CHAPTER 301 - I'M SHARP ENOUGH

Who was Byron Fisker?

An Iron Islander, a corporate stooge who had betrayed his homeland in favor of special interest groups on mainland Sinnoh? Perhaps he was a man who had tried his best despite it all and had, through massive opposition, tried to implement incremental improvements to the islands? Somewhere in-between, maybe. There were cheers as I climbed up the stairs to my platforms, though clearly less than Denzel had gotten at the start of his own battle, and I let the noise roll off my back, focusing on the coming fight and Pokeball warm against my bandaged palm. Gym Leaders usually came second to the battlefield, taking full advantage of their breaks, but Byron was already there, waiting.

Sitting on his metallic platform cross-legged, shovel in hand. It was an implement I could admire, with how sharp and well-maintained he'd kept it throughout the years. They said he'd owned the tool since he'd started working in the mines as a teenager, and while it didn't look new, it looked cared for. He wore thick, beige cargo pants with bright yellow bands around his ankles, no doubt used to be spotted in the darkened mines, along with a sleeveless shirt and a ragged cape draped over his shoulders. It did well to hide the weight of years of duty. Tired eyes, and a man too exhausted to keep up appearances any longer, with how he dressed and wild his burgundy hair was. Chase no doubt would have said the way he dressed was just PR to look like a man of the people. There were shallow scars all over his exposed arms. Yet he still bore the smile of a boy excited to battle, sharp and dangerous. The expression of a hunter.

Who was Byron Fisker, I asked myself again. Did any of his baggage matter to me, at this point in time?

No. Not today. That was not my fight.

He was simply a trainer who needed to be beaten. A man who had come upon a Shieldon fossil deep in the mines of the Iron Island and vowed right then and there that he would be a trainer. People still wondered, how he'd gotten the money to resurrect that Shieldon, but it was something he kept close to his chest.

The arena itself was what I'd expected of it. Rugged metal with hills and potholes large enough for Pokemon to fall into littered the entire surface with little licks of rust here and there. Pointed spikes taller than Sweetheart's eight feet, sprouting from the ground and pointing in every direction. There was so much of it that every breath I took, the taste of metal permeated in my mouth and throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the Gym Trainers had added a Mr. Mime to the usual Kadabra, and the barrier pulsed with what I recognized as glamour. I'd watched enough Conference battles to know that instead of Kadabra, Mr. Mime were the staple to shield the audience from what went on during the battle, especially when one of the trainers had a powerful dark type on hand.

I had just been acknowledged.

Byron stood up with a grunt, though I could tell he'd waited longer than needed to do so, and he pointed at me with his shovel, which gleamed under the Gym's harsh lighting.

"Welcome, Challenger."

The words were electrifying, invigorating. I instinctively leaned forward, desperate for him to go through his speech so we could start battling already. His voice was gravely, broken down to its roughest properties from days spent in the mines.

"Grace Pastel. For getting all the way up to your eighth, I congratulate you," he drawled, some of his accent slipping through. "This will be a six-on-six battle with two switches allowed. I reserve the right to use any Pokemon in my arsenal that I deem fit, and killing any Pokemon will get you disqualified from the League Circuit."

My eyes widened, and my throat tightened as I grinned so much my cheeks hurt. Two, not three. It was obvious, what he was targeting. My weakness. As my brain scrambled to adjust my plans, the Gym Leader continued.

"Let's see if you're sharp enough yet to cut through me," he finished, placing his shovel atop his shoulder.

What was it, with steel type specialists and sharpness? Not that I minded, in fact, I fucking loved it. I'd show him I was sharp enough to cut through him. With a radiant smile, I passed a finger over the release button of Sunshine's Pokeball. His eyes were filled with glee when he looked back at me, and he roared out a Flamethrower into the sky to show off to the crowd. The flames were pure white close to his snout, becoming bluer the further away they got from him. Byron studied the dragon type, his face completely still. There were a multitude of reasons I was leading with Sunshine, but he was mainly one thing.

Bait.

Turtonator was, in this battle, a bit of an enigma. Him altering the terrain in any way would not help us reach our end game, and molten metal was not able to be influenced by Princess' Ancient Power and wouldn't work well to alter the ground to help with Angel other than flattening it some, but he would certainly make Byron think I was planning on working with a molten floor to hurt his steel types. There were, as it stood, only a few Pokemon he could counter Sunshine with. Bronzong, which would reveal his personal Pokemon early. The psychic was a master of Rain Dance, manipulating water, and had the ability Heatproof. Second was Empoleon who despite it not being her specialty, would be able to use water to cancel us out or at least slow us down, and would synergize excellently with Bronzong. Lastly was Steelix— either his personal one, or his eighth badge one— and whose thick steel plating would be able to resist the heat from the molten metal. By leading with Turtonator, I narrowed his options enough to know what to expect.

It was something every trainer would have to consider, when fighting Sunshine. How did one fight heat itself, hotter than a thousand degrees Celsius? He was a problem, no matter how you pegged it, and a huge one at that.

At the twentieth second, Byron sent out his Pokemon. The red light grew, grew, and grew until it revealed the Steelix I'd been expecting. The way to differentiate the two was that Byron's Steelix was smaller than average, and the metal coating his body was tinted darker than usual. This one was a very light grey, almost white, and he was large enough for me not to have any doubts. Steelix rose with a grace almost sinuous, each segment moving with a hypnotic spin. Metal screeched against metal as the ground type coiled around himself, almost deafening. Dim, red eyes stared down at Sunshine, Steelix exposing his flattened teeth built to dig through stone and earth.

The referee counted down.

And slashed her hand downward.

Here was the thing about battling Steelix. Like Gyarados, it did not matter how slow they were, when they were so large they could be across the arena in seconds. They were titans of the underworld and used their sheer mass to either scare away any Pokemon or slam through every opponent they had before they could realize what had happened. Sunshine looked like a puny bug next to Steelix, almost pitiful.

Byron had no doubt expected me to switch out sooner rather than later into something like Jellicent.

He was wrong.

Flames burst through the cracks in Turtonator's scales as the ground began to shake when Steelix threw himself forward, cracks spreading through the entire arena like it was made of paper and not solid metal. A ball of light, acting as a second sun, appeared high in the sky and the flames roiling out of Sunshine went from blue to bright white as the metal below him turned molten. Fire turned to a Flame Charge, and Sunshine retreated to his shell, striking his back with an Iron Tail to drift left. He was straining to move with the constant Bulldoze, but what was a dragon's life without struggle? Steelix turned to follow as he grunted from the heat, but Sunshine instantly cut in and switched directions again.

"Corner him and Dragon Breath!" Byron called out.

Steel rose in Sunshine's path, and he slammed into the glowering wall, denting it, but it was not hot enough for him to break through it just yet. With Steelix's massive size, massive attacks followed. The steel type's jaw unlocked, and golden and blue lights swirled in his mouth, gathering into a massive ball of energy that keened to the world louder and louder.

"Fire Pillar."

The still-melting ground below Steelix bubbled, and then burst with the deafening roar of white flames wide enough to engulf half of the ground type's body. The fire exploded upon contact with Steelix's head, and I'd been hoping to knock it out of the way to make the Dragon Breath veer off-course, but Steelix was a force of nature, a walking natural disaster unto itself. When Steelix moved, the world moved with them. The ground shook and Pokemon fled in fear of what would happen to them. Cracks spread through his outer shell, but the Dragon Breath struck true and enveloped all of Sunshine, kicking up molten metal that further hurt the Steelix and creating a wide dent in the ground.

I'd expected to panic. For my mind to race and to have my hand racing toward my Pokeball, but the thing about my bond with Sunshine was that it ran deep. Ours was a partnership forged in revenge and blood, so calm seeped into my veins and I smiled when a stream of howling flames battered Steelix enough for the steel type to screech and Sunshine finally broke through his prison of metal, the steel having melted enough to be soft thanks to the extra oomph from Fire Pillar. The ground continued to shake, energy seeping through the cracks, but the tremors got less powerful the further away Sunshine got from Steelix, and we were faster, now. Hidden away in his shell for defense, the dragon zoomed across the arena while Steelix reeled from the hit. A few times, I had to warn him about a fissure or crack too large for him to just roll over, and an explosion carried him into a short hop to dodge.

Our strategy here had been two-fold. One, keep the ground next to Sunshine molten so Byron's counter would not be able to manipulate the steel into a solid to hurt him, and two, keep his distance from Steelix and outlast him.

"You're far enough now!" I yelled. "Focus Blast! Aim for the segments!"

Sunshine snapped out of his shell, golden energy gathering right in front of his snout. The entire arena was molten now, save for the corners he hadn't gotten to. Glowering red, continuously shifting and most importantly, burning.

"Follow and Rock Blast," Byron said.

Steelix pushed himself forward with a frustrated scream, shards of rock exploding like shrapnel all over his face. They broke against Sunshine's scales, denting and peeling them off as the ground type approached. Most of them just plunged into the molten metal around him, but one hit him in the face as the Bulldoze grew in strength and sent the superheated iron high up in the sky. The Focus Blast wavered, and for a moment, I thought it would explode before we launched it, but instead, Sunshine concentrated it into a single dot, so infinitely small I could barely see the glow amidst the fighting. It was so hot inside the arena that I could barely see Sunshine. It was like looking at a mirage.

Then, he launched it.

I saw it cut across one of Steelix's segments a fraction of a second before I actually heard the sound. A deep, resonating hum of energy that broke against the steel type. Months ago, deep inside Mount Coronet, I had realized that that was an Onix's weakness, and the same was true for their evolved forms. It was not so much that it was a gap in their armor, but it was where they felt the most pain. I kept my face neutral, containing the savage grin wanting to etch itself upon it as Steelix writhed against the superheated, liquid steel. His huge size worked in his favor here, with the way his tail slammed against Sunshine's plastron and sent him skidding back until he hit the barrier with a tired grunt.

Tired. That was what he was. Exhausted, already. Beaten by a constant Bulldoze and sharpened Rock Blasts as large as his torso. His scales were bent and—

Arm bent the wrong way. Broken from the tail hit from Steelix. He drew upon heavy breaths, each exhale spreading fire and heat throughout the arena, powered by the sun, globs of superheated metal constantly flying from the shaking earth.

"Iron Tail the ground and Metal Edge," Byron said. "If he tries to get on you, just Heavy Slam."

Sunshine and I shared another look, and even though I could not see him very well, understanding struck immediately.

When he had been half dead, deep in the bellows of Mount Wela, Sunshine had limped along for days in an attempt to hunt and recover. He'd been half-dead in Mount Coronet for days after Kamaile's death and harassed by passing trainers and roving bands of Rangers. Battered, but not broken. Never broken, for that was antithetical to all dragons. Steelix's tail blurred, slamming down on the molten metal and splitting it apart in a cone and revealing the solid ground below. The shockwave forced Sunshine a few feet back, but that was only second to the countless shards of metal bursting out of Steelix's body. He's shedding weight, I realized. Something Byron had trained Steelix to do to gain in speed and maneuverability— shit, no time to think!

"Go in!" I screamed.

Some might think it foolish, to ignore what the Gym Leader you were facing had said when they had an explicit counter to what you'd just ordered. An explosion rocked Sunshine's side of the field, plumes of smoking sulfur, molten metal and fire rattling the barrier close to Byron. Lightened by too many Flame Charges to count, Turtonator took flight, and for a moment it was like time was standing still. The trail of fire he left behind was like unfurling wings, and he soared through the skies as Steelix angled his Metal Edges upward. Sunshine retreated into his shell, his armor, and he got hit once, twice, thrice, each time propelling himself with another explosion so as not to lose his momentum.

Byron cackled, barely audible through the raging fires as he accepted the challenge. "Dragon Breath, wide!"

Again, it began as a tiny little light, a mixture of blue at its edges and yellow at its center. Steelix bit down on the draconic energy, and when he opened his mouth again, the blast formed into a cone Turtonator was incapable of dodging, more draconic wind than anything else. The Dragon Breath slowed Turtonator enough for him to barely make it onto Steelix's side with flames growing and growing until he was a ball of fiery death. We didn't get the Heat Crash we'd wanted, but he anchored himself by plunging an Iron Tail into the shallower and softer metal. That was the thing about steel types. Their armor softened with heat as well. Still, jagged edges rose from Steelix's armor as if he could shapeshift and kept hitting at Sunshine from every direction.

Smaller now, but huge still, Steelix instantly roared in agony, and without hesitation started to fall to intentionally crush Sunshine under all of his weight. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have expected a Gym Leader to employ such a brutal tactic, but I'd known as soon as he had ordered Heavy Slam that was what he'd been planning.

It was hot enough now. The attack would be quick to charge.

"Fire Blast!"

Now faster to move, Steelix fell down, angling himself to fall right on top of Sunshine, steel creaking and molten metal clinging to his skin as he did so. Sunshine inhaled and drew upon the fiery depths within. His scaled and rugged exterior glowed with an intense heat—

And Steelix hit the ground.

The barrier shook as one, and the impact made my hair blow backward as the force reverberated throughout the arena. The heated metal recoiled in response to the colossal force. Waves of liquid steel surged outward in a chaotic dance, momentarily disrupted by the seismic shockwave of Steelix's descent, and my heart nearly jumped out of my throat as the arena went eerily silent.

What was it, that was so special about Sunshine? He was a Pokemon raised by death and struggle. For more than seventy years, he had endlessly toiled toward a single goal of conquest. To sit atop a mountain, leaving only a trail of his enemy's ashes behind him. A wish gone undone, at least for now, but the flame of ambition had only grown within the last few months as he had.

There was the subtle crackling of flame. Almost a whisper, with how quiet it was, barely distinguishable from the molten metal itself. Byron yelled, but Steelix was already rising, his movement slowed by all of that metal slowing him down. Tons upon tons of it, clinging to every inch of his skin like a coiling snake. My breath caught in my throat, a small, weak and quivering thing.

Then, came the inferno.

Once, I'd been fascinated by how blinding Craig's Typhlosion could be. This wasn't that, not yet, but I understood, now. The surroundings themselves caught on fire as everything went white and something in the air popped, wind blew upward like a typhoon and the world burned to ashes. Light itself penetrated through my eyelids and I did not get to see the blast itself, but when I opened them, Steelix was on fire, metal seeping down to the ground as it superheated so much he struggled to keep himself together. Fire would consume all until it ran out of fuel, and this one would use anything as fuel. I had to blink to chase away the sun spots, and Sunshine rose from within the liquid metal, which was now deep enough to reach his upper chest. He was barely standing, his eyes only half-opened and plastron caved in the wrong way as he struggled to breathe and glowed slightly from the hastily put-together Iron Defense he'd used to survive getting crushed by Steelix.

Struggling.

Beaten.

But what it meant to be a dragon was to still be standing, at the end of it, because at the heart of it all, Sunshine would rather keep fighting until he died than see his opponent win. He was, simply put, a very stubborn kind of perseverance. Fire consumed, and dragons took.

But it was not over quite yet.

With what I imagined was a tired smile and satisfaction at such a wonderful opponent, Turtonator straightened his back and Steelix shook off the liquid metal currently on him. Part of me had hoped Byron would recall him out of fear, but if there was someone who wouldn't blink, it was a Gym Leader. At this point, I assumed he was too tired to move, and so I outstretched an arm.

"Flamethrower."

Quick, simple, and powered by his second sun and the ambient heat that was over a thousand degrees Celsius. The flames clicked into place as the wind from the massive updrafts howled, and Steelix—

"Dragon Tail!"

Was well enough to move. He was an unstoppable force, and he narrowly ducked to dodge the Flamethrower until Sunshine angled it down, though he was slow about it. Now smaller and with parts of his actual tail missing, Steelix could, ironically enough, maneuver better than he ever had, and with one smooth motion and a twist of his body, he sent his shining blue stump of a tail forward, hurtling toward Sunshine's chest.

"Hold on with Heat Crash!"

He'd already been planning on holding on, though the surge of fire coming from within of the building Heat Crash was not something he'd anticipated me to ask.

"Commit!" Byron cackled through the fire.

With a heavy grunt and with the use of only one arm, he clasped onto Steelix's thick, melting tail and used the weight of the impact to his advantage. Like a glowing sun, the sphere from Heat Crash expanded and blew up with a deafening explosion of wind and colorful flames. Shades of gold, blue, white, red and orange engulfed the entire arena as Sunshine crumpled down and slowly sank into the metal. Steelix's eyes were clouded by agony, with deep screeches resonating from deep inside his throat. It took a few more seconds, but he slumped and collapsed as well, allowing me to breathe out a sigh of relief as I smothered a grin. The ground stopped shaking from the constant Bulldoze and it stopped raining molten metal.

Sunshine had taken down a Steelix on his own today.

"Both Pokemon are unable to battle! Since Turtonator… fainted first, the Challenger should send out their next Pokemon first as well!" the referee yelled.

I got now, why he'd wanted an extra two to three days instead of six after this battle. Sunshine probably had more broken bones in his body than not, at this point in time, and possibly internal damage of some kind. Part of me felt guilty he'd been subjected to this, but not as much as I thought I'd be. There was something primal about battling like this in a safe manner that resonated deep within me, and I knew he would be pissed if I whined and apologized to him. There wasn't a much different way of fighting a Steelix anyway, so it wasn't like Byron had anything else to work with.

And Arceus, fighting types like steel was fun, with how resilient they were. No other way to let loose like this otherwise.

"You did well, my little ray of Sunshine," I whispered. The Pokeball beamed toward him, and I considered my next options.

The field wouldn't stay superheated for long without him, but it would for a while yet, and the Sunny Day still lingered in the sky. As it stood, I was confident we could go one more fight in this environment.

The advantage was that I was still locking in Byron to certain Pokemon. Now that Sunshine was actually out of the fight, it opened up more options like Corviknight, but the principle I was going with was still the same and the floor being in this state before anyone could stop him meant that even Empoleon was out. He'd only be able to send floating or flying Pokemon.

For my part, the options were either Buddy or Claydol. Sweetheart was capable of wading through the field without being hurt too much and would no doubt do well against anything Byron would send, but that would just goad him into sending out a Pokemon capable of flying, which was still among her biggest counters. I couldn't send out Princess, because molten metal wasn't molten rock, and couldn't be manipulated by Ancient Power.

In the end, I opted for Jellicent, simply because he was a safer bet and Claydol would be better used once all of the metal turned solid once again. There had been something else, however, something I hoped would pay off in an instant. Yes, his water type moves would be weaker, but that was a price I was willing to pay right now, and they'd only grow stronger as time went on.

There was a way about how Buddy glowed pale blue with an otherworldly sheen high above the molten ground that captivated my eye. Byron knew about the trick we'd used to whisper, so there was no use in setting it up and wasting time.

I did not have much time to get lost in the sight, though, because Byron instantly released his Bronzong. Personal Pokemon. Alarms blared through my mind despite having expected it to be released so early and theorizing that Bronzong was one of the most likely candidates for this battle, but seeing the psychic in the flesh was another matter entirely. They were tiny— barely over five feet— but the sheer weight of the ringing bell Bronzong announced themselves with was enough to make my knees weak and my ears ring. Sound continuously rippled through the arena as if it had a physical form and Buddy strained under its pressure. It was as if the sound was warping the air itself, reminding me of Aliyah's Chimecho, but much more powerful.

This was no song. The sound itself was indescribable. Deep and high, delayed and early, and most of all, wrong. It was distinctively alien and echoed from every direction, causing me to shiver and feel like a force was gripping my brain and squeezing it like a grape. Never had I seen a psychic type seem so haunting, their scarlet eyes brimming with wisdom and untold horrors. Bronzong's metallic form was etched with cryptic runes and weathered by the ages. Layers of rust upon rust, caked into their form, yet somehow still, they managed to look so pristine.

Untouched.

It was said that Byron's Bronzong was thousands of years old. That he had found them wandering off-route near abandoned ruins of one of the countless fallen civilizations that had come to our shores to die in early Hisuian history. The psychic had still been there, watering crops that no longer existed like an automaton, barely conscious of their actions.

Wind began whipping up my hair, and the air grew wet and humid. Through the barrier.

"They're going to drop lava on you with portals!" I snapped. "Will-O-Wisp!"

I knew from videos that Bronzong didn't use barriers in their eighth badge fights to give people a chance, but—

"Rapture," Byron exhaled, the air blowing across his hair. "Rifts."

What was it like, to fight a storm?

There was a crack— the shattering of glass as Bronzong tore ten holes through reality, all pointed toward Buddy. They were perfectly circular, with countless nearly transparent strings writhing around their edges that hurt to stare at for too long.

One more opened above Buddy's head, instantly dumping slag and molten metal Bronzong had no doubt linked from under the sea of superheated iron. He quickly began turning to vapor, and with an irritated click, he sent the Will-O-Wisps flying Bronzong's way with masterful control. They spun and intertwined with one another as they danced with a deafening silence, and gallons of water began pouring out of Bronzong's portals. That was the thing, with Bronzong. While they had Rain Dance, he could also pull water from somewhere else. The jets of water split into millions of droplets that fell horizontally through the arena as the wind howled and the world screamed.

It was raining sideways. Water pattered onto the molten metal, and vapor filled the arena as the battlefield cooled.

Even with the Sunny Day from Sunshine, Water Sport was almost working at full capacity. Still, every few seconds, Bronzong would drop scorching metal onto Jellicent, taking from the bottom of the pool to still use the parts that hadn't cooled. When they did cool, they turned to slag and slowed Buddy further.

That was, until his body split.

To regenerate fast enough, the ghost needed a large chunk to use as a launchpad. Around twenty percent of his head split off from the main body and instantly turned to another Jellicent, his old bits turning to liquid water and falling toward the scorching depths below. I restrained the urge to clench a fist as the burning wisps reached Bronzong and—

Started howling. Screams of agony, barely making it through the storm. Byron said something, but it was inaudible by now, with the constant ringing of the bell and the tempest Bronzong had created. I did not understand how, or why, but they winked out of existence as soon as they reached the steel type, and there had been no use of psychic energy either. None of the videos I'd seen had Bronzong ever interacting with Will-O-Wisp, and I did not exactly have the luxury of time to figure it out. Buddy had turned into a shapeless mass now, and Bronzong had stopped dropping metal on him now that they'd figured it wouldn't work. The Night Shades the water type had hastily summoned, though, were a different matter, and even the rain seemed to damage them enough for them to blow up in puffs of purple smoke before they could launch any attacks.

One thing was for certain, Buddy could not attain victory one-on-one against Bronzong. None of my Pokemon could. This was, in essence, Byron forcing me to use my switches early to see how I would possibly cope with being behind and having to claw my way back into an advantage. Buddy spat out countless Shadow Balls in rapid succession, but he keened when another portal sent them back right at him. I'd believed this would be a good matchup against Bronzong, but I'd been wrong.

It was, morbidly enough, still my best one. The ground had cooled into a smooth surface now, though Bronzong was still flooding the field with Rain Dance despite Buddy being able to use that water to heal. Byron was either setting up for Empoleon or forcing me into having to switch into Claydol or Togekiss next.

But we weren't going to go down that easily.

"Change of plan!" I yelled, cupping my mouth. "Gather some water!"

Jellicent were, as a species, hunters of the deep. They hid, lying still for days at a time until they could snatch their prey and drain them of every ounce of life they had, growing and growing for centuries until they became masters of the ocean capable of sinking constructs of steel larger than any Pokemon they could ever kill. Eyes shining bright through the storm, water began to coalesce around him, both from the vapor and the rain. It condensed into a group of four tight spheres as large as Bronzong themselves, but Buddy did not form them into another move quite yet, not when his opponent would just be able to open up portals to dodge without even moving.

We needed to get close, and he was smart enough to figure that out without my command. Still a shapeless, writhing mass of fluorescent water, Buddy launched himself quicker, now that the Sunny Day had waned completely. Just like the Will-O-Wisp, Jellicent strained under the push of sideways gravity, struggling to approach Bronzong, and Byron pointed his shovel forward, his lips moving.

I could barely make out the words cut before two portals closed next to his Bronzong and opened through Jellicent as soon as he crossed a threshold of around thirty feet.

He had cut him into three diagonal parts and sent those parts sprawling at opposite sides of the arena.

Two of the water spheres collapsed, exploding from the pressure they'd been put into before Buddy could recover, but that was fine, given how quickly he could regrow from this. Byron was testing the waters— probing for a weakness to use while buying time. The steel type angled themselves up, and a deafening Flash Cannon formed inside the hole below them, illuminating the entire arena which was now growing dark from stormy clouds. Instead of concentrating into a single, screaming point like Jasmine's, this one widened in a split second and shot out faster than I could blink.

The attack hit Buddy, but his body was liquid, now. The damage was substantial, the hit having vaporized the majority of his body, but it didn't knock him back. Close enough, now.

"Taunt!"

We only had one shot at this. The ghosts' eyes dimmed with darkness, and Bronzong froze, the entire storm around them collapsing within seconds and portals closing. For a moment in time, we had silence again, and it felt deafening. The gravitational field around Bronzong also ended, and everything returned to normal, save for the fact that the steel type was firing off Flash Cannon after Flash Cannon. We weren't going to get this off for free, and by the Legendaries, those attacks hurt. Each one, loud enough to deafen if you were close enough, hot enough to melt metal and to just make Jellicent's body disappear.

"Will-O-Wisp, then Water Spout!" I screamed, grinning.

The field effect that had screwed up Will-O-Wisp had to have been something Bronzong was consciously doing. It would have made no sense otherwise. The spirits crawled through our plane of existence— slower, this time— and they all rushed to enter Bronzong's body. Purple flames sprouted to existence around the steel type's body, moments later, the remaining spheres— along with a third one he had hastily gathered, levitated inside Bronzing's cavity and exploded with enough pressure to dent through metal.

The pain seemed to snap Bronzong out of the Taunt, because an invisible force snatched Buddy by the throat and started compressing him, leaving me no time to admire my work. It was a combination of Imprison, a concentrated Gravity and Psychic, and there was also anger. Anger at having their storm interrupted, I presumed.

Not that it bothered Byron much. He had his shovel slung over his shoulder and was watching with a lazy, satisfied smile, and I understood why a moment later when Buddy failed to separate parts of his body to escape. We were trapped here. We'd gotten close enough to dish out a few hits and burn Bronzong, but there was no way we were getting out of that vice or attacking out of it. Already, Buddy was trying to form Shadow Balls or Hydro Pumps, but they just exploded in his face from the sheer amount of pressure. It was enough to squeeze a fleshy Pokemon to death, or close to it, I imagined.

That also meant that our only means of escape, Water Cloak, was out of the picture, especially with the Rain Dance having ended. These last few weeks, I'd found that it was a lot more useful than only preventing freezing.

I recalled Buddy with a small nod, happy that we'd at least gotten off what we wanted. The ground was flooded, having turned into a sea, and Byron had forced me into a switch anyway. I sucked in air through my teeth, telling myself it always had to be this way, and nearly released my next Pokemon right away due to sheer excitement instead of waiting for the burn to chew through Bronzong.

Being honest with myself, things were looking quite bad. Not only had Byron fucked me over with only giving me two switches, there weren't many ways to fix the field and empty it of water if I wanted Angel to do his job. Bronzong was still raring to go, though the ghostly flames would slowly eat at them and their armor was chipped all over from the Water Spout. Bells kept ringing, and I bit my lip to stop myself from shivering. My hair felt wet and damp, as did the air.

There was, however, a silver lining.

The Rain Dance had stopped. That meant that Byron, too, couldn't have the field too flooded, or it would screw with the team he had planned. He wanted to screw me over until he emptied the entire place or froze it using Empoleon… or something else, but I was running on empty. Still, considering which Pokemon I was facing, there was only one option left, and Byron knew it.

Princess.

She materialized in a flash of scarlet at the twenty-ninth second, eyeing her opponent with the usual displeasure. Her wings did not flap, yet a wind carried her, almost silent. A whisper you could almost make out, if you listened long enough. There was no material for her to work with using Ancient Power here, so we were still handicapped.

"This is a different battle," I quickly warned. "You have to be quick, and don't get close, you won't be able to escape. Watch out for—"

"Power Gem, Rapture! Get close!" Byron yelled.

"—Gravity!" I finished. "Wish and Mystical Fire!"

While Flash Cannon was among the steel type's strongest attacks, they could also use it to propel themselves. This time, the bright light wasn't wide, instead blasting behind the psychic in a thin line as spheres of light appeared around them, orbiting so quickly they became a single line that—

Exploded. I covered my eyes, cursing at the fact that steel types were so bright all the time, and Princess had just finished using Wish, sending a light piercing through the ceiling. Without a sound, the wind carried her, and she broke to the right, keeping her distance from the advancing Bronzong, but a portal opened, and the light from Power Gem kept chasing her. It broke against her barrier until it glowed red and broke after a few seconds, and then hit her in the back, burning off her fur while she finished off a Nasty Plot and her eyes gleamed with plans of queendom and subjects like she'd spoken to me about so many times. Bronzong shot out another blinding Power Gem while she weaved flames around her. They were a dull red, at first, something she no doubt would have called pathetic, but then they brightened and turned bright blue as Bronzong's bell rang again in an attempt to stun and slow her down so their next Power Gem could hit and they could get in range to lock her up.

I winced when it did hit her wing. For Princess, dodging had always been easy, but not when Brozong could use up to eleven portals as misdirection to confuse her. Another one opened right in front of the fairy type, forcing her to swerve out of the way in order not to fly right into Bronzong, and I ordered her to shed her barrier for speed, given that they weren't working anyway. Another Nasty Plot finished, and blue flames intensified even further, not as hot as Sunshine's— nowhere near as hot, but warm enough to do what we needed. Togekiss circled around the arena, nearly scraping against the barrier as the air around her warped with how quick she was flying and Byron decided to switch tactics.

"Rifts again," he grunted. "Continue your storm."

My stomach dropped.

Shit, shit, shit! What was the plan here? Was he only going to use flying types and Empoleon from now on? Did he just not care? Bronzong stopped on my side of the arena, opening portals that poured out countless gallons of water that split until they became Rain Drops pressurized enough to hurt, just like Brine was. Bronzong glowed eerily in the darkening arena thanks to their burn, but there was no way we were going to outlast them, the most annoying Pokemon of Byron's to take down. I ground my teeth as Princess' Mystical Fire dulled, but she sent it forth anyway, the fire flying in every direction at speeds I could barely track. They weakened and slowed the closer they got to Bronzong and barely ended up tickling him by the end.

After two Nasty Plots. And there was no point in using any more due to diminishing returns.

"Stay up high!" I yelled. "They might drop water on you too! Defog!"

With a flap of Togekiss' wings, the clouds above cleared, and the rain weakened instead of stopping as I'd hoped. Byron frowned, and I remembered that I'd never shown off the move after having Nightstalker teach her, and I leaned against my knees as sweat and water dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. Relax, I breathed. Just because he was doing something that made no sense from my point of view didn't mean I was about to just lose everything, though the possibility of this being a trap was high.

We'd reached an equilibrium, now. Rain barely strong enough to hurt Princess, and not enough to stop Mystical Fire. Even with Heatproof, it was the best move we had at our disposal to deal consistent damage. A gust of Fairy Wind helped Princess climb in altitude as a Flash Cannon seared the edge of her skin, too wide to fit in a portal, but wide enough to make dodging a hassle anyway. It was then, that I noticed that Bronzong never seemed to actually go through a portal themselves, and I wondered if that was a limitation or a self-imposed handicap as a personal Pokemon.

Still, we were losing. Losing because I wasn't playing to Princess' strength.

Teeth flashed, eyes widened, and I decided to bet on my daughter.

"Fire and ice!" I snapped.

That was only the beginning, but we needed to start somewhere. Ice from Tri-Attack poured out of Princess, as did fire as she spun them around her as she sped through the arena and dodged another beam of light. The Wish she'd sent earlier appeared again and healed some of her burns, but she was focused. Eyes narrowed so tightly they might as well have been shut. Blue flames gushed forward in a line, vaporizing water around them and splitting apart to stop Bronzong from isolating them using portals. Instead, rain around the psychic slowed before freezing in place, as if suspended in time, gathering into a Weather Ball packed full of wind and water and ready to explode at a minor touch.

And explode it did, a wave of pressure pushing the fire apart, rattling Princess some, but otherwise having little effect. As if they could bend the water themselves, it rushed to stop the flames before they could reach him, and Princess used the opportunity to launch another Wish upward between heavy breaths as she sent the delayed beam of ice forward.

"Shadow Ball, then Moonblast. Overwhelm them!" I added.

Multi-tasking. She'd been blessed with the ability since she'd been a Togepi, but we'd never decided to push it this far. Fire struck Bronzong, although weakened, causing him to glow and the Will-O-Wisps to squeal in pleasure, followed by ice hurtled at them a few seconds later. Bronzong's portals were slowing, now, but we weren't done. Shadow Ball was next, though the steel type managed to shoot it out of the sky with a quick Power Gem, creating a billow of smoke that Togekiss sent swarming at Rapture with a gust of wind as a pristine moon gathered in front of her mouth. As an empath, she could feel his location and kept striking while she gathered the energy needed to cut.

She was always moving, because she had to. It was who she was, and what Hustle had pushed her to become. You only have eleven portals, but what if we use more than ten angles of attack? Push, push, push until we kept Bronzong on the defensive, because that was the only way we were going to win. Fire, ice, Shadow Ball, Fairy Wind, she could not be stopped.

But constantly chaining attacks had its consequences and was a double-edged blade, our favorite. She was tiring out, and fast.

The moon was without impurities as Princess finished molding it into her image and sent it forward. It was fast, faster than most Moonblasts, and had made its way across the battlefield before I could count to five. Superheated steel that was then cooled turned brittle, and countless invisible blades slashed at Bronzong's outer shell, furthering the damage dealt by Buddy and cutting across them like they were made of wood and not solid steel, even after the Iron Defense Byron had every single one of his Pokemon set up at the start of every fight.

"Rapture."

We were pushing, and yet Byron's voice brought me back from my high. Princess didn't need me to yell to understand that they were preparing something—

A portal opened above her and in front of Bronzong. There was a flash in Rapture's eyes, and then a crack as sinews of metal penetrated her back and Bronzong held her with Psychic.

Both of Princess' wings were bent back, and her moon disappeared as she fell down to the sea below. There was a lump in my throat as my hand instantly went for my Pokeball, waiting another second to see if she would recover from the sheer amount of pain she'd just been dealt with.

She didn't.

If I'd had her keep her barrier to buy a few seconds and allowed her to fight back…

But she's not out of the fight either, I thought as I beamed her back to her Pokeball before she could touch the water. Princess didn't need her wings to fly, especially now that she could manipulate the wind this well. She would, however, be incredibly slow and basically a sitting duck the next time I sent her out, and the pain from her wings would fray her focus to a point where we wouldn't be able to replicate what we'd just done.

Byron could have done this since the start, so why now? I'd dealt with this with Steelix and Sunshine just earlier, but I'd chalked it to the sheer difference in size and Byron going a little harder because his defences were among my best.

"First time someone's ever punched back, hm, lass?" Byron drawled with a satisfied sigh. "You dish it out, I dish back."

"I'm fine," I quickly countered. "I'd be a hypocrite not to be."

"Of course."

I didn't like how he sounded, but it was a possible mind trick, and my thirty seconds were running out. Had I ever been in such a disadvantageous position in a battle before? No switches left and with two tired Pokemon waiting in the wings? Though Buddy was a lot better than Princess was and I'd be confident sending him out against a healthy Pokemon. I eyed the sea below, in all of its turbulence, and decided it had to be him again. Rapture was almost out for the count, and we could hide in the depths to wait them out. I was confident now that with how tired the psychic was, they wouldn't pull any tricks and beat us in water TE manipulation.

And the fact that they'd been capable of beating a creature born to hunt in the ocean in that department before terrified me.

This time, Jellicent appeared below the water, a dull red light barely peeking through the darkened waves. Bronzong was completely still as they hovered in the sky, angled slightly back and ready to fire off a Flash Cannon. What truly confirmed to me that they were on their last legs was that they weren't using Rain Dance or creating a storm any longer, because they knew Buddy would be able to take advantage when the steel type fainted.

"They're tired and slow," I snapped. "Whirlpool and drag them in."

I had no idea where Buddy was, but water below Bronzong began to spin, turning into a typhoon that lengthened upward like a snake, the water at its edges freezing. Too wide to be contained by any portals, if they even had the energy to open them, still.

"Push it down and Flash Cannon," Byron countered.

The world shifted, and the top of the typhoon dissolved. Ice crackled under the pressure, and then the structure would have evaporated, had Buddy not been constantly supplying it with more water. Bronzong could only push with gravity for so long. Their body was in tatters, with deep gashes running all over and even a small hole poking through. They'd been burning for nearly as long as they'd been battling, and by the Legendaries, beating them had been a puzzle. The water swallowed Bronzong whole, freezing in an instant as it fell down to the sea and left the psychic to an unknown fate. I had no idea how Buddy finished them off, but it was completely silent.

It was honestly cooler that way.

Twenty seconds later, Bronzong's unconscious body floated up, face down in the water.

"Bronzong is unable to battle! Leader Byron, send out your third Pokemon!" the referee declared.

While technically ahead in Pokemon now, I was obviously still losing. The earlier Wish from Princess entered the water and healed Buddy some as Byron sent out his next Pokemon. A regal silhouette emerged from the aquatic abyss. A glint of steel pierced through the water's surface as Empoleon made herself known with a deep honk— far deeper than Louis'. Her trident-like beak looked golden and without a touch of decay, as was the steel at the side of her fins.

"Dot the sea, Empoleon," Byron said.

From the videos I'd seen, I knew what I was facing. Instantly, the sea shook as if it was rippled by an Earthquake, and waves at least ten feet high swarmed the arena as islands began to sprout from below the ocean. Empoleon was an artist— a sculptor good enough to rival Princess in detail, and better than her in scale of what she could work with, except she used metal instead of earth and stone. An island sprouted below her, and she stood atop it with a deep bow.

Islands, then, I thought. That was… I could work with that. I kept my poker face, arms flat against my side and moistened my lips.

"Will-O-Wisp again and Scald," I spoke.

Islands kept popping up left and right, and cold, purple flames burst out of the water, all rushing toward Empoleon. The steel type lowered herself to the ground, clawing across the steel of the island she had just made, and she raked. Shards of steel shrouded in darkness pelted at the flames with accuracy that shouldn't have been possible. Magnetism. Subtle, but still there, and the Will-O-Wisps died screaming. Next came the Scald, hot enough to hurt even steel types, and Empoleon jumped into the water to dodge the attack—

Fast! I could tell from how her form disturbed the water when she swam, but she was so quick we had no hopes of getting close and catching up. With a graceful jump, she landed atop another island, and steel formed around her webbed feet to stop her exactly at the center. Her body glowed slightly from the lingering Iron Defense she had set up.

Here was the dilemma, when fighting Empoleon. She could shape steel into anything she wanted, which meant that approaching her was a surefire way of getting skewered, and it meant that she'd be able to sense and attack if we came from underground too, just like Emi's Lycanroc had been. We need to find a counter for that, and soon. She was a master at what she did, and when she worked, there was never any flaw. A perfectionist by definition with the way she stared at people and her opponents.

Artist. Perfectionist. Sculptor. Empoleon had dedicated her life to art, and that was what battling was to her.

But! What could she do, to actually win, if we never approached? While she was fast in the water, we were better than her in it.

My eyes scanned the ocean as the last of the islands came to be, and Night Shades burst from the surface, shapeless, silent creatures barely held together by countless spirits. Webs of iron burst from the ground, piercing through the shades, but the explosion was more powerful than before. We'd learned to adjust that for when we needed a big one.

"Watch for Will-O-Wisps!" Byron warned.

Damn it, he fucking knew. I'd planned on the smoke masking the little buds of flames, trusting in Buddy to come to that conclusion on his own, but I supposed it had been obvious, in retrospect. There was a loud splash, and then a trail of smoke when Empoleon escaped to another island and started growing another web. They were almost like… trees. Winding branches that divided again and again.

I grinned when Jellicent jumped out of the water, more of a net with red eyes than anything else. At this range—

Now! "Taunt!"

I blinked, and metal tipped Empoleon's claws. Again, we only had this one opportunity, and flames had already been prepared—

Byron recalled Empoleon, using the first switch of the battle.

Ah, Buddy. Never flashy, but consistently annoying to fight, because if there was one thing a Pokemon centuries old never ran out of, it was patience, and time was on our side rather than Byron's. The Gym Leader cracked his neck, a noise picked up by the microphone and that made me think back to Princess' broken wings, and he released a…

I squinted. She was so tiny, when you couldn't zoom in like in the videos. Her bright pink cloak mimics the hues of a delicate flower in full bloom, albeit with an unconventional twist. It was made of metal, each blade sharp enough to cut anything that hit her with a physical move. A thin string of silk shot out from the bug type's mouth, and she anchored herself on one of the trees Empoleon had built—

Oh.

Oh, this had been planned, hadn't it? The islands, and the trees? Byron had just been forced into switching so early Empoleon had only managed to create three of them out of nine islands.

This Pokemon was a delicate flower, though she was poisonous and had thorns. She was proof that life could bloom anywhere if given enough time and care, and she was one I had not expected to face at all, given what my team was composed of. So small, so weak-looking, yet I knew that couldn't be further from the truth.

She was Wormadam. Hanging onto a tree by a single strand of silk. There was a shift in the air, then a… bristle. If you squinted and looked close enough, you could see each needle making up Wormadam's cloak was moving. Moving until they produced a horrible screech and a green hue appeared around her. I had to consciously keep my foot from tapping as a deep uncomfortableness overtook me. A thousand ideas, each passing so quickly they might as well not exist. Focus, Grace. Don't let the Bug Buzz get to you.

It would deal constant damage to Buddy, but hopefully the water would keep him insulated from the worst of it.

"Iron Defense and Infestation. Hunt," Byron ordered.

I swallowed. Infestation was one of our key weaknesses— something that couldn't be stopped by Water Cloak, only weakened. Wormadam shimmered under her tree, and countless little things so minuscule they would have been impossible to see without the slight green hue to them. They were writhing, dead, yet alive, reminding me of Vespiquen's way of bending honey. I knew Buddy must have been deep in the water in order not to get hit, but there must have been a reason Byron had called out for the attack anyway. A reason why Empoleon almost managed to set up for Wormadam so beautifully.

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"They can swim. They can swim!" I called out, louder the second time. "Keep moving and burn her!"

The Infestation entered the water as little beads of purple flame burst through the surface, each time in a different location. Wormadam's eyes narrowed, and the Infestation followed where the trail of flames was coming from until Byron slapped his shovel against his platform.

"It's a trick. Disperse them and find him that way."

Damn it, he'd instantly fucking figured it out! I internally cursed again when the Will-O-Wisp dissolved before crossing a threshold of ten feet around Wormadam as a transparent green ring circled around her. Safeguard. Must have been a new move she'd learned and mastered in the last two months, because that had been the last time she'd ever been used in battle and she'd gotten paralyzed in that one.

That unfortunately meant that Taunt was also out, given the fact that she had it permanently on and it was one of the few techniques that could fight against that move.

Action snapped me out of my thoughts, and a blade of ice, twenty feet long, elongated from behind the Wormadam's island, striking at the string holding her up—

It shattered. Splintering into a hundred shards of ice. I knew it'd be resistant, but how could a string be this fucking powerful? Had they used Iron Defense on it too? I didn't have enough information…

"Change of plans!" I called out. "Keep your distance and use Night Shades to hit her!"

Arceus, I felt so strange, having to yell these orders out instead of doing our usual whisper, like bringing a plastic knife to a swordfight, but I could see the way Wormadam's eyes glanced at my side of the barrier every few seconds while she directed her Infestation underwater that she knew, just like the others. Clones of Jellicent, this time fully formed, slipped out of the water with Hydro Pumps already prepared and blasted Wormadam with both attacks. The bug type didn't even react, instead, light swarmed her and exploded outward with such force that my ears popped and water around her island evaporated. The shades had thankfully been far enough not to be affected.

This was what it was like, to fight Wormadam. Bide, Counter, and Mirror Coat were her best tools, and any attack would be reflected to be even stronger. One was destined to listen to Bug Buzz and have their body wracked by one of the most powerful Infestations in the region while not even being able to strike back.

And with Safeguard added to the mix, she was truly untouchable.

I winced when one of the clones wavered and lost its shape, a sign that the Infestation had reached Buddy and penetrated him even through the Water Cloak. The last shade rushed toward Wormadam before he could lose control and exploded right on top of her—

Eyes narrowing, I bit my lip. I knew Buddy, and that was far too much control for a Pokemon who'd been hit by Infestation…

I got my answer soon after, with water around Wormadam's island receding as one for a moment, and then swarming her, placing her in a ball of water for her to drown in. A piece of Buddy writhed up the surface of the water, thousands of little green things eating at it until there'd be nothing left.

A trick. He'd separated a part of himself and vaguely shaped it in his image, new eyes and all, and detonated one of his clones to sell it, nearly fooling even me. The sound from the Bug Buzz was barely a whisper, now.

This was why I'd wanted to communicate so badly, but I wasn't going to complain. If we couldn't win by attacking, we would win by drowning.

"Metal Burst," the Gym Leader calmly ordered.

There was a screech, the sound altered by the ball of water, and Wormadam's eyes flared. I almost covered my ears by instinct, but the liquid dampened the sound enough not to make them feel like they were bleeding. The water moved, losing some of its volume, but it kept its stranglehold on the steel type. This time, Wormadam tried an old-fashioned Flash Cannon, but it was weaker than her counterparts, and she couldn't evaporate all the water at once to catch her breath, especially when we had an endless supply here.

And Jellicent was still nowhere to be seen. A hunter of the depths.

"Relax," Byron said. Wormadam must have been panicking, even if I couldn't even spot any differences on her face. "Get to another island."

I clicked my tongue. "Do not let her."

There were only three trees, and the other two were in a similar direction, towards Wormadam's right. The string blew out of the bug type's mouth, and water in between the islands rose, twisting itself into ice in an attempt to cut the string off.

It broke again, not even denting the newly formed string, and it was then that I understood that Wormadam had not been applying Iron Defense to her strings, but that this was biological. The string shot penetrated through the metallic tree trunk, and though Buddy tried to keep her in the water by playing with the currents of his sphere, Wormadam pulled herself to the other island and the Bug Buzz resumed, and thousands of tiny little worm-like things burst out of her cloak, jumping in the water. Infestation again.

We could do this old song and dance once more, but it was only a matter of time until Jellicent's real body was found, and I doubted his trick would work a second time. My thoughts raced as the ghost tried to drown her again, this time swarming all three islands in water and the trees as well, but a second String Shot left Wormadam's mouth and the steel type suspended herself in between two islands, hovering above the sea by having two strings penetrating the trees, all while slamming all of her surroundings with Bug Buzz. Some attempts were made to hit Wormadam with moves anyway— Shadow Ball, Hydro Pump and Water Spout from a distance, but with each retaliation, her power seemed to grow and now no matter how far Jellicent was, he always got hit. How did that even work? Some kind of reverse-engineering of Flail? That would mean that we were actually dealing damage, at the very least. The issue with Byron— and higher-leveled fights in general— was that calling out exactly what your Pokemon was doing became rarer and rarer, not that I'd been spared of that either. It was tough, to figure out what exactly went into each trick to counter them.

This was not sustainable. Recover could only take us so far, and despite not having seen Buddy once this entire exchange, I knew his limits. I understood how far he could go and not go, but who else could win this? Princess would be important to what I'd planned for later and needed rest. Claydol was the weakest offensively by far, Angel and Sweetheart needed to get close to deal any real damage, which would be difficult in this terrain, and Infestation would be able to claw past any barrier or armored plating.

No. The buck stopped with him. It had to.

"Out."

Instantly, Buddy flew into the sky with Water Sport, and hundreds of green lights followed him. Some were already inside of his body, though Wormadam hadn't converged them all there due to worrying about him having sprouted another trap.

I pointed forward, sleeves slightly too long for my arms. "Boil her alive."

I didn't have to tell him twice.

Countless green lights surged toward him at a quick pace, and he twisted his body, altering its shape to better dodge as he rushed toward Wormadam with hate flashing in his eyes. Not every bit of Infestation could be dodged, and those that entered him could still be seen through his transparent skin, wreaking havoc inside of him, but that was fine. To kill a ghost was to be ready to be taken down with them through sheer spite— and hell, they weren't even trying to do that. Jellicent's entire head flung open like a giant maw full of boiling teeth as he reached Wormadam, and the bug type let it happen, because why wouldn't she, when she could retaliate tenfold? This played like a desperate play from someone out of ideas, and honestly, it partly was. With each thing that slithered inside of him, Buddy's eyes grew less wise and more primal. It was a good thing my order had been simple, because it was actually possible for him to remember, when running only on instincts. His thoughts had been reverted to their most basic.

Buddy's head closed around Wormadam, the inside of his head burning hot enough to start evaporating himself. Light came to life, a burning ball of energy coursing out of Wormadam, and then everything exploded with enough force to make the entire barrier shake and have the referee take a step back. Definitely Flail, but there was no time to think about it. I squinted, my bandaged hands and sleeve covering my eyes, but I could still see the light through my eyelids. Shockwaves bounced repeatedly throughout the arena and tsunamis formed drowning every island. Wormadam was still pristine, a flower barely touched by the elements, but her eyes were struggling to stay open and she was swaying from side to side on her string, barely holding onto the stump that was left of both her trees.

Quiet. It was so quiet, the Bug Buzz having finally ended. It felt like something that had been squeezing against my skull had let go and I was free.

Chunks of Jellicent were floating in the water, lifeless and unmoving. With flickering eyes, Wormadam prepared to launch a Flash Cannon, the ball of light keening as it formed in front of her mouth and ready to fire if Buddy showed any signs of reforming.

But there was something else.

Vapor, both from the heat of the explosion and Buddy boiling so hot he'd vaporized himself.

Sinister tendrils of mist, devoid of color, shook and congealed, their spectral dance weaving into a familiar form surrounded by ghastly shadows. It was the eyes first, always the eyes—

"Wormadam, behind you!" Byron called out.

—a haunting, otherwordly wail resonated across the arena as the final wisps of vapor coalesced into Jellicent's horrifying visage. Serrated edges of frozen teeth swarming with countless spirits he had bound under his rule. Ripples continuously ran across his… head, like he was in a constant state of distortion. Grotesque long limbs had replaced his usual tentacles and wrapped around Wormadam in a blur.

He bit.

Wormadam screamed for the first time, her cries masked by the ones of the souls swimming in Buddy's head-maw thing. The teeth, if you could even call them that, didn't even penetrate past Wormadam's cloak.

And yet.

"You're okay, baby," I said, stopping my voice from shaking. It was so cold. "This is a battle."

At the end of it all, he was always there, because how couldn't he be? From a speck, he would always come back. Always the last one standing, able to come back from anything. You had to kill him again and again, over and over until you'd rid yourself of every little speck, every source of water in any state.

Because that was what it meant, to be a ghost.

"Wormadam is unable to battle! Leader Byron, send out your fourth Pokemon."

A breath escaped my lips, and I nearly stumbled as awareness returned to Buddy's eyes and he let go of the Wormadam, barely holding himself together.

Today was the first one of my own Pokemon had scared me.

It was Empoleon, that came out again, and there was no way to avoid the coming loss. Buddy was exhausted, not even having noticed the steel type appear on the island the closest to him. I tried calling out for a Will-O-Wisp, but Empoleon had already fired off a Flash Cannon and finished off Buddy as well, cutting a hole right through the middle of his face. The referee spoke again while I recalled him, and Empoleon began fixing up the islands that had been caved in or damaged by Wormadam with haste. In fact, she was making more ground than before, which signaled to me Byron was planning on using land-based Pokemon next. I was surprised he didn't wait until Empoleon was nearly out of the fight to take full advantage of the water, but maybe Byron didn't want to risk her being too exhausted to do it.

Here was why I'd actually been losing, or at best, keeping equal to Byron while still having the number's advantage. Ignoring the fundamentals of battle, the lack of switches, the field still being his instead of mine.

Claydol was weak.

The psychic type hovered in the sky as soon as I released them, their eyes blinking constantly. Most of them stared at the audience, and one at Empoleon.

I presume this is the Gym Battle? they asked.

"Yes. Don't mind the crowd, focus on Empoleon," I said. "This is a safe space."

Acknowledged—

A beam of light struck at Claydol, but it was stopped by a hastily erected barrier that luckily barely budged at the impact. The shield surrounded Claydol, glowing as everything clicked together until it became invisible to the naked eye.

No matter what, taking down Empoleon with Claydol was impossible, which meant I had sent them out to lose because of how little room to maneuver the two switches had given me. Still, me having to potentially 'sack' them was something we'd talked about extensively before the fight. Byron had read the reports about me catching Claydol, but he didn't actually know what the ground type was capable of beyond the broadest of strokes.

For once, he was actually in an informational deficit.

"Get to work," I said.

Mud materialized all around Claydol in large amounts, and with Ancient Power to help, they scattered it across the battlefield over and over. Enough to bury it in a thick layer of earth. The bits landing next to Empoleon sharpened to spikes and tried penetrating her skin, but the most we could do through Iron Defense was poke a little bit.

"Don't let them set up. Wash it away and Fling," Byron ordered.

While Empoleon was no Jellicent, having prioritized steel over water when it came to TE, she was still a water type. She inhaled, her chest growing to twice its size, and released a torrent all across the ground in an attempt to throw the mud into the water.

How did one win, when they did not have power to punch through a steel wall? Tricks. We were going to annoy the living hell out of this empress no matter what it took, and while victory might be unobtainable, something close to it might be. Mud crawled all over her, solidifying into stone as she tried raking the floor like she had before to launch little iron pebbles of darkness toward Claydol, and then around her mouth, cutting off the coming Hydro Pump from the source for a few seconds until the water burst through the stone and Empoleon coughed. Then, it was the eyes, the mud constantly trying to blind her. She shook, panicking at the loss of eyesight, and mud crawled into her mouth and earholes—

Byron slammed his shovel down, and Empoleon stiffened. Water burst out of her skin and the mud was all knocked away by the sudden force of the Aqua Jet. She glared at Claydol, something furious like she couldn't believe we'd just struck at her in such a dirty way to keep spreading mud around and destroying her art. She slammed a webbed foot on the ground, and thin poles of steel erupted through the solid mud, slowing slightly in front of her so she could bathe their tips in darkness.

Some Fling that was, I thought through clenched teeth. It was basically their own fucking spin on Metal Edge! The shape was perfect to break through a barrier, too, and this was again, a new tactic I'd never seen, and Claydol was too high—

"Imprison and get lower!" I said.

—to make use of Ancient Power effectively. The world blurred, and barriers snapped into place again and again, layer after layer of shields, so many I couldn't even count them as they shimmered like a set of rainbows. The poles broke through them like butter, and though they slowed with each impact, Empoleon brought her hand up and they sped up again, converging toward Claydol as one.

"Ancient Power!" I continued. "Rapid Spin if you can't!"

The thing about battling with Claydol was that beyond barriers, they had to be micromanaged in a way I hadn't been used to since… the first or second badge. Talking took time, and that delay in my order meant that the wall of solid mud climbing up to protect Claydol was late, there had been no Harden to keep themselves protected from some of the damage, and the Rapid Spin had barely begun when the poles penetrated through Claydol.

Yes, they went through their body, and I assumed the head had been spared because that would have been too lethal. Claydol felt no pain, but that didn't mean their systems couldn't fray when touched by darkness. Their spreading of mud across the battlefield slowed, and they were barely able to hover in place. It was as if the attack had been made to—

Oh.

Maybe it had.

What we had, though, was that we could spread mud faster than Empoleon could wash it away. Much of the arena had been covered, now, and though there was some form of a meandering river dividing the arena in two… three, I was slowly clawing my way back into a favorable situation. Another set of poles burst from the ground, but this time, I'd been ready to speak as soon as Empoleon slammed a foot down.

"Ancient Power. Layers," I blurted out.

Claydol was low to the ground, now, and ten thick walls of hardened stone popped up in between them and Empoleon. What I hadn't expected was for the darkened poles to make it through eight of them and having to scream at Claydol to reinforce them, but at least they hadn't gotten hit this time. I could barely see the water type past the walls, but I caught the trident on her head shimmering as she threw herself forward with what looked to be Iron Head. She could not fly, not even close, but she was a deceptively quick runner on the still wet mud even if she looked mighty awkward while doing so. Shards of stone exploded outward as she rammed her head into the shields Claydol had set up, and I called out for an Imprison.

Byron was growing more confident, because he knew I wasn't the type of trainer to go big on stalling and we weren't actually attacking. I flattened my palms in order not to clench them and watched Empoleon break through five walls until she slammed her head into an Imprison that she couldn't break out of. Part of me wanted to gush at the fact that Claydol's barriers were holding back an 8-badge level Pokemon specialized in steel when she was using Iron Head, but we didn't have enough tricks to win yet. Not enough experience, not enough of a bond. Empoleon easily broke out with her variation of Fling and an Aqua Jet preemptively stopped any attempts from blinding her with mud, and sped her up, but Claydol had been moving back, however slowly. Buying time.

But I'd be damned if I didn't try just like they were trying.

"Are you well enough to—"

Do not— ask. Order, they chided, their voice slightly more rapid. Fucking chided! Even though their voice was glitching due to having been stabbed, they were demanding something of me, hell yes!

"Give me hollow walls of earth around yourself," I blurted out.

Once, at the edges of Eterna Forest, Princess had shielded Justin from Scyther in this exact manner, but this was a much better showing of how one could push Ancient Power to… not its limits, but far. Thick walls emerged and bent into a dome, isolating Claydol from the outside world. Then another. And another, all with agility that did not betray how new they actually were with the move. Princess had been an excellent teacher.

"Break through," Byron said. "Keep Fling up."

"Psychic!" I screamed.

Thin poles, each the exact same length, rose from below the dirt and hovered above Empoleon as she got closer and closer. Fifteen seconds away now, maybe eighteen if I was being generous.

My order, simply, did not make any sense as it was. Claydol was not experienced enough to use Psychic on an opponent they couldn't see and that far, and if they waited until Empoleon broke through their fortress of solid stone, the water type would struggle for a few seconds, sure, but then she would launch the pole, and Claydol wouldn't be able to take another stabbing. The goal here, was to let Claydol interpret it in a way that made sense.

It was a leap of faith, as I found myself having done more and more during this fight. Putting my full trust into my Pokemon to accomplish something they'd never or seldom done before. In this case, to think and act independently. This would never work, if I called it out and warned Byron and Empoleon ahead of time. I stopped myself from biting my lip as Empoleon broke through the second dome, dust, ash and shards of rock rising from the crashing Iron Head.

Please.

Third impact. A gaping hole opened on the side of the dome.

At the same time, Claydol appeared above Empoleon without a sound and began assaulting the steel type's mind. Blood gushed from her beak, earholes and eyes, and she struggled to even find where Claydol was until Byron called out their location. Claydol had used those precious seconds hidden away to concentrate and Teleport a short distance.

It was only for a moment.

It didn't win us the fight.

It barely even mattered, in the grand scheme of things.

Lances of steel, tipped in darkness pierced through Claydol. Most of them missed, Empoleon's thought and aim having frayed due to the psychic attack, but the two that did make it weakened Claydol enough to let Empoleon focus on a single, pinpoint Flash Cannon that finished the job. Claydol crashed to the floor, their arms crumpling to their side and eyes fluttering closed. I hadn't realized how emotional I'd gotten at Claydol taking the initiative on offense for one of the first times. My eyes were wet, and it wasn't because of what Rapture had done earlier.

"Claydol is unable to battle," the referee droned. "Challenger, send out your fourth Pokemon!"

I clasped Claydol's Pokeball, but they spoke into my mind.

Did I— do well, my King? they asked, eyes barely open.

I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and crouched, touching the barrier. "Yes, Claydol. You did amazing."

A name has been assigned— to my own person—

They shut down. I so desperately wanted to have heard it, but it was too late. Their eyes were a pitch black and their voice had cut out in an instant. I recalled them, smiling at the Pokeball and drying my eyes one last time.

Empoleon, despite all of her fighting, was actually rather healthy. She was not the most offensive or defensive fighter, and she'd lost most of the water that made her a threat, but I couldn't underestimate how her fine control would affect a Pokemon that actually had to stick close to the ground. The layer of earth Claydol had planted wasn't deep enough to prevent her from playing with her steel, as she'd shown by her magnetically levitated batons. Even with broken wings, Togekiss was a better choice here than Sweetheart, who was, by all intents and purposes, supposed to go last so she could let loose and destroy the terrain I'd worked so hard to set up. Princess would also be able to flatten all of the walls and domes Claydol had raised. The plan had been for them to collapse them before fainting, but life didn't always go according to plan.

But.

Byron had a switch left. It had been hanging over my neck like an executioner's axe all battle, ready to be used at a moment's notice. If he switched into Corviknight or a Scizor, for example, it was pretty much over, wasn't it? Even Angel, in his current healthy state, would be able to better tackle both of these. The field wasn't perfect as I swore to him it would be, but there was soil, it had been hydrated by the river and water, and it was deep enough for him to root himself in. Again, though, there was a caveat to this. Bisharp was available, and unlike Scizor, he could actually cut himself out of this. Would it be at a speed higher than what Angel could smother him with? That was a question difficult to answer.

This was, I knew, a decision that could cost me the entire battle.

I sighed, grabbing my next Pokeball with a sweaty palm.

Angel materialized onto my side of the field, a silent, towering mass of writhing vines. His eyes locked with Empoleon, and he waved at her with a bright smile, as if telling her that he hoped they'd have a good fight. The water type sneered, the steel tipping her flippers sharpening with a menacing gleam.

"You'll have to stab him deep!" Byron ordered. He knew that a Tangrowth's weakness lay within their vines.

"Do it."

First came the sun, appearing above the sky with a woosh. It was a gentle thing, unlike the scorching heat Sunshine's Sunny Day helped bring. Comfortable with the way its warm, golden light kissed your skin. Empoleon was already running forward, her Aqua Jet growing a smidge weaker, and metal burst through the dirt to keep Angel in place as she summoned another row of spears, this time tipped in sharpened ice. Thick walls of earth rose to try to stop her, but Angel stopped after realizing they were doing nothing. At least Claydol's had slowed her, but the grass type hadn't practiced as much with the move than the others.

He closed his eyes.

Vines anchored themselves to the ground, and then expanded. A verdant cascade of vegetation sprouted out of him like they were the roots of an ancient tree, creaking like old wood. The ground beneath quivered, yielding to its master as sinuous vines kept worming themselves through the soil. They spread, dividing into two over and over like cells and even crossed the river without a hitch.

His silence was deafening.

Empoleon stopped until Byron barked out at her to keep going. She raked a claw forward, spreading a cloud of ice in front of her as she stepped on a path of frozen vines, spears still levitating around her as she slid down Angel's domain. He's testing the waters, I instantly thought. Wants to see if ice is a weakness, or maybe how much dexterity we've got. After all, who the hell could micromanage that many vines?

Angel could. From the side, a green tendril blurred, wrapping its way around Empoleon's neck, and puffs of every powder started exploding in between the two Pokemon. It was only one vine, at first then a dozen more, smothering Empoleon, who barely had time to react and send her spears flying forward. Angel managed to knock the majority of them out of the way with more vines, but two penetrated past his defenses because of how close Empoleon had gotten. For a moment, there were screams as Empoleon began to drown in the vines and Angel sucked her energy with Giga Drain, but then, she was completely silent, her voice having been smothered.

In the forest, no one would hear you scream if Angel ever got his hands on you. Death would come slowly and in silence.

For a moment, Byron frowned.

Then shrapnel and spikes of steel exploded from under Angel's vines, and he whipped a Pokeball out of his belt, instantly recalling the water type—

Arceus fucking damn it! There were supposed to be no openings, but Empoleon had given him enough time to recall her! He'd moved his hand so fast I hadn't even noticed. Those decades of experience weren't for nothing. Odds were, he wanted to keep Empoleon to use against Sweetheart, which was exactly what I'd wanted to avoid. Sure, her steel tricks wouldn't pierce through her armor, but since he was mirroring my style, he would no doubt order Empoleon to flood her vents with water or stab inside of her vents, and while they could be closed, that would go entirely against my plan I had for her—

Focus, Grace. I'd caught up to Byron's numerical advantage, and while Empoleon wasn't as banged up as Princess, I'd beaten Byron's Bronzong. I just needed to dock the damn ship and use Angel's strengths.

"Smoothen out the ground," I exhaled.

Vines crawled atop the earthen walls and domes, swallowing them into the deep. The steel spikes would have to stay, but they weren't really large enough to matter. In reality, he was just using his extended senses to turn them back into mud, but it still looked cool. Like an all-consuming sea of vines. Had I not been fighting against a Gym Leader, I'd be willing to bet that would be a neat psychological trick to stun other trainers. Byron's hands fiddled with the remaining Pokeballs on his belt, and I braced myself. No Skarmory other than his personal one on hand, and he'd already locked himself out of it. Corviknight was awful at attacking at a distance, so Byron would need to get close. It would either be Bisharp or Scizor—

Out of the ball, in the last free corners of the arena not yet overtaken by Angel, came out a Lucario. His eyes were… feral, not at all like Ri or Maylene's own Lucario, and a wide grin split the fighting type's face as soon as he noticed what he was up against. He punched his palm and growled as he squared himself and prepared to fight.

"I knew you'd enjoy this one," Byron said. "Armor up."

"Grab him."

When one pictured fighting a Lucario, they were always diligent, calm fighters. Technique and skill over raw power, blue light swarming every inch of their skin as they pulled off more and more complicated techniques that awed the audience. Lucario were, after all, among the best aura users in the entire world.

This Lucario was nothing like that.

There was no blue wave of energy cascading off his skin as it split open with a nauseating squelch and exposed the raw, pink flesh beneath the skin. Lucario's teeth clenched, but he never lost his grin and kept destroying his own body from within. The initial splits gave way to a visceral display as metallic bones emerged from within, tearing through muscle and sinew until the entire body was covered in sharpened armor that shimmered under the Gym's harsh lights. Only his eyes were still visible.

This was Byron's Lucario. A creature of violence, willing to go through and even enjoying pain, if it made him stronger. An endless hunger for powerful opponents without a care for how close his own body was to death. Vines unfortunately only reached him as soon as his transformation finished, but a set of metallic blades grew from the fighting type's arms, and his own body spun so quickly he became a blur, cutting every single appendage that had tried to reach him.

I had miscalculated thinking that he wouldn't use Lucario when I had a Tyranitar and Togekiss waiting in the wings.

"Swords Dance," Byron said.

"Bulldoze, Spores and Solar Beam!" I yelled in quick succession.

It was not a graceful thing, the way Lucario sharpened like a whetted sword. With an almost manic fervor, his body convulsed as if possessed by the very essence of the battle itself. The ground under him began to shake as vines beat against the metallic floor beneath the wet mud, and bombs of every kind of spore flew in a tall arc toward Lucario.

It was the final act, that captivated me, however. Tangrowth weaved vines into a circle about midway between himself and Lucario. They spun in an almost hypnotic pattern as energy from the sun built up at their center until it nearly blinded me. Within three seconds, the attack shot out toward Lucario. Now on all fours, the steel type threw himself to the side, tongue hanging out of his mouth as he dodged the Solar Beam and barely got a whiff of the spores. Countless vines grabbed at his wrist, chest, neck, legs and ankles, but despite being slowed with both those and the Bulldoze, he was so sharp that even with the vines wreathed with dark energy, they were getting cut within moments of grabbing onto him. Still, Lucario was taking damage. Leaf Blades, Solar Blades, and even Brick Break only dented his armor, but we needed more.

"Explode!" I ordered as soon as he landed from crossing the river.

Two Solar Blades sprouted from the ocean of vines next to Lucario, and the steel type instantly cut across both, but didn't account for the one that had been hidden right under his foot. Cracks in the armor this time, and it even chipped in some places, but it instantly regrew as Lucario snarled in pain and then grinned.

"You're almost there," Byron said.

So close he could taste it. Lucario spun, throwing himself in the air again, but a darkened vine from Angel clasped onto a groove in his ankle and slammed him onto the ground. There was no refinement in this battle. It was just… desperation. A need to fight, because how could Lucario live without that thrill? That was antithetical to who he was. Spores swarmed him as he stood up and coughed. It was as if the air itself was pushing them into his lungs.

One more time.

Another burst of steel from under his feet and hands, exploding with a thousand pieces of shrapnel and giving him enough height to reach Angel in a single jump.

Air crackling with power, a celestial light overtook Lucario's form as his arm shifted with the sound of rearranging bones until it became an elongated knife. The world screamed, air blurred around his arm as multi-colored flames burst out of his fist and the Meteor Mash took form. Lucario descended, streaks of astral fire trailed behind the mighty swing. The metallic bones, now infused with the power of falling stars, collided with Angel as the steel type gouged his insides.

Angel's eyes bulged, vines moved as one with agony all across the battlefield, and Lucario grinned, drool dripping from his mouth.

It was a wonderful display of violence and fighting spirit, but it was not enough. Angel drew upon nutrients from the ground, and Lucario's face fell. Spores wafted off the grass type, and another Solar Blade exploded below them, throwing Lucario back. Swallowing him below the depths was impossible with how he'd just cut his way out, but we could still overwhelm him. I'd known Pokemon capable of cutting vines would be a weakness of ours, but we still had numbers on our side.

It was up to Lucario to get to us, not the opposite. The fighting type flailed with every limb to get himself out, but every contact was another second spent being hit with Leaf Blades or having his energy sucked by Giga Drain, though I did notice the move was way weaker when touching the bones that made up Lucario's armor, and trying for Leech Seed was a lost cause.

"What do we do when we fail?" Byron asked. "We get up and try again. Bullet Punch."

Lucario's second fist turned to another blade, and he grunted.

"Ancient Power—"

He was more of a force than a living thing, with the way he rushed forward and cut so fast. Like a hurricane bending trees so low their leaves touched the ground. Lucario broke through the wall after three punches that might as well have been instant. He was faster now, but the drawback of this was that he was taking more damage. He could not cut every vine before they exploded, could not stop the occasional Solar Beam from clipping him in the shoulder before he could dodge, and spores were not something that could be cut.

Still, he reached us.

A wave. It was a flurry of punches, each puncturing deeper than the last, so quick that the air itself seemed to deflect the vines Angel was using to retaliate. With each impact, Angel lost more and more control. He did not bleed, nor did he scream, but the way his vines moved spelled out agony rather easily. The erraticness of the movements, the way they had turned from a unified force to a writhing mass of individuals. The way the terrain receded at its edges. The way he no longer used the mud to regenerate with Ingrain.

The way the sun flickered in the sky.

"You've got this," I breathed. "Concentrate."

Pain was something Angel had never gotten used to. The way his body was built had him nearly impervious to the sensation, and that had him lose focus each and every time he was struck. My voice had his attention back on the fight, but we were still losing, slowly but surely. Lucario was slowing with the amount of spores he had inhaled and hits he had taken, but he was going to outlast us. Without that armor he would have died— would have fainted twice over already.

That armor.

Steal.

"Give everything you have on Bulldoze!" I ordered.

Bulldoze was, along with Stomping Tantrum, not that much of a sophisticated technique. Angel's eyes sharpened as he beat the ground around Lucario like drums. Byron called out, telling him to pay attention to what was going on around him, but the ground had the fighting type stumble forward and allowed Angel to throw him back around thirty feet. He cut the vines on the ground as he skidded and rolled, and to my relief, he took seconds to get up. For the sheer amount of focus this had required of Angel, vines around the edges of the arena had receded some and the Sunny Day was weaker, now.

That was okay.

"Coat your vines in mud and solidify it."

I couldn't see his eyes from here, but with the split second it took for him to get to work, I could almost imagine him blinking. Mud slipped from below his vines and clumsily soaked their surface before hardening into a thick shell. It wasn't every vine, far from it. Six— seven, at most, with how he had to keep concentrating on everything else. Lucario would be able to break through, but his cutting was not well thought out, to break through stone.

"Bludgeon," Byron said.

There we go. Instead of blades, one of Lucario's fists turned to balls of spiky metal in a way that reminded me of Zoroark. The other was still a well-maintained sword, however.

"Steady. Keep your mind in the game," I warned.

Lucario blurred—

No, he stopped midway through his charge and jumped to the side, his blade-like fist raking against the vines in front of him to clear a path. Angel watched as the steel type circled him, still managing to continuously tire him out. Armor bent and broke, spores were inhaled and time was bought for him to get a feel for how his vines functioned when coated in stone. Lucario was looking for an opening, knowing that any big hit would spell his doom.

He found one, but not the way I'd expected.

Armor sleeked, sticking close to where Lucario's skin should have been, and any spikes and bumps were shed. With that, the fighting type lost weight and there was a shockwave— so fucking fast— in a second, he was next to Tangrowth again. The grass type slammed a whip-like stony vine against Lucario's back, and he howled in agony as his armor finally cracked. Another vine penetrated through the flesh within as Lucario grabbed onto Tangrowth with two hands and—

And ripped him out of his Ingrain. He spun once with Angel in his arms, his eyes barely open and his knees buckling over the massive weight. Circle Throw.

"You're so close! Use—" Anything. Anything would work, but—

Lucario collapsed, dropping Angel back onto the ground, and a discreet vine slithered out of his back.

He'd poured more spores into his veins and won. With fluttering eyes, Angel tried to anchor himself to the ground again to keep his vines from dying, but they were already wilting at the edges.

"Lucario is unable to battle! Leader Byron, send out your fifth Pokemon!"

"Good job, Angel! You did great!" I yelled.

He hadn't been the ace I'd been looking for, but I was starting to think that was okay. For each Pokemon to have been instrumental to victory in their own way, instead of putting all of my eggs in one basket, and honestly expecting any kind of sweep in a battle like this had just been me hoping for the best-case scenario.

Still, I didn't like this. These were basically draws even if my Pokemon were still standing by the end. Byron released Empoleon again, and I knew already that a loss was coming. Getting hit so many times had forced Angel's vines to recede and there was ample space for her to stand in.

"Solar Beam," I tried.

Slow, so slow. There was no more sun to power up the attack, and the light coalesced at a Slugma's pace in front of Angel. That was ample time to gather more steel to gouge Angel and finish him off. The beam still fired, but it swerved up as the grass type rolled onto his back and burned vertically across the barrier.

"Tangrowth is unable to battle! Challenger, send out your fifth Pokemon!"

I recalled Angel, and vines across the battlefield squirmed and died, shriveling up in seconds. Guess the soil wasn't as good as I thought it'd be, I internally sighed. That meant Ingrain hadn't been regenerating as much as it could have.

Now what?

Empoleon was weakened, but nowhere near down. Princess was an okay choice here and I had convinced myself to keep Sweetheart for last, but her wings were broken, meaning she was slow enough to skewer in the air, and if darkness-tipped poles hadn't been stopped by Claydol, they weren't going to be stopped by Princess.

Still, if she could get a Moonblast and some Tri Attacks off… it was doable.

Sending out Tyranitar now would have two weakened Pokemon face off against a single healthy one, and I'd watched enough videos to see how that nearly always went. The one with two Pokemon lost, and the fact that I still didn't know which one the last one would be had me worried.

It would have to be Princess, then. Artist against artist, sculptor against sculptor. And this time, we had earth to work with. It hurt, to see Princess' wings this way. Bent down halfway and struggling to move, despite how much she wanted to. The freedom they had afforded her, the speed, the sheer joy of flight had all been taken away from her. She teetered on a knife's edge, hovering slightly above the ground through sheer force of will like she had so many times as a Togetic, agony wracking every inch of her face.

Empoleon stared at her for a moment, and she must have found something there, or perhaps Byron had told her about Princess beforehand when he'd planned against me, but there was respect there that hadn't been present against any other Pokemon of mine. She was not the flashiest of Byron's fighters, not the strongest, but without her there, Byron's entire strategy just didn't work. It was something I'd noticed with the Gym Leader in high-leveled Gym Battles, to have at least one Pokemon focused more on control than taking down enemies.

She was one of the last two that needed to go down. There was something to be said about the importance Byron placed on her.

"Into that river," Byron ordered, and she instantly jumped head-first in the water.

Here was the state of the battlefield.

The ground had been flattened, having lost most of its holes and hills after Empoleon had altered the field to her liking, and almost all of it was covered by a thick layer of wet mud. From Byron's side of the arena, the river was mostly parallel to the length of the arena until halfway through and sharply turned cut across horizontally, dividing the field in two. Of course, there were remains of what once had been. The short stump of a metallic tree, in another spot, large shards of iron jutting from below the dirt, strings lying on the floor from Wormadam.

It was a simple field, returned to its basics, but the thing was that it worked perfectly for Empoleon. While I ordered Princess to gather some mud, and it began to orbit around her, foam and waves coursed through the river, signaling Empoleon beginning to swim. Spikes and poles formed on the water's shores everywhere near where Empoleon swam, jutting through the mud like sprouting trees.

They were not in the form of trees, this time. With little attention to give and tiredness spreading through the water type, they were rugged. Rough and what I felt Empoleon must have felt was unbecoming of her, but she wasn't actually making use of them. She jumped out of the river, water still tightly wound against her skin with long poles, darkness dancing around them as they hovered behind her. Twisting into a weak Drill Peck, she sped toward Princess at speeds that would be impossible to dodge.

I'd noticed the subtle darkness in her eyes, but doubted she'd have enough left in her to add another Nasty Plot. There wasn't enough time for me to speak regardless, and stones rose from around Princess, exploding like shrapnel around Empoleon and tearing through the small protective bubble of Aqua Jet and the wind from Drill Peck. Blood seeped in her water, yet she didn't veer off course nor lose her focus. She kept going. The ground below Princess rose, bumping he in the stomach to punch her toward Empoleon, and—

"Thunder Wave," I spat.

Electricity buzzed to life around Princess, linking her to Empoleon. It wrapped itself around the water type, and her two spears penetrated past one of Princess' wings while the rest planted themselves in the mud with a soft thud. With a cry of pain, Togekiss' eyes flashes and she pushed Empoleon back a few feet with Psychic. Empoleon rolled away, the mud seemingly working to keep shoving her away. Blood seeped on the ground and coated her fur.

Princess was on her last legs. Bronzong had affected her more than I thought they had. Moonblast would take too long, and Ancient Power wouldn't deal enough damage.

It had been a gamble, to let ourselves get hit to get this off, but being honest, it still gave me what I wanted, even if it hurt me to watch Princess suffer this much, and if Princess had been capable of dodging or avoiding getting hit in any way, she would have done so without me to tell her. This was, something I believed had been needed to obtain a win, catching Byron off-guard with a move I rarely ever used, because in a straight fight between the two, Princess would lose. Empoleon convulsed on the ground, not incapable of moving, but slower, and she wasn't helped by all the mud solidifying around her feet and arms.

"Blast her with electricity," I continued with a tired sigh.

Princess was on the ground now, too weak to even hover, but a small ball of electric energy began to form ahead of her. Weak, so pitifully weak, but hopefully enough.

The electric part of Tri-Attack struck Empoleon in the chest as she got up, but damn it if she wasn't so damn persistent. The water type stumbled forward, but her steps grew more and more confident. More graceful. A second blast of electricity, this time only managing to graze her wing and still slow enough for her to attempt to dodge.

Byron grunted. "Finish her off."

Empoleon raised a flipper, her three claws shining and elongating by a few inches, and she raked her hand across Princess' back, rendering her unconscious.

That was how it finished. With a simple Metal Claw.

Too fast. She'd been weakened too quickly. Even with broken wings and the stabbing, it made no sense for her to have…

"Togekiss is unable to battle! Challenger, send out your last Pokemon!"

And how had Empoleon not fainted through all of this? How had she seen entire battles through? This wasn't just being naturally enduring, this was a trick. A trick Byron had never called out in any of the battles she had ever been in. Aqua Ring? No, I would have seen it, at the very least. Life Dew? Her skin was perpetually wet so it was possible, and that move would be so much easier to render invisible to the naked eye, but this wasn't healing. I'd even scoured the forums talking about Byron's Gym, and none of them had said anything about this. It was something that had her last longer than she had any right to, and I was coming up empty.

I hated coming up empty.

Or maybe I was just paranoid.

Those spikes she'd set up across the arena was something she was too weak to use at the moment, so I assumed it was for what was coming next. Mawile, maybe? That'd make sense against Sweetheart, and the steel type was an expert at making armored Pokemon look like chumps. Ferrothorn? Ferrothorn made sense, given the fact that he had Ingrain and could use them to climb onto and move quickly like he had against Denzel. Aggron…?

But none of it mattered, did it? I only had one Pokemon left. No amount of thinking and theorizing would matter, in the end. I was tired, so tired, but my mind was still sharp. It was my body that could barely keep up. My muscles hurt from having tensed them too much, my ankle ached from standing so long and unconsciously putting weight on it, and my body was soaked in so much sweat that Sweetheart's Pokeball nearly slipped out of my palm.

Things did not actually look that bad for me.

One would have expected a Tyranitar's appearance to be a loud and boisterous thing, and especially mine. Perhaps a scream loud enough to make the barrier rattle, a fist slammed against a chest, the shaking and shifting of the earth.

Or at least to catch more than a glimpse of her.

The world hushed, and the air thickened with an ominous tension. The once-clear skies now twisted into a tumultuous vortex of darkened sands, shrouding the field in gloom, and suddenly, there was no more sound. Empoleon's heavy breathing, the river washing up against the shores of the arena, and none from Sweetheart herself. There was only the howling of the wind and the grating of the sand against the floor and the barrier, which was not even particularly loud. Everything was muffled. It was strange, the way she had disappeared from view seconds after materializing onto the field. The Sandstorm was not particularly thick. In fact, I could still somewhat spot Empoleon and even Byron from here.

Yet she was gone. Utterly masked from the world, as if she had never existed in the first place. The temperature began to drop from comfortable warmth to an annoying cold. Not enough that I could see my breath, but enough to make me shiver.

This was no ghostly trick. No slight of hand. This was her domain, where Tyranitar thrived. People, especially Sinnohans, knew Tyranitar for living high up in dangerous mountains the likes of Mount Silver, or Mount Coronet, but they lived in deserts, too. It was an unforgiving place of few prey, and so when they struck, they had to make it count.

Empoleon spun around, desperate to see where exactly she would be coming from. Had she somehow buried underground? Would the ground open up and swallow her hole? Well, it wasn't the former, since Sweetheart didn't know Dig and her body wasn't exactly adapted to it, but even I didn't know how she would strike. Empoleon flexed, spinning to fire water all around her, but her eyes widened when she saw how weak it was. Barely a Water Gun, if it was even that.

Enduring she was, but she was also on her last legs after Princess. Had she not been in this state, I had no doubt she would have had a trick to get out of this. Forming a shield of metal, perhaps.

It didn't matter any longer. Instead, she struggled to breathe from the amount of sand, convulsed from the paralysis. Byron's lips moved, but she couldn't hear him. No one could. He'd probably asked her to get back into the water.

There was a certain pressure, to not knowing where a multi-ton mass of scales and stone was, a building tension so thick you could choke on it, and anxiety made one prone to mistakes.

She was a hungry maw in the cold dunes at night. A hunter in the dark, ready to strike. A—

There was a roar. Deep and resonating deep in my bones. Endless rows of sharpened teeth sank into Empoleon's arm from behind as Tyranitar reappeared amidst the Sandstorm, her ambush having been laid. Sweetheart shook her head wildly, throwing Empoleon around like a rag and constantly beating her against the ground with Crunch sinking further and further into her flesh. She was the only thing we could hear, in the Sandstorm. Endless, guttural screams of her brutalizing her opponent.

Empoleon tried to get away with a pitifully weak Metal Claw, but the attack barely scratched Sweetheart's scales. It was Grass Knot, that allowed her to escape. From the mud we'd given her, thick roots grew around Tyranitar's feet and had her stumble, leaving Empoleon an opening to fire a concentrated beam of metal into one of her vents. She growled in irritation, and the pain forced her to let go.

Bloody, shaken, and with a flipper shredded by teeth, Empoleon retreated and jumped headfirst into the water now that she'd come back to her senses, but the liquid split apart, and she landed headfirst onto the cold, steel floor below, and the earth began to shake. Cracks spread from Sweetheart's feet until they reached Empoleon, and golden light erupted from the crevices before being swallowed by the dark. Smoke and shards of metal flew upward, thrown off from the sheer force of the Earthquake. They spread across the arena, flattening and altering the disposition of the ground. Even the river changed directions slightly to the right with three other channels being created in seconds.

The silence was admittedly disturbing.

The Sandstorm ended with Empoleon's fall into unconsciousness, letting the referee do their usual spiel to ask Byron to send out his last Pokemon.

"You've done well to push me this far, Grace Pastel," Byron said. "We've bloodied each other well, haven't we?"

What?

"Your true test begins now."

I gulped and ordered her to start it again right away despite the fact that it'd interrupt her celebrating. She disappeared into the Sandstorm once more, and Byron released his final Pokemon.

First came the golden glow.

He shimmered bright, even through the darkened sands, but he was not hope. No, that would be misconstruing what he was supposed to be. A beacon, yes, but a Pokemon meant to lead and inflict fear onto others, because when one saw the golden glow—

My knees buckled, and my breaths grew short. There was a— I felt cold metal press upon my throat, deep enough to nearly pierce the skin. It was there, but it— it wasn't. I shivered, not daring to move a muscle, not even a twitch of my finger or the rising of my chest with every breath, because I'd…

I'd what?

Lose. I would lose.

Kingambit stood up from his perpetual crouch with a lazy scowl, the golden blade atop his head lengthy enough to be taller than I was. Eyes like polished onyx gleamed with an unexplainable lassitude and held a cold, unyielding determination. The Kingambit's gaze swept across the surroundings and felt like a piercing judgment, causing my heartbeat to quicken and my throat to dry.

How, how, how? He had battled with Bisharp just two weeks ago, and the evolution method was entirely dependent on luck finding an army of Bisharp and Pawniard for your own to beat. This made no sense— he had been at his Gym every day since then. Had he sent a Gym Trainer to do it? Where? Sinnoh's population of the Pawniard line wasn't very high, and the reason no native Sinnohans who stayed here had ever gotten a Kingambit was because—

Byron's lips moved.

Kingambit didn't. He stood perfectly still, and something in the air gave away.

The cut was instantaneous, the sound of blade against blade breaking past the sandstorm and being louder than anything I could imagine. It was the screeching of a blade, raking against metal, but a thousandfold. Like nails against a chalkboard. I flinched when the crescent golden arc stretching high into the sky hit the barrier right in front of me, and I almost expected my head to get cut off for that disrespect. When my eyes opened, the Sandstorm was gone, Sweetheart lurking around Kingambit and preparing to strike again. The spikes Empoleon had laid that remained had all been sent forward by the impact, some of them having somehow penetrated past Sweetheart's armor.

But most of all.

He had cut through Dark Sandstorm.

He'd just fucking cut through it so effortlessly.

A large chasm had opened in the middle of the field, splitting it into two.

Everyone had heard of Kingambit's Supreme Overlord ability. It was one of Geeta's main gimmicks, when you actually got to that point and defeated almost her entire team, and Paldea had made a crap ton of propaganda movies about it that Denzel had showed me after Mira's Porygon had smuggled them off their internet, and they were actually pretty good. Where he differed from Palafin, however, was that this Pokemon was no hero meant to turn the tide of battle to save his allies. He was the final obstacle, annoyed that his army had failed him and forced him to get up from his chair to actually get the job done.

Here stood triumph, basked in gold and glory and exposing me to what felt like defeat so overwhelming I could barely move or stand.

"He— he can cut through you!" I yelled. "Iron Defense and Earthquake! Blow everything up!"

I didn't actually know if he could, but at this point it was like the steel type could do anything he set his mind to. With an earth-shaking roar, Tyranitar reared back, her powerful tail crashing against the metallic floor and causing vibrations that resonated throughout the entire arena. The ground quivered beneath the sheer force of the impact, and the metallic floor began to buckle and twist in agony under the earth that still remained. Splitting the earth to swallow him whole would be nearly impossible, when the floor was made of metal. There was a bit of relief when I saw Kingambit buckle under the power coursing through the cracked floor and struggle to stand. He wasn't invincible, thank fucking Arceus.

Still, no order came from Byron. He was barely looking at the battle.

And Kingambit was looking at me, not at Sweetheart.

I understood, now. I was fighting him. He was the general, and I was the opposite commander. What Byron had said before hadn't been an order.

Kingambit jumped, leaving a trail of golden light— no, golden slices in the air. Knowing she couldn't dodge, Sweetheart fired back with a Dragon Pulse, but he fucking cut that too, a sharpened arm slicing across the beam of concentrated turquoise energy. The steel type landed next to Sweetheart with speed that shouldn't have been possible, with his weight and size. He hadn't even looked at her, instead just letting one of the dark swords at the side of his face do the cutting, but I'd seen enough Fury Cutters to know that that neon green glow spelled bad news. Armor fell apart, crumbling like old sandpaper, and Sweetheart screamed.

Even through Iron Defense, he could cut.

"Concentrated Sandstorm!" I yelled.

Sweetheart turned, swiping at Kingambit's feet with her tail, and darkened sands sputtered from Tyranitar's vents and mouth, swarming around the steel type. Next, she intensified the Earthquake with a defiant roar that forced me to cover my ears despite the feeling of the iron against my neck. Water shook, earth and shards of steel flew up and rained down the arena, the floor depressed, collapsing to a lower level, yet Kingambit did not relent.

His hands sliced together, creating a blaring screech that had Sweetheart reeling back, and then he cut through the Sandstorm again, this time with Fury Cutter instead of that golden arc he had used prior. He broke into a quick jog, one step, two steps, three steps, then he slammed an elbow into Sweetheart's gut, plunging a blade deep into her flesh. Never had she been pushed to such an extent.

"Payback!" I ordered.

Darkness in her eyes— then a strike, so powerful a darkened shockwave shot out behind Kingambit and the plating on his chest dented. The steel type brought his head down, cutting through Sweetheart's shoulder with another Fury Cutter. He's growing stronger and stronger, I need some distance.

Kingambit was faster than her, however, and getting closer to the water wouldn't do anything when he'd just be able to cut his way across.

Another hit, this time slicing across her chest while she'd been slamming a fist into the crack in his chest, exposing the grey flesh within.

We had a way to do it, but it was high risk, high reward. To speed her up. Our win condition was keeping our distance enough to keep Earthquake going long enough to win.

A slice across her leg, and she roared, fury filling her eyes. A vengeful look twisted her face into a grimace, and she hurled her entire body forward, slamming her entire weight into Kingambit, who was crushed under so much pressure that he birthed a crater under his feet.

Yes.

That was our win condition.

A point-blank Dragon Pulse, this one cold and merciless as it engulfed Kingambit's form, stunning him for a few seconds until he reacted and cut, and pushed an Iron Head into her ribs.

"Rock Polish! Keep your distance and Earthquake!"

Who knew, that I'd be forced to see a Tyranitar run away from an opponent ever again? Stone shimmered, and for a moment, the blood soaking her plates glowed as well. Kingambit's eyes narrowed, and he leaped forward, but she was more agile, now. She threw herself back, sliding against the metal, and caught him with a burst of ground type energy where he landed before escaping towards the remainder of the river, which was at this point more of a bog. Kingambit let out a guttural, metallic grunt and followed.

Few moves were called out. There was a strange ebb and flow to this battle. Sweetheart ran, and Kingambit occasionally caught up to her due to her injured leg and got a good hit in. Something about those cuts was insidious. The amount of blood lost after each one was far greater than I'd ever expected from these attacks. I had her attempt Dark Sandstorm again, thinking that maybe that first move had been a powered-up one like Retaliate, but it hadn't been, and this time Kingambit destroyed it before it could even get going. Or maybe it had, and that was just its natural strength, I had no fucking idea and it was eating at me from the inside.

Thirty seconds later, they'd reached the water.

"Surf!"

I didn't think it was going to work, but I'd do anything to buy time. The water was full of mud and pieces of metal, but it was enough. A wave formed and washed over the land, and I would have crossed my fingers had every movement not made this damn Kingambit glance at me and press this fucking blade on my neck.

The steep type stopped, skidding against the ground, and braced himself— no he was flexing.

Then, there was darkness.

Little slices of the world, gone, just like that, like they'd been torn apart. The cuts ran the entire length of the Surf, and the water just… receded, like it was unable to be used any longer. Sweetheart confirmed my fears when she waved an arm and nothing happened. Here she was, her back to a bog of earth, water and metal.

We'd cornered ourselves. There was no way she'd be faster than Kingambit in water, Rock Polish just didn't work that way, and he'd waited until this very moment to reveal the fact that he too, could cut off the use of TE.

Not exactly that. More like if he cut enough with whatever move that was, he could effectively cut it off from being influenced by Type Energy. Such fucking bullshit.

This Kingambit… had he known all along? Had he lured us here, to this very position with all the momentum and the deck stacked against us? The Rock Polish, the way he seemed to have been suspiciously slow when following us? Was it all for this? This feeling of entrapment, of pushing against an unmoveable object— a damned mountain, and that defeat was now all but assured?

Don't let the psychological effects of his presence get to you, I breathed. The Earthquake had resumed in earnest and was back at full strength, the earth around them shaking like mad, though I suspected Iron Defense and the boost from Supreme Overlord was seriously dampening the effects.

This was it.

This was our last stand.

There was a glint in Sweetheart's eye, and she lunged forward with a defiant roar, flashing all of her teeth as the mud turned to stone and flew at Kingambit to accompany her charge. The steel type met her assault with calm, first knocking away all of the Stone Edges, and then parrying her main charge with a cross of his arms. She pushed, trying to pummel him into the ground and he fell—

Trick. Kingambit fell back, holding his entire weight with one arm embedded in the ground and then moved his head to slice across Sweetheart's chest. The wound was open enough now to plunge a blade there, and he did, stabbing her with the other hand. Rock Polish had turned Tyranitar slippery, so he pressed, and her feet slid down the metal. The rock type rolled toward the bog, landing face down in the mud, and Kingambit stood up with a tired groan. He cracked his neck, a deeply uncomfortable and metallic noise, then spared me a look, as if to tell me something.

Then, he slid down toward the water.

"Smack Down!" I screamed, hoping to have him slip too.

The water was shallow, and easy to get up from. Sweetheart angled her head toward Kingambit, and shards of stone and shrapnel burst through the water, but Kingambit just… cut.

He just cut so nonchalantly.

Words came out of my mouth, but my ears were ringing.

Kingambit jumped, dodging a burst of stones below him and escaping from the constant shaking of the earth. He landed on top of her, his weight pressing against her back, and a blade gouged the side of her back, neatly avoiding her spine. Sweetheart's eyes bulged, then slowly closed as her head sank back into the water.

Ah.

I'd… lost?

Seriously?

I blinked, my legs giving way below me. There was light at the edges of my vision, but I…

Was this a dream?

Moving was hard. So very hard. Like I'd just lost all of my strength.

Loud. Had the people around always been this obnoxiously loud? Clapping for no reason. Clapping when I hadn't won. Had it always been this difficult not to feel like garbage?

"Recall your Tyranitar, Grace Pastel."

Byron's voice, but it was far away. Shit. Shit, yeah. I fumbled around my belt, recalling Sweetheart before she drowned on accident. Kingambit looked at me and nodded, though he was sitting and drawing heavy breaths.

Like that mattered. Maybe I was just seeing things to make myself feel better. I turned away and bit my tongue. At least I was no longer feeling this pressure on me. There was the sound of Kingambit being recalled, and I had to struggle back to my feet twice before I made it up. Embarrassing.

This was real, wasn't it?

I wasn't going to wake up. Morning was not going to come. It was over.

I hadn't been strong enough to pass my test.

I should have expected Bronzong to break Princess' wings after seeing Steelix fight. Maybe Sunshine would have been able to beat Kingambit— could he cut heat? But then I'd need to spend so many resources to beat Steelix. Maybe I would have won. Maybe I should have saved a swap. Let Princess fall against Bronzong. Maybe I should—

My legs had carried me off the platform, nearly stumbling off the stairs and faceplanting forward. I knew Byron talked to all his challengers after their eighth-badge battle, win or lose, but all I wanted to do was leave. What had I been missing? What did I not have?

Byron was an imposing man, from up close, or maybe losing had fucked me up so hard I couldn't look him in the eye without feeling shame. Our microphones had already been cut off by this point.

The clap on my back knocked the wind out of me.

"What a fun battle! Well fought, Grace Pastel!" he barked out. "You impressed me time and time again with—"

"What did I do wrong?"

His eyebrows rose a smidge. "Let's have you hear the good first." He leaned forward, his hands and chin on the pommel of his shovel. I didn't care about the good, I needed to fix myself, but I let him go on. "Field manipulation and control. Among the best I've seen, for a kid your age. You fight tooth and nail for it, make it hard to keep to one plan. That's excellent."

Hurry.

"Firepower. People like to say that you can make up for that with clever tactics." He plastered a smile on his face, boy-like and innocent. "That's true, to an extent, but it's still a good thing to have. You've got some real heavy hitters with you. I s'pose your Claydol wasn't fully trained yet, though. Do me a favor and understand that what your Turtonator did isn't something you should replicate against all opponents. Accidents are prone to happen, sometimes."

Hurry up!

"I could talk about the strong bond and how your Pokemon fight for you, and how that makes them last longer in battle, but that one is rather common at this point," he continued. "Now, let's give you broad strokes. The problem is, while you've improved at improvising, what my files on you said was your weakness, you're prone to panic when it happens. Makes you battle worse."

Finally. "Do I just throw my head against the wall until I get better at that?" I asked, honing in on my flaw.

He nodded. "No fancy ways to improve other than battling yourself. You were caught off-guard when you realized I was fighting like you, when I started hitting back. That made you miss some things."

"My Togekiss."

"Hurts to see your Pokemon broken like that, doesn't it?" he asked. "Made you not notice the iron I had Rapture slip inside of her."

"I did notice, I—"

"Ah, and yet you didn't change the way you fought. That's even worse," Byron gruffed.

"No, I thought you just stabbed her!" I yelled defensively.

"Rapture contaminated her, and Empoleon helped spread it quicker," he said. "Made her weaken, and weaken fast." He must have seen my face drop, because he quickly added, "Not enough to put her in the hospital for weeks. Just enough to slow her down. Think of her like a steel type Toxic. Fairies are always weak to that trick."

It was just like mercury poisoning.

Damn it, and I'd only noticed she was weakening too quickly when it was too late. Empoleon had screwed us all along! My foot bounced and my teeth gnashed at my thumb nail.

"Relax, kid. Feels like the end of the world right now, but you'll be stronger for it," Byron said, standing up from his shovel. "Enjoy the rest of your week. Spend it with your friends, and I'll be seeing you again when this is all over."

I only nodded. He hadn't given me enough.

I was going to hole up in my room and watch the video over and over.