It was September 8th, one day before my fight with Bugsy.
Dendra and I were seated in the stands of the Azalea Gym. I hadn’t actually wanted to come here as I had already visited this place many times when I was younger to see the matches, both to enjoy them and to gather intel on how Bugsy battled. Dendra, however, was from a place that did not have Gyms and wanted to see for herself how a Gym Battle worked.
I glanced at my watch. It was almost 7 a.m.
Bugsy schedule was well known. He battled the first badge trainers from 7 to 11 a.m. then took a one-hour break, followed by one hour of paperwork and other tasks, things like signing the battle certificates for the League that proved that the challengers won in his Gym, inspecting the next day’s agenda, checking up on his Gym Trainers to see if everything is going alright with the Gym Trainer Battles. Then from 1 to 3 p.m., he battled the veteran trainers, the next two hours were classified on the Azalea Gym website as miscellaneous, which meant training gym trainers and pokemon, reading the reports from the veteran gym trainers tasked with checking the city, the nearby routes and surrounding areas for problems related to pokemon and relegating tasks, like feeding the Gym’s pokemon and dividing the night shift.
Dendra was looking around trying to discern what people around us were saying.
“I have a question.” She whispered, she did talk loudly normally but in crowded spaces like these, she did not feel comfortable doing it. It’s not like there was much of a crowd, Bugsy’s Gymnasium is one of the smallest Gyms in Indigo since Azalea’s population had always been small until five years ago. It could still fit five thousand people total, using the inner and outer stands but for beginner’s matches like these the Gym only opened the inner stands which could house two thousand people between both sides of the Gym. Right now it had, if I had to guess, eight hundred people, but all of them, including us, were near the field, crowded together.
“Yes?” I said.
“Is it a challenge or is it a match?”
I paused for a second. “What?”
“I—It's just that some people are calling it challenges and other people are calling it matches. What is the difference?”
I was looking at the field as the Gym Trainers began to make some last-minute preparations but stopped to think about it. That was a curious question with an actual interesting answer.
“Before the Pokemon League was created. It used to be called challenges because trainers went to the Gyms to have real fights, a challenge in the truest sense of the word. They fought in really vicious battles to get a badge because, at that time, getting eight badges meant that you could challenge the Elite Four and the Champion right away.”
She gasped. “The Champion could lose his position at any time?”
Today that is probably unimaginable considering that they could only be challenged every two years, only by the top eight trainers in the Championship ranking, and only if they won against the Elite Four, who were not considered part of the eight.
“Yes but at that time being a pokemon trainer was way more dangerous so there were a lot fewer challengers. The Champion still got a couple every month or so but after some advances in technology, particularly in pokemon health, and the creation of the Pokemon League which brought a lot of marketing towards becoming a trainer, training exploded out of control, suddenly the Elite Four and the Champions were battling every week, a couple of Champions even lost because of fatigue. It was chaos for a while... So after all that the League proposed to the affiliated Regions the creation of another branch of tournaments and after some years of planning. Now there were the historical Championship, now with the ranking system and the two reigning years, and for the other trainers the Circuit and the Conference.”
“How many years was that?”
“The change?” She nodded. “Almost one hundred years ago.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that the Conferences or the League were so new.”
I nodded. When they passed every year on the TV it seemed like they existed forever.
“So, back to the subject. When this system was first implemented people said “challenge” when someone wanted to get the Championship Badge to enter the rankings and “matches” when it was for the Conference Badge. Today, however, people use both terms interchangeably, Bugsy calls everyone a challenger for example. “
She asked me what books she could read about it and I said that it would be better to ask Jeremy since he could find some good ones in the library.
We then waited for a couple minutes and when it was five minutes to seven Bugsy emerged from the double doors in the middle of the Gym, he had the same bug-catching clothes that he always wore when on Gym Leader duty, and in one of his hands was a large bug net and on his belt were sixteen pokeballs.
He waved to the crowd while walking to the middle of the battlefield and turned on the microphone in his ear.
“Hello, dear audience, are you ready to see some challenges?” Blasted from the speakers
We could feel the vibrations on the ground as the crowd responded with cheers, claps, and from the little kids jumps. Bugsy then walked up the steps of his platform which stood between the height of the battlefield and of the stands and spoke.
“Challenger, If you dare to battle the Bug-Type specialist, step forward!”
After that we spent half an hour seeing Bugsy fight, his battles against the first years always went the same. Two against two. The first year released a pokemon and Bugsy responded with another of equal strength. If the challenger chooses a strong pokemon Bugsy will send out the stronger of the two that he prepared for the match, if the challenger releases a weaker one, Bugsy will send the weaker one.
How to win the match? Wrong question.
The true question is how to pass the match.
If the challenger could demonstrate that they had trained for at least some weeks with their pokemon they would “pass” which means that they have to show that their pokemon knew how to use attack moves adequately and how to dodge or defend. The basics of a pokemon battle, attack and defend, if they could do that, Bugsy would perform a loss.
The only thing you couldn’t do if you wanted to “win” in Bugsy’s Gym was to win using only pokemon that have a disadvantage against bug types unless you were a type specialist. Bugsy had, on the record, said that he would not let bug pokemon suffer this embarrassment.
I began to sag on my seat as it became quite repetitive after a while. The only nice thing about going to see the matches was the fact that Bugsy had varied his teams since becoming a Gym Leader six years ago, before, all we would see were pokemon mainly from Indigo, Sinnoh, and Hoenn but now I could see some pokemon from the Western Continent, the Venipede, Sewaddle and Joltik lines had been displayed in the one hour we’ve been here which pleased Dendra.
Unlike me, Dendra was not bored at all but recognized that she had seen everything that she needed in the eight matches. She had written in her new journal all about Bugsy’s fights and his more used pokemon. It almost brought a tear to my eyes. After one hour we went back to our training at the Pokemon Park.
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I glanced around the room at the other seven people. Most were nervous, some were calm and one, who had been lucky or unlucky enough to be the last one of this hour slot was sleeping, a Poochyena was sitting by his side probably with orders to wake him up soon.
I looked down at my hands and saw that they were still, calm. Even then I had to face the truth that I was worried, not nervous or anxious, just worried.
Worried that all the training that we did might have been the wrong training to fight Bugsy, and that we would be set back on our journey one month because of a loss.
I had never been worried about a battle before.
My hands closed in fists as I tried to squash this worry. I did not have any reason to be nervous, Bugsy would not defeat us. We should be two weeks of training away from Jungle or Mesa being able to win us our second badge. There was no way we were going to lose.
A man dressed in the colors of the Azalea Gym, green and brown, entered and spoke a name and the trainer that was called went with him. Soon after, one by one, the trainers went, the time passed and my worry began to grow again when someone called my name.
“Scott Wood?” said one of the two Gym Trainers who was in charge of running today’s matches.
“I'm here.” I rose from the bench and followed him, we passed through a corridor that connected the building that we were into the front of the Azalea Gym. When we reached the double doors we stopped.
“Just one second for me to confirm with my colleagues if everything is ready.” He said and put a hand to his ear.
After one minute he nodded. “You can enter now. Good luck, challenger.”
I said my thanks and entered through the double doors. As soon as I entered I could see the view that many other trainers, countless actually, had seen of the Azalea gymnasium.
A rectangular long grassy battlefield with some very small hills, with foliage, plants, bushes, and trees, some big at the edges of the field, and some small and thin ones spread in the middle. I climbed towards my platform and the arbiter asked if I was ready, to which I responded with a nod, as I looked to the stands I could see, Jeremy, Alice, Clarisse, and Dendra looking at me, they looked eager.
Bugsy rose to his platform, on his belt were six pokeballs which meant that he had three matches left. His face sported a small smile.
The arbiter then spoke. “This battle will be between Challenger Scott Wood and Gym Leader Bugsy. It will be two on two battle, no switches.” He waited a bit for the words to sink in and then continued. “Challenger, release your pokemon.”
I picked up the first pokeball on my belt and as soon as my hand touched it she began to enlarge from its passive mode. I clicked on the middle button and pointed the pokeball to the field which released a red light that condensed into Cape.
As soon as the familiar Heracross appeared on the field my worries faded the same way that, years ago, when I had a test, I turned the sheets over and saw that I knew the answers to the questions because I had studied for it. I knew that Cape and I were ready, we had trained for two years for this.
We would not fail.
Bugsy looked at Cape, but not in the way that a normal person might. It looked as if he was analyzing every centimeter of Cape, his strengths, his weaknesses, and how he could best test him. It was normal for Bugsy who, in his younger days, had been nicknamed by other bug pokemon trainers the Walking Bug Pokemon Encyclopedia, a moniker he was proud of.
Without waiting for the arbiter to speak, not that he would, Bugsy gently threw a pokeball on the field and it opened to reveal a pokemon that I hadn’t seen in Bugsy’s hands the day before, an Accelgor, The Shell Out Pokemon, it had a big pink head and a smaller body that was covered by blue strips, which were actually membrane, he had been released already in his line’s iconic pose with the crossed arms.
He looked around for a bit and then focused on Cape. He seemed satisfied with what he saw and then he unlatched his arms which came to rest beside his body.
I quickly revised what I knew about Accelgors. They were fast, very fast, and struck hard. As good at fighting at close range as they were at long. But I didn’t need to be Bugsy to see, by his size, that this one wasn’t even a two-badge pokemon. He would be tough but not even close to difficult for us.
Pink barriers were raised, and the two pokemon took positions, the arbiter checked me to see if I was ready and then he began the match.
“Accelgor, Quick Attack.” Bugsy said and the Bug pokemon began to emit grey energy all around his body and then he jumped forward in a zig-zag pattern.
“To the air, Cape.” Cape jumped high, opened his wings, and began to fly high and back increasing the distance from the earth-bound pokemon.
“Water Shuriken.” The pokemon hands glowed blue, Water energy flowed out from his “wrapped” hands and took the faint shape of shurikens. He jumped one last time using the remaining energy of Quick Attack and rotated. Six shurikens, three launched from each hand, were hurled towards Cape.
“Parry.” Cape’s hand glowed grey and he began to strike the shuriken at the center to disable them, the last two, however, changed directions at the last moment and faintly slashed Cape’s torso which made Cape flinch in pain.
Damn. He had put thought into the fight between Drenda and me.
“Aerial Ace.” Cape’s wings and arms glowed and then he vanished in a soft blue blur.
“Dodge.” The Accelgor was turning around in an attempt to follow Cape’s movements, and by the way that he twitched sometimes he could.
Cape appeared at the right side and Accelgor turned towards him. However, that was just a feint. Cape had become really good with those after training with Chopper.
Cape blurred again and appeared behind the Accelgor, who still turned and dodged his head out of the way but was hit on his body, he didn’t flinch or recoil and when Cape got close to him and tried to use Fury Attack he was able to respond to each of Cape’s strikes with blocks from his own arms and then create a bit of space between then.
“Tackle, Wrap and Absorb,” Bugsy said and his pokemon head glowed as he promptly jumped forward to try and headbutt Cape who crossed his arms into a block. Cape was pushed back still and this created more space for him to undo some of his ribbon-like membranes and use them to wrap Cape’s incoming arms, both pokemon glowed green showing the Absorb at work, Cape suddenly staggered due to the sudden feeling of fatigue.
“Hold him down and Tackle into Arm Thrust,” I said. It was a bit over the top, but Cape wanted a sweep so we had to dominate.
The Heracross pulled at the wrappings on his arms and then rushed the locked-down Accelgor, who tried to organically cut his membranes to get away but couldn’t in time. Cape, with his arms, smashed him in the side of his head and into the ground using his superior strength. The Accelgor still tried to get away but Cape ended the fight with an Arm Thrust to his head.
The pokemon slumped to the ground and the arbiter declared a win for us. Bugsy recovered the Accelgor into his pokeball and then released a Surskit, the pokemon he probably would have used early if I had led with one of my weaker companions. It was a weaker pokemon, just as fast as the Accelgor.
Cape used one weaker Aerial Ace and the pokemon was down.
The arbiter announced another win and then the match as Bugsy and I met in the center of the field.
“Congratulations, Scott Wood.” He then gave me the Hive Badge, which I immediately put on my badge case, and a one-time use TM, the TM49 Fury Cutter. “I am glad to see someone with a good head on his shoulders entering the Pokemon scene. Keep it up.”
He then turned to the exhausted Heracross who glared at him and gave a gentle laugh. “Are you still mad about that? Well in my defense everything went very well, just as I, Bugsy, predicted.”
I was surprised that he was talking so much, usually, he only gave the rewards, a motivational phrase or advice and then left, I guess we did win fast. “What do you mean by that?”
He responded while caressing a spot on Cape’s head that made the Heracross slump in delight. I made a note of the place.
“In my searches for pokemon for the orphans, there are always ambitious pokemon like Cape here, and between the orphans, there are always ones who search for… Motivated pokemon to train.” He turned his eyes towards me. “Rarely are they the first pick though… Now I have to get going.”
He was walking away towards his platform.
“Thank you, Leader Bugsy.”
He stopped and turned slightly. “No, thank you, Scott, I bet you are going far, and if you take a bug pokemon with you, well, all the better for me… Ah, I almost forgot, you are marked from here on out so as I said keep it up.”
Then he walked away through the double doors.
Cape and I were leaving the battlefield when Cape turned to me with a questioning expression.
“Marked?”
The Heracross nodded. Marked was a thing of myths, just as the meetings between top trainers have been, we were only now able to know that this truly existed because of Blue’s big mouth, in an interview someone had asked why his Gym battles were more difficult than normal and, of course, Blue had bragged.
“When you do great in a Gym match that Gym Leader might mark you, which means that they believe that you’re a trainer ahead of the Gym challenge curve, so the next Gym Leader now knows that they can pump up the difficulty to make the Gym battle a real challenge,” I said.
Cape seemed to like that very much and I agreed with him, more challenging battles would push us further. I also believed that that was a good system to filter good and bad trainers, after all, there were always some rich kids who hadn’t trained or learned anything about pokemon battles but showed up with powerful and well-trained pokemon. They easily won their first badge and then think it will be smooth sailing from that, just for the next Gym Leader to really kick their teeth in and humble them.
Depending on the Leader it could even be humiliating Kanto’s Surge being the worst one in that regard, he was famous for making bad trainers with strong pokemon run away crying from his Gym. Complaints were raised, but well… It was war hero Lieutenant Surge.
When we reached the end of the corridor on the side of the building that led to the street. I saw that there was a familiar group there waiting for us.