“Attention Trainers! This will be a League Standard 1V1 battle between Jr. Trainer Avery and Jr. Trainer Mimi until either trainer’s Pokemon faints or is recalled. No switch-ins, substitutions, or consumable items are permitted.”
The console announced as Chikorita stood in front of me. Mimi, on the other hand, grabbed a Pokeball from her belt and released it; a red beam came out as the form of a Pidgey materialized on the ground. Not optimal, Flying-types typically had an advantage on Grass-types due to the effectiveness of the former’s type energy destabilizing the latter. Either way, I’ll have to figure out a way to draw her in as Pidgey isn’t known to be particularly bulky Pokemon.
“Begin battle in 3…2..1…go!”
“Chikorita, use Razor Leaf!”
“Pidgey, fly up and gust, block those leaves!” Mimi counters instantly as her Pidgey launches herself from the ground and flaps her wings with Flying-type energy. The energy manipulates the air around Pidgey and launches an invisible gust towards Chikorita’s thrown leaves, displacing most of them although a couple make it through the patch of air. Unfortunately, Pidgey is able to dodge the rest of the leaves leaving Chikorita at a disadvantage since she won’t be able to get away from the Gust in time.
“Chikorita, hold on and Growl!” I order in an attempt to counter any physical damage Pidgey might be able to do. Chikorita growls and it falters Pidgey’s flight just slightly but Gust still lands.
“Keep it up Pidgey!” Mimi, on the other hand, seems to find it completely acceptable to just keep using Gust. I won’t be able to stay defensive with Gust as a counter so I know I have to take the initiative.
I wait until the second Gust is almost ready to launch before my next order, “Chikorita, run to the side now!” She follows my word without a fault as she runs to her left. “Razor leaf, now!” I quickly finish as soon as she’s almost out of the area of the attack. Gust still impacts Chikorita’s side though and she’s already panting by the time her attack is ready.
A flurry of glowing emerald leaves launches from Chikorita’s head-leaf and rockets towards Pidgey. Both due to recovering from the two consecutive uses of Gust as well as the decreased air resistance from the move itself, Razor leaf is able to reach Pidgey quickly, finally getting some meaningful damage in.
Pidgey stays afloat and it seems Mimi has already had enough; Chikorita is panting, Gust’s Flying-type energy doing quite a number on her. “Pidgey, Quick Attack!” She orders as her Pidgey glows with white Normal-type energy and accelerates towards Pidgey.
“Chikorita, follow-up with a Tackle!” I counter, trusting in Chikorita’s bulk and our prior use of Growl. Pidgey slams onto Chikorita head-on, fortunately sparing her flank this time, and Chikorita, the beautiful girl that she is, glows with Normal-type energy as well and hits Pidgey before the bird can retreat in time. Luckily, Chikorita was able to score a hit on her wing and Pidgeys flight isn’t as stable as it was before. Seeing my opportunity, I ordered Chikorita to pounce ahead with our newly mastered move!
“Chikorita, get her down with a Vine Whip!” Chikorita’s vine quickly grows out from the side of her neck and slams against the fleeing Pidgey’s back, bringing her down. “Now, get in there and finish her off with Razor Leaf!”
“Oh frack, Pidgey Quick Attack to get outta there!!” Mimi orders hurriedly. The sequence of events since her last order had been too quick for her to follow or place a counter with but Pidgey is able to turn around in time to face Chikorita. The two Pokemon are barely a body-width apart and Chikorita leaps forward, swing her head leaf as if a Knight swinging their sword; before the move can connect though, Pidgey once more glows with white Normal-type energy, slams her foot onto the field, and shoots up out of range as Chikorita whiffs. Fortunately, the Grass-type energy for the physical version of Razor Leaf wasn’t expended and my win condition is clear.
“Chikorita, shoot up!” - “Pidgey Gust!” We both order as Chikorita starts swinging her leaf and Pidgey widens her wing span. A flurry of sharp spinning leafy projectiles launch from the ground while a mass of wind races towards the ground. The leaves hold up better this time, likely due to Chikorita initially intending the energy for the physical move, and quite a few more exit the small maelstrom, almost all of them homing in on Pidgey’s relatively stationary position in the sky. On the other end, the Gust reaches Chikorita and envelopes her form as a cloud of dust and debris shrouds both Pokemon.
Both Mimi and I wait with anticipation. My heart is racing and the cloud of anger in my chest is replaced with worry for Chikorita. She was already almost spent from the two prior Gusts so I doubt she’d be able to take another one head-on. All I could hope for is that she’s safe by this point, regardless of win or loss.
As the field slowly clears up, the airspace above is empty with no sign of Pidgey. Soon after, I can see both Pokemon and neither are doing well; Chikorita was still barely standing but her head leaf was frayed on the edges with multiple welts across the rest of her body. Pidgey on the other hand, was clearly fainted.
“Oh no, Pidgey-poo!!!” Mimi exclaims as she runs across and kneels beside her Pokemon. I follow as well, my win in the bag but feeling bad about the extent of the battle. Either of us could’ve withdrawn earlier, especially me, but the anger I had felt kept me on the attack. I knelt down, taking Chikorita in my arms carefully. “Good job girl, you’re the best” I whispered to her with a smile on my face as she returned a smile to me and relaxed, passing out to rest right after. I returned her to her Pokeball and took out a Potion, holding it out to Mimi.
“Hey, umm. I’m not sure what you have against me and I don’t like what you implied. But this was a good battle so thanks” I said, not totally confident in what I was trying to say. Pidgey seemed to have just fainted thankfully but the Razor Leaves left a mark on her quite a few places on her plumage, especially her feet. Mimi looked up at me silently and shifted to look at the Potion I held out to her.
“I don’t need any pity.” She replied, her eyes falling back towards her Pidgey before she stood up and returned her to her Pokeball. “Yer’ good, I’ll give ya that. Sorry ‘bout what I said before, thought you were some sorta scammer.” Mimi explained, her eyes shifting away and turning towards Joey.
“Anyway, see ya ‘round!” She finished quickly, ignoring the Potion I still held out to her and leaving the field. Joey, who had been standing on the sidelines all this time looked sheepishly towards me, gave me a small nod, and followed Mimi out.
“Huh, that was something” I thought to myself. I had planned to do a few more battles but Chikorita was already spent so I decided to call it a day here and work on my RotomTube videos; the two battles today would definitely go up there so I walked over to the console and requested access to the recordings.
All Pokemon BattleGrounds were maintained by the local gym with funding from the city and subsidies from the Pokemon League. The fields themselves were mostly barebones but included a few important aspects, namely the console which controlled all the battle rules and monitored for fairness, as well as the multiple cameras spread around the field that captured all the battles. As a registered Jr. Trainer, we were given access to our own battles automatically through our Trainer IDs, all I had to do was request it at the console where the battle took place and it would be sent to my PokePhone’s cloud storage. The recordings themselves were large, which is why you had to request them, and typically of decent quality although that largely depends on the state of the fields.
Viridian City’s public BattleGrounds weren’t state-of-the-art as far as I was aware but they had the basics. I would have to check the recordings themselves to see if the quality was decent enough.
Either way, I confirmed the recording transfer request on the console, accepted it on my PokePhone, and started heading back to the Pokemon Center.
The sun was high in the sky by the time I made it back to the Pokemon Center. I handed over Chikorita’s Pokeball to Nurse Joy and had a quick lunch. The morning was quite eventful, unexpectedly so, but I still had the rest of the day ahead of me. Sitting down in front of one of the public PCs, I attached my PokePhone to it and started working on the videos from the morning battles. I had already researched the niche I was trying to target on RotomTube and surprisingly, it lacked any decent videos from low level or low gym count fights. The highest views were mostly centered around commentary and analytical videos on high-stake battles at the top of any given region’s trainers, often involving Ace Trainers and even Gym Leaders. The other popular categories seemed mostly clickbait with titles such as “Top 10 must haves as a Trainer!” or “You won’t believe what this Sandshrew did!”.
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After a lot of digging, I was able to find a few videos on low level battles but they were only concerned with how the outcome of a battle came to be. I felt like I wasn’t a genius or anything when it came to Pokemon battling, but it was surprising that the type of content I wanted to produce wasn’t really there. Maybe I was missing something, but I felt that basic analyses of Pokemon battles, especially low-level ones, would be a really popular genre given the amount of new trainers every year. As I kept looking though, I finally came across a hint as to why this wasn’t the fact.
While it is true that a lot of new trainers would start their journeys throughout the year, it was also true that all of these trainers were also competitors. They would all face each other at the end of their respective seasons and these videos would in-turn give information to your competitors about how best to defeat you, and in the worst cases, might lead to the trainer missing out on the Top 16 or even the title! Outside of the tournaments though, gym badges were also a sign of qualification and contributed to a trainer’s success after they decide to stop battling and pursue employment or higher education. Taking shortcuts would be frowned upon but at this point, I felt as if the culture in Kanto on this has declined to a form of gatekeeping. Information is key in any field, especially so in Pokemon battles. At the highest levels, any new moves or Pokemon were considered top secret and used only when necessary, especially given the cap of 6 Pokemon for official tournaments. With the top dogs in the field discouraging these types of videos, although they were the most actively viewed on RotomTube, it’s no wonder that they likely transitioned outside of mainstream media over the years!
My next step was to scour the PokeForums and Swabble to see if this genre has truly died out i.e. is no one interested in these types of videos, or is it simply suppressed. My search here was a lot more successful; the PokeForums I had access to had many, many, many, and many posts from trainers requesting help on Pokemon battling that went beyond the basic type matchups covered in any primary school. The responses on most of these posts though were sub-par with quite a majority of comments presenting a simple meme as an answer, that being of a Kadabra pointing at you, ragging at the original poster on their perceived laziness. It seems the culture, at least in the Kanto Rookie Pokeforums, was to promote experimentation by oneself and overall secrecy to any training methods or even understanding of battles.
Swabble had a more diverse set of opinions and seemed to have content that was a lot more casual. Most of the Gusts were personal thoughts on subjects, updates on content, commentary on events, etc. Searching for battle analysis content, I found a few posters making Gusts on the lack of response on their posts on the PokeForums, which was quite funny, but not really anything more.
Having a clear idea of the state of the content scene, I felt as if I was on the precipice of something. My guts were telling me to go forward with my ideas but with how insular most Kanto trainers seem, I also felt that most would find my decision to be foolish. Either way, I was confident in my skills so I would go ahead and see what happens. In the worst case scenario, I would simply take the videos down. In the best case though, this could prove to be a good source of revenue for my journey itself.
With all the introspection done, I opened a video editor and started working on it, adding small notes of commentary on my thought process during the battle itself and ways I could improve in the future. I also started to write a semi-formal script for the video, emulating the style of some of those mass-produced clickbait videos since they seem to hit all the right markers for gathering a large amount of views. Finally, after a couple of hours of working on that, I was notified that Chikorita was healed and ready to be picked up. I saved all of the files and content on my PokePhone, logged out of the PC, and headed towards Nurse Joy’s desk.
The sky outside had almost finished its transition to evening and the Pokemon Center lobby had a few trainers lounging about looking at the TVs. This time, the central display was playing a live broadcast of an 8-badge gym battle at the Viridian Gym, which was historically the last gym trainers would have faced as it had been known to be uber difficult. Since the Oak family took control of it though, the difficulty was balanced and now it was on the average scale in terms of requirements. Depending on where you were starting your journey from, it could be the first gym you faced or the eighth; for myself, I was taking the plunge and chose it as my first. This did mean I would have to make the Cinnabar Gym my eighth but I was confident that I’d be able to get through either way.
By the time I finished my rumination, I was at the front of the line.
“Hello Avery, here to pick up Chikorita?” Nurse Joy asked after I stepped up to the desk.
“Yeah Nurse Joy, she’s okay?” I replied, worried for my partner. She was tough in both battles but had gotten hit more than I’d like. I was thinking of introducing some evasion training into our routine instead of just move training but was still brainstorming if it was possible to combine the two in any way.
“She’s alright, just mild energy depletion, a few bruises, and a couple of cuts. She’s all healed up now but I don’t suggest any further battles tonight; light training is fine and she’ll be good to go tomorrow morning.” She replied, placing a tray with Chikorita’s Pokeball nestled in one of the six slots.
“Wow, thanks Nurse Joy!” I replied, feeling relieved that she was doing well. I took her Pokeball and moved away from the desk, waving goodbye to Nurse Joy as I headed towards the cafeteria. While a bit early for dinner, Chikorita had skipped her meal in order to get healed up, so I felt it appropriate to catch up on her meal before heading out for any further training. I released her once I found an empty table.
Chikorita appeared in front of me, sitting on her hind legs and looking around. She had a couple of small bandages on her left flank, likely leftovers from the Pidgey’s Quick Attacks. Thinking back, I’m surprised Mimi didn’t use Peck since those would be far more effective on Pidgey but maybe she didn’t want to risk staying in range for too long. Either way, I rubbed Chikorita’s head, careful not to touch any of the recently healed areas that had a lighter coloration, and started preparing her meal. The Grass-type Pokefeed seemed to be suiting her quite well and I added in the calcium supplements as asked; seeing as she spent most of her afternoon in the center being healed, I also added in a vitamin D supplement.
After serving her meal, I also grabbed a quick plate of pasta with a red meaty sauce and sat down to eat dinner together. Given our eventful morning, I spent the time eating catching Chikorita up on what I found out online and commenting on the ideas and improvements I made note of while editing the recordings. I’m not sure how much Chikorita understood for the former topic but she was quite attentive during the latter, her head-leaf twitching slightly when I commented on a small mistake, mostly regarding positioning, or how we can improve our response times.
We both finished dinner and the evening had rolled in; I had initially planned on going out for some more move training but decided to hit the gym instead and work on basic conditioning with Chikorita. We briefly returned to our room where I changed out of my jeans and jacket into some shorts and a loose tee. We entered the gym and I saw that quite a few other trainers and Pokemon were already there working out. Chikorita’s head was once more on a swivel as she checked out all of the different Pokemon and equipment. The weights area seemed to be the most in use with a couple of fighting type Pokemon going through different reps.
I quickly spotted what I was looking for and grabbed a set of hand weights for Chikorita to use.
“Okay, so Nurse Joy told me to maintain a light training routine tonight, so we’ll just work on your energy control and vine strength instead of anything more extensive.”
Chikorita stopped staring at a Nuzleaf pressing a barbell and turned towards me; I smirked and she looked at me innocently. Moving on, I explained to her our current goal. Her Vine Whips have been getting faster and stronger so I felt like it was at a good point to slowly start advancing the move.
“First, I want you to get used to summoning more than a single vine; instead of directing all your energy into one, try to split it into two and grow two vines even if they're both shorter. Keep them both the same strength though hmm; I think if you maintain the same density of energy but reduce the amount for each, that should work.”
Chikorita nodded in understanding and got to work. While she was making her vines, I lined up the hand weights from lowest to highest weight and set up a few markers against the wall horizontally, each spaced about 5 feet apart. Looking back, I observed two nubs on Chikorita’s neck glowing before vines grew out of them; they were quite a bit shorter than her usual vine, which was around 20 feet long; these were barely 5 feet long though. Either way, we had two of them.
“Great job Chikorita; so the next step, I want you to grab each of these weights and tell me which one you feel is heavy enough to move around with some exertion.”
Chikorita reached out with her vines and grabbed the smallest hand weights, lifting the pair easily. She moved onto the next one, and the one after that, lifting each steadily until eventually she started to visibly exert herself on the 5th set; the 40 kg weights. I asked her to roll back to the 30 kg ones and she was able to lift them a few times with some exertion, which was perfect for the next step.
“Awesome, so your job is to now experiment with your energy output and vine strength with these weights. For this current set, I want you to lift those weights and try to push them as far as you can along these markers.” I instructed, pointing to the markers. “After every extension, pull back the weights slowly while trying to keep them as balanced as possible. That’s gonna be tough at first but I’m sure you’ll get it in no time. After 1 set, dissolve the vines and rest for a minute. I want you to try to mix up the ratio of energy density and quantity before using Vine Whip every time, and I’ll note down the results.” Chikorita nodded and began her routine while I took out a notebook and started to note down the time taken for her to use the move, rated the effort she had to take to lift the 30 kg hand weights, distance extended, and time taken to complete a set. In between each of these markers, I also grabbed a couple of weights and started stretching with them beside her. We spent the rest of the evening working on this and hit the bed after a couple of hours.
I woke up the next day with the same goal in mind, hit the BattleGrounds and win some more spending money!