The rest of the kids' battles wrapped up quickly, considering that we were arranging one-on-ones for the inexperienced. When it was time to shuffle positions, I waved at Annabelle to get her attention and then pointed at the field to our right, where Pidgey and Johnathan were still standing.

A frown crossed her face briefly, before she gave a slight nod of her head in agreement. "If you want to battle them, we can give it a try! Come on." We took the place of the disgruntled boy who had been battling with the Bunnelby, while Johnathan had his arms crossed over his chest, trying to stand tall in a cocky-looking pose. I know kids will be kids and all, but everything about this boy was rubbing me the wrong way, even if he was only like nine years old. Well, I'm at least going to try and knock him down a peg or two today. I still wasn't at a point where I was confident I could take down Pidgey in a head-on battle, but I also didn't want to try and convince her to throw just because the kid was a jerk.

Thinking about how disappointed Pidgey would be if we had a bad battle made me realize I was focusing too much on trying to make this kid out to be the bad guy. Sure, he was a bully, but why was I focusing so much on trying to do something mean to him in return? When I stopped to think about it, I think the kid reminded me a lot of that jerk Pokémon-kidnapper. The cocky vibe, the smug demeanor, it matched up in my head. It was making me act like this nine-year-old kid was practically a villain already. Taking a deep breath, I calmed myself down. I was just going to have a good attempt at a fight with my friend. That's what I should be putting my efforts on. And I felt a little better when I made that decision, not wanting to care about anything besides the fun of getting to practice and battle.

"Wow, so you guys decided that you wanted to get losing to me out of the way already, huh?" Way to test my newfound resolve to not rise to your antics, kid. I preemptively transformed into a Pidgey myself and winged out onto the field. I wasn't sure that was technically allowed, since it could be considered setting up before a battle, but I was so used to sparring with Pidgey by now that it kicked in like a reflex.

"We'll see! Let's just have a good battle!" Annabelle called out, and we waited for the group to finish shuffling positions around us. "Begin!" was shouted by Mable and a more-distant Mister Patel at the same time, with both me and my opponent taking to the air and hovering a few feet off the ground.

"Ditto, rush in with Tackle!"

"Pidgey, open with Sand Attack!"

A sheen of white energy coursed over my frame as I swooped forward, while Pidgey dropped low and grabbed a double-talon glob of dirt and swung up to throw it at my face. I flew right through it without flinching away in the slightest, and my full-body charge slammed into Pidgey's side as she tried to right herself from the ground-scraping maneuver.

"What!? Lucky shot! Pidgey, do it again and do it right this time, focus on evading afterward when your opponent's vision is blocked." Johnathan seemed to think that I just happened to get a lucky hit despite the dirt flung at my eyes, and just kept digging himself a hole with his non-damaging strategy.

I kept the energy coursing through my body as I banked a sharp turn, almost making it seem like I was continuing the previous tackle attempts more than starting anew. "That's it, Ditto, keep it up!" Annabelle seemed excited that we had delivered the first blow.

After scooping up another pile of debris, I saw the sky-blue hue of energy forming along Pidgey's wings, seemingly not content to let her temporary trainer make her look like a fool. When she threw the dirt at my face, she gave a hard flap of her wings and drove a Gust into me as I charged toward her. It stung and made me flinch slightly aside, but not enough to miss her. I landed against her side, striking with a firm impact that made Pidgey have to shift her wings in frantic flapping to avoid toppling sideways mid-air.

"How come you keep managing to hit!?" Johnathan called out in a sullen tone, glaring at Annabelle as if it was her fault that his efforts weren't doing what he hoped for. Annabelle lost some of her energy, wilting a bit under the stare and leaving a lull in the battle orders as neither side called out commands. That suited me and Pidgey just fine, as we were both slipping back into our sparring habits, trading Gusts of wind at each other and creating small twisters of air that spiraled across the grass briefly before fading.

"I don't believe you'll keep getting lucky! Pidgey, one more Sand Attack! We'll turn this around! I can't believe that they're gonna manage to ignore it forever!" This time, however, Pidgey didn't even interrupt her rapid swoop toward me, landing a firm peck against the base of my left wing. I floundered in the air in pain, since such an important joint for flying now had a rather sharp pain every time I moved my wing. Rather than being pleased at seeing Pidgey land a hit, however, Johnathan seemed to all but throw a tantrum. "What are you doing, you stupid bird!? I said to use Sand Attack! Sand Attack! Why are you still using Peck!?" He was actually stomping his feet on the ground, glaring at Pidgey.

As much as I wanted to win this, it was a close match-up between myself and Pidgey under the best of conditions, and flying at the moment made it feel like a Beedrill was trying to poke a hole in the base of my wing. I swooped over to my starting position near where Annabelle was and landed on the grass, merely watching Pidgey to be ready to react rather than push the fight. I could keep battling, but I didn't want to wind up hurting myself by forcing the fight with a wing injury and likely wind up embarrassed besides. That seemed to break Annabelle out of the near-trance she had been in. She had been just staring at the battlefield without giving orders since Johnathan had given her the evil-eye treatment. "You want to stop?" She asked, looking guilty at having abandoned giving orders.

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Before I could nod my head and signal my intent to surrender, I heard Mable calling out "Johnathan? You're not allowed to leave the trainer box, are you surrendering?" The boy had left the trainer's position and was striding clear across the field, so neither I or Pidgey could make a move without risking involving him in the battle. It made me glad I had stopped when I did, otherwise he might have wandered right into the path of battling.

"I don't care! Mister Patel! I want to swap for a new Pokémon! This one doesn't listen anymore!" He declared in a petulant tone, the same demeanor I'd expect from a child who had just broken a new toy and wanted his parents to get him another one. Pidgey seemed taken aback by the remark, and glared at the boy in much the same fashion I did. She was the only one who did anything right this battle!

Fortunately, the battles on the elderly teacher's side had wrapped up, while the one match that was still going on Mable's side now that ours had wrapped up was a pair of Aron butting heads repeatedly. Yeah... we had time.

"What seems to be the problem, Johnathan? Did your Pokémon do something wrong?" Mister Patel called out, resting both hands on his cane and leaning forward onto it as he stared down at the boy. It seems like everyone else could hear the gentle chiding in his tone except the intended target.

"Of course! I told you, it didn't listen, so it's no good!" The boy was back in his pose again, arms crossed over his chest and his head tipped upward so he could act like he was staring down his nose at anyone around him.

"Mable, I wasn't watching the battle, could you tell me what happened?" Momentarily dismissing the boy's complaint, he looked at Mable, who gave him a brief, knowing look in return. "Your student decided that his Sand Attack strategy had been so effective against his previous opponent, a Bunnelby, that he was firmly committed to doing the same strategy again when he faced Ditto, who copied his Pidgey."

Mister Patel nodded his head in a display of understanding, patiently turning back to the pouting Johnathan, "And did that strategy seem to be doing as well as you hoped the second time? Perhaps your Pidgey knew better than to keep trying something that wasn't working, and you should adjust your strategy to allow for you to be in-tune with your Pokémon's battle instincts?"

Johnathan snorted dismissively, waving a hand, "Like a dumb bird is gonna know better than me. Pokémon are supposed to do what they're told, aren't they? So I want to swap to a Pokémon that will listen!"

"Pokémon are willing to listen to commands they don't necessarily agree with when they have a bond of trust with their trainer, or have particularly docile personalities. It's asking a whole lot of a temporary partner to be willing to trust that you know better than them. Pokémon are partners, not tools, Johnathan. You need to remember that." Mister Patel took on a lecturing tone, and was now looking around at the gathered students as if to include them in the following words, sounding like he was giving a lesson.

"For example, while blinding your opponent may be a viable strategy in some battles, Pidgey are widely known to possess particularly resilient eyes. It's a trait called Keen Eye that isn't uncommon in flying-type Pokémon, especially in birds that evolve into particularly fast fliers as they need to be able to protect their eyes at high speed. You were doing little more than dirtying your opponent's feathers by insisting on using Sand Attack so heavily against your opponent. The Pokémon you were battling with knew this, and adjusted their strategy accordingly. If I had to guess, they knew from the start that your command wasn't going to accomplish anything, but were still willing to give you a chance to learn from the experience and adjust your battle orders. Instead, you gave up and walked away from a fight that you still stood a fair chance of winning with only a small adjustment to your mood."

The boy looked a little bit stunned by that revelation, then his cheeks darkened with a reddening blush, embarrassed at being made a textbook example of what not to do in a battle in front of his entire class. "I don't care! I don't want a Pokémon that doesn't listen to me! Just because it happened to be right one time doesn't mean it's a good idea to establish the habit of being lenient with Pokémon when it comes to following orders!" He doubled down on his stance, and I could sense the palpable air of disappointment in his teacher.

Sighing, Mister Patel made a waving gesture that seemed to encompass the entire pasture area around them. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to change the Pokémon you are battling with, that's part of what these practice battles are going to teach you all. Sometimes there may not be compatibility between a Pokémon and a trainer, and you simply can't force that." His carefully neutral tone avoided putting emphasis on either the Pokémon or the trainer, but the way he was exasperatedly looking at Johnathan made it seem to me that he wasn't blaming the Pokémon in this case.

I didn't agree with Johnathan's method of acting as a trainer, but as sweet as she seemed to be, I wasn't exactly thrilled with Annabelle's performance either. While I was slowly growing more confident with increased battle practice, she just sort of... froze up like a deer in the headlights under even the most modest pressure. If I wanted to be completely independent in battle, that sort of trainer might not be a problem, but I still had this idea of a proper partner as my ideal trainer. Someone who was willing to have my back, but also let me do my own thing when I hit my rhythm. Yeah. That was a pretty specific ask, but I still had time to wait and see if I could find someone like that.

"Alright, pair up everyone, we'll move on to the next battles. Since we have an odd number, now, Mable would you see if any of the Pokémon are willing to take on the role of a 'wild encounter' and battle without orders?" Mable nodded and stepped off the outlined fields to walk toward the spectating crowd of Pokémon a short distance away, eventually coaxing out another one of the Bidoof gang into position on one of the fields, opposite the bug-trainer boy with the Caterpie.

In the meantime, I had been chewing on another Sitrus berry, and the energy flowing through me made me wonder if it was secretly some kind of wonder medicine. The ache in my wing-joint faded almost immediately, and I quickly felt like I was almost as good as new again. It hadn't been the way I expected to win, but I'm gonna take it. Particularly because it was that Johnathan boy's own fault for throwing a tantrum, so he deserved the loss. Two for two, now let's see who we're up against next?