CHAPTER 185

Angel’s unconscious form disappeared into his Pokeball as trainers all around us clapped and cheered for the end of the battle. I hadn’t put an estimate on how many Pokemon I believed I’d be able to take down, and even though I made a few glaring mistakes, I was happy about my performance. It took a bit for the crowd to clear, mostly because I had to answer some curious trainers’ questions about the battle, and so did Zachary. He was one of the up-and-coming trainers despite not being a first-year, so he was still decently popular, and for good reason. He had just beaten me without breaking a sweat.

I was already replaying the fight in my mind as I waited for him to come by, trying to figure out the less obvious mistakes that I’d made. Using Sunny Day and falling for that Destiny Bond trick were two. Another one was me not switching out Electabuzz right away at the start instead of trying to desperately land a Fire Punch, but what else was there?

That was what Zachary was for. He motioned at me from afar to follow and then shoved both of his hands in his pocket. He wanted me to follow him outside, which did make sense. Giving advice in this crowded arena would be annoying no matter how much of Sweetheart’s screams I was used to when studying. Given the fact that all of my Pokemon were down, I called out to him, asking him to wait for one of my friends. Zachary raised an eyebrow, clearly weirded out by my skittishness, but I told him it was a personal issue and he quickly shrugged. I didn’t think he was Galactic, but I felt very naked without a friend or Pokemon to keep me safe.

Maeve had been the closest, coming back from a light training session with Mira and Louis while they opted to stay, so she arrived first. Monferno huddled by her side, using his body temperature to keep her from her usual shivering.

“Nice Monferno you’ve got there,” Zach grinned.

I’d only seen Zachary’s Infernape in battle, but he was a lot more outgoing and… boisterous than Maeve’s Monferno. The fire type shyly waved and shrunk slightly behind his trainer.

“Uh, thank you,” she said. “I’m Maeve.”

“Zach. Nice to meetcha.”

Maeve nodded. “By the way, I know this might be intrusive, but could I join you? I want to listen to the advice, even if it doesn’t apply to me.”

“Sure thing. Why don’t we get back to the Center, hand in our wounded ‘Mons and head to the cafeteria? It should be rather empty this time of day,” he said.

Empty might have been overselling it. The Pokemon Center’s cafeteria was never truly empty, but the tide of people sometimes rose or lowered. Right now, it was low tide, with plenty of empty tables and quiet corners for us to sit in. Hopefully I’d be able to get my team back after a single day. The more time I spent without them, the more anxious I felt. I also used the opportunity to swing by my room to grab my laptop to take notes, which Zachary found very amusing. Trainers were old-fashioned and usually didn’t take notes, let alone on a laptop, but writing was a lot slower than typing.

After picking up a cup and just filling it with ice cubes, he lazily sat on the chair with terrible posture and adjusted his glasses. “You ready?”

“Yup,” I said, turning to Maeve. She also nodded.

“Now I’m gonna say before I start, don’t take anything I say personally, alright? I’m just going to try to hammer a few points home and then move onto the positives,” he warned. “Now, you’re at that stage in your career where you can almost always figure out the correct way to respond to a threat. Your train of thought is scary fast, and you analyze the pros and cons on a whim while the battle’s going on.”

“Those sound like positives to me,” I said.

“Well, hold on for a sec,” he raised a finger. “The best examples of this was your Pupitar against Ampharos and your Jellicent and Togetic against Infernape. You knew that my Ampharos’ biggest weakness was his lack of mobility, so you tried to bury him in a hole with Stomping Tantrum or under a fuck ton of rocks. With Infernape, you knew that the moment you got close to the ground, you’d lose, which is why you tried to keep your distance, either through flight or Whirpool.”

He paused, waiting to see if I was paying attention.

“The problem with that is that you’re operating through the worldview that you’re better than everyone else at planning and reacting to threats, but you aren’t, or at least you won’t be for long. I will admit, there are plenty of times you caught me off-guard during the battle, but you always pick the most obvious way of responding to threats. That makes you predictable, Grace. It was obvious that you’d try to go after Ampharos’ mobility with Pupitar and I knew it was coming, so I easily reacted to that and shut her down.”

What he was saying hurt a little, but I was too busy writing his every word to answer.

“When you catch someone off-guard, that’s a crucial opening to take advantage of. You saw it with that crazy flight trick with Pupitar. Didn’t even know that was a thing,” he laughed. “But the bottom line is, you’re good at identifying problems and finding ways to fix them, just try to make that fix less obvious. It doesn’t have to be every time, because that would be impossible, but try to think outside the box sometimes. Do some unique shit that only you would think of.”

“Got it,” I agreed.

“Next, you need to relax, okay?”

This time, I scoffed. “Huh? Do you mean me being kind of nervous?”

“Oh, no, being nervous is fine. Your battling pace, I mean. You’re always going one hundred percent, you never stop and relax. You’re always throwing out attacks even when you know for sure that they won’t work. Your Jellicent did it against Infernape, your Electabuzz did it against Vespi. I’m interested in why?”

“I thought I’d be able to catch you on the wrong foot,” I shrugged. “Why is it a problem?”

“Well, if your tempo’s always at one hundred, I always know that an attack is coming soon and that I need to respond to it, right? I’m not telling you to spend time doing nothing, but it’s okay to slow down and breathe sometimes. Your brain’s at one hundred percent all the time. That makes you slip up, tunnel vision and do obvious mistakes that you really shouldn’t be making like Sunny Day with Tangrowth. Now, because you’re so used to attacking all the time, you panic when I simply slow down slightly, like when Infernape hid down that chasm for a bit and came out the same spot. Your Pokemon are used to your pace, so they panic too.”

“Ah. Yeah, I guess I do go a bit fast. I’m kind of obsessed with being proactive instead of reactive, and I like to keep up the pressure,” I said.

“I getcha, and I’m not saying that you need to do it like me. Being a fast-paced battler’s perfectly fine. Just mix it up sometimes instead of always putting your foot on the gas. Recuperate, take a deep breath and look at the battle through a wider lens for just a little bit before you go back to going ham,” he said.

He chewed on a couple of ice cubes and kept going.

“Now, getting back to your Pokemon. You asking them to constantly attack when the moves have a very little chance of landing makes them waste energy for no good reason. There’s a difference between keeping up the pressure and having your Jellicent use Water Pulse over and over when the attack couldn’t even get close to Infernape. You were using more energy than he was and instead of just waiting to figure out a surefire way of beating us, you opted to order your Jellicent to go low. Battles at a high level against peers… they’re long and exhausting for the participants. Every ounce of energy counts.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I guess that I really just never stop attacking.”

“Yeah. And again, I will reiterate, you don’t have to do it like me, just keep it in mind. Everyone’s got different styles, I was just giving you some general advice. Anyway, moving on, your face. I’ve heard you can read people, although I didn’t see much of it here, but did you know you’re also very easy to read? When you panicked, I knew. When you were thinking, I knew. When you thought one of my attacks or techniques was bullshit,” he paused with a chuckle. “I also knew. You really hated that Destiny Bond trick, huh?”

“I did…” I embarrassingly shrunk. I found it hard to focus on people when I was barely holding on by a thread during the battle. “Can you explain how that worked? My Turtonator’s going to be pissed.”

“When we’re done,” he nodded. “Anyway, get some poker face going, because as it stands, you’re very easy to read. Actually, it doesn’t even need to be a poker face. Some people have a persona they put on or are just one thing all the time. That girl, Craig Goodwill’s sister— what’s her name?”

“Lauren.”

“Lauren,” he said. “Saw her battle some other good first year around here when I was hanging out. She’s always unhinged when battling. That means that she’s harder to read. Personally, I try to be relaxed at all times, but I still slip up sometimes. Just try to figure something that works for you.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Okay,” I said.

If I wanted to emulate one facet of myself during a battle, it was the way I’d been during my fight with Harry Rodriguez. The memories of that fight were still… hard for me, and I still occasionally woke up with nightmares, but the way I’d been? I would be unreadable if I could replicate that. Of course, that’d require me to emotionally detach and disassociate… which was something Bella had taught me. It’d be a lot harder to do when I wasn’t alone in a quiet room with only the sound of my thoughts, though.

“Doesn’t matter much if you’re rolling your opponents like you were at that tournament, but when you’re battling opponents stronger than you or at your level, you tend to let your emotions show. Gotta work on that,” he pointed at me. “Next up, your Pokemon.”

He saw me react and held out his hand.

“Now hold on. I won’t state the obvious and say that they were weaker than mine— except for that Turtonator. That’s not the goal of this exercise and I’d be a dick to think that counts as advice. They’ll catch up with time, but you aren’t utilizing a lot of them to their full potential. Did you notice how I had my Ampharos destroy the arena with two Thunders and let your Pupitar use Stomping Tantrums for my Infernape?”

“Yeah. I know what you’re going to say. Your team fought like, well, a team and mine didn’t. I’ve been trying to figure out more ways of doing that, and it's hard to focus on it when I'm losing horribly,” I said.

“You've gotta keep your head in the game no matter what. It helps if you don't go at 100% all the time like I told you. My battle with Maylene— well, it wasn't as one-sided as this one, but I was still on the backfoot the entire time. I’ve got three Pokemons capable of flying, and Infernape and Ferrothorn are good at navigating fucked up fields, so that’s what I do most of the time. I destroy it completely and use that to my advantage. See, you’ve got plenty of destructive power already, but beginners— forgive me for using that term— tend to be too stingy with those powers. The arenas that they set up are more of a suggestion than anything, really. When you reach the sixth badge, it’ll most likely end up being completely different than what it was at the start after every battle and both trainers almost always compete to change it to their advantage. Now, I don’t know enough about your team to tell you what would work for you or what wouldn’t, but know this: when someone’s very clearly altering the field on purpose, try to at least stop them. Granted, with the power disparity here, it couldn’t have worked that well.”

“No, no. I appreciate the advice, still,” I smiled.

“You won’t have to worry about this for Maylene’s fifth badge Pokemon, but Volkner’s a master at working the field and turning it into hell for anything that doesn’t resist electricity. Think what Ampharos did, but way worse.”

“Yeah… there’s a reason why they said he could have potentially been in the Elite Four,” Maeve chimed in the first time.

“We’re almost done now, but one last point,” Zach said after chewing on some more ice cubes. “Damn, that hit the spot. Be less stringent with your swaps. They’re a resource, but you’ve got to use them. You never see someone at a high level lose without having exhausted all of their options. You could have potentially lasted longer.”

“I should have switched out my Electabuzz,” I acknowledged grimly. “Your Vespiquen’s no joke.”

“She isn’t,” he said. “I do want to finish by saying that you’re damn good. I thought I’d be able to use the gap in experience to take down Turtonator with Vespiquen but I had to use Destiny Bond. Speaking of, you wanted to know how it worked?”

“I did. Beyond the obvious of causing a Pokemon to faint after taking down the user.”

“Ah, there are a lot more nuances to it than that. First, you actually could have noticed that I had Vespi use the move. We trained enough to conceal the flames with that trick, but you can never conceal the eyes. They shine purple.”

My eyes widened. So that was what that had been! It had been barely noticeable since Vespiquen had been encased in that ball of solidified honey.

“We’ve trained to extend the length to a minute and thirty seconds or something along those lines, but when we first got the move, she could only keep the bond going for twenty seconds, which was kind of shit,” he smiled. “It takes too much out of her to use twice in a row, so if you’d waited, you would have won.”

I scoffed. “Took a lot out of her? She was still damn near unbeatable!”

“Well moving honey around is as easy as breathing for her, so that doesn’t count. You’ve got to realize that taking a lot out of a Pokemon at Vespiquen’s level doesn’t mean that they’re no longer threats.”

I chewed on his words. It was true that even Sunshine could easily beat my Pokemon one-on-one when wounded or tired, so I supposed that made sense.

“Got any more questions for me?” He asked.

“Hm… your Ampharos had some sort of proto-electric terrain running. Could my Electabuzz replicate that?”

“Every electric type could do it, although some easier than others. Don’t know much about the Electabuzz line,” he said. “Ampharos might not look like it, but he’s a monster. He does it by just releasing electricity through his feet and into the ground, but the amount needed…”

We didn’t have that kind of power yet, but Electabuzz didn’t need to evolve for us to start working on it. For now though, I’d keep him building up his capacity by working on Thunder. The amount of destruction wrought by Ampharos left me salivating.

“Thank you for the amazing advice,” I said. “It was more than I could have hoped for.”

In fact, he’d been so thorough that I no longer felt like the Poketch Company was holding me back by restricting the number of public losses I could have. I’d written five pages of bullet points to further develop later when I got back up to my room.

“No prob’. Always a pleasure helping out, and it’s not like I don’t benefit. I wanted to fight that Turtonator really badly and the publicity will make my sponsors happy. Gotta get that dough.”

“Yep,” I sighed, thinking of how close I was to buying my Shiny Stone.

After that, the TM floodgates would finally be opened, and I just couldn’t wait. Zachary finished his… drink and got up.

“I’ve gotta run, see you kids later,” he waved as he left. “The battle was fun!”

I ignored the fact that someone one year older than me called me a kid and closed my laptop with a satisfied sigh as I sunk into my chair. That had been damn satisfying. I could see what Cynthia had meant by how valuable punching up was now. There was a wisdom experience brought that no amount of hard work or talent would uncover unless someone actually beat it into your head.

“What’d you think?” I asked.

“He’s pretty cool. Confident,” Maeve shrugged. “Wish I’d been there to see that battle now.”

“Someone probably already uploaded a recording,” I said, stretching my arms. “Man, that was good. Say, how’re you doing? We haven’t seen each other much.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’m mostly training, trying to push Monferno over the edge so he can evolve before Maylene… I’m gonna sign up with Louis in two days, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to get there. I’ve also been trying to find a fifth team member, but I’ve been coming up blank. I’ve had my four Pokemon for so long that I’m getting anxiety just making a choice.”

I stood up from my chair and patted her on the shoulder. “Pauline’s had the same thing, except without your valid reasons. I think that you’ll figure something out, but remember to take your time. It’s okay to be stingy when you’re going to be spending the rest of your life with your team,” I mirrored Cynthia’s words.

“Thanks,” she smiled. “I’ll see you later? Maybe we can grab a bite tonight? Like you said, it’s been a while.”

“Will, um, Mira be there?” I asked.

“No, no, I was thinking just you, me, and Emilia,” she said. “I know you guys are kind of fighting, but I’ve got Louis keeping an eye on her and that Chase guy seems to make her happy enough when they come across each other. I can tell when she’s faking and when she isn’t.”

“Still nothing with Justin, then?”

“No, but there’s… rumors. He apparently has six Pokemon now, but it’s nothing concrete. One thing’s for sure, he’s going to battle Maylene soon and then dip. He wanted to get to Sunyshore as fast as possible, remember? We’ve got to find him before he leaves.”

“Agreed. Let’s come up with something tomorrow. I’m going back to my room to study, you stay safe okay? Don’t walk alone for too long. See you later for dinner? We can all meet in front of the Center at… 6:30 pm?”

“Got it,” she smiled. “Bye-bye.”

I took refuge in my room and vicariously consumed and developed my notes. I immediately regretted not having recorded what Zach had said, but he probably would have thought that would have taken things too far. I colored them, bolded and underlined the important bits and two hours later, I had everything I needed. Now I just needed to apply this to the next time I trained with my team. I doubted that they’d feel down. I had warned them that we were going into an unwinnable battle, but Sunshine would be furious about going down with Destiny Bond. That was nothing a few sweet words from Pupitar and burning a few cliffs to vent out his anger couldn’t fix.

Maybe I could make him laugh with a really bad joke too.

It felt weird having none of them here with me. My room felt empty.

I spent the hours waiting for 6:30, but my phone rang an hour before the meeting. The Poketch Company was calling.

“They sure work fast,” I whispered. They probably wanted to speak to me about today’s battle. “Hello? Melody?”

“Grace! My proposition got through the board!” She yelled. I could feel her excitement through the phone.

“Wait, this isn’t about my—”

“We want to start you from zero, and we want for you to represent the link between Pokemon and Human society. You’ve got a knack for understanding them, right? And you can just walk through a route with hundreds of them following you, I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that only happens in movies.”

“Yes,” I said, my body tensing in anticipation. “But they’ll probably only be that friendly in forests.”

“Don’t sweat the details. We were thinking— and you can say no, but it would certainly help— we were thinking about having you do an interview next week about your experience through the route. It would be on national television…”

I deflated like a balloon. “I got questioned enough, Melody.”

“We can vet the questions and we’ll prepare you. They’ll be real softballs, and there will be no live audience. Just you, the camera crew and the interviewer. You can go in-depth about wild Pokemon as individuals and focus on the positives of your experience. If we combine this with your talent at battles, we could strike a real gold mine.”

“Business-minded as always, aren’t you?” I smiled.

Arceus, this was fucking terrifying. Me on live television? And only a week to mentally prepare myself? But this was such a good opportunity to make people see wild Pokemon in a different light… sure, it wouldn’t change things, but it would at least start a conversation.

And I could start helping out Bellatrix and Night.

It wasn’t a promise.

Not yet.

“I’m in,” I said.

I may or may not have immediately regretted the words.