to think. “So you just saw us battle and then decided to follow us to this snack bar and listen to our conversation?” I said.
She, now with eyes wide and horrified, leaned back in her seat and waved her arms around. “I-I was just nervous and was waiting for a good time to come ask you for a battle! That is all! I swear!”
I leaned back in my seat and glanced at her belt which held three pokeballs. “Paldea is very far away from here, what are you doing all the way here?”
She started to become red and then raised her arm behind her head to scratch it. “Ahn… Hmm… Haha, you know, fighting and such, training, catch new pokemon, you know? The whole thing right, Haha!”
I stared at her and she began to become even more nervous until I couldn’t take it anymore and laughed at her silliness, she was just a kid nervous to ask for a battle, furthermore, why was she lying when she was so bad at it?
When she saw that I was just joking she relaxed a bit.
It was obvious that she was one of the foreign beginners who came here to Indigo for Champion Lance’s dragon egg quest after I had been made aware of the announcement by Clarisse it was easy to notice the foreigners in the crowd if you paid a little attention, people dressed in clothes, styles and hairstyles from Sinnoh and Hoenn, and even from the Western Continent, as the regions there were so different in clothes and styles that they were easy to spot, had come to try and gain a Dragon from a Champion level pokemon. I didn’t even know why she was trying to lie, it was a public challenge after all.
I know that we in Johto had the reputation of being competitive, serious, and zealous people but we would not kick down or give a tough time to someone just because of an attractive prize.
“A fighting type specialist with a Makuhita, huh.” I crossed my arms in a thinking poise, well, Cape wanted to fight still and we had been talking about battling fighting types, I looked at the Heracross, who slightly nodded. “Sure, I will give you a battle.”
Her nervous expression faded into a smiling and bright one and she pumped her arms. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
She jumped from her seat and punched one of her hands with a fist.
Alice jumped in. “Your region doesn’t have a League, do you know how the Battle Hall works?”
She took a big breath as if to calm herself further, it made me feel a little bad about teasing her if her anxiety was this bad. “Yes, I already went there many times to battle since I arrived in Johto at the beginning of the month, it's really amazing what you guys have here, we don’t have this kind of thing in Paldea… We should though!”
Alice, the black-haired girl, and I left the coffee after we finished our food, Alice even paid for a chocolate for the girl, and after paying the cashier we returned to the Battle Hall.
“I'm sorry, Dendra, we didn’t even introduce ourselves yet,” she said, “my name is Alice and the name of this oddball right here is Scott.”
“It's great to meet you guys!”
---
Dendra and I skipped the first line as we still had our tokens for the second battle, when she had watched Alice and me in the stands she had already fought her first battle and was taking a break so we were put on a second, much faster this time, line to fight.
Dendra talked about the pokemon she wanted to train, which included but was not limited to a Machop, a Mankey, three Tyrogue, a Torchic, and a Riolu.
I, of course, didn’t say that she might have more chances of seeing the three legendary beasts than a Torchic or a Riolu, I did hear some trainers behind us giggling at the girl, who seemed to not notice it.
Sometime after we were finally in the field and across each other, one interesting thing was that as soon as Dendra stepped into the field, people who were watching other battles began to come over, it looked like the little girl was good at battling if she was attracting this much attention.
“The battle in field 3 will be between Trainers Dendra Navarro and Scott Wood,” the announcer said to the whole battle hall, as was normal when two trainers fought, this time more people in the zero badge section began to make their way towards the stands near us.
As the arbiter stepped up I noticed that I was a little more nervous than normal because of the crowd, however, one year of being an arbiter myself had roughed me up to noise… and to a lot of absolutely healthy criticism about my ability as one.
“Trainers, release your pokemon.” She and I both did the controlled release instead of the throwing one and a Heracross and a Makuhita took the field.
The Makuhita in question, named Chopper as Dendra had told me while we were in line, was smaller than the average Makuhita, most were one meter or higher, this one had at most zero point seven meters, and looked to be filling in, so maybe sixty kilograms, we could maybe push him if necessary, something that couldn’t be done to normal examples of this line.
The arbiter looked at both of us to see if we were ready then raised his hand. “Begin!”
I didn’t waste time. “Cape let's test our fighting moves, get close.” Cape began to slowly walk towards the center.
“Meet him in the middle, Chopper.” The bigger pokemon also began to walk forward, he had his hands up front, so he probably had Force Palm, most Makuhita choose between two main styles of fighting, or they liked to swing and counter, imitating Unovan boxing and Kantonese Karate or they used to push and grab moves normally found in Johtonian Sumo, this one looks like a push and grab type.
Both pokemon advanced forward cautiously and when they reached five meters of distance between them, they ran at each other. Cape tried to swing his horn at him with Horn Attack from one side to another but the bright horn passed by when the Makuhita stopped and dodged back from the horn trajectory, my eyebrows rose at his unusual degree of flexibility for his line.
“Arm Thrust, press him!” Dendra shouted. Chopper regained his balance in two long steps and came forward with an open palm which began to glow with the dark orange color typical of fighting moves.
“Match him, Cape.” Cape quickly ducked the first attack and slammed his own orange glowing palm at the Makuhita’s face, the pokemon took it but at the same moment that he received the attack his hands blurred and smashed into both sides of the Heracross, then he made a one-two combo with arm thrust that Cape, still dazed, barely managed to block the first an parry the second.
“Get some distance.” The Makuhita tried to move in for a grab, but Cape hearing my command, jumped backwards and when Chopper tried to reach him with an Arm Thrust, Cape, with a glowing gray leg, kicked his palm pushing himself back outside the Makuhita’s range.
“Whirlwind.”
The Makuhita’s hand began to glow and he started to slowly shadow palm at the Heracross but every time he palmed the air, solid and compact winds were pushed towards Cape, the first wind hit the unprepared and unbalanced Heracross and he flew across my side of the arena and almost left the field before his wings slightly opened and stopped him.
My eyes widened at how many Whirlwinds were coming as I said. “Fly and dodge.”
Cape fully opened his wings this time and began to weave around the pillars of wind created by the Makuhita who stood in the middle of the field.
I hummed. So that’s how she was battling.
If we stayed and fought she would win by sheer move exchange and if we stayed away she would push us out of the arena, making us get fouls for leaving the field, I didn’t know how many fouls the Battle Hall allowed but with the time limit there probably wasn’t that many. Ingenious against easily scared people.
One thing that bothered me though was that Cape was obviously in better physical condition than Chopper, him being a smaller-than-normal Makuhita, so how did he get hit with that Fake Out?
“Cape!” I shouted as he dodged another Whirlwind. “Come here for a minute.”
He flew backwards towards me all the while never looking away from Chopper and his winds. “Cross?”
“Let loose at half strength,” I said as he still dodged the winds, “attack one time and then threaten him two times, I want to see what he does.”
The bug and fighting pokemon nodded and flew forward and the Makuhita stopped launching Whirlwinds and got ready for an attack, Cape raised his claws, showing that he was ready.
I rolled my eyes at my dramatic Heracross, I was not that much of a show-off but Cape had this fascination about Aerial Ace and wanted to spread its word like a religious person so he insisted that I always needed to call it before he used, that meant that I had to train his reaction time so that at the first letters he was already using it to give no chance for the enemy to react.
It did help with making him react faster to other commands as well so I can’t actually complain.
“Aerial Ace!” Cape’s wings and arms became full of flying-type energy so fast it looked like they caught fire and before I even finished speaking he vanished. The Makuhita spun backward with widened eyes just in time to receive a flying energy-filled arm to the shoulder.
He was thrown away by the force but used his rotund body to roll on the ground instead of hitting it and landed upright.
That was good, but what was even better was his reaction to the next two Aerial Ace as Cape made to attack him by the side and back but at the last moment diverted. What was the reaction from Makuhita? He didn’t react to it, he just looked lost and confused, his instincts told him about an attack coming but something else stated that it wasn’t going to happen.
“Chopper, stop,” Dendra said with apprehension in her voice from the other side of the field, and the Makuhita’s head seemed to clear as he focused and looked around for the horned pokemon who appeared behind him.
I hummed at that sequence of events and a shark smile bloomed on my face as the answer became obvious, Detect. a fighting move used to see an attack before it happened, young trainers talked about it as if that move was overpowered. Seeing the future was too good to be true, so what was the catch?
You can only see attacks that will actually hit you, so feints like the ones we did he was not able to see, in fact, it looked as if an undertrained Detect confused the pokemon who used it as he had to decide between it and his instincts.
“Cape, come back.”
As I waited for the flying Heracross. I thought about the Detect as it was rare to see a Makuhita at his size learn Detect, in fact, when a Makuhita learned detect he should be almost evolving, but at 0.8 meters he was not even fully out of his baby phase.
A hush of air indicated that Cape had come near me and soon enough the Whirlwinds tailed him, Cape dodged them as I whispered my plan to him, and when I finished he showed his second nature as a fighting type by grinning at my idea.
“Cape… Aerial Ace!” He hit his arms together and accelerated, turning into a blue blur that disappeared from the field.
“Ready yourself, Chopper,” Dendra said in a soft voice, she could probably see the writing on the wall but didn’t want to give up, in her situation I would have done the same.
Chopper again looked puzzled, he had probably activated Detect again, but it wouldn’t help.
A blue burr passed him by at ground level and suddenly he was in the air. Two blue claws grabbed together one of his legs and lifted him to the sky. Grabs, unfortunately for Chopper and Dendra, didn’t count as an attack as far as Detect was concerned.
The poor Makuhita waved his little arms around trying to do anything but by the time he got his bearings Cape had already swung him around himself once in the air and threw the Makuhita at the ground. Not as strong as he could have, of course.
The ground was hit and a loud boom echoed across the entire battle hall as broken pieces of soil hit the psychic barriers, making them glow pink and a cloud of dust flew out from the newly formed crater.
People in the stands became silent and even battles that were happening around us stopped to see what had happened, after all, it was not every day that the zero badge field produced a sound like that.
Cape floated down towards our side of the battlefield and landed in front of me, panting but ready to continue if necessary which was not because as the cloud of dust cleared we could see the form of a Makuhita fainted in the ground. Dendra promptly recalled him
“The winner of this battle is Scott Wood and Heracross.” Everything came rushing back as the voice of the arbiter took away the tension in me that I hadn’t noticed I had.
The crowd, about sixty people, in the stands began to cheer and howl. Cape turned to me and grinned before flying up to give me a high-five before I recalled him, I walked towards the center, dodging the crater, but stopped when I noticed that Dendra was not approaching for the handshake.
That’s when I finally noticed that the people, particularly the ones on her side of the stands, were not just cheering and clapping the good fight we had but were also booing her and talking shit.
“Go back to your region! Loser!” One kid shouted.
“The pushing bore lost!” Another laughed.
“How it feels to lose to a real trainer!” This time it was an adult man, and he was not alone, there were more two adults in civilian clothes cheering her loss with less than kind words.
In total eight people of the thirty were throwing insults at her.
Her face was set in a small smile but I could see that her eyes were strained, that her body was tense, and that she was distracted as though she was trying to get lost.
I walked up to her and she flinched a little, I also could sense the arbiter’s gaze following me from behind and didn’t forget that somewhere in this arena there was a psychic type pokemon, so I didn’t approach her too much and just extended my arm towards her.
I saw her body relax and the smile on her face became a little less forced as she grasped my hand, I then sensed the arbiter approach after releasing his Graveler to fix the ground. We turned towards him and each of us shook his hand.
As we both were on her side of the field, which was the one we entered, we had to walk all the field to leave, some people were still booing but I just ignored them and not even looked towards them. It seemed that I was really disgusted that people were picking at a twelve-year-old girl for battling by the book.
However, at the last second, my gaze was drawn towards the stands and I saw that, on the last row of the stands, there was a man with lilac hair, dressed in bug-catching clothes and with a big bug net made of wood resting on his arm, he stood up from his seat and faintly glowed in pink before vanishing. It looked like I just made my Gym battle a little more difficult.
I sighed, now that Bugsy had seen that battle he knew he could challenge me a little more, and so I would need to adjust a bit. I looked at Dendra who was walking a little in front of me and thought of her Makuhita, well… Technically, I was going to do it anyway.