Chapter Fifty - Cheering On

Choco cheered, screaming out excited "Bun! Bun! Bun!"s from the stands.

The stands themselves were a lot smaller than the ones in the first gym they'd been to, just five rows of benches on one side of the arena. They were actually behind the gym leader, so Tabitha was way off on the other end.

Not that it mattered much. Tabitha wasn't paying attention to the stands and was instead focused on the battle before her. A battle which had just ended.

King Krabby had taken out two big bug pokemon one after the other. Then Tabitha had switched in Slowking, who had had a bit of a harder time taking out Bugsy's third pokemon. But the last bug went down anyway

"Way to go Tabby!" Broccoli cheered.

"Ma Ma Marill!" Go Go Tabitha!

Jazz shook her head. "She's won already, you don't need to continue cheering," she said as she crossed her arms.

Choco glanced at her, but didn't spend much time staring before returning his attention to the gym arena. Tabitha was stepping down and around, heading over to Bugsy to shake his hand and get her badge. Words were exchanged, but he couldn't pick them up. Not that it mattered.

What mattered a lot more was the... thing going on between Jazz and Tabitha.

Jazz was still angry. She'd get all pouty faced and cross her arms and storm out of the room whenever Tabitha was around for too long.

Tabitha wasn't much better. She was constantly staring at Jazz whenever Jazz wasn't looking, and the expressions on her face were just weird. Not that Tabitha was a very normal human. She didn't know how to talk good like Broccoli, the most normal human Choco knew, could. It was actually kind of sad.

Was Tabitha the runt of her litter or something? She was thin enough for that kind of thing to be possible.

Well, he wasn't sure, and it wasn't really his job to fix friendships. That was Broccoli's job. She said so herself.

"Oh, she's leaving the arena," Broccoli said. "Come on everybun! We need to catch up for post-victory hugs!"

Broccoli scooped Choco up and plopped him onto her head where he took hold of her ears. Marill was hugged closer to Broccoli's tummy, and then Jazz sighed and stood up herself.

"What did you think of Bugsy?" Jazz asked. "We'll be fighting some of his trainers tomorrow. They might not be on the same level as the gym leader, but they won't be pushovers either."

"The bugs were cute," Broccoli said with a nod that made Choco swing back and forth. He was used to it by now, it was actually kind of fun!

"Nevermind the cuteness of them," Jazz said. "What's important is how they fight. Bugsy's low-level team seems to be mostly defence-heavy. Metapods and kakuna. He did use that scyther on Tabitha, but it looked younger."

"The big praying-mantis looking one?" Broccoli asked. "Yeah, I guess. It looked stronger than the others. The rest were... kind of passive?"

Choco thought back. The two cocooned pokemon didn't seem all that strong to him. "Buneary bun." I could take em.

Marill sniffed. "Marill ma rill." Not if I take them first.

"I'm sure there will be enough for everyone," Broccoli said. "So... is it just me or is this gym less of a challenge than the first one?"

"Hmm," Jazz hummed. "It might be, yeah. I don't want to underestimate Bug-types so casually, but yeah, they don't have the obvious challenge that Flying-types have with being impossible to hit. No, Bugsy's focused on something else. Did you notice the moves he used?"

"Not really?" Broccoli said. "Uh, Poison Sting? The Scyther was zoomy."

"Zoomy," Jazz repeated. She shook her head. "No, I meant the self-buffs. Harden. He's playing the hard-defence."

Broccoli tilted her head in confusion, which almost flung Choco off of his perch. "Is that the challenge? That seems easy to work around."

"His Scyther was fast. Avoiding hits by dodging rather than taking the blows like his cocoon pokemon. I think his challenge on lower badge levels is centred around enduring and avoiding hits and buffing himself. Bug-type energy has a lot of types it's not very effective against, but none that are immune to it. Playing the long game makes sense, I think."

Broccoli rubbed her chin in thought and Choco did the same, though he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be thinking about. "So it's a challenge to see if you can do enough damage, or endure long enough?"

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"It's more about speed, I think, but I guess that could work too. It's a pretty open challenge," Jazz said. "I think we'll do alright, actually."

Choco glanced at Jazz. She seemed to be doing a bit better, maybe? He wasn't the best at reading humans, but Jazz had been in a slump for the whole day after Tabitha beat her.

"Tabitha!" Broccoli cheered as they walked into the gym's main lobby. Tabitha was standing ahead of them, looking... like Tabitha normally did, straight-backed and a little bored. She perked up a little before Broccoli crashed into her with a big hug.

"Maaaa!" Came Marill's muffled complaint from the epicentre of the hug.

Choco let himself fall forwards so that he landed tummy-first atop Tabitha's head. He gave her a hug too. Broccoli said that they were important, and she was always right.

"Thank you," Tabitha said, her voice flat as usual. "I appreciated your cheers. I'm uncertain if they helped, but the thought certainly made me feel better about my battle against the gym leader."

"How many badges is this for you?" Broccoli asked.

"This makes my first badge," Tabitha said.

"So in a couple of days we'll be ahead of you," Jazz said with a grin.

"Yes, I suppose so," Tabitha replied. She glanced at Jazz, then continued glancing at her. Even Choco felt how awkward things were getting.

Fortunately, Broccoli saved the day. "Victory meal!"

"We can't afford anything nice," Jazz said.

"Victory grocery shopping and then victory cooking!" Broccoli cheered anyway.

They did just that, filing out of the gym and heading over to a local pokemart. Jazz grumbled and griped about everything they bought, but she still let them fill a basket with stuff. Mostly ingredients that Choco didn't know anything about.

All he cared about was that there was a folding seat thing on the back of the grocery cart. He had to share with Marill, but that was okay. He even convinced Jazz—not Broccoli because she was resistant—that he and Marill really needed a box of PokeBerry-Os using Baby-Doll Eyes and a few sniffles while gesturing to the box.

She grabbed it, stuffed it into the basket, then crossed her arms and refused to look their way for the rest of the trip through the groceries.

Once they were back at the pokemon centre, they took over the little kitchen at the back. Broccoli didn't like meaty things, but that didn't mean she couldn't cook any. Mostly though, they worked on a little victory cake for Tabitha.

They made two cakes. One for the humans, and one for the pokemon. The PokeBerry-Os ended up as sprinkles on top of the pokemon cake, which made it much prettier. He helped decorate, and so did Marill once he pried her away from trying to read the cookbook!

They were all the envy of the other trainers and their pokemon. A lot of them were dragged over to stare into the kitchen by the wafting smell of baking cake. Even Nurse Joy showed up. She told them all that too much cake was bad and then left when Broccoli promised her and Chansey a slice each.

Lunch was had outside, under the midday sun. It was yummy and delicious and Choco got some all over his paws, but that was alright because he could just lick them clean after.

"Tomorrow afternoon is going to be my fight with a gym trainer, and then Broccoli's right after," Jazz said. "Any last-minute preparations? I'm pretty confident that my team can take them on."

"I'm pretty confident in Choco and Marill too," Broccoli said with a serious nod. "But I was wondering... should we show off our secret weapons, or should we keep them under wraps for now?"

Jazz considered it, then nodded. "Keep them under wraps unless you need them to win."

"Might I enquire as to what these secret weapons are?" Tabitha asked.

"No," Jazz said.

At the exact same time, Broccoli replied: "Fireballs!"

Choco, hearing his cue, raised both cake-covered paws over his head and concentrated really hard. Two tiny spurts of fire launched out into the air above him.

Tabitha stared. "I wasn't aware buneary could do that," she said. "However, I did notice that they can learn the move Fire Punch according to Pokepedia's Move-Dex. It's not entirely impossible that what you have here is a sort of proto-move in that direction?"

"Nope!" Broccoli said. "We're not learning Fire Punch, it's Fireball, and it's gonna be awesome!"

***