A second after Grant accepted the challenge, both his and the girl’s watches let out a loud beep to signal that a challenge had been recognized. In unison the watches let out a flash of blue light before projecting a battlefield onto the ground in blue and white lines.
“Grant Wilson has accepted the challenge of Ashley Wright.” Their watches said in a mechanical robot voice.
“This challenge will be a 1 vs 1 pokemon battle. The loser of this challenge will have 100 pokedollars deducted from their account and that money will be credited to the victor. Trainers and pokemon assume your positions.” The watch finished, and as it did, Grant moved into the square of blue light marked for the trainer. Horsea started to head into the battlegrounds, but Grant stopped him.
“Listen buddy we need to keep away from her mankey.” I said quietly. Horsea’s face was serious as Grant spoke.
“We are going to keep smokescreens and waterguns flowing and try to win from a distance. Do you think you can do that for me?” Grant asked. Not even hesitating, Horsea gave a firm nod. Grant smiled.
“Great, now get in there, and good luck.” Horsea snorted as he floated by as if to say he didn’t need luck. Grant kept the smile on his face as Horsea moved to the starting area, but inwardly Grant’s stomach was in knots. He had only been given 200 pokedollars by the Foundation to get him started, which might not seem like a lot to most people, but to Grant that was more money than he had ever had in his life. He sincerely didn’t want to see half of it go to this random Ashley Wright girl. Grant’s thoughts were interrupted as Ashley and her mankey finished their own prefight conference. A second later mankey was entering its starting area, and the four of them Grant, Ashley, mankey, and horsea fell still.
“This fight will begin in 3, 2, 1” When the watch reached 1 the four of them sprang into action.
“Horsea use smokescreen!”
“Mankey run in and use scratch!” As Grant expected Ashley was going to have her mankey close in early in the fight. Horsea threw up a smokescreen, but it still only covered a small area. It was enough for mankey to completely lose track of Horsea though.
“Now hit it with water gun!” Grant called. The water fired out from within the smoke, and connected center mass with mankey, it didn’t have much of an effect. Mankey just stepped backward and seemed more angry than injured. Ashley laughed at horsea’s attack.
“That’s it! You can’t win with attacks that weak. Mankey charge into the smoke and use low kick.” Ashley called. Her words made Grant furious. He knew horsea’s attacks weren’t very strong, but they hadn’t had enough time to work on improving water gun yet.
Mankey charged in and used low kick its leg dispersing a surprising amount of the smokescreen and exposing a startled horsea.
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“Finish it off with fury swipes!” Ashley called. Mankey’s hands started to glow white, as it charged in to finish horsea off.
“Horsea use,” Grant started, but his mind went blank. Splash and leer wouldn’t help here. Grant already saw how ineffective water gun was, and even if horsea could get off another smokescreen there wasn’t enough time for horsea to get out of the way before mankey was on him. Upset, sad, and frustrated Grant pulled the pokeball off his belt and recalled horsea before mankey could finish the attack. Better to lose than let horsea get hurt.
“Ashley and mankey are the victors of this challenge. 100 pokedollars have been deducted from your account. Your new league standing is 0-1.” Grant’s watch chimed as horsea entered his pokeball. Grant also heard Ashley’s watch inform her that her league record had been updated to 14-0. Grant frowned at her when he heard that. Was she just traveling this road to challenge new trainers to rack up easy wins? It wasn’t unheard of even if it was frowned upon by the league. Grant didn’t get a chance to ask, because as soon as the challenge was over, Ashley recalled mankey to his ball, and marched right on past Grant. Before she was totally out of ear shot, he heard her mutter something.
“Too weak. Let’s see if we can find somebody stronger to challenge.” Grant’s fists clenched in anger. As much as he hated to admit it his horsea wasn’t a capable fighter right now. He had no shot against the gym leader Flint, let alone one of the screening trainers he had to defeat just to get the chance to face Flint.
“We’ll work on it.” Grant muttered as he started walking further down the road.
Unknown to Grant and Ashley their challenge had not gone unobserved. Tangela, the one Grant fought several hours ago, had watched the whole thing. In fact, she had been watching Grant for the last two hours. She had been careful to stay out of sight. In truth she wasn’t sure what drew her to the human. She had originally started following him to make a second sneak attack, but after watching the battle, and his unwillingness to let the horsea get injured in battle the tangela felt a kind of kinship with the human. There was no sense in letting the weak get hurt fighting a superior opponent when an alternate option was available. Tangela knew that better than most, as the scars covering her body would attest, even if those she had once protected were long gone, taken from her. Tangela glared at the back of the human who had challenged Grant. She was far too similar to the one who took her family away. Tangela tried to push away the anger and continued to follow the human and his horsea. She wasn’t sure what, if anything, she would do, but she wanted to watch them for a little longer before deciding anything.