Seb and I stood on either side of the battle court, staring at each other in silence. My cap was flipped backward while his wide-brimmed hat was pulled low over his eyes. Unlike some of the other matches going on in the courts surrounding us, there was no referee to call the start of our battle; ours was just a friendly, without any money on the line or need for a third-party officiant. But that didn’t mean we weren’t taking this seriously. This was some of our pokemons’ first real battle, and we were both prepared to give it our all.

It was a truth Seb had reminded me of when I’d suggested pulling the punches. There was a time and place for that, certainly, but we weren’t in the wilderness without access to quality healing — as brutal as battles could be, a quick trip to the nearby pokecenter would have our teams back in fighting shape in no time. Having our pokemon hold back now would be doing them and ourselves a disservice.

So, despite the lack of a ref or any actual stakes on the battle, we were prepared for a tough fight. We stood staring at each other, waiting for the other to flinch. Until, without any signal, we simultaneously reached for our belts and threw out our first pokemon.

“Slowpoke, go!”

“You’ve got this Porygon!”

The two pokemon appeared in flashes of red light, Slowpoke looking around in confusion while Porygon called out a series of beeps that sounded more like a modem connecting than a battle cry.

I nodded. As expected, he started with his slowpoke. I figured that would be his go-to — neither of us wanted this battle to end with a sweep from our starters. Seb didn’t know the identity of my pokemon, though, so I’d elected to return all three to their balls before approaching the courts. It wouldn’t be much of an advantage, but if I was taking this seriously, I’d reach for every advantage I could get.

“Porygon, magnet rise! Get ready to dodge water gun!”

Porygon was already floating a foot off the ground, but sparks gathered around him and he shot higher into the sky, completely out of range of any physical attacks from the slowpoke. He wasn’t out of range of water guns, I knew, but the extra distance would hopefully give him the space to see them coming.

“Slowpoke, use amnesia!” Seb called. I wasn’t sure if the slowpoke obeyed, or if he even understood the command — he looked just as confused as ever. But a few seconds later, I noticed a pink aura of energy appear around the slowpoke’s body, just barely visible against its skin in the sunlight.

“Don’t give it time to buff itself, Porygon! Use thundershock!”

“Beep, bzzzt,” Porygon called, before a bolt of electricity arced from his body to the slowpoke. But if slowpoke was injured from the attack, it didn’t show it.

“Keep using amnesia, slowpoke!”

“Don’t let up!”

It took some time — a surprisingly long amount of time, given the move was supereffective — but eventually slowpoke started to show pain. As the slowpoke, still wreathed in sparks of electricity, flinched back, Seb used that as his cue to change things up. “Slowpoke, disable!”

“Recycle, now!” I immediately called. But Porygon hesitated before glancing back at me in confusion. “Just do it! Recycle!” I called again, and Porygon bobbed in place before normal energy gathered around him in preparation for the useless move.

But it was too late. Just before the move completed, slowpoke completed his own move, and the court flickered with a flash of pink energy.

“Porygon, thundershock again!” I called, hoping I’d seen wrong. But when Porygon tried again to use the supereffective move, nothing happened, and he let out a disconcerted bzzzt. Between Porygon’s three damaging moves, slowpoke was resistant to psybeam. And we couldn’t afford to wait for the disable to wear off, not when the slowpoke could just stack more and more amnesias in the meantime.

“Tackle instead! And keep tackling!” I called, and Porygon bobbed in the air before charging the slowpoke.

“Confusion!” Seb yelled as Porygon crashed into the larger pokemon, and a few seconds later Porygon faltered, breaking out of his latest charge.

“Conversion, and then tackle again!”

We were lucky the slowpoke was so slow to formulate its own attacks. Porygon obviously wasn’t used to battling — a simple confusion shouldn’t be enough to knock him out of a tackle — but hopefully the resistance that came with mimicking slowpoke’s psychic/water type would mitigate that. Energy gathered around Porygon as his body shifted with his use of conversion, the blues becoming lighter and the reds moving closer to pink. And then he charged forward again, determined to finish the battle.

It wasn’t particularly elegant. Both of the pokemon were new to battling and had limited movesets. I’d already played pretty much all of Porygon’s cards, and I’d be willing to wager Seb had done the same with his slowpoke. But that didn’t stop the two pokemon from fighting ferociously, Porygon charging the slowpoke with tackle after tackle, and the slowpoke responding with confusions. Just once did the slowpoke try a tackle of its own, ignoring Seb’s command to keep using confusion, but the swing of its tail was so late it was almost closer to catching Porygon on his next tackling pass than it was on the one slowpoke was aiming for.

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They couldn’t keep it up forever, though. Porygon performed one final tackle, his charge wobbly from all the confusions as he impacted against the slowpoke’s head — and the slowpoke flopped onto the ground, its eyes closed as it fell unconscious.

“Beeeep!!” Porygon cheered his victory as Seb returned his slowpoke, and I let out a whoop of encouragement with him.

“Good battle!” Seb called across the court as Porygon flew back to hover by my side. “Who’s that pokemon, though? I’ve never seen it before.”

“A porygon,” I replied, willing to take a break to chat if Seb wanted. Giving Porygon time to rest before the next battle only benefited me, though I doubted my pokemon would last much longer into whatever Seb was going to throw out. He was already on his last legs from the confusions, and the slowpoke was Seb’s only ‘new’ pokemon. “They’re pretty rare, and aren’t often used for battling.”

“Well, he seems to be good at it,” Seb complimented, but then his smile turned savage. “Don’t expect him to do as well against my next pokemon, though.” He reached for his belt and released another pokeball. “Komala! Go!”

I sucked a breath between my teeth as I watched the light-blue koala pokemon appear on the court opposite Porygon. It was a pokemon from one of the newer gens, a rare one, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen one since coming to this world. But it did explain, somewhat, how Seb had been able to defeat Koga so early in his gym run.

Komala was a normal-type pokemon with a unique ability, comatose, which made it completely immune to any status conditions. It would’ve been a great counter to Koga’s typical strategy of poisoning, paralyzing, and putting his opponents to sleep. Coupled with the fact that Komala was a single-stage pokemon, which meant it would be much stronger at the lower levels than the average, and I could see how he might have been able to eke out a victory.

Comatose wouldn’t help him now, though. Maybe after some training Porygon would have better access to status-affecting moves, but for now, his strategies were much more limited.

“Porygon, psybeam!” I called.

“Slam,” Seb called at the same time.

And despite the komala’s eyes remaining closed, its head ducked down with its chin resting against its chest…

It moved.

“Porygon, magnet rise!” I called desperately — but it was too late. Porygon had drifted closer to the ground in the wake of the previous battle, and I hadn’t thought to correct him, thinking there was no way the small koala-like pokemon could traverse the court so quickly.

I was wrong.

Using the log it carried like a pole vault, the komala launched itself at Porygon and slammed the log down on top of his head.

In less than a second, Porygon was down, and I recalled him to his ball before the dust had a chance to settle.

“Good effort, Porygon,” I muttered to the ball before slotting it back on my belt, and my hands hovered over the two remaining balls. I itched to send out Hobbes, to test the might of my partner against what looked to be a surprisingly strong opponent. But no — this battle was for our new pokemon to get their bearings. I doubted Sableye would do much better than Porygon against the komala, but I would give him a chance.

“Go, Sableye!” I called, and the gremlin pokemon appeared in a flash of red light.

“Say!” he called, before hunching over even further upon seeing the crowds of people in the courts around us.

“Don’t worry about them, Sableye, they aren’t watching us,” I said, ignoring the few curious gazes directed at the rare pokemon occupying our court. “Just focus on the battle.”

Sableye hesitated, but then eventually gave a slow nod.

“Ready?” Seb asked, politely waiting for my pokemon to catch his bearings. It wasn’t something that was required in a normal pokemon match, even between youngsters, so I appreciated his restraint.

“Ready!” I called back. And then I immediately yelled, “Sableye, leer!”

“Komala, stockpile!” he yelled at the same time, and the komala tore a small branch off of the log it carried and stuffed it into its mouth at the same time as Sableye’s eyes glowed with a white light.

“Keep it up, Sableye!” I yelled, while Seb just stood silently, seemingly content to let his previous command stand. I didn’t mind — stockpile boosted both komala’s defense and special defense, while leer only lowered his defense, but with Sableye’s limited moveset, defense was all I cared about. And while Sableye could keep using leer as long as he had the energy to do so, stockpile was limited by the amount of food the pokemon could eat — as long as we kept it up long enough, leer would eventually outpace stockpile.

If Seb was cognizant of this fact, it didn’t show on his face. Komala continued to munch on branches from his log — which amazingly regrew almost instantly — while Sableye leered with glowing eyes. Until finally, Seb called out another command.

“Rollout.”

I winced. With Sableye’s rarity, I’d hoped Seb wouldn’t recognize that he was a ghost type and attempt another slam, a move Sableye was immune to. But either through knowledge or instinct, he chose the rock move rollout instead — we wouldn’t get a free attack.

“Wait, and then scratch when he comes close!”

Once again, the komala moved with surprising speed, especially for the first turn of a rollout combo. But we were ready this time, and Sableye dodged out of the way of the rolling blue pokemon before slashing at its back with blinding speed.

It did absolutely nothing.

It took only a moment for me to realize what had happened — Sableye had used shadow sneak instead of scratch. But that moment was enough to give the komala the advantage.

“Dodge again! Shadow sneak away!” I called as the komala turned at the edge of the court and accelerated at Sableye even faster than before. Sableye attempted another dodge, but this time he was too slow, and the edge of the komala clipped him, knocking him heavily to the ground.

“Get up, Sableye! You’ve got to dodge!” I yelled, and Sableye struggled to push himself back to his feet. The komala took longer to arrest its momentum and turn to face my pokemon, giving Sableye some much-needed time to recover from the impact, but its speed was increasing even further as it arced around the court in a wide turn. I frowned.

Sableye was almost back on his feet, but Komala was already charging directly at him, even faster than before. The distance between them closed in a blink, but just before they collided — Sableye disappeared in a flash of red light.

“That’s your win,” I called as I lowered Sableye’s ball to my side. “He couldn’t have taken that hit.”

Seb gave a relaxed nod as the komala drifted to a halt, uncurling from its ball in front of its trainer. “Smart move. Komala hits hard once she gets going.” Then he glanced pointedly at my belt and the one ball remaining. “You finished?”

I smirked as I plucked Hobbes’ ball from my side and it expanded within my hand. “In your dreams.”

My partner appeared in a flash of red light. And in an instant — much faster than after any of the previous switches — the battle was back on.