CHAPTER 99

My eyes widened at Craig’s proposal. A Pokemon’s owner needed a license to fly, and if they were caught without one, there’d be severe penalties. In the most severe cases, depending on what happened, you could even be banned from ever flying, have your trainer ID revoked forever, or your Pokemon could even be taken, but those were only reserved for accidents that caused deaths. Most of the time, for first offenders, you would only have to pay a hefty fine. Still, so long as the Pokemon’s owner had a license, you were allowed to ride with them, just like a car driver.

“Um… that would certainly help a lot,” Denzel said. “But can Salamence support all of us and our bags?”

“Roxie’s a tough girl, don’t worry,” Craig said. “She’s carried five people before, and you guys are kids, so you’re lighter.”

“You said it benefits us both,” Cecilia started, crossing her arms. “How?”

“Well, you’re going to Eterna, right?” He asked. We responded with a nod. “Now that I’ve beaten Candice, I need to beat Gardenia too, so we’re going in the same direction, but that’s not it. It might be temporary, but you guys are the hottest thing in the news right now— you’re getting more coverage than any trainers in the Circuit. This might seem a bit cynical, so sorry if it comes out meaner than I want it to, but if I bring you back, I get a lot of positive coverage too. Just make sure to put in a good word for me. It’ll reflect badly on you, since trainers will think that it’s unfair— especially the other first years, but honestly, after what you’ve been through, I think the criticism will be pretty muted.”

Denzel rubbed his chin. “I mean, I don’t see why not—”

“I’m going to Celestic, not Eterna,” Chase interrupted. “I’ll pass.”

“Are you sure?” Craig asked. “It’ll take you a long time to get to your next gym battle. By the time you make it to Hearthome, or wherever you’re going, some first years might have five badges already. You’ll fall behind.”

Chase clicked his tongue and thought for a few seconds. “Fuck it,” he groaned. “Fine, I’ll get to Eterna. I’ll visit Celestic later in the year.”

“Any reason why you want to go to Celestic in particular?” I asked. His need to go to the small town was intriguing to me. It was mostly famous for being Cynthia’s hometown, and where she had started her Journey when she was fifteen, and the Celestic Ruins, but other than that, it was rather barren.

“Nah,” he sighed. I had been with him long enough to suspect that he was lying. “It’ll be fine.”

“That works then,” Craig smiled.

“How long does it take to fly there?” I asked.

“Three to four days. More, depending on the weather— if there’s a blizzard or the wind’s blowing against us. Roxie also has to take a break every ten hours or so.”

“Only three days?” Cece said in awe.

“She’s a pretty fast flier. But there are a few things we need to go over. Chase and Denzel, your clothes aren’t warm enough to fly. It gets cold up there. You also need to buy some goggles to protect your eyes. We’ll be going fast, and you don’t want anything getting in your eyes. Plus, the wind makes it almost impossible to keep ‘em open without them anyway.”

“Won’t we fall off?” I asked.

Craig laughed. “Obviously not. I have a saddle that has seats for five, and you’ll be attached to it. There’d be no way to hold on otherwise. Not everyone is as crazy as Cynthia. Did you know she just manually holds on to her Garchomp? It’s a wonder she’s never fallen off.”

I gave a hesitant nod. I wasn’t scared of heights, but flying on a Pokemon for the first time would make anyone uneasy.

“Let me give you all my number so that you can call me when you’re ready,” the older trainer said. “Don’t take too long. I’ve spent too much time here already.”

“What, you don’t want to see me?” Candice pouted.

“I like my doses of Candice in moderation.”

“Um, Chase,” I started. “Now that you’re going to Eterna, will you travel with us?”

“No, I’m still going to Hearthome on my own,” he said. “But now we’ll definitely meet in the city.”

“Right,” I grinned. “How about we battle there? Cece, Denzel, and I were already planning on doing so, but now that you’ll be there, we can add you to the plan.”

“I don’t see why not,” he said confidently.

“Alright!” I cheered. “Maybe we can do a two on two or something.”

“Hey! Don’t start picking already, we’ll figure it out when we get there,” Denzel said.

“Okay, I’m taking Obel then,” he said right away.

“What if I refuse?” She teased.

“Your loss.”

“You kids are so cute,” Candice said, resting her head against her hands. “Makes me miss being a trainer. I’m gonna miss you guys.”

“We can always come back,” Denzel said. “I doubt it’s the last time we’ll be here, especially since our friends still need to battle you.”

“It’s going to take months,” she complained. “I want to stick you all in little jars and keep you.”

I ignored her out-of-pocket suggestion and let the current situation sink in. Somehow, we had kind of just… befriended a gym leader. We were in her home, talking. Only the best trainers that recurringly went through the Circuit and made the gym leaders use their personal teams could usually boast of such a feat.

Maybe I’d get to talk to Gardenia one day.

——

The next day, I had to wait all afternoon for my team to be healed. Electabuzz was the one that had been injured the worst, and Frillish would have been too, if he hadn’t been a ghost. Nurse Joy told me to let Electabuzz take it easy for a few days, and I would obviously listen. He had done wonderfully during the battle, but there was no doubt that he had pushed himself past his limit. Using so many Thunderbolts had taken its toll, and Jynx and Darmanitan had done a number on him. I was now back in my room, ready to release all of them.

“Larvi!” Larvitar yelled at my feet. She was excited to see the team again, and so was I. With a flash of red, I let out all of my Pokemon with a beaming smile. Togetic rushed me, knocking me on the ground as she rubbed her head against my neck. Tangela wrapped me in a dozen vines, squeezing me into a hug as he shook excitedly. Frillish smiled slightly and gave me a firm nod.

“Okay, okay!” I laughed. “I get it, I’m happy to see you guys too!”

Electabuzz approached me and offered me a hand. I took it, and he lifted me back up. I brought him into a warm hug. Larvitar giggled as angel pat her on the head.

“You were awesome,” I said, before looking at my team. “You all were. Seriously, look at me.”

All of my Pokemon turned toward me.

“There were two phases to the battle. The first phase, the one where we had a plan and we were in control. That part was practically perfect. We had Candice exactly where we wanted her and used that to our advantage,” I explained. “The second part… well, I can’t exactly judge it before watching the footage, since it’s kind of all a blur, but I know that we can improve on that,” I said, remembering Craig’s advice. “But don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not saying that I’m sad or anything. Seriously, this was the most fun I’ve ever had in a Pokemon battle.”

“Ele,” Electabuzz said, clapping my shoulder with a smile.

“You too, huh?” I grinned. “You’ve got some serious firepower, you know that hon?”

Togetic giggled, floating above him and placing her head in between his antenna.

“I told you, you were all awesome,” I said. “I’m going to watch over the footage now, so feel free to play, alright? We’ll work on your next steps for training at some point, but you all deserve a break.”

I grabbed my Poketch from my bag, but I also gave Togetic her plushie and Tangela his stress ball. Larvitar immediately yelled and tried to steal both of their toys, and I had to sternly tell her not to throw a fit and that they could share. Unfortunately, Electabuzz had outgrown his already small battery, so I couldn’t really give it to him. Thankfully though, he seemed content with teasing Larvitar and bragging about the battle. He sure knew how to press her buttons, especially since she desperately wanted to start battling.

“Well, time for the autopsy,” I said with a twinge of anticipation. Frillish was behind me, staring at what I was doing as he usually did when I was working.

I opened the Snowpoint gym website, grabbed my notebook, my pen, and started playing the video. After pushing past the discomfort of hearing my voice on a recording, the first thing I noticed was how unhinged I looked. Even at the start of the battle, I was just staring at Candice with my eyes wide like I was mad. Hell, I was barely blinking. Now that I was looking at it, I could definitely see how that could anger somebody. Candice was a gym leader, but she was still human.

“Well, damn,” I groaned. Gardenia was much more subtle about her observations, and when you did catch her looking at you, it wasn’t with such a crazy look.

In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter though. Sure, it had angered Candice, but maybe me looking like a crazy person would unsettle my opponents and throw them off their game.

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I definitely needed to remember to blink and breathe, though.

“Here we go,” I whispered.

First, there was the fight between Frillish and Glalie. Scouting the ice type’s moves had gone exceedingly well, and he had taken minimal damage, but it went a bit off the rails when we switched gears and wanted to take it down. The plan had been to take it down immediately, hoping that the sudden change of pace in the battle would throw Candice off enough to let that happen, but she adapted remarkably quickly. Luckily, Frillish had worked on Shadow Ball enough to break past that Protect, otherwise we would have taken too long, and Candice might have felt like going on a more offensive Pokemon, which might have spelled trouble for Electabuzz.

Thankfully, none of that had happened. But it could have. I didn’t want to have any maybe’s in my plans. I wanted everything to be iron tight. So what could I have done to avoid this and beat Glalie faster? I could have just said that I could have practice Shadow Ball more so that Frillish could just throw them out like he could with Water Pulse or Bubblebeam and call it a day, but that wasn’t enough. If I was placed in the battle right now, with the exact same setup, what would I do? I tapped my pen on my desk as I thought, ignoring my Pokemon’s many cries around me.

Suddenly, it came to me.

The Glalie had frozen the majority of Frillish’s water type attacks, so I had used Shadow Ball to try and bait another move, but what if I hadn’t? I could have made Candice reveal protect by having Frillish quickly move around Glalie with Water Sport and using a water type move behind him so that freezing it with Frost Breath was impossible. Hell, that actually happened during the battle. If I had acted more helplessly and not revealed Shadow Ball until I was sure it could hit, then I would have been in a better spot.

But maybe Frillish would have taken more damage from Freeze Dry or Ice Shard.

For every action in battle, there was a cost. Would the cost have been worth it here? Since Frillish had Recover, I thought yes. There was a huge mistake I had made, however, and that was during Frillish’s short fight against Sealeo. Frillish had Water Absorb, but I still made him dodge Brine when he could have used that water to regenerate some of the damage he had taken from Glalie. I had been so focused on grand plans that I had forgotten to look at the little, obvious things. I needed to get better at using abilities in general too, which was something I had largely ignored.

I scribbled some notes and moved on to Electabuzz. His performance against Sealeo had been flawless. No matter how many times I replayed the video, there were no mistakes I could spot there, so I moved on to his battle against Jynx. The start had actually been fine. Despite a close call with Sing, his Thunderbolts were fast and accurate enough to stop the ice type from ever putting him to sleep, and we had slowly been dealing damage, chipping away at Jynx as it desperately diverted our attacks.

“You’re pissing me off! We’re going all out! Get up there and grab some trees on the way!” Candice yelled in the video.

That was obviously when the problems started. I had said before I had hoped that a quick change in the pace of the battle would destabilize Candice, but she actually used the same tactic on me. Despite’s honey’s best efforts, I wasn’t there to help him, and he took some avoidable hits, like that tree that hit from behind him.

I could have warned him, but I had been too taken aback. I was lost in my head, and then it was too late. Being hit by a tree was obviously no small problem, and it had been enough to almost faint him, but luckily, he had pushed himself to the brink and taken Jynx down with Fire Punch.

Still, if he hadn’t been hit by that tree, then maybe he wouldn’t have gone down in one Avalanche against Darmanitan. That mistake had honestly all been on me. Like Craig had said, I needed to be better at adapting when the situation was no longer in my favor, but ideally, I’d be able to predict those shifts in the battle before they even happened by watching my opponent’s body language. I had noticed Candice’s rising anger during the battle, but I thought nothing of it until it was too late, which meant that unfortunately, I wasn’t good enough to do that yet, but it was still something to work on. I wrote on my notebook and continued.

“Angel, huh…” I whispered.

Angel had done his job, which was Leech Seed and Poison Darmanitan, but there were still things to work on. First, I should have figured out that Darmanitan’s Icicle Crash would be more powerful than the others’ after seeing his Avalanche take down Electabuzz. I distinctively remembered watching a video of her battles where the move had been applied in the exact same way, with dozens of icicles crashing into the ground all at once— albeit it had been used by another Pokemon. Unfortunately, in the heat of the battle, I had forgotten that, and Tangela took a hit we could have maybe avoided with foresight, which might have let him paralyze Darmanitan along with the poison. Another misstep I needed to fix.

For Togetic, I had seriously underestimated the control that Darmanitan had over Avalanche. Power was one thing, but the amount of fine-tuning needed to have the move wrap around Extrasensory was mind-boggling. Thankfully, by that time in the battle, I had landed back on my feet, and I was thinking clearly again. Ancient Power had bought us a precious few seconds, and we managed to get Darmanitan into that… second form. I took a break from writing to look it up online. Apparently, it was called ‘Zen Mode,’ and some Darmanitan had the ability to switch forms whenever they took too much damage. For Galarian Darmanitan, it turned them into an ice and fire type, which is why it burned off Tangela’s Leech Seed so easily.

The ability was exceedingly rare, however, which was why I hadn’t even heard of it before. I was somewhat harsh on myself— I needed to be, if I wanted to get to the Conference in my first year— but I wasn’t that harsh, which was why I wouldn’t blame myself for not figuring it out.

Lastly, there was Frillish’s fight against Darmanitan. There wasn’t much to say there. He almost went down to an Avalanche, but we managed to salvage the situation with an Acid Armor. After he managed to Recover, I’d say that we were in the clear.

Not revealing Recover had actually been the key to my victory. If Candice had known that Frillish knew the move, I doubted that she still would have used Belly Drum, which caused Darmanitan to damage itself to the point of collapse. She probably believed that all she would have to do to win was take down an already-injured Frillish.

“Ahhh,” I groaned, stretching my arms and legs. Frillish placed a tentacle on my shoulder, and I gently held it. “I know you want me to rest, but I’m not done quite yet. Plus, I actually feel fantastic. No joke.”

“Fri…”

“I’m not lying, I swear!” I exclaimed. “I have a few more things to think about, and I’ll get back to bed, alright? I’ve got to be well rested for the trip tomorrow.”

Since I felt fine today, we were going to start flying back south tomorrow morning. I felt anxious at the fact that I was only going to get three days to prepare to tackle my newfound fame, but… blegh. We wouldn’t stay in Eterna long anyway, but I dreaded the swarms of trainers, reporters, and people who just recognized me from T.V. I did feel good about the fact that we would maybe make it in time for Pauline’s birthday in three days. We hadn’t told the others we were traveling on a dragon, and I couldn’t wait to see the look on their faces when we arrived.

I turned to Larvitar, who was running against one of Tangela’s vines while the grass type was preoccupied by standing by a window and soaking up sunlight. When we got on the road again after Eterna, I would begin teaching her new moves and start getting her to battle the wild Pokemon on route 207. It was one of the most frequented routes, especially near the cycling road, so the wild Pokemon there were often weak. If I met trainers with one badge or less, I’d let her battle them too. She was almost at her normal weight of 158 pounds, and she was almost fully grown now, so it was time for her to start battling. I’d break the news to her later though.

I turned off the battle videos and started typing something on my Poketch.

‘Fire types available in Sinnoh.’

Due to how cold the region was, in the past, there weren’t many fire types native to the region at all. Thankfully— or unfortunately, depending on if you were talking to a ranger— globalization had brought all the regions closer together, and that meant that contamination happened. Paras, for example, were native to Kanto, but like that ranger had explained before we entered Eterna Forest, all it took was for a few trainers to bring Paras there and abandon them for whatever reason, and now they were infesting the forest. Of course, not every Pokemon could be found in Sinnoh, but there were enough fire types for me to work with.

I needed a certain type of Pokemon to fill a role in my team that was still empty. That gaping hole had been felt during the battle against Candice. Heavy artillery, I had called it. Something that could deal a lot of damage from afar, but also take a lot of hits. After narrowing my choices, I was left with a few candidates.

First, the Rolycoly line. I knew they could be found in caves, and we were going to travel through Mount Coronet again to get to Hearthome. Coalossal was great at filling the role I needed, and they learned a lot of powerful fire and rock type moves, but they weren’t the best long distance fighters, and a rock and fire type had a lot of weaknesses, which could be exploited by how slow the Pokemon was. Plus, I already had a rock type with Larvitar. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but the rarity of the next two might mean that I’d have to catch one anyway.

Next up was Torkoal, which was a slightly better choice. From what I could see, they were also found in Mount Coronet, but they were way rarer than Rolycoly. They were also found deep in the Oreburgh mines, since they sustained themselves off of coal, which was funny enough, since Rolycoly was made out of coal. Did Torkoal eat Rolycoly?

I preferred not to think about that.

Torkoal unfortunately came with its drawbacks as well, though. It was adept at resisting physical attacks thanks to its tough shell, but it sometimes floundered against special attacks, and it was even slower than Coalossal. Plus, the Pokemon was too defensive-minded for what I wanted exactly, but I wouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It was still an excellent battler, and the strongest ones could learn Eruption, one of the most powerful fire type moves in the world.

Lastly, there was the Numel line. Camerupt was the most offensive-minded Pokemon of the three, and it could also learn Eruption. The ground typing would also help with rounding out my team. But those offensive capabilities came with a drawback. It was the least bulky Pokemon of the three, and it couldn’t take as many hits. Numel were also rare, however, it didn’t live on Mount Coronet, but around it and other mountainous areas. It was most common around Stark Mountain, and so were Torkoal, but routes and facilities on the Battle Frontier were restricted to trainers with eight badges, so I wasn’t going to get there any time soon.

Rolycoly, Torkoal, Numel. All came with advantages and disadvantages I’d find a way to work around, but one of these three would be my final team member for the foreseeable future, and I’d have to catch it before I was out of Mount Coronet.

If I had to pick one between the three, though? I would choose Numel.

“Well, I’m done,” I said with a satisfied smile. “Time to get some rest.”

——

I watched in awe as Roxie just let Craig install the enormous saddle on her back. He pulled on it firmly and asked Salamence to move around a bit with it to make sure it was on tight. We were on the outskirts of Snowpoint, since Pokemon as dangerous as Salamence weren’t allowed to be out inside of cities or specifically designated areas, and the sun was just rising.

“Now let me repeat this again,” Craig said. “Keep your Pokeballs inside of your bag and not on your belt. We don’t want any accidents. Then we’d be forced to turn back to look for it, and most of the time, we won’t be flying over routes. Everybody go to the bathroom? Everybody eat and drink? We’ll be in the air for almost ten hours straight, and Roxie doesn’t like it when I interrupt her flying, so I’d rather avoid it.”

We all nodded, and he motioned us to step forward. He quickly lifted us on top of Salamence and we attached ourselves to the saddle. There were four seats on her back and one right below her neck, which was where Craig would sit, and they were angled away from Salamence’s body so that our legs could hang off the… edge. Cece sat next to me, on Roxie’s left, and Chase and Denzel were on the other side. Craig turned back and made sure we were all attached correctly, and he had to tighten Chase’s harness. I zipped my coat up to my neck and put on my goggles.

“I’m so fucking nervous,” I said, trembling slightly.

“Come on, grow up,” Chase complained.

“We’ll be fine,” Denzel said. “People do this every day.”

“That doesn’t help whatsoever,” I said. “And Chase, don’t act like you aren’t scared. I see you bouncing your leg.”

“Wha— Shut it!”

“Personally, I can’t wait,” Cecilia grinned. “I’m looking forward to doing this with Zweilous when they evolve into Hydreigon. Talonflame could as well, but they’re often too small to lift a person. It depends on how big she is when she evolves.”

Craig climbed on Salamence’s back.

“Ready? It’s going to be really sudden, and you might feel a bit nauseous, but when we get to cruising altitude, you’ll barely be able to tell.”

I froze. Nauseous?

“Let’s go, Roxie,” Craig said as he tapped her neck.

Salamence flapped her giant wings and took flight.

I screamed.