Chapter 15: R4 | Ares, Aphrodite
They chanted her name. She heard it.
Through the gate she stepped and the stadium opened before her, rising. It was the first time she ever saw it. Every battle before she kept her eyes at her feet as she hurried to her platform. Now, she lifted her hands—both, even the one missing fingers—slowly skyward and the volume rose in tandem, as if by her command.
To-ril. To-ril.
It was funny. She could only hear it because she was listening. If she listened another way she might hear it differently: Ce-ly. Ce-ly.
She wore an outfit of her own devising, ordered (at no small cost) overnight and tailored in Viridian. Modeled on her region's uniform in the last great war. The history didn't matter. She liked the look. Bibarel fur adorned her hat and shoulders; a cape, bound by a gold chain, swept down her back. She tromped in black boots that matched her gloves and she felt it was finally her in front of their endless eyes.
Step by step she ascended her platform. The chant persisted. Her gaze met her opponent's on the other side.
"Trainers, please confirm readiness," said the automated prompt.
On the jumbotron, a countdown commenced: 30. 29. The crowd, together, roared each number.
Cely was beautiful as always. Under the floodlight's golden glow Toril remembered her that first meeting: a goddess. With her soft white clothes and tanned skin, her smile that shined warmly, she was a goddess of love. Toril, then, was a goddess of war. Fighting for the fate of this world Cely was so certain would end.
"It won't end," Toril mouthed, since even whispers were picked up on her microphone. "It'll never end."
Cely, however, did speak. Smiling her pitying smile, her voice broadcast amid the frenzy of the audience: "Let's write the end together, Toril."
The timer touched 0. The crowd rained cataclysmic fury, and the world shook.
"Go, Trude!"
"Momokins!"
Their arms lashed out; Toril's cape flew back. Poké Balls bounced against the arena floor and split open. In the whorl of sonic armageddon they manifested, Meowscarada on Cely's side, Rillaboom on Toril's.
Rillaboom, who did not beat the drum. Rillaboom, who summoned no Grassy Terrain. When Cely glanced at Toril with a strange grin, Toril tossed back her head and cackled.
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Still rubbing his shoulder, Domino flung open the VIP booth's door. He flopped into a chair, heaved a deep breath, and only then looked down to realize with a pained hiss the battle had begun. Momokins versus Rillaboom.
As Brittany patted his brow with a napkin, a voice startled him. "Well, well. What a gambit Toril's playing."
Yui and Raj were long gone. Toril and Cely were onstage. Nobody should've been here. Domino grunted as he shifted to look.
Gold and black; the kid sat at a ridiculous angle, legs crossed and heeled shoes kicked onto another chair. One finger pushed up yellow-tinted glasses as his other hand held out a leaf of kale, which his Lopunny nibbled less-than-daintily.
"Jinjiao Zhang?!"
"Pulling the same opener as the first match takes balls, I'll give her that. I'd bet money it's the real Rillaboom this time, not Zoroark. Overgrow instead of Grassy Surge and it doesn't put up terrain. Suboptimal build, of course, but Aracely probably doesn't realize it's even a possibility. Or do you disagree, Dad?"
Domino sputtered. Didn't this kid go home ages ago?
The trainers called their first moves.
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"U-turn," Cely said.
Toril kept laughing. She laughed and laughed, until without warning even to herself she ratcheted forward, leaned over the console, face pressed through the holoscreen, and screamed: "U-turn!"
They had both called the same move.
Meowscarada was faster than anything on Toril's team. Rillaboom, Zoroark, didn't matter. So, just like how Rotom's Volt Switch was the perfect play the first time around, U-turn—which did the same thing, attacking and immediately switching—was the perfect play now.
Or should have been.
That was the whole trick. The trick was that the Rillaboom/Zoroark deception wasn't the trick at all. It was a smokescreen, a trick in front of a trick. The real trick was that Toril was running Choice Scarf, the only legal item that boosted her Pokémon's speed over Meowscarada's.
"Rillaboom" moved first. It threw itself at Meowscarada, bounced off its body, and pivoted the way it came. Meowscarada, stricken by a devastating effective move, didn't get a chance to do the same. The same time "Rillaboom" vanished back into its Poké Ball, Meowscarada flopped melodramatically to the arena floor, raised a paw to the sky, and shuddered unconscious.
They said Aracely Sosa read minds. Toril knew that wasn't true. She read people. Their faces, their feelings, their characters. From that she intuited what her opponent would do, even if she barely understood the mechanical logic behind it.
So Cely saw Toril cackling like mad and knew there must be a trick. Every fucking moron at home must see there was a trick. The obvious trick would be that Rillaboom was actually Zoroark. But then you'd think, that trick is too obvious, and also she did it last time and it didn't work. So you'd think, maybe it really is Rillaboom? Change its ability to Overgrow and it won't summon Grassy Terrain. Then you might think, maybe that's what she wants you to think.
Or maybe Cely understood the human psyche better than Toril—shocker—and knew it really was Zoroark pretending to be Rillaboom (it was). She'd think she saw through the deception. After all, Cely lacked the mechanical knowhow. She would never expect Zoroark to use U-turn of all moves.
Toril had to thank Yui Matsui. Opening with a hyper-specific crackhead build tailored to your opponent came straight from her playbook. It was completely out of character for Toril to do something so risky.
Being out of Toril's character was why Cely never saw it coming.
"Rasmus," Toril said. On the arena, Annihilape appeared.
"Ziggy," Cely said. And there he was, the shiny yellow flop-eared fuck.
Toril settled down. The final spasmic chuckles left her. If she kept it up too long, Cely would catch on. But Toril didn't spend the past week memorizing charts and maximizing percentage plays. She spent it learning skills she never thought she'd learn in her life. She was ready to use them all.
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"So on the first turn, Toril exorcises her demon and pulls off the Rillaboom fake out," Jinjiao said. "Heh. Now let's see if Aracely can exorcise her own demon."
"What are you talking about?" Domino said.
"Annihilape versus Azumarill. Remember, Dad? Last time, Cely called for him to use Play Rough, but he used Belly Drum instead. It cost the whole match."
Domino remembered. It sent sick waves of doom through his chest.
"Cely's spent a lot of time with Ziggy since then." They were the right words, but who knew if they were true. Cely had become hieroglyphics: undecipherable.
He felt ill. Britt kept breathing with him, but it didn't work. "What's up with you, kid? Afraid to show your face back home?"
Jinjiao looked like he'd eaten something sour. His Lopunny, lapping at his empty hand, glanced up quizzically.
"I got death threats."
"Death threats?"
"Yeah. Like, more than one. I can't blame them. I gave myself death threats."
"Don't joke about that."
"Whatever."
"Seriously. Don't."
Jinjiao stroked Lopunny under the chin. "Gonna watch the game? Your little girl's in a hole now."
Domino grunted. Cely would claw her way out. He had faith.
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Annihilape versus Azumarill. Last time, the matchup depended on a single prediction: would Annihilape use Taunt or Bulk Up? Cely nailed the prediction, but Azumarill refused to listen.
Time for Toril's second trick. She called it "100 Percent." Meaning it was a move where prediction and luck didn't factor. It was a move with no chance of failure.
"Rasmus, return. Go, Elias."
"Play Rough," Cely said.
As Toril expected, Cely had gotten Ziggy in line. He didn't opt for Belly Drum, but dutifully followed the command.
Unfortunately, the attack did nothing.
Cely's face—Toril paid close attention—screwed up. Now it was Toril who could read her mind, not from facial cues, but because she knew the underlying logic that arose from the predictable gaps in Cely's knowledge.
Cely thought: How did the attack do nothing? Oh, wait, sorry. She thought: How did the attack do nothing? Play Rough was a fairy move. No type was immune to fairy. Even if it did negligible damage, when Ziggy hurled himself "playfully" at his target, it should have at least left a scratch.
There was, however, a singular known Pokémon immune to fairy. It was Toril's final Pokémon, the one she kept hidden all tournament. This wasn't how she expected to use it. She always envisioned some climactic finale, hope draining from her foe's face as they realized they faced something immune to every single attack their final Pokémon knew. Cely's confusion was more satisfying, though.
Elias existed, motionless. Only a husk. So thin you could poke your finger through it. It did not move. It could barely move. If it moved too much, it would break apart. To describe it as alive was obviously wrong, but describing it as dead was inaccurate too. Can something be dead that never lived?
Buried, blind, the unremarkable bug Nincada survives, subsists. For a decade it lies dormant, waiting for time to transform it, and like most Pokémon, eventually time does. Like most Pokémon, it evolves into something stronger, Ninjask, the fastest Pokémon confirmed to exist, a terrifying predator invisible at maximum velocity.
A classic tale of Pokémon evolution. Nurtured from a state of weakness to one of strength. But unlike every other Pokémon, when Nincada evolved into Ninjask it left something behind. A husk of shed skin.
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Nobody knew what exactly Shedinja was. It defied otherwise irrefutable laws of biology. Spontaneous generation, thoroughly debunked in the case of Pokémon like Grimer or Magnemite once thought to manifest consciousness out of the aether, remained the only plausible explanation for Shedinja's existence. Scientists thought perhaps Nincada was actually a symbiotic relationship between two organisms, which split upon evolution, but no evidence emerged to support the theory. Or was it something more elemental, amoebic? Ninjask clearly maintained the memories and consciousness of the original Nincada, but to a lesser extent, Shedinja did too. At least, they thought. Because Shedinja never did anything, it was hard to tell.
Science, officially stumped, tossed up its hands. Toril had her own theory.
Shedinja was a shard of Nincada's soul. The part of it that was weak and afraid, motionless underground as it prayed no predator would detect it, sifting antennae through the soil for microscopic bits of sustenance. In that state it dreamed of the Ninjask it would become, its ideal self, but while other Pokémon could simply achieve their dreams with effort, Nincada was always too miserable and empty and alone, so alone in that dark hole. Bottom of the food chain, interaction with any other living creature meant death, interaction was loathsome, yet some part longed to interact, longed to reach out and touch, for why else did its antennae ceaselessly sift?
Through dreams alone, dreams and the perfect state of being unseen that allowed true magic to happen, Nincada became Ninjask, soared through the sky, basked under the sun. Magic did it, not effort, not natural selection or the interminable scientific processes underlying evolution. Magic. And magic had a tradeoff. For dream to become reality, reality must become dream. The weak, empty, lifeless husk of Nincada lingered as a ghost, a creature difficult to say existed despite it being visible before the eyes of the world, still praying for someone—anyone—to touch it, protected by a wondrous guard that disallowed all contact.
"Uh, Ziggy—return." From across the arena, Cely tossed up her hands at Toril as if to say, sure whatever. "Rotom."
"Will-O-Wisp," said the goddess of war, the fastest human known to exist.
Rotom wasn't the optimal target. Toril had hoped for Scizor. The purpose of Shedinja wasn't to actually accomplish anything, though. It was a 100 percent guaranteed wall against Azumarill. For Aracely Sosa, you needed 100 percent.
"Elias, return. Go, Waldemar."
Cely brought out Rotom to burn Shedinja. Which made this a free switch—
"Hydro Pump," Cely said.
Rotom, still smiling after Cely cracked his phone screen, extended his washing machine's tube hose and sprayed a jet of water directly into the face of Toril's Volcarona the moment it appeared.
Cely stuck her tongue at Toril. Toril remained calm on the outside. Inside she reeled: (If Cely intended to use a water type move against Shedinja, why didn't she just keep Azumarill in? Did she understand how Shedinja worked at all? Was she actually so stupid she looped around to being smart? Did she anticipate the swap all along?)
Didn't matter. Toril blotted that out, crunched the numbers. Waldemar at 15 percent health. The odds of him accomplishing anything in this battle from that position were minimal. So.
"Keep in there. Giga Drain!"
Briefly, she considered that Cely might expect Toril to swap Volcarona rather than sack him.
Nope. Cely knew.
She always knew.
Toril closed her eyes and remained calm.
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Though Volcarona got off a Giga Drain that hurt Rotom bad, Rotom finished it with a second Hydro Pump. The match returned to dead heat.
"There we go," Jinjiao said. "A trademark Cely Sosa prediction. Shedinja's a problem, though. I think Aracely still has no clue what it is or how to beat it."
Domino kept rubbing his shoulder and wincing. Beet red face. When he spoke, he sounded like he could barely breathe: "Probably..."
"Okay there Dad?"
His Gardevoir kept fretting. It drove Jinjiao insane seeing her in the periphery when he focused on the match. Domino waved a flabby hand. "I'm... fine. So you rooting for Cely now, kid?"
"I figure, the only way I don't come out of this looking completely pathetic is she wins the whole tournament. But then I'm selling my soul, right? What were you thinking, putting her in this tournament without her joining the Battler's Union?"
Domino only shook his head.
"I mean look at the rules. Even with the Union they've turned it into an anticompetitive farce. Single elimination, best of one. It creates a more exciting viewing product, but the winner isn't the best trainer. It's the luckiest. I guess you'd say that's cope, coming from me? Heh."
A grunt. Jinjiao knew IPL history. He'd seen Domino's finals. He imagined it was a grunt of assent.
"The IPL has been salivating for someone like Cely to show up. Someone with real charisma. Have you seen the viewership statistics? Up 17 percent from last year. If she's in finals, it'll break the record. The IPL is supposedly a tournament for trainers, but they hate trainers. Trainers are weird. They live on a mountain all year and come down weird. You have to be weird to be good at this sport. That's why they make the sport less and less about being good. So they can get lucky people instead of good people. Lucky people are normal people. They're the only people who can afford to be normal. Am I coping here? Tell me if I'm coping."
Kekayin wanted more kale. She nuzzled her head up and down his neck and whined. Jinjiao held out his hands. Did he look like a kale dispenser?
"Or I got it backward. Maybe we're the only people who can afford to be weird. We reject everything else about humanity because we have this tournament to make our lives mean something. I dunno. I'm coping. I have to cope, Dad."
Toril tossed out Rillaboom to match Rotom. The real Rillaboom: it pounded its drum and Grassy Terrain appeared. So the thing that one shot Meowscarada with U-turn was Zoroark all along. Next level tech.
"Do you think it's over for me? Do you think I'm done? I tell myself I'm not done. Then I think about the statistics. My whole life is statistics, how can I not think about them? Of trainers who appear at the IPL, 85 percent only appear once. There's no second year. They burn out in regionals and vanish. Is that me, Dad? I'll be real, I'm terrified. Was that my one shot and I blew it losing to a girl made of plastic?"
He freewheeled to himself, speaking the words he chewed every night in bed, but surprisingly, Domino interjected.
"How... how old are you, kid?"
"Thirteen."
Gardevoir tried to get Domino to stop talking. Imploring hand signals. She looked at Jinjiao for aid and Jinjiao made the same motion as at Kekayin: What do you think I am, a kale dispenser?
"Kid," Domino said. "It's the brain. The brain is why."
"The brain?"
"The brain. No, shit, maybe it's the heart."
Domino placed a hand to his heart and kneaded.
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In this terrain Rillaboom knocked out a half health Rotom with Grassy Glide. It was such an obvious move, though, that even Cely could predict it. She'd swap. Which meant the actual best move was for Rillaboom to use U-turn, scout the swap, and let Toril herself swap to the best counter.
But if Cely predicted that, Rotom's best move would instead be Volt Switch. Assuming a slower Rotom—likely—it meant Cely would actually be scouting Toril's swap. That gave her the advantage.
But if Cely did that, Toril's best move was Grassy Glide to knock out Rotom.
Grassy Glide or U-turn. The best move depended on what Cely did. What Cely did depended on what she thought Toril would do. Despite Toril's opening tricks, Cely finally got her pickaxe into Toril's brain. The goddess of love golden and glowing showed Toril a beatific visage. Toril returned the look with one of stone.
Third trick.
In her mind, Toril visualized a slot machine with one wheel. The wheel had every number between 1 and 100 printed on it, with numbers to 50 blue and numbers after 50 red.
She let that wheel spin as she watched the timer tick down. Faster and faster, until the numbers were an unreadable blur.
The timer hit one. Toril made the wheel stop.
It landed on 64. Red. She slammed her finger into the holoscreen an instant before the timer turned over. She wasn't sure, but thought Cely hit her screen slightly quicker.
Toril looked at the button she'd pressed and said: "Grassy Glide."
Rillaboom surfed over the terrain. With her arms out for balance she looked ridiculous, but her expression was as dead serious as Toril's. Cely's smile remained even as Rillaboom knocked Rotom back to the Stone Age.
Two Pokémon down for Aracely, one down for Toril. Back in the lead.
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"What do you mean, brain, heart?"
"You're right." Domino regained color. "They hate trainers. So they change the rules every year. One year Ultra Beasts are everywhere, next year they're banned. Now it's Megas. Next year that Tera crap. This Pokémon's legal, now it's not. This move is, now it's not. First it's hail, then it's snow. Get it?"
Kekayin rolled on the floor, stamped her feet against the tabletop underside, and whined. When not in Mega form, she was basically always like this.
"Kind of," Jinjiao said, as Cely sent out Scizor. "You mean they change the rules so much to force trainer turnover?"
"Yeah. Even the best, when they get to be twenty-five, thirty, it's too much on the brain. But most can't handle it even the first time. That's why I said the heart. Because..." He winced again.
Toril made the obvious swap to Mawile, but on the same turn Cely—predicting the obvious swap? Reading Toril's mind?—swapped to Slowking. Jinjiao was pretty sure Mawile won the matchup, depending on moveset, but unless it got lucky it would virtually knock itself out in the process.
"Because what, Dad?"
"Think of your Pokémon. That Lopunny there, Umbreon, all the rest. You went through hell with them. They're not just your pets. They're your family. Shit. When I was your age... I... they were my only family. I ditched my real one..."
Jinjiao said nothing, although Kekayin gnawed his ankle.
Toril swapped to Annihilape, a much better counter to Slowking. But Cely foresaw this, too, and swapped to Azumarill, her own Annihilape counter.
(Was it vanity, or was Jinjiao right to think Cely learned this swap tech from him?)
"Imagine next year," Domino said, "the rules change. Your Pokémon are shit now. New Pokémon are good. Pokémon you don't have. Say goodbye to your family, go get a new one. See what I mean? The heart. The heart can't keep up."
"Is that why you retired?"
A shake of the head. "I knocked up a girl."
"Heh. Heheh." Jinjiao tugged at his collar. "Yeah, well. Lots of trainers do that, I hear. Doesn't stop them."
"I wanted... to be a good dad..."
This seemed the best he could do. He sagged back and massaged his shoulder.
Below, impossibly, the third consecutive double swap occurred as Toril sent in Rillaboom and Aracely sent in Slowking.
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To say the crowd booed overstated it. The crowd was a mindless monster. Emotion pervaded, though, and the character of its cheer turned bitter. Neither trainer had done anything the past three turns except swap Pokémon in and out.
Toril understood why she was swapping. Rillaboom locked into Grassy Glide against Scizor, no other choice. But if Aracely anticipated it, why swap Scizor too, instead of using Swords Dance on the free turn? Any other trainer, Toril would say they specifically anticipated the Mawile, which neutralized Swords Dance with Intimidate and resisted any move Scizor might realistically know.
But why, then, did Aracely specifically swap to Slowking?
Mawile had a 99 percent chance of winning the matchup against Galarian Slowking, even if Slowking knew a super effective move like Flamethrower. Toril's Mawile had Sucker Punch, with a 12.5 percent chance to OHKO Slowking and a guaranteed chance to 2HKO. So why opt into this matchup?
Grappling for an explanation, Toril found two:
1. Aracely mispredicted the Mawile. She swapped to Slowking expecting something else.
2. Aracely correctly predicted the Mawile, but didn't understand Slowking lost the matchup.
Toril lacked faith in the first explanation and considered the second an oversight even for Aracely, who usually did decent prep. Which led to additional explanations:
3. Aracely ceased looking to her father for prep (why? Overconfidence? A fight?) which caused a blunder.
4. Actually no, Aracely prepped specifically for this matchup and ran some lunatic Slowking tech à la Iron Head Garchomp.
The final explanation was too persuasive and Toril opted for what she deemed the safer move, a swap to Annihilape, which equally countered Slowking. Only to immediately realize her mistake, because the obvious lunatic tech would be Calm Mind, which countered both Sucker Punch Mawile and Annihilape.
Already running the odds whether anything in a Calm Mind Slowking kit hurt Shedinja, Toril was baffled when Aracely swapped again, this time to Azumarill. A move that only made sense if you specifically predicted the Annihilape swap.
That freakish feeling. Aracely really was reading her mind. Toril took a deep breath, kept her face level, showed no emotion, focused on the next move. When she borrowed Rune's laptop to order her clothes, she succumbed to temptation and peeked at what the internet said about her. To her surprise, she actually had a sizable group of fans. They made "Toril Rage Compilations" of all her best finger-devouring, clothes-shredding moments. Comments said things like "This is what a true battler looks like. In a world so sterile and corporate, you feel her passion" and "Based." Toril apologized, but she had to disappoint them as she levied her poker face at Aracely.
The last time Annihilape and Azumarill were on field, Toril swapped to Shedinja. Fair to assume Aracely expected that, even if Toril still didn't know if Aracely understood how Shedinja worked. So she swapped to a different counter: Rillaboom.
Aracely swapped to Slowking.
The move ostensibly made sense even if Aracely predicted Shedinja, since it was likely Slowking had Flamethrower. What Aracely didn't know was—actually, best not to think it at all.
Relax your muscles. Keep a neutral expression. The wikiHow article "13 Steps for a Good Poker Face" guided her as Toril broadcast her intention to swap back to Annihilape.
"High Horsepower," she shouted instead.
High Horsepower. Rillaboom was no horse, but learned it anyway. A powerful ground type move. Combined with Choice Band, it was a guaranteed OHKO on Galarian Slowking.
"Sludge Bomb," Aracely said. She didn't swap. She expected Rillaboom to stay in. But Slowking had slow in the fucking name. It wouldn't live long enough to do anything.
Losing Slowking made the match virtually unwinnable. Shedinja shut down Azumarill, Mawile shut down Scizor. Aracely's unknown final Pokémon could only do so much even with god tier predictions. Kommo-o, Aegislash: Toril knew how to handle them.
"Game over," Toril muttered. She forgot she wore a microphone; the words broadcast over the arena.
Which was great, just great, because of what happened a second later.
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"I guess," Jinjiao said, "if I'm done, I want it to be done too. The whole thing. Burn it all down. The end. So yeah, I'm rooting for your daughter."
Standing, he considered the battle. Rillaboom versus Slowking. Either they swapped again, or Toril used High Horsepower.
"You sure you're okay? You look real bad, Dad."
He was interrupted when Toril did, in fact, call High Horsepower. And Cely stayed in. The moron. Jinjiao lost to this?
He tactfully refrained from mentioning to Aracely's father his dream the night after the loss. Paralyzed, every muscle taut on his bed as she crawled out from under it and toward him, eyes bright in the dark.
Like a Mudsdale, except with no equine features at all, Rillaboom blazed a trail across the arena. Dirt dredged up in its wake as it shot for Slowking. This would be the final blow, regardless of what happened next; no way Cely recovered.
Then—
"It MISSED?!"
He leapt. Literally leapt. It missed. The dirt plume cleared and Rillaboom's angle was off by a degree, it sat in its trench uselessly past Slowking, and Slowking hadn't budged, only now gradually turning toward its opponent to belch a catastrophic blast of poison.
"It missed. It missed! That's a five percent chance. You see that Dad?!"
He turned, exuberant, his sleep paralysis demon satisfied by his loyalty, her smirk burned into his retinas, as he watched Domino Sosa pitch forward from his chair and smack the floor motionless.
Gardevoir seized her head and screeched. Jinjiao said, "Oh fuck!" Kekayin skidded to her knees, rolled Domino over, and started compressing his chest. Jinjiao pulled out his phone and it almost went flying from his sweaty hand but he somehow held on.
"Hey! Is anyone there? This guy in the booth—he just had a heart attack!"