CHAPTER 250

"There… there, my stream is over," I muttered. I double-checked my phone to make sure I wasn't about to carry it while still streaming on accident. "Yep, over."

It was pretty hard to ignore the swarm of trainers no doubt waiting for me outside so I could no doubt explain how the hell I'd gotten an Electivire. I already had twenty-nine notifications— half of them from Melody and Denzel alone, the other half from all of my friends. Even Candice hadn't known, for some reason. Maybe Cynthia had kept the deal contained to her, me and Volkner? A congratulation from Jasmine, a panicked text from Louis about how hurt our Pokemon had been, Pauline calling me a badass and desperately wanting her Vigoroth to evolve into Slaking after seeing Snorlax at work… there were some similarities with the two. There were more texts than I could count. My viewership had peaked slightly lower than my battle with Denzel, probably because I didn't have his reach online.

"I'm pretty bad with internet stuff," Barry said, leaning forward. For a second, I thought he'd been snooping and I covered my phone, but he didn't even pay attention. "We didn't have it when I grew up."

"Damn. Did you just watch TV?"

"I wouldn't watch cable. Most of the time, I just played outside, but sometimes I'd put my old man's old VHS tapes on to see his battles," Barry said with a fond smile. "We've got every single one of his Gym Battles, some other ones where he battled random trainers, all of his runs in the Conference and his battles against the Elite Four and the Champion."

"Holy crap," I muttered. He had a treasure trove of videos that were no doubt worth millions. None of this footage was available to the public, if I had to guess. Maybe they kept them in some archives at the League, though. "Did he get far?"

When he said the Elite Four and Champion did he mean that Palmer had actually gotten that far in the Conference?

"Got to fight the Elite Four twice," Barry said, his face beaming in admiration— and competition. "The second time, he got up to the Champion, but lost. After that, they recruited him in to work for the League."

I nodded with a grunt, surprised he hadn't pushed on to become the Champion himself.

I placed my phone back in my pocket, folded my tripod and put it in my backpack. "Who was the Champion back then?"

"Leo Florentius!" He instantly answered. "Half dragon, half steel type specialist! Of course, he lost a few years later to Gabriel Radetic, who then lost to Cynthia way later, but Leo was really cool! They say he sent his Salamence out during the war, who would fly down south to attack Kanto's armies on his own. He was really strong."

"War isn't cool," I said.

"Oh… well, of course," he nodded. "But my old man couldn't even take him down at the tail-end of his career, so you know he was really powerful."

"I can see why you and Denzel are friends," I smirked. They'd probably nerded about trainer history together for hours as young kids. I turned to face the crowd, who had largely dispersed outside by now. Trainers were respectful enough to give their opponents space after such a battle. "Okay, I'm going to go home now. I need to get my Pokemon healed and answer some texts."

"I can bring you if you want!" He exclaimed.

"Oh. I thought you'd run off."

"Well, my Pokemon are beat up too," he shrugged. His eyes were such a light brown that they almost appeared orange. "It's not like I could do anything anyway. My battle with Wake is in four days."

"Oh. Oh. I'm sorry," I said.

"What for?"

"Well, had I known that I wouldn't have tried to hurt them so much," I muttered. "I could have delayed your battle by weeks if you were forced to miss the deadline! Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted you to give it everything you had with no holds barred, that's all," he answered as if he was saying the most obvious thing in the world. "That way, we both come out of the battle satisfied no matter the result."

"Okay," I said, still thinking I'd almost ruined his stay in Pastoria. Luckily I hadn't actually broken any bones… except maybe Staraptor? They were pretty tough, as far as flying types went. "I guess I'll take you up on your offer. It's not often someone gets to talk to Barry Lane."

"Why talk when I could train instead?" He deadpanned.

Had I been someone else, that definitely would have rubbed me the wrong way. Right now, though, I just smiled. Barry was short— well, no, he was short compared to the friends I had. He was only an inch taller than me if I could estimate correctly. He pushed through the crowd, using my ankle to make people clear the way so I could pass through. Already, I could hear the numerous questions on everyone's mind. Honey was the Pokemon of the hour, even if I had lost. It was all everyone could even speak about. Barry didn't seem to care, though. Once we were through, I embarked on the long journey back to the Center with Barry in tow.

"What about your Pokemon? You should probably get them checked in, and if we stayed at the same Center I would have known."

It would have been hard to walk through the lobby without people whispering that Palmer's kid was there.

"My mom taught me that I need to be a gentleman," he shook his head. "My team's tough! The Pokeballs will keep them from hurting."

"If you say so," I hesitated.

"We're in the same direction anyway!"

Arceus, I was sure that without my broken ankle, I would have loved to walk Pastoria's long streets. Thankfully, the painkillers were still in my system, so I was doing okay. They really needed to invest in public transport here… maybe we'd see a taxi I could get in pass by at some point.

"So what'd you think about me?" I asked.

"You were exciting," he smiled. "All of your Pokemon are so cool! I didn't know Pupitar could go across the water like that, let alone fly! That's like something I'd come up with! I'm a little bummed I didn't get to fight Turtonator the way I wanted, but I saw an opportunity to win, and I needed to take it or things might have gotten bad. I don't know why, but when I battle fellow first-years who can stand up to me, I get really thrilled. I hadn't felt that in a long time."

"When was the last time?" I asked.

"Well I pretty much pulled away from everyone else our year after the first month or so," he slowly answered, staring at the sky. "But I guess Lucas and Dawn were still great until I got my third badge."

"Oh, Denzel told me about them! They're researchers, right? For Professor Rowan?"

"Yup, they're his assistants. They have real talent, let me tell you. A spark no one else has…" he trailed off and held onto his scarf. "Right now, they're probably good enough for four badges, and they aren't even training that hard because of how busy they get. They would have made it to the Conference if they tried. There's no doubt in my mind!"

"Any reason why they didn't try?" I asked.

"Well, they were always nerds, so when Rowan offered them their positions as assistants, they couldn't refuse. I like that old man, but he robbed me of two great rivals!" He exclaimed, comically clenching a fist. "But I guess I have you, now."

"You should give Lauren a try," I said. "Cecilia doesn't have a sixth Pokemon yet and Denzel is still training up Swablu, so you'd have to be content with five-on-fives."

And he was fixing things with Sylveon, little by little.

I omitted Chase's name, because I knew for a fact that he and Barry's personalities wouldn't mesh well at all.

"Unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, I'll be out of here as soon as I beat Wake," he said. "I finally managed to get my flying license, and now that it's almost April and the weather's gotten better, I'll be able to fly to Snowpoint to battle Candice."

"Oh, nice! How many tries?"

"Four for the written exam, one for the practical one," he said. "I can't pay attention in classes. My mom homeschooled me because she was the only one that could get me to learn anything. Not that there were that many kids in Twinleaf anyway. We've got a single school and like, three certified teachers for all of it. The rest of them are just adults that like to teach but aren't actually teachers."

"One school? I don't think I'd be able to live there."

Barry's lips stretched upward. "In a way, I like how small it is. The calmness of it all."

He was the last person I would have expected to say that. Barry seemed like he would fit in perfectly with Jubilife's bustling city life.

"I miss it sometimes, but you can't sit still if you want to be the best," he gripped his scarf and frowned. "Win or lose at the Conference, I'm off to the Battle Frontier this summer."

To confront his father about whatever problems they were having. Was it abandonment? I didn't have much context, but it looked like Palmer hadn't seen Barry in years due to his duties at the Battle Frontier.

"You want to beat Palmer?"

"Yes," he nodded firmly. "It'll be so tough! He managed to knock out four of Leo's Pokemon, and that was back then when he didn't have Rhyperior."

I swallowed. How strong was Palmer, exactly? Like, I knew he was insanely powerful, but at that scale of power, the lines got very blurry.

"Is he stronger than the Elite Four?" I asked, voicing my thoughts.

"I guess, yeah. The other Frontier Brains aren't as strong as he is, but they're usually comparable to the Elite Four," Barry explained. "Want to know my dad's team?!" He asked, then went on without letting me answer. "Milotic, Rhyperior, Dragonite, Darmanitan, Tauros, Hariyama, Gallade and Absol!" He machine-gunned their names, each one faster than the last.

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"Sheesh."

Talk about powerhouses. Granted, every Pokemon could become strong, but there were some more associated with power than others.

"So he has fun beating all the people with eight badges that flood the Battle Frontier to train during the summer?" I wondered.

"The Battle Frontier is where a lot of our military-trained Pokemon are," Barry said, as if he was reciting from a textbook. "You know, the League has a ton of Pokemon and not enough people to train them, so they send them to be loaned there so they don't get rusty. My old man doesn't use his personal team very often, other than when he has to fight wild Pokemon that attack the few cities we have up there."

"Are they frequent?" I asked.

"Oh, a lot more. The Pokemon on the Battle Frontier don't really like negotiating with humans, since we only arrived there in big numbers around a century ago, and they're a lot stronger on average. Again, it makes for good training grounds for the government's Pokemon, though."

I caught myself, not wanting to spark some political debate with a friend I'd just made. He seemed a lot more knowledgeable than I was in this field (somehow losing his scatterbrained and hectic temperament just for this). I knew it must have been more nuanced than 'we're just defending each other', though. There must have been something up there that made the League want to settle that island. Wasn't Cecilia's Spiritomb up there too? A Spiritomb there implied that humans had been there before in ancient history to actually make them, or maybe they'd been dropped off after conception on the mainland? Bellatrix had also told me there was some kind of domain holder up there that kept the temperatures warm all year long and the climate tropical even though it was even further north than Snowpoint.

"Well, I hope you'll beat your dad," I said. I knew it wouldn't happen this year, despite how good Barry was.

"What about your parents? Are they trainers?" He asked in an upbeat tone.

I snorted and then broke into an uncontrollable laugh. The image of my dad being a trainer wearing sneakers and with a backpack had been too much for me to bear, even if I knew he had actually tried for a month or two when he'd just turned fifteen. My mother didn't even know the first thing about Pokemon battling either despite trying her best to keep track of my progress.

"No," I coughed, leaning on a crutch for support. "No, absolutely not."

Arceus, I couldn't wait to see dad again. He was busy being a worrywart about my broken ankle these days, and he'd told me he couldn't focus on work. I felt a twinge of guilt, and my smile fell.

"I didn't think that would set you off."

"I just got a really funny image in my head," I said, shaking my head. "Don't worry about it."

"You look sad, now, though."

"Yeah. I miss my dad," I said. And I was going to have to betray him again with this poacher business when I'd told him I'd try to stay safe back in Hearthome. "I mean, we message almost every day and call at least once a week, but I want to see him, y'know? I haven't… since Hearthome. You ever miss your…" I paused, considering my next words. Dad would be inappropriate and stepping on his toes. "Mom sometimes?"

"All the time. I try to stay focused on other things, though. And I smile! Y'know, she'd tell me, 'Barry, if you're tired of being sad, you should smile and try to cheer yourself up!' Apparently she's seen some study on TV where people are more likely to be happy if they smile. Fake it 'til you make it, or something like that."

"Hmhm," I grunted absent-mindedly. "She sounds like a nice lady."

"She's the best." His lip twitched. "She had Lucas and Dawn follow me to Jubilife to get me a map that I forgot about, and I had to tell her phones were a thing. Then she told me, 'Barry, you don't know how to use a phone!' And I told her I was learning. The twins gave me the map in Jubilife anyway, though. It soothed her worries."

I blinked.

"Lucas and Dawn are twins?"

Barry paused, stopping in his tracks. "Yeah! I thought that was obvious?"

—

Obviously they were twins. Now that he had shown me an old picture, they did really look alike. Dark blue hair, grey eyes, their noses and faces were the exact same shape— even their smiles were similar. I painstakingly opened the door to my Center Room and Barry left to get his own Pokemon healed. I didn't know if I'd see him again. I had given him my number, but he'd told me he never used his phone other than to locate himself and call other people— mostly Rowan who'd send him on jobs or his mother. Of course, I hadn't wanted to launch into the ethics of Rowan asking Barry to catch Pokemon to send him, but I did try to pry, and at the very least Rowan would send the Pokemon back when he was done with them if they wanted to.

So, temporary kidnapping? Yikes, that was still awful.

"I guess I gotta check on my phone now," I groaned.

Beforehand, I drew a cold bath for Buddy and released him inside. The Ominous Wind had really done a number on him, and he'd need hours of resting to be back in top form.

Resting. Rest. On the way there, there had been a few techniques that had come up to counter moves like Rest and its ilk. First, Taunt. The most obvious answer that I hadn't even considered until Barry brought it up. The problem with Taunt was that it wasn't permanent, and the more a Pokemon used it on another, the more tolerance that opponent built toward the move for the battle. The first Taunt would have put Snorlax into a rageful state where even Barry wouldn't have been able to command him. The second would have angered him enough to snap him out of his sleep, and the third maybe would have made him hesitate to Rest.

Would that have been enough to beat him? Probably. I certainly would have had a much better chance, and I could have kept its use hidden for a pivotal moment that would have allowed me to take Snorlax down. Either way, I'd move the technique up to the top of Buddy's pile, since we desperately needed something to stop setup moves in general anyway.

Two, Electric Terrain would sometimes snap a Pokemon out of Rest if given enough time, but that one was a lot less consistent. Pokemon adept at Rest would probably be able to work through it— or at least that was according to Barry. He was very knowledgeable when it came to stuff like this because he experimented a lot to create concepts for new strategies or moves.

Three, Worry Seed. This one would be explicitly for Rest, so I didn't really want to focus on it now that the bitter feelings from the loss had largely passed. What I wanted Angel to do was continue work on Solar Blade, Acid, and most importantly manipulating his vines to control the field. Roserade's performance had inspired me and given me plenty more ideas, but we'd stick with our simple baseline for now and build from there. Spreading vines through a large chunk of the field would be a good start.

So it would fall onto Buddy to be our Taunt user. The move was also a relatively cheap TM, but I was confident I knew how to get him started on it, and I wanted to save my money for actual necessary TMs since I was going to get paid in a few days— the last Friday of the month. Dark TE was neutrality and could dampen feelings, but the Elder in Solaceon had used it to leave only an undying loyalty toward him remaining in the Hunters' brains.

So, you could technically pick and choose what feeling to leave untouched. Taunt was, well, a taunt, which meant that Buddy would have to leave something like anger, rage, irritation, impatience, or something along those lines intact. Easier said than done. Buddy had a grand number of zero dark type attacks at the moment, so he didn't even have a base to work with.

Angel and Sweetheart would be able to help him with that. I let out a silent chuckle when I imagined those two teaching anything. Poor Buddy would probably have a terrible time, but he was a genius that learned moves in record time, save for his issues with Will-O-Wisp. He was the smartest person in the family, despite him not acknowledging it. I was confident he'd be able to learn it relatively quickly. Not in time for Wake, but soon after that.

Sweetheart could potentially learn Taunt too, but the minute manipulations needed didn't suit her well. She wasn't dumb by any means, just too unfocused to make it work. Even with a TM, I believed she'd struggle to master the move.

"Right. My phone," I whispered. "Will you be okay in here?"

Buddy answered by letting bubbles out of his mouth.

"Gotcha," I said.

First, Melody. Calls, calls, more calls and texts. She was flabbergasted that I'd even managed to get an Electivire, let alone the fact that I hid it from the Poketch Company. Unfortunately for her, that had been an order from Volkner, and he was technically my superior in the League's food chain since I was in the LTIP. I called her and soothed her worries by saying that this was really the last secret I'd keep from her. She didn't like it, and I could tell that she wanted to scold me, but she was too excited to even care.

After telling me I shouldn't have ended my stream so soon, Denzel basically gushed over the battle from start to finish. He was really fired up, as were the rest of my friends. Unfortunately, when he asked me to tell Barry to battle him next, I had to break the news that my new friend wasn't going to stay long, so he decided he'd battle Chase, Lauren or Cecilia instead of the best first-year in the Circuit. Cecilia had said that she was going into the Safari Zone to catch her sixth Pokemon as soon as she got there, but even then Wake was going to be the hardest for her. She'd have to essentially fight a five-on-six. I doubted that her new Pokemon was going to be that strong.

Social media, now. I hadn't wanted to check Chatter, but I'd tried to be a little more online ever since Sunyshore. It wouldn't hurt to check what people were saying about the battle and maybe make a post too.

Right. I'd make a post! I wracked my head for a few minutes, sent the draft to Melody and waited for her to approve, which she did. It wasn't a revolutionary post. Just one saying that I'd enjoyed the match a ton, thanking Barry for the opportunity when he had such a busy schedule and that I'd learned a whole lot. Electivire was a trending topic, funnily enough. Most people were sharing moments of the battle they'd loved with him in it, but there was a minority— a very vocal minority that wasn't very happy with Honey's evolution.

Heardemsay_oO

Why is it that this girl gets everything handed to her? The mentorship with Jasmine was already bullshit, but this takes the cake. Why does she get to have an Electivire without going through the proper channels, which is getting promoted high enough in the League? If I had an Electabuzz, I'd be left out to dry. Even Volkner had to wait to become a Gym Leader!

Ampren7a

This is blatant favoritism from the League. Volkner must have told her. That has to be what that Electabuzz vs Electivire special match during her Gym Battle was about. No one else gets special treatment like she and her friends do.

There were a lot of these. I typed a response to a few, but just deleted it afterward, realizing that it wasn't even worth interacting with them and that Melody and Poketch as a whole would hate me for posting behind their backs. From the outside, I supposed that it looked unfair. And to be honest, there was some degree of favoritism.

So what? Had I lost against Volkner, I never would have gotten Honey to evolve, and Craig Goodwill had told me that making connections was a skill that trainers at the top needed. Heardemsay_oO… after a few minutes of research, I got his real name. Two badges, third year. Ampren7a, three badges, second year. I wasn't looking them up to make fun of them or even threaten them. I wasn't about to turn into Chase from early in the year. I was just satiating my curiosity since I wanted to know the demographics of who was complaining the most.

"Might as well follow some people," I said.

Denzel, Cece, Emi, The Poketch Company, and maybe some of my co-workers too? Ramon, Bobby, Sharon and… yeah, not Aubri. She'd probably hate me even more now considering she had brought up this favoritism issue up before, but from the Company instead of the government. It was strange to see my fans jump into the comments to defend me. Some claimed I'd only lost the battle because of my painkillers or my ankle when that was completely bogus. My mind had been completely clear during the fight. I passed by Goalducc's account and laughed when I saw him analyzing every minute of the battle with Archive. They were apparently doing so on the forums too to grow their fanbase on both sites.

I gave them both a follow too.

I laid down on my bed and outstretched my arms as I scrolled through Chatter for an hour. It was a special and strange feeling, to see people talking about me that much. Psychoanalyzing my every move, calling me a saint who could do no wrong or an evil trainer who hid behind a veneer of innocence and using every minute detail in my life to prove their narrative (those that hated me mostly used how brutal my orders were as 'proof'). Fans and haters, pitted against each other in a fight that apparently mattered? Not to me, but to them. I couldn't deny that seeing people defend me felt good, and that seeing people badmouthing me hurt, but at least it hurt a lot less than it once had.

At the end of the day, I was just a girl.

What really pissed me off were the people blaming my Pokemon for my failures, but I always scrolled through those quickly so I wouldn't convince myself to respond. Hopefully Sunshine wouldn't beat himself up too hard for that loss. We'd proven that movement through explosions was possible and not some hallucination he had had from when he'd been half-dead in a volcano. Roserade was just a lot lighter and nimble, so it was easier for her than it would be for him, but it was still within reach and growing closer by the day.

The afternoon passed slowly, as it always did whenever my Pokemon or friends weren't with me. Buddy was too tired to keep me company, so I ended up falling asleep while brainstorming which TMs I would get. It was hard to balance cost and utility, especially when I wanted everyone to get at least one TM. When I was eating dinner in my room, my phone rang.

My friends were about to arrive. Including Chase, Mira, and Cecilia. They'd apparently sped up after I'd left, going as fast as humanly possible, and they'd caught up to Louis' group in the last few hours, so they were going to enter Pastoria together. Denzel's group was still a day behind, but it was still hard to ignore the surge of happiness coursing through me.

They were back!