Friday morning came quickly and Tommy really hoped that he had packed everything he needed for the trip. His mother had reviewed the list ten times already and Tommy’s backpack and travel gear were close to overflowing. She had been watching the weather and reminded him one hundred times that it was going to rain this weekend even though today promised to be a beautiful day. Finally, Tommy promised her for the thousandth time that he would be careful on his trip when she dropped him off at school this morning. Tori was bleary eyed and grumpy as she was also forced to wake up an hour earlier than she normally did since their mom didn’t want to make two trips to school, but she gave Tommy a hug before she left to her classroom.
Tommy hadn’t been informed where his group would meet, so he headed towards the back of the school campus where most of the fourth year classes were held. As he approached the stadium, he saw a sign directing him to the park. He made his way through the main plaza to the opposite pathway, blinking his eyes in disbelief at the sight stretching out before him. There were sleek metal vehicles that looked like smaller versions of the transit buses he saw driving around Goldenrod. Each of them was painted white with gold accents to match the coloring of the school, and they sat on the ground instead of on wheels. There was a long metal bar that ran the width of each vehicle on the front and back ends of the bus.
Tommy made his way through the crowds of students as he looked for group 4. He passed by Darius, Jon, and Aubrey who had all been miraculously placed into group 9 together; he gave them a thumbs up and smiled as he passed each of them. After walking for a minute, he saw Ashley and Nessa, shouldering their backpacks and standing with their arms folded in front of two buses, each with the number 4 on them. Tommy made his way over towards the girls and found both of them refusing to look the other in the eye; nothing unusual there.
The last few days the three of them had met up in the park to chat, but not once had any of their meetings gone well. They always devolved into shouting matches between the two girls who Tommy was starting to believe would never be able to work together or see eye to eye on anything. It also didn’t help that Ashley still basically refused to acknowledge Tommy as a trainer. She told him over and over again that she basically expected him to be a good for nothing sack of dead weight this weekend.
“Are we all set?” Tommy called out, smiling wide as he made his way over. Nessa’s face brightened considerably when she saw Tommy but Ashley rolled her eyes, still wearing a scowl across her face.
“Great, the extra baggage is here,” Ashley muttered while looking at Tommy. She pointed to the large sack on her back, “My backpack is already heavy enough, so make sure you keep up and don’t expect me to carry your ass through whatever challenges we’re tasked with completing once we get to Cianwood.”
Nessa looked like she was about to open her mouth and get in Ashley’s face, but at that exact moment Zach called out and waved towards group four as he jogged their way.
“Hey there, everyone!” Zach yelled. He passed between the throngs of students and came to stop in between the two buses that were assigned to him. “I’ve got our Pokémon for the trip so come grab your rental when I call your name. Once you’ve got your rental or if you aren’t using one, when your name is called get on the buses so we can take off. Each bus seats 12, so four groups on each bus.”
“Thomas Hartford, Vanessa Anderson, Ashley Caldwell,” Zach wasted no time by calling out Tommy’s group first. Ashley and Nessa made their way inside the first bus while Tommy walked up to Zach to get his rental Pokémon.
“I’ve got your Solosis here, Mr. Hartford,” Zach said as he clapped Tommy on the shoulder with a massive hand. He had a huge grin spread across his face and a twinkle in his eye as he passed the Pokéball over to Tommy. “You look like you’re going to have your hands full this trip, eh?”
Not sure how he should respond to Zach or if Nessa and Ashley would hear anything he said, Tommy wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. He settled for smiling up at Zach and grabbing the Pokéball from the man's outstretched hand, clipping it securely on one of his belt notches. Tommy made his way into the bus to join his group as Zach resumed calling roll for the remaining groups. Inside the bus, Tommy saw that there were four rows each with 3 seats. Nessa and Ashley both were seated in the second row, Nessa by the window while Ashley occupied the aisle seat. Tommy excused himself as he squeezed by Ashley to sit in the middle of the two girls.
Once the two buses were loaded, Zach whooped loudly and shouted, “Time to go!” He unclipped four Pokéballs from his belt and tossed them into the air, depositing the Pokémon into the skies and catching all 4 now empty Pokéballs. From two of the Pokéballs, two Corviknights appeared who each grabbed the metal bars mounted at the backs of the two buses. The other two Pokéballs called out two Pidgeots who grabbed the front bars of the buses. Zach hefted himself onto the roof of the bus that Tommy’s group was in, just as the four massive bird Pokémon began to lift the vehicles into the sky.
All of the students in the bus were chatting excitedly while looking out of the windows. Tommy reached his arm around the back of Nessa’s seat so he could lean over and try to peer out of the window that she was sitting next to. He tried his hardest to ignore just how close his face was to both her face and chest, but could feel his temperature starting to slowly rise. As their bus rose steadily higher in the air Tommy saw the ground and school falling further and further away. Corviknight was flapping his wings powerfully on the back end of the bus allowing them to climb higher in the air with every passing second. Tommy felt his stomach lurch and his heart palpitate as he stared at the ever-shrinking ground and tried to imagine how high they were off of the ground right now; he thought he could see his family ranch south of the city from this height so he pointed it out to Nessa. He turned his head to look at her and saw that she had the same big grin that he was sure was on his face right now. Their bus came to a halt in the air to allow the second bus to pull level with them.
The bus was so high in the air that the crisscrossing streets of Goldenrod looked like a chessboard and the tall trees of the surrounding countryside looked like matchsticks. Once the second bus had reached the same height as theirs, Zach smacked the roof of the bus hard and whooped again at the top of his lungs. Pidgeot flapped her wings furiously as she began to drag them forward, slowly at first as they were starting from rest, while Corviknight was working just as hard in the back to lessen the weight of the bus for Pidgeot. Their bus began to pick up speed, going faster and faster until they were rocketing westward across the ocean, traveling towards Cianwood City.
The second bus started out directly behind theirs as they began their journey travelling forward in a straight line. After about 15 or 20 minutes the second bus overtook the first and it wasn’t lost on Tommy that the second Pidgeot was working much harder now that she was in the front. The buses switched positions every few minutes and Tommy overheard a kid in the row behind him explaining to his group mates that the Pidgeot were taking turns resting by flying behind each other since the air resistance was greatly reduced for the bus in the second position.
The port city of Goldenrod was soon replaced by a vast ocean spreading endlessly before them. Massive cargo ships that looked like ants from their height charged through the water in the ocean below their bus, but the repetitive blue oceanscape soon lost its allure, a vast empty expanse of nothing stretching ever onward towards the horizon. A couple of kids brought cards and Nessa and Tommy passed the time by playing games with the group of students seated in the first row. Ashley had fallen asleep almost immediately after setting out and her head eventually came to rest on Tommy’s right shoulder. He thought about waking her up but wasn’t sure if she would be more upset to find out that he woke her when she was asleep or didn’t wake her and let her sleep on his arm. He took his chances and figured he should let her sleep.
Eventually the bus began to slow and Tommy checked his watch; 10:50. He didn’t know how far the distance from Goldenrod to Cianwood was but he knew it took days to travel by ship, sometimes over a week depending on the weather. They had made the trip in a little under 3 hours.
Tommy gently roused Ashley and then tried unsuccessfully not to stare, her beautiful blonde hair in a mess of unkempt curls while her green eyes opened slowly to look up at Tommy. After realizing where she was and that she had been sleeping on Tommy’s shoulder, she quickly sat up in her seat and straightened herself out. Tommy saw Ashley look at him out of the corner of his eye, but he was trying his best to stare straight ahead out of the front windshield and not look over at her. He could see the city of Cianwood coming into view on the horizon, though he could already tell it wasn’t nearly as big as Goldenrod was.
The two buses began to descend but Tommy frowned as he realized that Cianwood was still far away from their current position; they were losing altitude quickly and wouldn’t make it to the city.
Ashley must have realized the same thing because she was fully alert now and muttering to herself so low that Tommy could barely hear her. “Why are we descending so early, we’re nowhere near close enough to Cianwood yet.”
She tried her best to stand in the bus that was now beginning to rock slightly back and forth as they continued to descend. Stumbling over to the window on the right side of the bus, Ashley stuck her head out and looked around. Tommy heard her swear loudly followed by Zach laughing heartily from atop their bus. Ashley brought her head back through the window and took her seat again with a giant scowl.
“Care to tell us what you’ve discovered?” Nessa asked abruptly. All of the other students in the bus had stopped talking and were waiting expectantly to hear what Ashley was about to say.
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“Yeah, that smiling goody-goody sitting on top of our bus is actually rotten to his core,” Ashley started. “We aren’t going to Cianwood at all.”
“Where are we going then?” Tommy asked after Ashley hadn’t bothered to elaborate any further. She had closed her eyes and was rubbing her temples with the ends of her fingers.
“Ugh, this is going to be a really lousy weekend,” Ashley complained. “We’re landing on the Whirl Islands.”
Tommy could still hear Zach laughing loudly atop their bus.
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The descent didn’t take long at all, and each of the four bird Pokémon collapsed in an exhausted heap once the buses had been deposited on one of the rocks that made up the Whirl Islands. As their buses had been descending, Tommy noticed that there were 4 different islands, though all of them were really nothing more than barren rock jutting out from the ocean depths. The rocks must have been named the Whirl Islands because of the multitude of whirlpools preventing any approach to the islands by sea; none of the whirlpools looked particularly vicious at the moment, but Tommy didn’t doubt they would still rebuff most smaller boats that tried to approach the islands. Between the whirlpools, the islands that consisted of only sharp rocks, and the overall lack of apparent vegetation, Tommy could tell this was already going to be a difficult trip. The rock they landed on had a small beachhead in front of where they were standing and an entrance to a cave directly behind them.
Zach beckoned all of the students over and cleared his throat, addressing the students that gathered around him.
“You’ve no doubt realized by now we have not landed in Cianwood City,” Zach yelled. Tommy noticed yelling seemed to be Zach’s default volume setting.
“Welcome to the Whirl Islands!” He spread his arms wide as if something magnificent was directly behind him and not a small mountain of ugly jagged rock. “These islands are owned by Cianwood and are a great place to train. I myself spend a lot of time exploring the caves and the waters around the islands.”
Tommy looked around to see the group of students all wearing disapproving and unexcited looks on their faces.
“Well then, we’ll go ahead and get right to things,” he continued completely unperturbed. “It is low tide right now as you can see the beach; once high tide hits later this evening the beach will be submerged completely and the whirlpools will get much stronger. For now it’s perfectly safe to enter the water here around the beach. The current is not strong, but I will advise against entering the water in the late evening and early morning when the riptide is strong. If you are not a strong swimmer you can get sucked out to sea into one of the whirlpools.”
“Now our first test will be a physical fitness test,” Zach informed all of them. “Your health and fitness are some of the most important aspects of being a trainer, so we’ll begin our weekend by running a gauntlet. If you are not currently wearing your swimming suit then we will take this opportunity to change. Ladies, I will direct your attention to the cave that is directly behind us. I have cleared out the first few rooms in the cave but for now do not go further than the first room. Gentlemen, feel free to either step into the buses to change or stand behind them, whichever you prefer. Do not attempt to enter that cave gentlemen, am I understood? We’ll reconvene out here in 10 minutes so hurry up.”
The students scattered when Zach finished speaking and hurried to where they were told to go. Tommy stayed behind while the students left to change as he was apparently the only one who wore his swimsuit ahead of time. He saw Zach had removed his lab coat and pulled a brush out so he could wipe down the 4 exhausted birds while he waited for the students to get ready.
“Can I help?” Tommy asked his chaperone. “If you have an extra brush.”
“Oh?” Zach asked with a raised brow. “You don’t need to change?”
“I wore my swimsuit underneath,” Tommy said, stepping out of his shorts and pulling off his shirt. “I figured I'd be prepared just in case.”
“Not bad,” Zach grinned, smile infectious, so Tommy grinned right back. “I’ve only got the one brush and we don’t have much time, but I'll tell you what, go run and grab the water jugs from under the first row seats in the bus.”
Tommy did what he was told and returned before any other students had come back.
“Do you have any experience handling Pokémon?” Zach asked him. “You’re a rental kid from what I recall.”
“I work on a ranch and I handle all of the Pokémon there pretty much daily,” Tommy casually told Zach. He glanced down somewhat apprehensively at the razor talons on the ends of Pidgeot’s feet and the bladed feathers on Corviknight’s wings. “Nothing as big as this, I’ll admit. But I can back off if I feel threatened.”
“Fair enough. They’re school Pokémon so they should hopefully be docile enough. Grab that empty bowl there and fill it with one of those jugs then,” Zach instructed him. “Then walk down the line and offer each of them some water. Be careful, we’re a long way from a Pokémon Center and I only know basic first aid.”
Tommy tried to calm his furiously beating heart as he filled the bowl with water. Once done, he walked up to the first Pidgeot in the line as slowly as he could while never breaking eye contact with her. He extended his empty hand out and held it open at his side so she could hopefully see how non-threatening he was. He smiled at Pidgeot, careful not to bare any teeth at her and stopped just outside of what he hoped was the range of her talons, calling out softly to her.
“Hey there girl,” Tommy tried to project as much authority and confidence into his voice as he could. He inched closer all the while that he was speaking. “Thank you for carrying us so far. I have some water for you, I know you must be thirsty. You did an incredible job.”
Tommy was well within her striking range now. He was sweating profusely and the muscles in his arms were starting to lock from having them constantly tensed, but he wouldn’t be deterred. Pidgeot’s head was turned sideways as she regarded him with one great yellow eye.
“That’s it,” Tommy told her as he stopped, centimeters from her breast. “Here, drink as much as you want. You’re thirsty aren’t you.”
She regarded him for another moment but then closed her eyes and dipped her head into the bowl, tongue dabbing the surface of the water as she tried to drink. Tommy spoke soothing words to her as she continued to drink and he brought his left hand up, as slowly as possible.
“I’m going to pet you now,” he told her. “You’re beautiful and your feathers are gorgeous. I just want to say thanks, that’s all.”
He slowly brought his left hand down on the back of her head. She spread her wings wide and flapped them as soon as Tommy touched her, causing Tommy’s heart to momentarily stop. She was just adjusting her weight though and settled her wings back into her side. Tommy brushed his fingers up and down her head, he felt the feathers on her wings and on her breast and grinned. They were the softest thing he had ever felt, softer than his pillow back home or any of the plushie toys that Tori had on her bed.
Pidgeot finished drinking and screeched as she straightened out. Tommy felt his breath catch all over again but she turned her back to him and hopped away.
“Thank you,” Tommy called out after her. He would have been content to sit quietly on the beach for the rest of the day, running his fingers through her soft feathers.
Tommy turned to ask Zach a question but it died in his throat when he saw the way Zach was staring at him. Zach recovered quickly though, a customary grin returning to his face.
“That was impressive,” Zach said. “I’ll be honest I wasn’t expecting much, I thought she would just ignore you, but you’re a natural. It’s hard to earn the trust of a Pokémon, especially if you don’t have any badges.”
Some of the students had begun to make their way back over so Zach grabbed the bowl from Tommy’s hand.
“I’ll water and feed the rest of them once you guys get started. And let me also give you a quick warning as well, Mr. Hartford,” Zach told him. “It’s best to keep to yourself the good fortune that you seem to have with Pokémon. Not many people will understand or appreciate your considerable gift.”
Tommy was about to ask Zach to elaborate but the man had already turned his back to Tommy, so he held his tongue as his classmates began to filter back over. All of the guys had changed and a few of the girls as well, and they had begun to make their way out of the cave back towards the beach. Tommy spotted Nessa walking back over in a modest bikini, but a bikini nonetheless. Completely white, the swimsuit stood in stark contrast with her deeply tanned skin and muscles. Tommy tried his hardest to not stare like the rest of the guys were as she walked over to stand beside him.
“I saw you with Pidgeot when I was in the cave,” she smiled genuinely. “First Shellder and Totodile, now Pidgeot. You’ll have to show me how you do it when we get back to Goldenrod.”
Tommy laughed, “I’ll try, but I have no idea that I’m doing anything half of the time anyway.”
Ashley walked out of the cave with the remainder of the girls and Tommy tried again to appreciate the ground as much as he could. He had still glimpsed her though when she first emerged from the cave, blonde hair loose and blowing in the sea breeze, walking over confidently in a black bikini top and bottom. Tommy silently thanked Zach as he began to explain their first task.
“Excellent, now that everyone is here let’s go ahead and start,” he began. “Our first task will be a fitness test, so I hope that all of you have been exercising properly these last few years.”
He pointed out into the water as he continued on, “We’ll begin with a swim. You should see buoys floating out in the water, they circle the entire island. You will begin by swimming out to that buoy and then each subsequent one to completely swim around the entire island; the total distance is a little over half of a kilometer. If you aren’t a strong swimmer, take frequent breaks by grabbing a buoy, they’re spaced about 50 meters apart. You can also call for rescue anytime but it will result in your disqualification. Once you’ve made your lap and returned to this starting buoy you can swim your way back to the beach.”
“From there you will need to complete 100 sit-ups, 50 push-ups, and 25 pull-ups,” he continued. “You can do those exercises in any order and your pull-ups can be done on the four bars overhanging the buses. You’ll run the length of the beach, up and back, three times, and then you’ll finish by climbing to the top of the island.”
“Your entire 3 man team must complete the circuit and the whole team will fail if one student fails to do so,” his customary grin wasn’t displayed on his face anymore. “Do not use any Pokémon to help you, or your entire team will be disqualified.”
“The first, second, and third place teams will earn three points, two points, and one point respectively,” he informed them. “This will not be our only challenge this weekend so for those of you who earn no points don’t worry, there will be other opportunities to do so. All members of the team with the most points will earn a prize when we return to the school.”
“I’m told the prize is something you definitely don’t want to miss out on.” He was grinning excitedly again as he looked at all of the students.
“You have three hours to complete the circuit, good luck.”