The day on which Joey was to face Surge did not start overly well. For one, it was raining, which forced him to leave the house with an umbrella, something that he hated. Secondly, despite quite an ardent search, he had not managed to find a third Pokemon for the gym battle. This meant that he would be facing Surge with an additional disadvantage, to the disadvantage that it already was having a Metapod. Thirdly, Mia would not be joining them. She had caught her Oddish, had taught her Rattata a very weak version of Thunderbolt, and was planning on her second gym badge attempt to be Cerulean.
The gym that Joey himself was considering skipping. After all, it might just be better to simply focus on the youngster tournament from Surge onwards.
This meant that as Joey arrived at the south gate of the city, where the same bus was once again waiting for them, he didn't even have a pleasant bus ride to look forward to.
In fact, the only youngsters present who would be challenging the gym were Sabrina and Michael. Truly, riveting conversationalists in their own right. There was of course also Ruth, her grey hair matted to her skull from the downpour, and the same bus driver as last time.
"Good that you're here Jonathan," Ruth addressed him politely as he joined the group.
Sabrina was protecting herself from the rain with her psychic abilities but did not bother extending the courtesy to others.
"We're only waiting for a trainer escort at this point," the old lady said.
"Can we maybe wait on the bus?" Joey asked. His shoes already felt wet. He loved swimming, but the water had never been meant to fall from the sky. Unless of course, one had nothing to do that day, then it was all right.
Ruth looked like she let his suggestion tumble through her head, before looking at something in the distance. "No worries, there she is. Let me introduce you and then we'll be on our way."
Joey looked at where the women's gaze was pointed and his heart did a little skip as his eyes beheld the person walking towards them calmly in the rain seemingly unbothered by the drenched state of their clothing.
It was Lorelei. What was she still doing here? Joey asked himself.
She'd beaten his ass on his return from Constance weeks ago. By all accounts, she should have already beaten the gym, with no issues.
As the girl joined the group to stand next to Ruth and the bus driver, Ruth introduced her. "This is Lorelei. An ice specialist from the Sevii islands. She will be joining us just on the trip to Vermilion, we will pick up another trainer on the way back." She turned to the girl in question and nodded towards the youngsters. "These are your charges, do try to prevent them from dying."
Lorelei nodded seriously, but because she wasn't wearing her glasses, Joey assumed that she didn't really see any of them.
This suspicion was confirmed as they all entered the bus and Joey remarked to the girl, "Are you really just using this as a bus ride to Vermillion? You do know it's only 3 days walking, right?"
She turned to him, or, well, in his general direction. Instead of answering his question she instead posed her own."I think I recognize your voice, do we know each other from somewhere?"
The youngster simply face-palmed and went to sit down in the front of the bus. How was someone who was set to become an Elite Four member in the future such an airhead?
Well, the Elite Four were decided by strength and the girl was still young, with lots of time to mature.
Just as he was about to mentally doze off, perhaps pray a bit that at least there wouldn't be any rain in Vermilion, someone suddenly sat down next to him. Considering that quite frankly all of the options on the bus were bad, he reluctantly turned his head to the left to consider the new arrival.
It was Sabrina, oddly enough. Joey had thought that they had parted on bad terms, due to his intrusive question about her abilities. He glanced at her belt and noted that she had three pokéballs. If she'd caught a third abra he would sincerely laugh his ass off. He wondered what she wanted from him.
"Can I do something for you?"
The girl turned her head towards him, flicked her green hair behind her ear and gave him a penetrating stare. "You smell worse than usual," she said and promptly teleported away to another one of the seats on the bus.
Joey sat there, stupefied. He didn't know if he had just been roasted, insulted or burned. Complimented?
What she was probably referring to was the fact that in addition to him being ghost-typed, he'd also been going to Constance regularly recently to play with the Misdreavus there.
However, just to double-check, he subtly lifted an arm and smelled his armpit. It smelled normal. Sure he was going through puberty, but as an adult who'd already done that once, he knew how to use deodorant and to shower regularly.
"Weird girl," he muttered, as the bus set itself into motion. Just like last time a small part of the gate opened to let them through and they were off on the road which was blissfully empty of any trainers or youngsters that would have otherwise surely blocked the path with their inane
battles.
The trip commenced normally and just like last time Ruth arrived at Joey's side to ask him what his plan was for the gym. She looked sceptically at the two pokéballs on his belt.
"Good job on the last battle," she started. "What's your plan for Surge, if I may ask?"
Joey shrugged. "I guess there's no point in hiding it considering you'll see the whole thing anyway," he joked. "It's quite simple really. I have one of my Pokemon poison Raichu, and then the other exhausts it."
"That seems simplistic, but the best plans often are. It's not like you're not good at improvisation," Ruth riposted, just as the bus ground to a halt on the road. The both of them perked up and stood up to see through the front window what was happening.
Lorelei seemed unconcerned standing there and the bus driver simply leaned back with a sigh.
The scene that revealed itself before them was relatively harmless but nevertheless promised an excruciating delay in their journey...
There was a colony of slowpoke migrating over the road.
This was going to take a while.
Ruth cursed next to him. "Surge and his impatience, I told the boy we didn't use such tight deadlines for a reason."
-/-
The miserable group arrived in Vermilion six hours after their departure. The journey should have only taken two, however the migratory Slowpoke moved slower than an amoeba on crack. It was still an amoeba, and thus not very fast.
Everyone was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, or in the case of Sabrina completely perfectly refreshed and fine. The girl had simply teleported back home and then come back an hour or two later with some sandwiches for herself which she did not share.
They had held several ethical discussions on whether they should just hurry the Slowpoke along, but Lorelei, the local expert on the species had advised them to let them be. It was not good to fight battles one didn't have to.
Also, it was debatable if trying to quicken up a group of hundred Slowpoke was really a worthwhile endeavour when one considered how, if one had gone out and started talking to the Pokemon, the Slowpoke comprehending one's intention would have delayed the migration even further.
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As the result of their delay, Ruth had called ahead to the gym, to inform them that they would not be there for their battles in time. The receptionist had rescheduled them for the evening
Quite frankly, the only good thing about the delay was that by the time they finally arrived in the port city, the rain had stopped, leaving behind a slightly muddy ground and streets empty of people as they had simply decided to spend the day inside.
They rolled up, miserable, to the hotel where they were staying and were told to drop off their luggage.
It was one of those old pensions, taken care of by a couple that was most likely over 60 and whose children had all gone to university to study engineering and had thus discontinued the heritage of the established family business, leading to the inevitable rot, failure, and death.
Sad.
It was a cute yellow building with exactly six apartments, enough for all of the participants of the journey to have a room by themselves.
After having dropped off his backpack in his room Joey found himself in the reception hall looking at the pictures on the walls which seemed to depict the now-aged owner in the prime of his youth where he had apparently been an athlete running marathons and sprints.
Interesting.
He was now at a loss of what to do, considering that he had a few hours free. He didn't want to do anything too strenuous, but he was so bored that he was truly considering simply leaving the town and exploring the Diglett tunnel or something stupid like that to do away with the horrible boredom. Being forced to sit still for six hours felt worse than ever.
He even considered swimming in the sea, a completely and utterly inadvisable action when one considered the dangers that lay within it, and his lack of a water Pokemon to defend himself with.
Therefore, it was rather a form of self-defence against future stupid decisions that he walked up to the old man at the counter and asked him what there was to do in Vermillion.
The nearly bald old man, with a ring of white around his cueball head, hummed thoughtfully at the question. He had a strong frame despite looking to be around 60 years old, obviously still strong from his history of high-performance sports.
"Well, there is the Pokemon fan club. And even in a time like this when the sea is not very calm it's still nice to walk around the docks. Also, since you youngsters are here to challenge Surge I imagine a bit of a warmup might not be amiss." His eyes glinted humorously. "I'm training a Diglett myself and I like to race people with him. If you're feeling up to the challenge we can have a little competition out in the back?"
"Stakes?" Joey asked, sort of curious. He wasn't interested in the Pokemon fan club, but he might just go check out the sea. It was true that you hadn't seen one in, well, a lifetime.
The race could be something interesting to do before a brief walk to the docks. Especially against a Diglett. They were some of the fastest Pokemon available if he remembered correctly. But his Rattata wasn't a slouch either and had been getting trained almost purely for speed and evasion for half a year now.
The old man waved him off. "We don't need stakes. It's not a battle. Never was a trainer in my past, just a runner. Running up and down and there and here. Then the Pokemon sort of muscled us out. Human athletes." He snorted. "Well, can't blame them. It is much more interesting to watch. No, I'm just interested in the speed, not money"
"You're in luck then," Joey said with a smirk. "I have a pretty quick Pokemon myself, so maybe we'll take you up on your challenge."
The old man smiled and stood up, revealing that he had actually been sitting down behind the counter. His actual size dwarfed Joey's by a multiplicator of almost two, all muscle. The boy gulped unconsciously. The old man had a more intimidating physique than Kong, which was a bit ridiculous. Did Kong even lift?
"Why don't we go out back? Got myself a proud racing course there," the old man suggested and the two of them left the little yellow motel to enter its quite humongous backyard. The term racing course was very literal; it seemed. The backyard consisted of a 400 m race track, with one of the lanes utterly destroyed, upturned earth travelling all the way around.
That must have been where Diglett had been practising.
The ground was still muddy from the rain, but the excitement of a challenge, any sort of challenge invigorated Joey's spirit.
The old man pulled out a Pokeball from one of his pockets and promptly released the brown mole-like Pokemon into the ground. it materialised in a beam of red light, took one look a Joey and promptly looked away with its pink nose turned up in the air.
The youngsters' smile cracked a bit and he called out Rattata.
"Not the gym battle yet, boy, but maybe a warm-up. The Diglett over there is challenging us to race, can you believe it?" Joey said.
Diglett seemed to perk up at the mention of a gym battle, but when it noticed Joey's attention still on it, it quickly looked away with a far-away look in its eyes.
"How about some simple rules?" the old man suggested. "Five laps around the field makes for two kilometres. Diglett can usually do that in 40 seconds. We stopwatch the Pokemon and the one who's faster wins."
"Why stopwatch?" Joey asked. "We can just run at the same time."
The old man considered for a bit before nodding his head. "That's also possible. Of course, attacks or interference are not allowed."
Joey almost rolled his eyes. "That's not what I was implying," he said before starting to stretch. "Maybe I should join as well?" he asked himself out loud. "After all it's not only the Pokemon that have to be physically fit."
The old man raised an eyebrow. "Oh, young man, don't tempt me like that."
Joey decided not to participate after all. He didn't think he'd live down losing to a 60-year-old. He shook his head and stopped stretching.
"Let's have them go at it then," Joey then said we're shrug. "Might get his blood pumping for the gym-battle tonight."
"Which level are you challenging?"
"I already have two badges, so I'm hoping for a third."
"Impressive," the old man commented before switching conversation topics. "But let's get this show on the road. I think Diglett is starting to get impatient." He nodded towards the brown furry mole Pokemon who seemed to be getting slightly nervous from the long wait. It was sneaking glances at Joey whenever it thought the boy wasn't looking.
Joey nodded and turned to address Rattata who had been patiently waiting. "All right Rattata, let's do this."
"Rattata, ratta!" His starter beat his chest with his fists while snorting proudly.
"Don't get your head too full yet," Joey warned. "You're a battler at heart which is why you do a bunch of technique and strength training as well, today you'll be facing someone who specialises only in speed."
"Rattata." The rat nodded understandingly.
"How about you go to the starting line over there?" Joey asked and pointed towards the start of the track where the white lines marked the beginning and the end.
"Starting position Diglett," the old man encouraged, causing the Pokemon to burrow forward. It was an odd Pokemon, the brown colouring was due to a sort of very fine fur, and the pink nose didn't fit the aesthetic.
"How much did we say?" Joey asked. "10 laps?"
"Sounds about right. It allows a Pokemon that's not as fast to catch up if it has better stamina," the old man said and held up a Pikachu-themed stopwatch with two ears. It seemed like he wanted to time his Pokemon regardless.
"Ready?" Joey called out.
Rather than having taken the inner ring of the track, which meant a small advantage over time, Diglett had taken the outer one. The one that was already ruined through the constant digging.
If Joey remembered correctly, in the games Diglett had a higher base speed stat than Rattata. However, this was a real world, not a combination of arbitrary numbers and algorithms. Pokemon could train one of their attributes with a clear focus, and surpass the limitations of their base talent. A Pokemon could train beyond their limits and win against a Pokemon of another species which technically had a higher predisposition to speed but hadn't trained it.
However, considering they had specifically been challenged to a race he didn't really expect the Diglett to be anything other than fast as fuck boi.
He just had to bet on Rattata being faster.
The two Pokemon squared off at the starting line.
"We start on go," the old man announced loudly, his tank top fluttering in a slight breeze. He started to count down. "Three, two, one, go!" he shouted and the Pokemon sped off.
Both become blurs as, racing for the moment above ground, head to head in the first lap.
It wasn't a speed that Joey himself could have ever kept up with without using Shadow Sneak. It seemed that both of the Pokemon were indeed very good physical examples of their species. They weren't going all out against one another yet though, just testing each other's boundaries.
"It seems like we got quite a little speed star on our hands!" the old man shouted to his runner… digger? "Diglett. Kick it into the next gear. Go underground!"
Joey almost cursed. Of course, it made sense that Diglett, a Pokemon that was usually used to moving underground, would be faster doing that instead of being above ground.
So, when the Pokemon went under, the fact that he was even still using the track was only apparent from the upturning earth designating its move usage. It quickly started out-speeding Rattata.
Joey also had something up his sleeve though. "Rattata, start using quick attack," he called out, and now it was the rat that shot in front of the other Pokemon. An indistinct line of smeared purple and white stood out in stark contrast to the green of the trees growing right behind the track.
The two Pokemon finished their third lap with Rattata slightly pulling ahead. Another lap, and another lap, Rattata was getting more and more ahead. But it was on the sixth lap that the Diglett started catching up again.
They were moving so fast that Joey had to swivel his head like an idiot just to keep up with the movement, but he was not able to determine if Diglett was suddenly faster. It was also possible that Rattata was slowing down.
In the next lap, his suspicion was confirmed. The white energy of the Quick Attack started fading. But, Diglett, was indeed getting faster. How?
Joey suddenly understood as he saw the way the Diglett kept upturning the earth in the same exact circle. It had already gone through the same earth several times, with every passage it was becoming an easier burrow.
In a battle, he would have had many possibilities open to him. Here? What could he do? He did not train any particular moves that would help Rattata run faster.
"Rattata, you can do it," he shouted, resorting to encouragement instead of tactics.
The match was a foregone conclusion, however. While the Quick Attack slowed, Dig quickened and the match ended anticlimactic. Diglett beat an exhausted Rattata by half a lap in the end.
The two Pokemon both stuttered to a stop after the finish line, but it was definitely Rattata who had gotten the worst of the exchange. After all, they hadn't trained stamina and running. They'd trained to win battles. That was a completely different skill.
Joey recalled the despondent Rattata and muttered some encouraging words to the ball.
"Get a rest. Good job," he said while turning to the old man. "Well, I have to say I'm impressed. I thought that speed was one of rattata's most developed attributes. You probably still beat us with another trick up your sleeve as well…" he trailed off.
"What do you mean another trick up my sleeve?" the old man asked as the Diglett returned to get a pat on the head and swirl around his trainer to celebrate its win.
"Well," Joey started. "Diglett can develop the ability, Sand Force. It increases the power of all ground-type moves in a sandstorm. Little known fact, considering that it is the power that determines the speed at which a Pokemon uses Dig, they can become faster in a sandstorm. Although, I guess it would be unsporting to use the move unless you could localise it."
"Oh, I didn't even know about that," the old man said, clearly impressed. "You seem to know a lot about Pokemon."
Joey shrugged. "It's my job as a trainer, I guess. The more general knowledge, the more likely it is that I'll get a good idea in training or during a match."
The hotel owner nodded. "I was very impressed with your Rattata. Usually, we only ever lose races to flying types using agility," the old man admitted.
"Rattata did very well, but of course he's a Pokemon trained for battling, not for speed so I'm still proud of him despite the loss," Joey said.
The old man hummed and the Diglett looked at Joey curiously, the run seemingly having exhausted some of its more nervous energies.
"I'm curious to see you battle now. When are you going to be challenging Surge?"
"It's going to be this evening at the stadium. Otherwise, I think some of my battles are also still uploaded on the websites of the gyms that I beat. Saffron and Celadon." Gyms kept the recordings of their matches for a bit until the arbitrary number they set as the limit got filled up. Joey's match against Kong and Celadon gym leader would probably still be up there considering they had happened this season.
"Maybe I'll take a look at that while you explore the town, ho, ho, ho," the old man said with a chuckle and a friendly squint of his eyes. "Diglett really likes watching trainer battles," he admitted, at which his Pokemon disappeared underground sheepishly, as if embarrassed.
"Well, have fun with that. I think I'm going to go look at the sea. I haven't seen it in a long time," the youngster said and went away with a backward wave at the duo that had just trumped him in the race.
He wondered if the old man was internet literate enough to find the footage. It was kind of buried, he was only a youngster in the end, after all.