The next few days went by in a flash. It was amazing how quickly time passed when he didn’t want it to at all. The days were relaxing. He spent most of his time in light training with his pokemon, focusing on positioning with both Bulbasaur and Mankey. Emilia joined him for the training, though she focused on increasing the range, power, and accuracy of Charmeleon and Omanyte’s attacks.
When they weren’t training, both Cashe and Emilia allowed themselves to be dragged along with Lindon to all the activities on the cruise that he wanted to do. They saw a horrible family movie, Detective Pikachu 4, that went in a completely different direction than the film did back on Earth. In the pokemon world, the movie was about a regular detective who used a Pikachu as his pokemon companion in place of the more traditional Growlithe. It was filmed with both the style and sensibilities of an Air Bud movie, except instead of being an extremely competent detective, Pikachu was extremely incompetent. The entire thing was grating and Cashe left the theater wishing for his time back.
They made more than one visit to the casino, even though there were no matches until the quarterfinals started. Lindon wanted to make sure no one was catching up with him and was paranoid that he would lose his top spot, even though he was well ahead of everyone else. He adjusted his bets for the upcoming round multiple times as well, before ultimately going back to the original bets that he placed immediately after the round of sixteen.
They visited a few other things on the ship - bumper cars, a climbing wall, an arcade - which were pleasant enough, but only mindless fun. For the most part, Cashe focused on his upcoming battle and preparing to face off against two pokemon in the second stage of evolution. He was fairly confident against the Chansey, but the Poliwhirl was going to be a problem. He was checking the weather hourly, hoping to see predictions of sunny skies for his match.
Lindon had little interest in helping either Cashe or Emilia strategize for their battles, so evenings were spent helping each other, though after a few days there was little to go over that they had not previously.
“I told you, I am fine with my match,” Emilia said. She was lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling of her cabin, arms behind her head and legs crossed. Cashe was at the foot of her bed, hunched over a laptop. He was clicking between old, grainy footage of Tobb’s battle before the start of the tournament that a fan had posted online to gain insight into his battle style. It was not helping.
“You can’t say you are going to use Ice Beam until they faint,” Cashe grumbled, “That’s not a battle strategy.”
“It is,” Emilia said, “I have actually seen my opponent battle live, and he wins with clever strategies and great fundamentals like positioning and attack selection. And that works really well in a lot of cases, but against overwhelming and powerful super effective attacks, it doesn’t. I might use Water Gun against Onix if I’m feeling playful. Who knows?”
“Well, I need a way to slow down Poliwhirl if it’s not sunny out,” Cashe complained.
“We already went over this. Mankey knows Rock Tomb.”
“Yes, and hitting Rock Tomb is a problem.”
“So you have to corner Poliwhirl first like I did with Omanyte and Charmeleon.”
“Omanyte was cornered by Kubfu, not the other way around,” Cashe pointed out. Again. “If Tobb paid any attention at all, he would expect a strategy like that and he wouldn’t fall for that.”
Instead of pointing out that superior positioning would render that moot against a physical attacker like she had the previous couple of times they had this exact conversation, Emilia took another route, “Come on, Cashe. His name’s Tobb. He’s not a serious trainer. You’re getting way too worked up over this.”
“What?” Cashe pulled his attention away from the computer to focus on Emilia.
“I mean really, how are you nervous about someone named Tobb?” Emilia continued, “No one is worried about Tobb. Tobb is the guy who gets lost going to the bathroom at a party and nobody notices he's missing. Tobb is the guy who spends years talking about how he could have made it big after a failed audition for Detective Pikachu 5. When someone tells you your girlfriend is running around with another guy and then you find out his name is Tobb, you think, “Oh, that’s no big deal.” Tobb isn’t the guy who steals your girl. He’s not the guy who becomes a movie star. He’s not the guy that people remember. And he’s definitely not the guy who beats Apollo Cashe.”
“Thanks, I think?” Cashe said, giving Emilia a befuddled expression, “Have you always been so judgmental about names?”
“Why do you think I stopped my sister when she was flirting with that trainer? His name was Till. Can you imagine an Oak going around with some guy named Till? She was obviously way too good for him, even if he is handsome.” Emilia sat up, frowning at Cashe seriously.
“What the hell is going on? Are you pranking me?” Cashe slapped himself in the face to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating things.
“No one’s ever heard of Champion Tobb or Champion Till.” Emilia continued her rant, “They don’t exist. Think of the great Champions of the past. Blue, Red, Gold. Lance. Cynthia. Steven is still around, though that’s one of the original’s kids. Selena was a champion. Emilia will be a champion.” Emilia gave Cashe a look as if challenging him to argue the point. Cashe held up his hands in surrender, “Tobb is not going to be a champion.”
“Okay,” Cashe said, “I get it. Tobb isn’t champion material. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to worry about him.”
“It kind of does,” Emilia said, rolling her eyes, “Look at Tobb’s battle history for this tournament. What do you see?”
Cashe didn’t need to glance at the laptop to check, he had been staring at the match history for hours.
“It’s all wins.”
“Obviously. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t win everything. What else?” Emilia shuffled over to Cashe, stopping behind him and leaning on his back to look over his shoulder.
“Uh,” Cashe glanced at the battles, “Some were close. Especially recently.”
Emilia pressed into him, “What else?”
“I don’t know,” Cashe said, “His battles all take a little longer than normal?”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Look at his pokemon.”
“They’re the same. Chansey and Poliwhirl. Kanto pokemon, second evolution in their lines. So what?”
“So,” Emilia drew out the word, “How many trainers have you seen with second evolution pokemon?”
“You,” Cashe said. He frowned. Who else had pokemon that evolved? “Is that it?”
“I’m the only person I am aware of,” Emilia said, “It’s almost like it’s really hard to evolve a pokemon this early in our careers. It’s almost like I’m a generational talent.”
“So you’re saying Tobb is a great talent?” Cashe gave her a confused look. He was sure that was not what she was trying to say.
“I’m saying that he has two second evolution pokemon from the start of the tournament! Look! Every match, Chansey and Poliwhirl. His parents are probably some successful trainers that got him evolved pokemon from a breeder when he was a kid! He didn’t go through the hardships of training them himself. He has two evolved pokemon, but some of his matches are still close? I bet you didn’t fail to notice how much stronger Charmeleon is than Charmander. It’s like that with every pokemon! But look at his last match! Fennekin and Sentret, but it still took him nearly twice the time to win as it took you! What does that tell you?”
“Huh,” Cashe said, “He’s not a good trainer.”
“He’s Tobb,” Emilia huffed in his ear, “He’s probably not a good anything.”
***
Emilia’s rather unique pep talk did help relieve Cashe’s stress over the upcoming battle somewhat. Cashe didn’t know if it was because she had an actually good point, if he secretly or subconsciously agreed with her about people named Tobb, or if the very fact that she ranted about names for five minutes was just too surreal to him, but whatever the case, he managed to get quite a good sleep the night before his battle against Tobb.
The morning of the battle he still felt his customary nervousness, but he doubted he would ever be rid of that. Every match of the top eight was held on the main stage of the stadium, and his match was the second of the day. Emilia’s was first, which meant he had the opportunity to watch it from the good seats directly beside the stadium with Lindon.
The sun stood high in the sky, bright and hot, without a cloud in sight. People filtered into the stadium as the official and the Kadabra prepared for the upcoming matches. The announcer prattled on over the speaker systems, making light hearted jokes at the expense of those in the crowd. A camera would focus on a person and they would appear on the enormous screens overhead, usually laughing along with the crowd at the announcer's soft ribbing.
It was a good atmosphere, and a needed one, as despite the match being a quarter final, and the three day break since the last match, the crowd was decidedly less excited about Emilia vs Erick than it was about Emilia vs Ashley. The entire round was being talked about like a foregone conclusion online. There were four powerhouse trainers left and four trainers very few people had ever heard of until the True Rookie Tournament. Each ‘powerhouse’ - Cashe, Emilia, Marcus and Damian Dart - was matched up against a lesser known trainer, meaning most people already thought they had a good idea of the outcome of the matches. Cashe could see this reflected in the audience. The stands were, for the first time, not filled completely, with little pockets of seats empty as people took the opportunity to explore other areas of the ship when most of the guests were otherwise occupied.
Both participants entered the arena to mild applause, with Emilia waving to the crowd and wearing a bright smile and Erick swaggering to his place as if he were on a stroll at a park. Erick was a dark haired young man with a laid back posture and was wearing a leather jacket and jeans instead of the customary trainer’s tracksuit or gym clothes.
As ever, Emilia proved she knew what she was talking about when it came to battling. She led her Omanyte, as she said she would, against Erick’s Pidove. Emilia immediately unleashed a torrent of attacks, firing Ice Beam after Ice Beam across the battlefield. The attack looked almost like a laser, a blue flash of ice shooting across the battlefield too fast for the eye to track. Erick did well to avoid it for as long as he could, getting off what Cashe recognized as a Swagger from his training with Mankey, and what looked like a Gust or two. It was not enough, however, and Pidove soon fell to a single Ice Beam across the breast.
Onix was out next, but suffered a worse fate than Pidove. Erick’s Onix was huge, nearly fifty feet long and ten wide, it shook the stage when it entered the battlefield. Unfortunately, this would also be its undoing, its enormous size making an easy target for Omanyte’s onslaught of attacks. The match was over almost as soon as it started, with Onix going down in a great heap to a single Water Gun. Apparently, Emilia was feeling playful after all.
The crowd applauded the victory, but it was a polite clap instead of an excited cheer. Getting so far in the tournament with his pokemon was an admirable accomplishment, but most of the audience seemed to be on the same page as Emilia. There was only so much someone could do with good strategy and tactics. Strong pokemon were necessary if one wanted to be the best.
As Emilia and Erick finished up the post-match interviews, Cashe took an opportunity provided by sitting in the very front of the stadium. Rather than go the long way around, he hopped the protective railing to get onto the stage, circumventing the tunnels completely.
“Apollo, what are you doing?” Lindon yelled as Cashe landed on the stage.
Cashe only waved to him and jogged across the arena to meet Emilia as she walked back to the tunnels. Emilia noticed him as he approached and grinned, “You know I thought about doing that yesterday after your match.”
“You can do it now,” Cashe said, “Lindon is saving you a seat.”
Emilia looked over Cashe’s shoulder to Lindon and waved in his direction, but he was too busy speaking adamantly with another fan in the crowd to notice.
“That kid makes friends with everyone,” Emilia smiled, “Good luck with your match.”
“Not going to hop the fence?” Cashe said as Emilia walked away.
“That’s more of a Blood Money thing, I think.” Emilia said, “Emilia Oak is a good girl.”
Cashe snorted and headed towards the stage. A stressed employee in a headset tried to get him to return to the tunnel and make a proper entrance, but Cashe figured the ‘Blood Money’ thing to do would be to ignore her. That made Cashe feel bad, however, and he ended up having a brief conversation over the headset with the producer on the other end of the woman’s headset, explaining that he was already here and he didn’t really care about a proper introduction. It might hurt his image a little bit, but he didn’t want the production assistant to get in trouble with her boss.
Fortunately, the announcer was a true professional, and took the development in stride, describing Cashe as ‘eager for battle’ in his introductory excitations. To Cashe’s ear, it was a little tongue and cheek, but the crowd seemed to like it well enough.
Cashe had to suppress a smile when he saw his opponent enter the stadium, remembering Emilia’s rant against his name. “There’s no way she didn’t know what he looked like ahead of time,” Cashe mumbled to himself as he tried to suppress his inappropriate giggling, “She set me up.”
Tobb looked like a Tobb. There was no other way to put it. Cashe wasn’t one who believed that names meant anything about a person, or that people tended to take on a stereotypical image related to their name. Cashe knew many Karens who were very nice people. But Tobb looked like a Tobb.
He was short. Not strikingly short, for that would be discussion worthy in its own right. No, he was only an inch or two shorter than average, with short dark hair and a pair of rectangular glasses. He was not bad looking, but had the kind of face that said ‘I’d prefer not to be noticed’, and he wore a plain red tee-shirt with a pair of tan cargo shorts. He carried his pokeballs in a fanny pack and did not look particularly happy about making it so far in the prestigious tournament.
Tobb, got a more traditional introduction, which stirred the audience up a bit more, though they still were not overly excited for the battle.
‘Probably because his name is Tobb,’ Emilia’s voice said in his head.
Cashe couldn’t help it. He laughed.
*****