“… don’t be afraid to spread knowledge, especially the knowledge you don’t need to hoard, when people come towards you and ask for your hard-earned expertise remember this lesson from someone who took too long to learn it: One can only learn by teaching.”
We left the battlefield and went straight to the pokemon center, once there the nurses said that Chopper would have to stay the night to be in observation, fortunately, Makuhitas were very sturdy and rarely had broken bones or things like that, so there were only bruises and bumps, they just wanted him to stay in the Center as a precaution.
Dendra and I then met up with Alice and we sat at one of the tables outside of the battle hall.
“That was an incredible battle!” Dendra said, “Chopper will be so happy when he wakes up.”
“That was a great battle,” Alice said with a kind smile, “it didn’t even look like you both are beginners.”
Dendra rubbed her nose in embarrassment. “Well, I did train Chopper a lot before coming to Johto so it's not that special.”
“No, it is special,” I said, finally entering the conversation, “I watched a lot of battles between beginners and never heard of a pokemon so young learning Detect.”
“You're embarrassing me, Mister Scott, Haha.” The girl smiled.
Alice’s eyes flicked from me to Dendra, her face was bright but it had a tightness to it, she was forcing herself to appear positive, she might have fooled strangers but I knew her.
She was worried for the little girl, she had been in the stands with the crowd and heard the same things we did.
Alice cleared her throat, a sign that she wanted me to follow her lead. “You know, as you probably know from hearing our conversation from before in the snack bar, Scott is training every day in a Pokemon park outside the city but he needs someone to bounce ideas with and train, you know, trainer stuff, right?”
The smiling girl, oblivious to the manipulation offered her two cents. “Yeah I know, in Paldea I had friends that I fought and traded tips with every day, it was great!”
“Yes, so what do you think about you and Scott training together? You two, great trainers that you are, can learn so much together.” She clapped her hands together with a smile like she had a great idea, I was amused by her humble imitation of Mother Elisa.
“Really!?” the girl said, and then glanced at me and coughed. “I mean, if mister Scott wants, I'm okay with it.”
I didn’t wait for Alice’s incoming glare and nodded. “It's going to be good for us both as trainers, tell me the address of where you are staying, and tomorrow, at seven o’clock, we will pick you up and show you where the Park is.”
After that the conversation devolved towards more light topics, like favorite foods and hobbies, Dendra and Alice both liked running, and when it reached five pm Dendra decided to go to the Pokemon Center where she was staying, we exchanged contacts and she left.
Immediately after she left Alice turned to me and lost the smile.
“Thank you for going along with that, after what I heard in the stand… I worried about a young girl like her going about this stuff alone.”
I nodded and checked my watch. “She stayed with us for almost two hours and no one came to see what she was doing, no one called her and she didn’t tell us anything about any friend or family that she had here… You would think. with how kids are, that after one month in the city, she would have at least some friends.”
She sighed. “Are you going home now?”
I looked towards the Battle Hall. “I just need to do something and then I will go.”
I didn’t move and she also didn’t. “…I know that, in general, our people are kind and compassionate, but we can’t know what horrible thing can happen until it happens… Scott, I know that what I am asking is a lot, no trainer likes to share their training and secrets but could you please train her and her team a bit until they are able to defend themselves?”
I turned back to her with an amused smile and an arched eyebrow.
“Well, I was already going to do it anyway.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I think you are under the impression that I would not gain anything by training her Alice. Well, let me tell you an educator’s secret,” I then said one of my favorite sayings, “One can only learn by teaching.”
---
I yawned as I checked my watch, eight and thirty AM, I always began my team’s training at eight but Dendra and I had to do a detour to the Battle Hall Center to pick up Chopper which wasted a little of our time.
“Alright, team, this is Dendra Navarro and her team, Chopper the Makuhita, Cross the Hawlucha, and Ress the Sandile.”
The girl in question was standing still with her pokemon in a file by her side like we were some kind of army. I guess Johto, or more broadly, the Indigo Region would be seen like that by outsiders, with our reputation to being a serious people. At least her team wasn’t as stiff, Chopper was concentrated, Cross glared at us as if to judge if we were any good, and Ress was just continuously yawing.
Her team was loaded with interesting pokemon but the highlight, at least for me, was the Sandile, the pokemon that one day would become Krookodile, a very famous line in tournaments in the other continent, mostly seen in Unova, but in Galar, Kalos, and Paldea too.
Every time someone showed one it was a great battle, each one with a different style, Ground, Dark, Fighting. There were even Dragon Masters who had them and taught them dragon-type moves. There were no powerful or weak line of pokemon but if there were, that one would be considered a powerful one. At the very least it would be interesting to help train one.
“Relax, we are not in the army.” That made her deflate a little, other regions really took the cliches from Indigo too seriously. “From now on we will be training with them until we fight Bugsy, we will briefly talk about what we will train today, and then… We will train, that’s it.”
Cape and Jungle cheered at my speech— Jungle had taken the sarcastic humor of Cape very well— while the clay pokemon watched them, Dendra and her pokemon also had their own commemoration and then we were off.
We talked a bit and decided that Cape would be paired with Cross, for them to exchange pointers about flying and how to use fighting moves while in the air, Hawluchas had a natural disposition towards fighting in the air and I wanted to see if Cape could pick up anything from him, the flying pokemon, on the other hand, needed a sparring partner to practice moves in the air, as the Makuhita couldn’t do it, so they would be sparing after a quick warm-up.
Jungle and Ress would be on physical exercise, just as the Bulbasaur and the Baltoy were new to my team, Sandile was the last pokemon that Dendra got before leaving Paldea, so they needed the exercise.
Then I sat with Dendra and Chopper to talk about our battle.
“Mesa, can you keep an eye on the two of them for us please,” I said to the pokemon that floated by my side, he made his affirmative up and down floating and turned to keep his eyes on the two pokemon, similarly, the Makuhita was turned slightly to keep them on his field of vision while they trained. For now, they were just running around to warm up and build stamina.
“So let's talk about our battle,” I said to Dendra, who looked nervous while she held a notebook and a pen to write down what I was going to say, “Remember these are not things that you should take to heart, okay?”
“Okay, Mister Scott.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Alright,” I said and took out from my bag a notebook that I called Battle Log, it is where I wrote about all my battles, ever since I got Cape two years ago.
It had logs about all the almost forty battles I had fought with him, almost all with Alice, I lost the first six in a row to her, because she had one year of advantage over me but after that, almost all were wins for me unless she learned something new that got us by surprise, like Spike’s String Shot, three were with Jeremy when I had just got Cape, I had nagged him for a fight. I lost the first one but didn’t lose the next two. My first win against him was close, but the second we won handily, which he said meant that I didn’t need to fight Taylor anymore, which I agreed.
He was just worried about the little Rhyhorn being wounded and I respect that, not every pokemon needs to battle after all, competitive battles are just one form to express companionship.
I began to leaf through the notebook. There were other fights here with other acquaintances from inside and outside the orphanage but one thing that they all had in common was that all those battles needed, at most, one page each for me to dissect them. They were very simple battles.
This time, the fight with Dendra had deserved one page and a half.
When I told her that she stuffed her chest and turned to Chopper. “You heard that Chopper, the first ones to have two pages dedicated to a fight!”
Chopper clenched his fists and nodded to the girl. I could tell that the Makuhita was not really amazed but it tried to act like it for the sake of his trainer.
“Ok, now let's begin with your Detect. It is a good move, even a great one, however, leaning on it all the time is… I don’t really have a better way to say it so I'm just going to say it, lazy.”
She nodded, she had probably come to the same conclusion after the fight, that spoke of someone who liked to correct its flaws when they lost a battle, a valuable opponent I would say.
“Well, that’s easy to fix. Detect is a buff,”—she turned her head to the side, confused, so I specified the word—” an enhancer or in this case a substitute, for reflex and speed training, so if you can train Chopper in those areas and combine that with Detect it would make it even more effective, maybe even avoid blows entirely and not trade for them.
She nodded and wrote it down on a sticky note.
“Another thing is that Chopper seemed to become confused with feints and non-attacks which explains how Cape was able to grab him, that is also easy to fix, after Cape and Cross finish up, Cape is going to spar with him and use a lot of faints and grabs.” I turned to the small Makuhita.” Chopper, ignore the attacks and focus on Cape’s movement when he uses faints and grabs, Detect takes care of attacks, your attention must be on your opponent’s body so that you can see what they can do instead of direct attacks.”
Chopper nodded as Dendra groaned.
“I feel so stupid because for sure that would be a problem, it was written in the move description, ‘Attacks only’.” She said while caressing Chopper’s big cheek, which he seemed to like.
I laughed. “Sometimes you need a good battle to understand a problem, don’t worry, you're not the first to not fully understand a complex move.”
“I know, but still… Let's continue please!”
“Ok…” I turned to the Battle Log to see what I had written the night before. “I don’t think this is a problem right now, but when Chopper begins to learn more powerful moves that are, by consequence, harder on stamina and energy, he will not be able to maintain Detect running all the time and also use his Whirlwinds like that.”
“Yeah, we know, soon enough we will begin to modify Whirlwind to be more expansive instead of concentrated so that it can be used in the mid range and then learn Mud Shot and Rock Throw for long range.”
“Ok, for you that’s it, can you guess what our weakness in that fight was?”
“What? You had weakness?!”
“Yes, a very glaring one.” She closed her eyes in thought, but by her face, she was not getting it. “There was one thing that I ran away from during that battle.”
With that tip, she was able to get it. “A close fight?”
I nodded. “Yes, Cape is very strong, fast, and agile because of all his training, he should have been able to defeat Chopper just on physical might alone, but one thing he does not have is experience battling Fighting Types so on the first exchange I already knew that he was not going to win the battle if he continued like that. I will be counting on you guys to correct this problem.”
“Well, leave it to us, Mister Scott, Chopper will kick Cape’s butt so much he will gain a black belt.” This seemed to animate the little Makuhita. “Alright, while you wait, why don’t you start warming up.”
Chopper nodded and went near where Jungle and Cross were training to do a light run and jump in circles.
I put away my notebook and moved from sitting in front of Dendra and with my back towards where the pokemon were training to sit beside her, then I called Mesa for us to do some puzzles, and he started hot with three misses.
“So, have you made any local friends in the month you spent here?” I said while Mesa, by himself, paused to deliberate what he was doing wrong and why the circle didn’t enter the square.
She smiled. “I didn’t have time, or I am training or I am fighting, no time to make friends!”
“Huh.” I let the silence fill the air for a minute and then asked.” And why did you choose to come to the old Johto region and not to fresh Kanto.”
These were the nicknames by which the people of Indigo referred to their Regions, which highlighted the fact that Johto had come first and was a lot more traditional than Kanto as it was settled by Johto and since its independence embraced the new and modern, especially in terms of technology.
“There are more chances of finding some pokemon that I want here—“
“Oh yes, I do remember you wanting a Torchic and Riolu.”
“Ahh! I was talking about what I wanted not what I would one hundred percent get.” She squawked and after taking some time to calm down continued. “…I also like history, Kanto seemed too modern for me, Johto has Ecruteak, Blackthorn, Violet City, I want to go see those famous places that I read about and my… My family also thought it should be safer here than Kanto.”
Cross and Cape finished their ten-minute training. Dendra got up and explained to them that Cross would continue to practice some land moves and Cape would be sparing with Chopper, after everything was set in motion she came back and sat down again.
Seeing Cape and Chopper have a friendly spar was nice, they were smiling as they traded blows or not, as Cape half the time attacked, half the time feinted and sometimes tried to grab some member of the Makuhita that he thought was overextended, however, the more experienced pokemon, most of the time, was just setting bait for Cape, which made him begin to focus in which ones were baits and why he thought that to be the case.
A very productive training spar for both, I would say.
“So what do you think about that?”
“What?” Dendra turned from the Jungle and Mesa to me.
“Do you feel like Johto is more safer than Kanto?”
She paused and hugged her knees. “… I mean, nobody has done anything to me.”
“Adults yelling insults at a twelve-year-old hardly constitutes nothing, and for a reason so stupid as that. If you were an adult— maybe— we could say that it was understandable, it is expected of adults to not be hurt or provoked over words, however, you are not an adult, you are a young girl who is not supposed to endure this kind of stress and anxiety that those words burdened you with.”
“I'm not stressed or with anxiety right now, am I?”
“You froze in a battle,” I whispered and she went stiff at the words. “It was not because you had that problem like many young trainers do, it was because you were afraid of what would happen if you lost… Let me guess, when you win they grumble, kick some dirt, and go away but when you lose they scream and swear at you, so when you noticed that Detect was not working you panicked, froze, and lost the battle while thinking about what was just about to happen.”
“I…” She began but in the end, just didn’t say anything more.
“It's alright you don’t need to say anything, for now, you just need to know that yesterday you made two friends who will have your back in case anything happens, from now on if you need something or something happens you can call Alice or me, okay?”
She, still stiff and hugging her knees, nodded. “Ok, I will.”
---
Two days after we began training with Dendra’s team the Johto Circuit started.
This year the Circuit began September 6th and ended March 26th, at the end of it the people who had eight badgers out of the sixteen official gyms of Johto and were inside the Silver Citadel would automatically be in the group stage of the main and most prestigious pokemon tournament of the Johto Region, The Silver Conference.
So to commemorate our official start as trainers Dendra, while training, had the idea of doing a sleepover to see the circuit opening that happened a little before midnight. We invited Alice and went to Jeremy’s house for the sleepover, which he didn’t know would happen until we got there with the games and the food. He was not that annoyed. We watched a couple of movies and played some board games until the opening ceremony began.
When midnight came and the Circuit officially started, which meant that the websites of the Pokemon Gyms were officially opened, I picked up my laptop and entered the Azalea Gym website to confirm that they were crashing as always but to our surprise, the site was running smoothly so we sent our challenges and the scheduler returned to us in ten minutes. I would have my Gym Battle in three days, so on September 9th, passing over the Gym Trainer Battle since being sponsored by a League Official meant that I didn’t need to do it.
Dendra was scheduled on the 14th for her Gym Trainer Battle and her Gym Battle was on October 20th, I consoled her by saying that I would win against Bugsy, travel to Goldenrod, win against Whitney, win a tournament or two, and then come back to see her Gym Battle.
She didn’t see the humor and Alice told me to shut it.
It would not be possible for me to see her fight, of course. October 20th was the date for her to fight Bugsy if everyone who took the Gym Trainer Battle passed, which seventy percent of trainers didn’t do on their first try, so she would probably fight at the very least on September 24th.
We also made some travel and meeting plans because I would be going relatively fast by the Gyms unless I lost so the best we could come up with to meet up was that I would be going to Goldenrod and from there to Violet, Dendra would be going directly there after defeating Bugsy and we would have a fight again to see how we improved, then I would be going to Ecruteak and then for Olivine, where I would again meet Dendra after she beat Falkner and went straight to Olivine, and from there I would be going to Cianwood and she would turn back to Goldenrod.
For now, that was the plan we were working on. We watched one more movie and went to sleep, Alice and Dendra slept in Jeremy’s double bed and Jeremy and I slept in his sofa bed I finally learned why Taylor and Fancy slept in the living room. Jeremy snored.
On the morning of September 7th I, still in Jeremy’s house and still sleepy because of Jeremy, went to use my laptop and saw an email for me, it was an invitation for a meeting with other trainers scheduled two days from now.