“Rollout!”
Seb didn’t hesitate to repeat the same command he’d given against sableye, and the komala didn’t hesitate to follow the command, curling into a ball and rolling at Hobbes with dizzying speed.
“Dodge and slash!” I yelled, and Hobbes tensed, though he didn’t otherwise react to my command. For another second he simply stood there, the hems of his disguise flapping gently in the breeze as the komala charged him. Closer, and closer, and closer…
Until, at the last possible second, he blurred. He dodged the rollout by mere inches and then slashed out with a claw an instant later, scoring a weak hit on the passing pokemon.
I gave a satisfied nod. It wasn’t much, but the more hits Hobbes could get in without taking any of his own, the better. And I knew what my partner managed to pull off was much more impressive than it might have looked to a novice observer.
Unlike Sableye’s earlier ineffective shadow sneak, Hobbes had attacked with slash, a move that could actually affect our normal-type opponent. But it hadn’t just been slash — by itself, the move wouldn’t have been fast enough to both dodge the rollout and strike back. It had been a shadow sneak-slash combo, using the priority move to dodge the attack and then slashing afterward.
Using two different moves in combination like that was much more difficult than my partner had made it seem, especially when the moves were of such diametrically opposed types like normal and ghost. But Hobbes had pulled it off, though at the cost of some of the power his slash would normally contain.
“Again! But don’t push it too far — dodging is more important!” I called, and Hobbes gave a tiny nod. The komala sped up as it rolled around the arena, Seb remaining silent as she came in for another attacking pass.
Once again, Hobbes waited for the very last moment to dodge with shadow sneak and then strike out with slash, this time to even less effect. The komala was moving fast enough, now, that Hobbes could barely switch between the moves before she was past.
“Don’t worry about hitting back — just dodge!” I yelled.
“Di! Kyu!” Hobbes called back, determination — and a bit of nervousness, to those who knew him — clear in his voice.
This was a tough matchup for my partner. He was recently fused, which would normally be a powerful boost for a pokemon, but ditto didn’t offer any of the typical advantages of a fused Pokemon. And the one advantage it did offer — transform — Hobbes was still too inexperienced with to take full advantage of, especially against a pokemon he’d never before encountered. Plus, the normal versus ghost matchup was always tricky.
The biggest difficulty for us, however, was Komala’s power. Most of our training had been against other youngsters or old, retired pet pokemon from Lavender Town. Seb was barely past being a youngster himself, true, but he was also a one-badge trainer, and komala was a single-stage pokemon. That was a huge step up from facing a youngster’s freshly caught rattata.
Komala rolled past twice more, Hobbes waiting and then dodging with shadow sneak at the last possible moment. On the second pass he was almost too slow, and my heart stopped for a moment when I thought he got hit. But just like all the previous attacks, he dodged out of the way with inches to spare.
It couldn’t last. Komala was getting faster, and Hobbes was already starting to tire from his liberal use of shadow sneak. Seb hadn’t called out any other instructions since rollout, either due to a limit of the move itself, like in the video games, or simply because it wasn’t necessary. There was a limit to the power any pokemon could achieve with a move like rollout, but whatever that limit was, the komala hadn’t yet hit it. She was practically a blur as she zipped around the arena, and I knew Hobbes had no chance of dodging this next attack. As fast a shadow sneak could make him, he wasn’t faster than a fully-charged rollout, not when the pokemon behind the attack fully committed.
It was what we were counting on.
“…get ready…” I muttered under my breath, barely loud enough for my pokemon to hear.
And then, as the komala rolled at him at blinding speeds…
Hobbes didn’t move.
I’m sure at least some of it was my imagination, but it felt as if the arena jumped beneath my feet when the thump of the colliding pokemon echoed over the courts. For a moment after there was silence, the gazes of all the surrounding battlers drawn to the cloud of dust that shrouded our battling pokemon.
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And when the dust settled…Hobbes stood tall.
“Slash! Get him while he’s down!” I yelled.
It took a moment for Seb to issue his own commands, surprised as he was that Hobbes was still standing after taking such a massive hit. But, faster than I hoped, he recovered.
“Defense curl! And then wood hammer!” he called.
From there the battle was a slog of traded hits as the two pokemon went at it like they’d insulted each other’s mothers. It lacked the nuance of the earlier trades and Hobbes was obviously outclassed physically by the other pokemon, but overall it was the best situation we could have hoped for. We couldn’t afford to let Komala set up with another round of rollouts, so Hobbes kept up the pressure with scratches and slashes while I hoped Hobbes’ earlier attacks, coupled with the free hit he got after blocking the final rollout, were enough to win out.
And, eventually, my hopes were proven correct. The komala collapsed to the ground in a bruised heap, disappearing a moment later in a flash of red light as I let out a whoop of victory.
“…is your pokemon okay?” Seb asked, concern evident in his voice, and I toned down my excitement as I realized how Hobbes might look to an outside observer.
The neck of his costume tilted at an almost ninety-degree angle and one of the ears had been entirely torn off. The costume’s body had several large rents torn in it with faint hints of purple darkness barely visible through the gaps. For someone unfamiliar with the mimikyu line, it looked as if my pokemon was in extremely bad shape, and it was understandable for any observers to be worried.
If they were familiar with the mimikyu line, they should be more than worried — they should be terrified.
But Hobbes was no longer a simple mimikyu. No, he was a dimikyu, a mimikyu-ditto fusion. And despite retaining some of the properties of mimikyu, such as his disguise’s ability to absorb the power of the first attack that hit it, he wasn’t quite the same.
A normal mimikyu’s costume was simple fabric and thread. Empowered by the power of the pokemon underneath, sure, but it was still just a covering for the mimikyu’s true body. But a dimikyu…in a certain sense, Hobbes’ costume was his body. He could transform it at will, taking the shape of whatever he desired with the costume following suit.
He no longer had to worry about his ‘true form’ harming those he loved.
Though Hobbes had always loved to battle, both for its own sake and out of a desire to join me on my journey, it had never been something he’d been able to fully embrace. Because in every battle there was always the worry: what if something destroyed his disguise and someone were to see the body underneath? It wasn’t as big of an issue in youngster battles, as few first-stage or unfused pokemon had the power to destroy his magically-reinforced disguise. But we both knew that in higher level battles, his costume being destroyed was a matter of when, not if.
But now those worries could finally be put to rest. I knew Hobbes had been nervous before this battle; I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous myself. This was the first time we were truly putting his new ‘costume’ to the test. But now that it had turned out successful…
“We’re good to keep going,” I said with a smile. Seb still looked unconvinced, however, so I looked to my partner. “Hobbes?”
“Di.”
His one word had enough confidence that even the most skeptical of observing trainers and pokemon gave approving nods.
“If you’re sure,” Seb said, but I noticed the smirk pulling up the corner of his lips. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you now, though. This one’s my final pokemon, and my starter. Go! Slakoth!”
----------------------------------------
Hobbes was still pouting from my shoulder ten minutes after the loss, his ripped and battered costume flapping in the breeze.
“I’m sorry, I should have seen sucker punch coming,” I apologized. “He already told me his starter beat Koga — I knew he must’ve had a way to attack quickly.”
“It wouldn’t be much of a sucker punch if you knew it was coming,” Seb commented from my side with a laugh as we walked from the battle courts.
“True. But I’m still annoyed I didn’t expect it.”
Hobbes hadn’t truly been knocked out from the unexpected blow, but he had been dazed enough that, coupled with the earlier hits he’d taken from Komala, we decided to call the match. Even with Slakoth’s signature ability truant slowing him down, the sloth pokemon would’ve had more than enough to time finish Hobbes off before he could’ve recovered from the first hit.
Seb’s starter hit hard for a first-stage pokemon.
“Let’s get you and the others looked at, and maybe we can return for some more battles afterward,” I commented.
“…kyu,” Hobbes answered with a disgruntled chirp.
I laughed, before turning serious. “How’s the costume? You don’t feel any pain from its damage? I don’t feel any sense of impending doom, but you’re sure we’re not in any danger from those glimpses we got of you?”
“Di, di kyu,” Hobbes answered, and I sighed in relief. We’d been confident that there was no risk of death from seeing underneath Hobbes’ new body’s ‘costume’ — he had an intuitive understanding of his powers, after all. But it was difficult to let go completely of the niggling worry, especially after years of being so careful.
Hobbes must have felt the same way, because after a few seconds of silence he glowed with a white light before his costume reformed around him, appearing good as new.
“Huh, that’s convenient,” I commented. “We should still get you checked out at the pokecenter, though. I doubt using transform to fix your costume has actually healed any of the damage you took in the fight.”
“Di.”
We walked another ten paces toward the pokemon center, Seb by my side having a conversation with his own pokemon, before I stumbled. Seb laughed and offered me a hand up, but I was too caught up in my own thoughts to respond.
Hobbes had just fixed his costume with transform.
He had fixed his disguise — his disguise which, when undamaged, let him negate a single enemy attack — with a single use of transform.