The first day of the Indigo Conference. While I was excited to watch the opening ceremony and the first day of high-level battles, I woke up early in order to prepare for my upcoming battle with Brown Lars.
After finishing dinner the previous night, I spent quite a bit of time working with Fletchling on understanding his moves and where he was regarding his development. It was unusual but not unheard of for a Fletchling to have Flame Charge so early on but I had never heard of them having Flame Body before their evolution. The combination of the two meant that Fletchling had difficulty controlling the temperature around his environment whenever he started flying.
Thankfully, his Flame Body also seems to go offline when he is on his feet or just resting. An odd trigger but reading up on his PokeDex entries some more, I understood that it was likely linked to his metabolic activity, which inevitably increases when he is in flight.
Either way, the combination of Flame Charge and Flame Body meant that Fletchling’s Ember was almost fully developed; the only weakness I could find last night was his control of the flames generated from Ember itself.
Acrobatics and Agility, on the other hand, were both very rudimentary. I suspect that Acrobatics will eventually overtake Agility in terms of development as it uses Flying-type energy, which Fletchling has a natural advantage in. Agility, on the other hand, typically involves Psychic-type energy. I didn’t have any idea on where to start with training him to learn how to harness that, not yet at least.
Either way, after I familiarized myself with his moves, we went ahead and hit the gym for an hour or two. Chikorita continued to strengthen her vines and work on her overall dodging by shooting Bullet Seeds against a wall and dodging the rebound.
Fletchling, given his inherent frailty, worked on his maneuverability instead. A caveat of Flame Charge was that it made it very difficult to change directions once the charge started; this was something our opponents could take advantage of regardless of the high base power of the move. In addition, Flame Charge inevitably required Fletchling to make physical contact. The Fire-type energy did shield him quite a bit but some recoil is expected.
The key to the move is in its ability to allow Fletchling to speed up after every single charge. Ideally, Flame Charge allows the bearer to convert the expended Fire-type energy into a significant speed buff for themselves, thus increasing the chances of having the next charge hit. My hope was to modify the move slightly so that after every charge, regardless of a hit or a miss, Fletchling would build up on the gathered Fire-type energy instead of converting it into a significant speed buff, rather only gain a normal speed buff but a bigger overall shield. My goal would be for Fletchling to be able to slowly build up into a situation where a single hit would knock out his opponent while also preserving his own health and buffs instead of just faster and faster attacks, which would be the usual Flame Charge scenario.
Either way, we were quite far from that goal but working towards it is an incremental process, one that started last night with Fletchling doing labs around multiple obstacles and then doing a game of green-light red-light.
After all of that, the three of us retired in our rooms exhausted and ready to tuck in. I briefly looked up my statistics on my RotomTube and, deciding to commit to the challenge, posted a Gust on to my Swabble, making sure to reference our Trainer tags instead of our social tags.
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“@jrtrainer_brown_lars See you at the BattleGrounds, 9 AM sharp - @jrtrainer_avery”
[https://i.postimg.cc/3RY1GP6V/Break-Pokeball.png]
The three of us finished a quick breakfast, and we were out of the Pokemon Center by 8.30 AM. Looking back on it as I walked to the Public BattleGrounds, the Gust was somewhat arrogant; I still don’t have as many followers on Swabble as RotomTube, so it’s unlikely anyone would really show up.
Unfortunately, I severely underestimated Brown Lars' popularity as the viewing area of the BattleGrounds, specifically behind a field where a short blond boy stood waiting in front of it’s console, had almost a couple dozen people looking in. Most of them were just sitting and chatting among themselves but the sight of so many people started to make my heart rate. All of the battles I’ve participated in thus far only had 1 or 2 members in the audience, often people I knew.
To add to my anxiety though, as I made my way across the sidelines and to the BattleGround that Brown was occupying, the audience started pointing my way and whispering to each other. Deciding that the best thing I could do for myself would be to ignore the crowd, I took a deep breath and confidently strode up to Brown.
“I’m here, Brown. I hope you don’t come to regret challenging me.” I replied, trying to keep a confident visage even though my heart was beating a mile a minute.
“Heh, glad you proved to not be a total wuss. I’ll still wipe the floor with you so let’s get to it. 2v2, normal rules, standard wager, alright?” Brown countered, staring daggers at me with a confident smirk plastered on his face. I had no idea how he could be so uncaring of the audience.
“Sounds good.” I agreed, tapping my PokePhone on the counter and confirming the preset details. We both strode away from the center of the field, each heading towards the boxes designated for trainers. As I took my position, I mistakenly glanced over to the viewing area and my anxiety returned full force. As I gripped Chikorita’s Pokeball tightly, my palms started to become sweaty and I felt as if the crowd had suddenly tripled in size. Before I could spiral further though, snippets of long-lost conversation bubbled up through to my consciousness from deep inside.
“Fix your posture” I stood straighter.
“Pick a focal point” I looked straight at the field.
“Breathe mindfully” I took a deep breath and focused on the exhale.
“Release the tension” I felt my tense muscle’s relax as I breathed out.
“Form your intention, then direct!”
I was challenged to a battle, I didn’t run away, I will battle and I will show everyone the training my team has gone through and give them a glimpse of the heights they will achieve.
At that moment, I knew I was ready. The crowd didn’t matter, all that mattered was this battle and the fruits of our training. I tapped the ready indicator on the PokePhone and Brown did the same as the tinny microphones began playing.
“Attention Trainers! This will be a League Standard 2v2 battle between Jr. Trainer Avery and Jr. Trainer Brown Lars until a Pokemon is unable to battle or is withdrawn manually. Each trainer is allowed to switch once and may do so at any time during the course of the battle. No consumable items are permitted.”
“Trainers! Begin your battle in 3…2…1…GO!”