CHAPTER 129

We watched as Emilia exited the waiting room. She was tightly gripping the sides of her dress and looked to be on the brink of tears. Vincent closely followed behind her, and even though he did look disappointed, he appeared nowhere as distraught as she was. Maybe it was because this was Emilia’s first loss, and this was his third? The first one was often the toughest to swallow.

“Emi, you were fucking awesome out there!” Pauline exclaimed. “You should have made it to the top sixteen, that third judge just had a stick up his ass.”

“You were a lot better than most people we saw,” Justin agreed. “You were great too, Vincent. You certainly look to be near the top of the newer coordinators.”

“Cheer up, there’s always the next one, right?” Denzel said. “If this is how you did in your first contest, then you’re going places. Cecilia was bored out of her mind until she saw your performance.”

Emilia sniffled and rubbed her eyes.

“Emi…” Pauline muttered.

“I’m fine,” she sobbed. “These are angry tears, not sad tears. I’m pissed. I should have made it through, but the whole industry favors people at the top. They dangle hope in front of you only to keep it just out of reach. It needs to change.”

Vincent whistled. “That’ll take a lot of… a lot of everything. You can’t just change how things work, you have to change people’s mindsets too. Powerful coordinators will go against you, and there are a whole lot of judges stuck in their old ways, like you already saw.”

“I know,” she nodded, wiping her eyes. “I’ll start slow. First, I need to re-double my training. No more lounging around for hours at a time. I need to work just as hard as you guys do,” she said, staring at us. “I need to improve as fast as I can and get to the top sixteen once. According to Vincent, that’s when you start getting a lot more eyes on you. I’ll need to change the entire industry from the top down.”

“So you do dream big after all,” I smiled.

“The next contest is a grand one, and it’s next week, so you might be a little out of luck. No matter how determined you are, you aren’t beating the big shots that are going to be there. Even Temperance will be there.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said, having finally finished crying. “I’ll stick to the low-stakes ones for now, and it’s probably full by now anyway. Do you know about any grand contests going on in Veilstone?”

“Well, there are contests every week or two in every city,” Vincent muttered. “But if I remember correctly, the next grand contest in Veilstone should be in a little over a month.”

“That works out perfectly for us, doesn’t it?” I asked.

“It does!” Pauline happily said. “You’ll be able to fly out for our stay during the city.”

“I won’t be going to Solaceon,” she declared. “I’m sorry, but I need to stick around here to participate in as many contests as I can. Solaceon doesn’t have a contest hall, so…”

“We get it,” Denzel nodded. “It won’t be for long. There was that tournament that Grace talked to us about, but apart from that, we shouldn’t stick around Solaceon for long anyway.”

Emilia took a deep breath. “Now that I have a clear objective, I feel like a whole new person. Let’s go home. I want to crash into my bed and sleep.”

“Wait, you’re forgetting something!” Denzel said. “Your video! We still need to upload it!”

She groaned. “Right… right, we should do that now while the contest is still fresh in people’s minds. Vincent, come with us.”

“Err… I need to go give this suit back first.”

——

“Cece was right,” I panted. “This is harder than I thought it’d be.”

I had gone back into my room, and I was currently crushing Oran berries into a paste. I was about to feed my Pokemon vitamins for the first time, and I figured that this would be an easier way to trick Togetic into eating the damn thing. She was a horribly picky eater and only ate Oran berries. The vitamins came in powdered form, but they were tasteless, so as long as she couldn’t see it, I was confident that she’d end up eating it as normal, although she might wonder why her food was crushed today instead of sliced like normal.

Vincent, Emilia and Denzel were currently getting ready to upload Emilia’s video. There was surprisingly a lot more that went into the process than I thought. The title, the tags, the thumbnail, the time you uploaded at… being a content creator sure seemed exhausting. Meanwhile, Chase had comfortably won his fight against Fantina with Houndoom and Vikavolt carrying most of the fight. I’d look at it in detail tomorrow, but apparently, his Snover had evolved into an Abomasnow during the battle.

“Finally,” I groaned. I had finally finished crushing enough berries for Jellicent, Togetic, and Tangrowth. I separated the entire thing into five bowls— Togetic would get one, and the others would get two larger ones— and carefully fanned the powder over the berries before mixing it again to hide it.

Electabuzz and Larvitar would get kibble, since they seemed to favor that type of food. Although to her, nothing could beat fresh dirt or small rocks that she snacked on when we traveled. I released my entire team aside from Turtonator, who I’d need to talk to later.

“It’s dinner time,” I smiled, clapping my hands.

Electabuzz yelled loudly to celebrate, grabbed his bowl and quickly scarfed everything down. Larvitar enviously stared at her brother, then picked up her bowl to try to imitate him before I could even tell her no. Due to her small size, and the largeness of her bowl, she dropped half of her food on the ground.

“Sweetheart!” I said exasperatedly. That was some amount of money wasted. “You’re too small to eat like that, okay? Do it slower.”

Larvitar apologized while Togetic gathered the fallen kibble with Extrasensory and placed it back into her huge bowl. She levitated a single piece in front of her and then eyed me suspiciously. A little bit of powder could be seen on it.

Better ignore her for now.

Tangrowth just wrapped his vines around both of his bowls and brought them inside of his body. After barely three seconds, he spat them out, and they were wiped clean. For Jellicent, I poured his food over his mustache, since his mouth sat under all that foam. Surprisingly, I actually saw the food slowly dissolve inside of his body.

Togetic squinted at her food, and then at me.

“It’s crushed today because I wanted to do something different,” I lied. “They’re still Oran berries.”

“Toge…”

Suddenly, I felt a sudden chill. Jellicent began to loom behind her with an evil glint in his eyes, and she took a hesitant bite. After noticing that there was no difference in taste, she enthusiastically began to eat.

Yes, I smiled. Eat and grow strong.

Maybe I’d get buddy to force my future kids to eat their veggies. He seemed very effective.

I blushed and hurriedly shook my head at the vision that flashed in my mind. Cece and me raising kids? We were both teenagers, I needed to calm down.

“Arceus…” I sighed as I shook my head. “Anyway, when princess and sweetheart are done eating, I need to go out to speak to Turtonator.”

Togetic stopped eating, and her expression turned angry, which was more of a cute thing, especially with the blue paste from the berries all over her mouth. Plus, Togetic couldn’t exactly look angry. Sad? Distraught? Sure, but angry? It was like her face was incapable of showcasing the expression.

“I need to talk to him about his diet,” I said. “Don’t worry, you guys can come.”

I wasn’t about to talk to him alone this time, especially since I’d have to bring up his old trainer. Soon enough, Togetic and Larvitar finished their food, and we were on our way to route 208. It was late at night, so I doubted that we would come across any trainers, especially at the edge of the route. People tended to have settled down by now and would hunker down for the night. I released my entire team, and then Turtonator. As usual, he snorted haughtily at me, causing Togetic to protest. Her wings anxiously fluttered, and she glared at the fire type.

“It’s okay, princess,” I smiled as I grabbed her. I placed her head against my chest and gently stroked her crown so that she would hear the sound of my heartbeat and calm down. I used to do it a lot when she’d been in her egg, and I’d sleep with it in my bed. She slowly began to calm, but a condescending, snorty laugh from Turtonator snapped her out of her daze.

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” I frowned. “Stop antagonizing her. Angel, take care of her for me.”

Tangrowth nodded, grabbing Togetic and carefully placing her on his head, where she stared daggers at Turtonator. The dragon type just shrugged, and as usual, he walked off and lazily lay down on the grass. He seemed to enjoy sleeping a whole lot. In fact, he had fallen asleep the majority of the times I attempted to talk to him one-on-one. I was in the process of telling him all of my adventures, since I thought that maybe it’d make him respect me more if he knew everything I had gone through. I was currently around the Floaroma tournament, and I hadn’t told him about the whole ordeal at the power plant yet.

One thing was for sure, Turtonator was slowly mellowing out. He hadn’t raised the temperature when I annoyed him at all lately, but I was still a way off from actually using him. He still held me in contempt. There was no respect behind his gaze, and as long as that was the case, he wouldn’t listen to me in battle.

But at least he’d be manageable.

“I wanted to ask you a question about your old diet,” I began, carefully skirting around mentioning Kamaile. “I’ve started feeding the others supplements, and—”

“Toge!” Princess said with a betrayed expression. I held back a groan and forced a smile so that she’d believe me.

“I didn’t put it in yours,” I lied before turning back to Turtonator. “Do you remember being given any kind of vitamins to eat? If you were, I don’t want to disrupt the balance that you had.”

The fire type nodded.

Turtonator was a bulky Pokemon that excelled in special attacks, so if I had to guess, he’d been fed Calcium to maximize his attack and Magnesium or Iron to maximize his bulk or his defensive capabilities. After asking him five times which one of the two it was, he ended up nodding at Iron. I supposed that made the most sense, with how tough his shell was.

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“You hungry?” I asked. He snorted, not even bothering to answer.

That was an annoyed but agreeing snort, so I grabbed kibble from my backpack and mixed Iron and Calcium with the food. He quickly wolfed it all down and threw the huge bowl away from me. Togetic quickly caught it and prevented it from breaking, though. After that, I decided to stay here a little bit longer. Somehow, this was the most relaxed the team had been in weeks. Princess still had her guard up, and I was pretty sure she was messing with the floor under us and probably preparing a sudden Ancient Power, but she was beginning to doze off on Tangrowth’s head. He was slowly swaying back and forth in a rhythm to put her to sleep. Turtonator had surprisingly let Larvitar approach him, and she was touching his scales with a look of pure awe. I could have sworn I caught his lips twitch a few times.

So you like her, huh? I thought to myself with a smile.

Jellicent was floating high up in the sky and observing Hearthome’s pretty lights, and Electabuzz was lying down with his head on my lap while I scratched his head. It was only for a single night, but Turtonator truly felt like a part of the family.

I began telling Turtonator my story again, and he was doing that thing where he pretended to be asleep, but still listened. Larvitar carefully listened too, since she hadn’t been there. I ended up stopping right before I was teleported into the power plant, though, since I figured it’d be too depressing a story to tell during such a calm night, and I didn’t particularly feel like bringing up Team Galactic. I still hoped that one day, he’d let me talk about Kamaile and his old team, but right now, there was no way I was going to disrupt what we had going.

Ray of sunshine, huh? I mused as I stared at Turtonator.

Sunshine would be a nice nickname.

——

For the second time, Denzel quietly stood in a cold, dark alley a few minutes away from his Pokemon Center. If it hadn’t been for his friend, then he definitely would have been irritated by his development. They could have met anywhere else, but Louis insisted on doing it here. Plus, he’d betrayed his trust this time. Denzel had revealed to the group that he’d met Louis and his friends in secret when he had promised to keep it hidden, and now the entire group had asked him to meet to catch up and discuss their next move regarding Harvey and Clarence. Louis still hadn’t come to a decision, and he didn’t want to be pushed out of his comfort zone, especially with how obsessed he was with not being ‘worthy’ of seeing them again.

Denzel perked up when Louis stepped into the alley, and wasting no time, he immediately apologized without even greeting him.

“Louis… listen, man, I’m sorry about telling the others about you. Did Pauline tell you about our meeting with her mom?”

Louis looked less tired than usual, but he certainly looked worried. He carried himself meekly— a far cry from how he had behaved when they had first met. Sometimes, Denzel couldn’t believe they were the same person.

“She did, and she summed up the situation for me via text… and also berated me and asked to see me,” he sighed. “Was telling them about me really necessary?”

“I tried to skirt around it, but Grace and Josephine figured me out right away. Josephine was talking about how Mira and Maeve could have been sent by your father to isolate you and keep you away from us, but I immediately shot the idea down.”

“Josephine’s always been perceptive,” Louis said, leaning against a wall.

“I wouldn’t lean against that, it’s dirty as hell.”

He groaned, turning around and trying to rub his back. “Is it stained?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Louis sighed again. “I’ve truly become a magnet for misfortune, it seems. Anyway, I forgive you. I know how much pressure Josephine can apply when she wants. She could get anything she wanted out of me when I was a kid.”

“You’ve met her before?” Denzel asked.

He knew that Justin, Emilia and Pauline had known each other since early in their childhoods, but Louis hadn’t come into the picture until this year.

“Oh, you know how it is,” he said dismissively.

“No. No, I literally don’t.”

“Oh, right. You don’t,” he awkwardly said. “Well, she’s met my father a few times, and I was always dragged along with him. I’m pretty sure she dislikes me.”

“She implied as much,” Denzel said, scratching his head. “Anyway, you signed up for the gym yet?”

The blond trainer nodded. “I battle the day after you.”

“Okay. I know we didn’t get to train as much as we both would have wanted, but just remember your conditioning. Just get in the flow of things, and you’ll win.”

Denzel ran on instincts when he battled, but that was an oversimplification of things. His best asset was stamina. He could battle for nearly an hour and not feel tired by the end of it at all, which would no doubt help him by the time he made it to the Conference. The battles there— and high-leveled battles in general could be brutally long. For example, the battles at the Conference had a time limit of an hour. When Denzel really got into a battle, he entered what people called the flow state. Not exactly autopilot, but he certainly felt like something was there to help him make snap decisions. By the end of it, he always snapped out of his daze, and memories of the battle were a blur. He often watched back the footage and was baffled that it was him doing all of this.

Denzel had tried to instill this into Louis, and he had taken well to his teachings. He was getting more resilient, and he didn’t falter when Denzel purposefully lengthened the duration of their mock battles.

He never used Sylveon, though. He was too brutal, especially with Mira and Maeve’s Pokemon. Doubt was starting to creep into the back of Denzel’s mind. Had he always been like this, or was this the fairy influence he had heard about during his lessons as a child? He seemed normal enough with the other members of his group, although he hadn’t seen them in a while.

Something was wrong, and Denzel would get to the bottom of it after his gym battle. It was better not to rock the boat before such an important fight.

“By the way, even if you don’t want to meet, you should come to see our battles the day after tomorrow. If you come a bit late, then you won’t come across us.”

“I don’t know… I could always watch them online.”

“We all know that’s not as good as the real thing!” Mira screamed as she emerged from the shadows, causing Denzel to flinch. “Maeve! Stop hiding and come here!”

“Did you follow me?” Louis asked.

“Yeah.”

“No shame, huh?” Denzel said as he saw Maeve shuffle into the alley.

“I tried to tell her this was a bad idea.”

“But you followed me anyway,” Mira shrugged.

——

The next day was the last before our gym battles with Fantina, so everyone was out training in their own different ways. I had sent a text to Lauren to let her know, and even though she hadn’t answered, she had left me on read, so I knew that she had seen the message. My Pokemon already all knew what to do. Electabuzz was perfecting his ghost sense and working on Protect. He wouldn’t be able to use the move that many times, but at least the barrier wrapped around his entire body now. Togetic was working on her control with Psychic, which still left a lot to be desired. She wasn’t used to dealing with that much power at once.

As things stood though, it’d be enough to ram her enemies into things and deal psychic damage to their heads, so it was usable. When we needed to have more control over things, I’d go back to using Extrasensory. Tangrowth could now use Knock Off while keeping an opponent trapped in his vines, and he could use it with two if he really focused, but there was still little progress with Sunny Day. There was a little something we’d been working on to make sure he could use Bind on ghosts, though. Jellicent had easily mastered Brine and was slowly working on expanding the area over which he could use to move. Larvitar was off in the distance practicing Sandstorm, and Tangrowth was supervising her, but she could only create it over a tiny area, and at this point, it looked more like Gible’s Sand Tomb rather than a proper Sandstorm attack.

I knew all of the moves Fantina had. All of the Pokemon she might use. Now all I had to do was execute my plan and stay calm whenever it inevitably went off the rails, and I had to improvise. I trusted Electabuzz and Jellicent to work through her illusions on their own, but I’d have to work in tandem with Togetic and Tangrowth if she used them against them. Fantina tended to only use one or two per battle at our level, so they'd be manageable, at least.

Since all my Pokemon knew what to do on their own, I figured I’d start analyzing what went wrong in the battle against Chase and Cecilia. I had downloaded the video on my computer just for this occasion. I sat against a tree and began to parse through the video.

In retrospect, the start had been pretty salvageable, and Denzel kept me from slipping into a panic. They still held the advantage due to Vikavolt’s maneuverability in the air and Slowking’s Psychic, but we adapted fast. Me figuring out that Knock Off would be capable of slipping past their defenses had been the kind of quick thinking I wanted to get better at. In the end, Denzel helped take down Vikavolt, although he had to sacrifice his Roselia for it. I forced her to switch out her Slowking after that.

But after that, we were back on equal footing or even an advantageous position. Togetic’s Wish failing to heal Sylveon had been when I believed the battle turned to shit, but that wasn’t how things worked. A battle didn’t suddenly go from going really well to a catastrophe in one event. There was always a slow escalation toward disaster, which was usually when you figured out that something went wrong.

But it’d be too late to find out that something had gone wrong after the fact. I needed to spot it while it was happening, and I’d focus exclusively on what I could have done, not Denzel. Forcing Cece to switch out Slowking had been excellent. Watching the footage again, I understood now that he was actually the biggest problem in the battle, not Zweilous. His presence alone forced us to change the way we fought so radically that we needed to take free damage just to have a chance at hitting him. Luckily for me, he seemed to be a terrible fighter whenever he was overwhelmed, as was proved by Tangrowth, and later, Sylveon, who ended up taking him down, so there was at least a counter there.

Since Cecilia used her switch on him, there wasn’t much I could have done to ensure Tangrowth took him down, but I could have minimized the damage he took. Cecilia had sent out her Fletchinder second, and on retrospect…

I should have switched Tangrowth out instead of making him stick around until he fell. Even if the plan with Wish had worked out, having angel in the back would have done wonders. Instead, he took too much damage from Fletchinder’s fire type attacks and fainted too quickly. Plus, it might have meant I could have sent him out again against Slowking when Cece released him the second time.

Instead, Electabuzz had been forced to fight Slowking and Snover, soaking up a lot of damage from Ice Shard and Water Pulse in the process. That meant that the one Psychic he had gotten hit with had done a lot more to him than I thought, and it had scrambled his brain so much that he hadn’t managed to dodge Houndoom’s Flamethrower.

Snowball. The battle had slowly been snowballing out of control from the start because I had tunnel visioned on my plan. I should have given up on it when I saw that they had two new evolutions and weren’t starting with the Pokemon we thought they would.

Togetic had pushed herself beyond her limits with Ancient Power, easily dealing with Cecilia’s Scyther despite his speed and unpredictability. She had also masterfully bought Snorunt enough time to use Blizzard. I couldn’t possibly have asked more of her, at least for this part of the battle. One thing was still bothering me about her performance though. Why had Extrasensory not worked on Houndoom’s Flamethrower? In the heat of the battle, I hadn’t figured it out, but I had adapted quickly. The only way it made any sense was if Houndoom had somehow injected some dark type energy into the attack, but the flames showed no signs of that. Hiding such a feat would require such control over the type energy and the Flamethrower… yet Chase had somehow done it, no doubt as one of his tactics to counter Togetic.

Which was what had given me the inspiration to work on Tangrowth's Bind and find a way to grab ghosts.

Then it happened. The moment where the battle had slipped beyond our control forever. Sylveon went down before Wish could heal him.

Beyond our control didn’t mean that the battle was lost, though. When it had just been Cecilia and me on the field— Jellicent against Zweilous— there was still a way I could have won after poisoning him. If I had taken a risk and used Hex instead of keeping my distance with Bubblebeam and Water Pulse, then Zweilous would have possibly taken enough damage for Princess to finish him off.

But it also could have backfired terribly. Hex required Jellicent to be close to his opponent, and Zweilous having two heads fully capable of attacking meant that he probably would have gotten two attacks in retaliation, possibly disintegrating his body again. I hadn’t known if buddy would be capable of keeping up that rhythm.

And I hated unknowns.

So at the end of the day, I should have swapped Tangrowth out right when Cecilia did the same for Slowking. If I had done that, then the battle wouldn’t have snowballed out of my control, which was when I was at my weakest. I needed to be more adaptable. Foregoing a plan did not mean I was admitting defeat. I needed not to stick to a failing strategy if the chance of it succeeding was less than one hundred percent.

Okay, no plan ever had a one hundred percent success rate, but it had certainly stood on shaky legs right when the battle began, and I’d need to keep this mindset for my battle against Fantina because there was no way that fight would go according to plan.

“Let’s go through it one more time,” I muttered. Then after combing through the footage, I’d watch Chase’s gym battle.

——

After buying a bottle of water, I quickly shuffled to my seat in the spectating ring. It was Denzel’s turn to go first, and we were all waiting for his battle to start. I’d use his and Cecilia’s fight to try to do some last minute studying on reading Fantina’s body language. She was nowhere near as expressive as Candice, so I wouldn’t be able to gauge what she was thinking on the fly during the battle. Hell, most of the time, the only expression on her face was boredom.

“There he is!” Pauline said excitedly.

Denzel sported a jersey I had never seen before with the logo of every company he had been sponsored by. Did that mean they were all cooperating with him? That looked custom-made.

Fantina enunciated the rules. The battle would be a four-on-four with one switch in. One thing I had noticed was that when Fantina was in an especially cranky mood due to her job, she gave her battles a minimal amount of switches so that they’d last less long and she’d be able to run on autopilot. It seemed like she was in one of these moods today.

Denzel sent out his Sylveon, which had the same, blurry armor around his fur, and Fantina sent out a Gourgeist. With a simple signal from the referee, the battle began.