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CHAPTER IV

TO LEARN WHAT A BOND IS

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(-o-)

My first reaction was to smile, and when Lenn didn’t reciprocate, I frowned.

“You want to battle? You said yourself; they are rookies. What would be the point? …” It was an embarrassingly weak argument, and I felt cheap right after saying it, but it was the only thing that crossed my mind.

Lenn scoffed in response. “All the more reason to start. Do you think you’ll get on by without a battle? You may be able to decline trainers, but wild pokémon won’t give you that luxury. Don’t you want to see what that lump of fat can do?”

I began to understand how a trainer might feel. An insult to your pokémon was an insult to yourself. Drowzee didn’t belong to me, but he was my partner, and Lenn’s comment irked me more than I thought possible.

I glared at him, and he smiled then.

“Don’t get upset, man, you look like a creep,” he said, and I saw his eyes shifting from my blind eye to the other with awkward amusement.

“You want to battle?” I repeated, my blood running hot.

He shrugged casually. “If you’re up for it.”

I would have liked for nothing more than to smash my fist into his mouth right then. The way some people worked you up only to act as if you were the one bugging them infuriated me.

He had an Abra, and I had a Drowzee, and I knew from the Professor’s words that they both knew some form of Psybeam. I knew some bit about pokémon-type matchups, and I realized that their attacks would not be so effective against each other. That, I actually saw as a positive. I did not want to put Drowzee in harm’s way.

Besides Psybeam, I believed Drowzee might’ve also known Hypnosis, since that is what they were most known for. That would give us the advantage over Abra’s Psybeam/ Teleport since the latter move had no offensive power.

My own mind surprised me with how fast I considered all of this as I had no real battle experience and at that moment, I did not care if Lenn did.

My blind eye was shockingly quiet, with not so much as an itch, and I truly began to wonder if I was finally outgrowing my childhood trauma.

“You want to battle here?” We were out in the open and exposed. If anyone passed by they would see us and probably wonder where we got our pokémon from.

Lenn glanced about with a silly smirk on his face. “Got a better place?”

My thoughts instantly went to the quiet paths Isabel had led me through the previous day and I nodded. “Yeah.”

Lenn said, “Sure,” and told me lead the way.

We walked in silence for only a few minutes, and though they might have been awkward for him, I was too worked up to feel anything other than a vicious anticipation. I wanted to shut him up so badly.

“Hey, not bad,” he said when we entered a small clearing with thin and tall eucaly trees growing all around. The small dirt path ran through the center of the clearing.

I turned back to him and pulled out Drowzee’s pokéball from my pocket. Lenn grinned and took several steps back, pulling out a pokéball of his own.

“You can return it any time you like. This is just for fun, like I said.”

Sure it is, idiot.

I shrugged and nodded.

A lightness came over my head and I felt dizzy with surrealism. Was I really about to have my first battle like this?

Absolutely, my body replied, pressing the button and expanding the pokéball in my hand.

We both tossed our pokéballs at the same time, though he had opted for an overhead throw that pitted the white surge of light closer to me than to himself. Abra gleamed before me, its pokéball dropping to the ground behind it and rolling a few paces back towards Lenn.

Drowzee gleamed between me and Abra, and I caught the pokéball on its way down.

There was a total moment of quiet, where only the trees rustled in the swaying breeze. It was broken when both Abra and Drowzee produced high-pitched, static-sounding cries of what I could only guess was a greeting. Pitting them against each other seemed wrong then, but I had not much time to dwell on it because Lenn called out loudly,

“Let’s start off easy! Abra, attack with Psybeam!”

I felt my heart skip a beat and I reflexively braced myself, putting an arm in front of me. Abra, floating just above the ground like a balloon, spread its gangly arms and rose a few inches further in the air. He let out another cry which I instinctively understood as hesitation.

“Abra!” Lenn yelled, and the outline of his pokémon shone with rainbow-prism light. Abra shot out a beam that flared in my good eye for a moment, and I flinched, ducking for the ground.

Drowzee let out a shrill, trumpeting cry and then I heard a strange and loud noise, as if someone had grabbed a thin sheet of metal and had begun wobbling it back and forth.

I looked up quickly to see Drowzee glowing with an identical outline as Abra had before it attacked.

Lenn bawled with laughter, but my sights remained on the pokémon, watching for any sign of a follow-up attack.

“It blocked the Psybeam with its own!” Lenn cried with amusement. I stood up and gathered my courage.

“Drowzee!” I said, my voice sounding hoarse. “Hypnotize it!”

Drowzee did not hesitate. He rumbled with a low, purring hum and his trunk extended forward offensively.

The air before him pulsed with transparent rings that travelled quickly towards Abra, and my heart leapt with thrill that my assumption had been correct. Lenn did not miss a beat.

“Abra, dodge with Teleport!”

Abra blinked out like a blown lightbulb and disappeared from the battlefield. Lenn was glancing around, smiling wildly and I mimicked him, casting my eye about for any sign of Abra.

When he yelled, “Abra, use Dark Pulse!” a pit in my stomach opened up, dismayed that he was giving out a command to an enemy I could not see.

There was an ominous reverberating sound up in the trees and my head jolted towards it. I was aghast when I spotted dark, shadowy tendrils arcing around Abra. It was floating amongst the leaves, facing us with a creasing brow.

How can it even know that move?! screamed my thoughts.

As the name suggested, Dark Pulse was a Dark-type move, and I had watched enough Indigo Championship shows to know that Dark-type trumped Psychic-type. It trumped it hard. Somehow, this Abra knew a move that went against its very nature.

A blast of dark, arcing energy shot towards us, but it struck the ground several yards away. The ground exploded with a cloud of soil and dust that very quickly settled. I was frozen in place, still stunned and unsure what to do. Abra let out a mournful cry and I wondered if using the move had maybe hurt it in some way.

An idea sprang in my mind and despite what I had just seen, I spoke it without delay. “Drowzee! Dark Pulse!”

Drowzee let out a cry that I perceived as: What the hell? and turned his head towards me. Our eyes met and I knew then that he didn’t know the move.

Lenn laughed. “You’re funny!” he yelled across the battlefield, then gave Abra another command. “Aim it well, Abra! Dark Pulse!”

Abra began floating slowly down and it cried out again. It was a complaint. I was almost sure.

“I think it hurts him!” I yelled at Lenn but kept my eye on the descending Abra.

“Nah!” he yelled back. “He just doesn’t want to use it on his buddy!”

Of course. We had pit two friends against one another, and both were reluctant to hurt each other. My desire to get at Lenn began to dissipate if it meant I had to go through Abra.

“Abra, now!”

Abra’s brow creased again, but this time, for some reason, I was not as scared.

“Drowzee!” I bellowed. “Hypnosis!”

Drowzee complied, letting out a cry of approval and spreading his short arms wide. The hypnotizing rings were larger, and they moved through the air like a rushing gust of wind. Abra was in the middle of channeling his dark power and could not teleport in time. The Hypnosis breezed through its target, making it go limp and drop to the ground softly, like a falling leaf.

I felt a rising feeling in my chest and looked across at Lenn, who had an unreadable expression on his face. I could not tell if he was livid, or indifferent, and I didn’t much care.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I had done it. I had won my first battle. I had put him in his place.

Lenn reached into his pocket for what I assumed was Abra’s pokéball. Then I saw that it was still on the ground where it had fallen at the start of the battle.

The Sinnoh-boy whipped his arm and threw another pokéball.

“Skorupi, Bug-bite!”

To my horror, I watched as that dreaded pokémon of his surged out of its pokéball. It was a purple bug-type-looking thing. With pincers like a Paras, and a nastier-looking set of mandibles than a Spinarak. It had a spiked tail that curled above itself and I didn’t want to find out what it used it for. It was a pokémon from Sinnoh. A violent and dangerous one.

It skittled across the ground with alarming speed and rushed toward Drowzee without so much as a battle cry.

Its mandibles glowed with a dank color of green and it doubled in for the kill. I could give Drowzee no command. It was all happening too fast. Drowzee though, glowed with prism-light and shot out a powerful Psybeam.

The bug-type pokémon nimbly side-stepped the beam with only inches to spare, and then let out a horrible shriek as it lunged at Drowzee, viciously gripping him by the arm before striking with its glowing mandibles.

Drowzee cried out in anguish. It was a piercing cry that made my ears ring, and my blind eye began to itch furiously. I was astounded briefly when I realized that I had gone through the whole battle prior without a single complaint from the eye. Drowzee’s predicament brought me to the present, and I shoved my hand in my pocket, fumbling for my pokéball.

“Skorupi, Bite! Bite down!” Lenn yelled urgently and I shot him a glare full of malice. What the hell was he thinking?

I pulled the pokéball and with trembling hands, looked for the central button. My fingers felt like stiff twigs, and the pokéball dropped to the ground.

I roared, lunging for it and Drowzee cried out again.

When I pressed the button and maximized the pokéball, I was almost on my belly, reaching out with the pokéball and pointing it at Drowzee. His eyes were frantic with fear and had begun to roll slowly back. He was fainting. The red beam from the pokéball enveloped him and within a few seconds, he was back in the pokéball.

The Sinnoh pokémon, Skorupi, skittered around briefly, shifting on the spot impatiently. It locked its vicious gaze on me and in little, scurrying crawls, crept toward me, chomping its mandibles in anticipation.

Lenn guffawed with a sickening and infuriating laughter. I stood up and braced myself. If I had to fight with his vicious little freak, I would not hesitate to stomp, smash, or crush it with whatever means possible.

The Skorupi kept creeping closer until it was no further than a stride’s length. I widened my stance and crouched lower to its level, glaring at it with both eyes open wide, every fiber of muscle tensed, ready to grip if it decided to lunge. Before it could, it was enveloped in a dull red light that brightened and withdrew like a flowing hologram back into its pokéball.

“That’s your first pokémon battle, right?” Lenn called across the silent battlefield. “You did better than I thought you would.”

I didn’t care for his complements. A warm, stinging sensation settled across my face, and I realized that my eyes were welling up with tears. I could not remember the last time I cried. What was happening to me?

I thought of Professor Cid and what I had put his pokémon through. I feared what he might think, but I remembered that he had a newly acquired pokéball incubator in his lab. So, I resolved to take Drowzee there and apologize. I ran a sleeve past my eyes and did not spare Lenn another glance. He was a cheater, and I had won fair and square. I was completely sure that he wouldn’t mention that to anyone though, and it made me feel bitter.

I walked out of the clearing, cutting across the thicket of trees and Lenn tried twice more to call out to me, telling me that that was the reality of battles. I ignored him and the last thing I heard before I stepped out of the woods was a snicker of laugh and the sound of the sleeping Abra being reabsorbed into its pokéball.

I arrived at the Professor’s lab soon after, and he could tell that something was the matter. I explained myself, avoiding his eyes and looking at the floor in shame, but he patted me once on the back and told me to cheer up.

“As I told you folks, aim to avoid battles whenever possible.” He ushered me to a chair and I sat on it, feeling relieved that he had taken it so well.

“However, Pokémon Battle has been an integral part of many cultures. Pokémon themselves might even yearn for it…” He spun a finger backwards in a circle as if to backtrack and said, “Or rather, they yearn for evolution, and battle is the method that comes most naturally.”

He lifted the veil on the pokéball incubator and reached out with a hand round its backside, next to the wall. “Drowzee has probably gained more evolutionary experience in that short bout than he has in the past year with me. Hah…”

He pulled a cord and grabbed the machine’s plug, inserting it into a socket in the wall nearby. He dusted his hands and flicked a switch on the side. The incubator whirred to life, strong and white neon lights glowing from within. It sounded like an old refrigerator for a whole minute before the lights flashed three times and the noise lowered to a quiet, steady hum. Professor Cid clapped his hands together, looking pleased.

“Superb. That was easy.” He asked for Drowzee’s pokéball and I handed it to him eagerly. I watched him place it inside one of the six clamps which closed around it after a few seconds. He walked around to a screen panel on the machine’s side and pressed a series of different buttons. A transparent pane of glass or plastic slid across the open chamber, sealing the machine shut and the Professor stepped back.

“Do you drink coffee?” he asked, taking his glasses off and letting them hang from his neck.

“Ehh… if it has sugar,” I replied gingerly.

“Come then, this will take some half-hour, and you can spend the time with an orientation.”

I was not sure what an orientation meant, but I agreed, and we walked the next room where he had set up a desk neatly, with thin files and several chairs. He might’ve expected that we would come as a group again, but we all seemed to be running on our own schedules.

I sat down and he stood beside me, sliding one of the files before me and opening it.

“Let’s have a look at some of the crucial areas that you should not stray too far from while you’re out and about.” He pulled out a sheet of paper from its plastic sleeve. It was a map of some kind, and he went on to tell me the names and locations of several inns, shops, and centers that littered the territories all the way from the vicinities of Pallet Town to the Viridian and Pewter municipalities. He drew an oval on the map encircling these areas and said that he did not expect our search to exceed that distance. He went on to turn the paper, showing that a large list of these places had been compiled incase we ever forgot them, which I did not doubt we would.

He then said something that shocked me.

“You will each receive ten thousand poké-dollars to pay for any expenses you may incur.”

Ten thousand bucks! “Ten thousand?” I was in sheer disbelief.

The Professor smiled. “Yes, it is a lot of money for a young man, isn’t it? …” He tapped my back again. “But we had to ensure that you were not left wanting in the coming weeks. You will be expected to keep receipts of all your purchases, and any leftover funds must be handed over to the committee upon your return.”

He chuckled lightly. “Not sounding so good anymore, huh?”

Was he kidding? It sounded insane! That was more money than I ever thought I’d hold. Just how loaded was he? I guess it paid well to study pokémon.

He talked a little more about wild encounter fleeing strategies and advised me to ignore any pokémon trainers looking for battles. He insisted that we focus on capturing our targets.

I drank mild and sweet coffee as we talked, while he sipped on something so strong, that I wondered how he could find any pleasure in drinking it.

“Now, as for the moves Drowzee knows…”

“Psybeam and Hypnosis are the ones I know,” I said quickly.

The Professor nodded. “Yes, good. In addition to that, it knows a move called Disable which allows it to negate other pokémon’s moves… And it can also give a pretty strong Headbutt.”

He held the coffee near his mouth, tapping at the cup with a finger, lost in thought. He finally pulled a chair beside me and sat down. “I believe it knows Confusion too…” He apologized for not being sure, but I welcomed any information he had to offer, and I thought that he might’ve made a good mentor at school. I found myself absorbing everything he said like a starved student hungering for knowledge, especially when discussing Drowzee. It seemed I had taken a strong liking to him…

That reminded me.

“Is it male? The Drowzee I mean.”

The Professor looked surprised for a moment before replying, “Yes, it’s a male. Why?”

I explained the discussion with my friends and asked him about Charli’s partner, Natu.

“Natu, Natu… Natu is female. A lively chirpy one, that one.”

He went on to reveal the command for both tracking and restraining the target, and when to time my capture attempt which would be done using specially designed pokéballs he had customized for the job.

The command to restrain was simply the word ‘Arrest’. He explained that the command, while not a recognized pokémon move, worked on all types of pokémon, but had a special effect on ghost-type pokémon. They would be unable to resist it, how ever greater their level over Drowzee, or any of the other hunters’ partners.

“What about Indigo League level? Could it work on such level ghost types?” I asked in a half-joking manner, but the Professor simply replied, “Absolutely. Without a doubt.” And though I was impressed, I could not quite believe it.

I asked him about Lenn’s Abra, how it could use Dark Pulse and the Professor’s eyebrows stretched high, wrinkling his forehead to the max.

“No, that can’t be, surely…”

I insisted, describing what I had seen, and the look of surprise stayed plastered on his face. “If that’s the case then it’s truly something. I gather the chap is quite the pokémon adept. I will ask him when he comes.”

Lenn had only had Abra for a single night and it had already learned a new move. I was slightly jealous, and I imagined how much I could’ve learnt from him if we had been friends. As it stood, besides our common mission, I wanted nothing to do with him.

The Professor placed his cup on the table and leaned on the chair. He drummed his fingers on his stomach.

“I may not be a trainer, but I have met plenty of them, and I have good inkling at what makes one rise up.”

I looked sideways at him and blinked.

“It’s how strongly a trainer and pokémon are bound. That link is what matters above all else, whether you are a trainer, an artist, or a scientist. If the pokémon does not see your vision, you will not make much headway. You must be certain of yourself. I don’t mean confidence here; that is a by-product. I mean certitude…” He made a fist and shook it firmly.

“You must be certain. Certain of your will and of your actions. The pokémon are extremely sensitive to human levels of certitude. Believe in a lie with enough certitude, and your pokémon will roll over backwards to make it happen.”

His words pressed on my mind like branding irons, and a strange lucidity came over me. The air was different, and the Professor himself seemed like a different man. A complete contrast from the one we had all seen shouting and yelling during his arrest a few days ago.

This was a glimpse of the real him. The one he was behind closed doors. When I abruptly asked him what exactly he was researching, the air of certitude dissipated, and he once more reverted to a more familiar demeanor.

“Perhaps we shall talk when you return from this job, if you are still interested,” he replied. “Or if I’ve got the time!”

We talked a little while more about what routes I planned to take, and I answered that I should like to travel in close directions to my friends. He didn’t show much interest in that, saying that we would sort ourselves out the following morning before we set off, but he did suggest that we should stay in frequent contact with one another so as to coordinate ourselves as effectively as possible.

He offered me to use his backyard to practice some commands with Drowzee, but I remembered Glee and opted to head out. I planned on practicing in my own backyard.

“Very well, we shall see each other tomorrow before you go. Everything shall be in place.”

We headed back to the landing room and small glows and flashes of neon green light shone within the pokéball incubator. The Professor pressed a button, and the transparent pane slid open, whirring. The clamp holding Drowzee’s pokéball unlatched and the Professor pulled it out. He bounced it on his hand and gave me a tiny smile.

“Remember, chap, be certain!”

He handed it over, placing it on my palm and it felt warm and slightly heavier than I remembered. I was silently grateful to him for giving me his pokémon so freely, and once I held Drowzee’s ball in my hands, I felt both a sense of relief, and a pressing conviction to not see him faint again. I would do everything in my power to ensure that.

We said our goodbyes and I made my way back to Glee and Gran. The battle with Lenn made me want to spend some time alone.

I felt my pocket and smiled. Drowzee was the exception though. I had some apologies to make, and we had some moves to practice.

Be certain. This phrase echoed in my head as I walked.

(-x-)