Chapter 49 at last!
This chapter was actually really fun and turned out better than I expected in my opinion.
The battles of the previous chapters were probably better for a number of reasons, but eh, you can't have everything. Twenty-one pages in all.
(Side note: holy crap, there are a lot of italics in this chapter.
)
The Ouen League – Chapter 49: The Rage of a Scyther
“You know,” May said as they walked from the Pokémon Center back to the trainer lodges, “you really weren’t that bad this time. A couple of odd switches and you could probably have used Dragonite better even against the über-Lunatone, but there was some actual strategy going on in parts of it and Letal utilized the arena well. And in-battle evolution always gets you coolness points.”
“The woman at the office building said they’d also take into account the confusion with Charizard,” Mark said. “Think that will mean extra points too?”
“Almost definitely,” May replied. “He’s a Flying-type which would have been good on the arena and a Fire-type which would have been good against both Delibird and Letaligon. You really just might qualify now. Especially since you officially won 2-0. Good call with Scyther.”
Mark nodded. “I guess you can thank Aaron White for that.”
“What, don’t I get any credit for pointing out you could do it too?”
Mark looked quizzically at May; she was smiling in a way that indicated it was a joke. He could never really be sure with her.
“Anyway,” she went on, “that means you’re done with the preliminaries and can just fool around for the next week and a half, but I recommend you start to work on reprogramming yourself in case you qualify. The knockout rounds are six-on-six with no switching. That means your Pokémon will be facing opponents they’re weak against and you can’t just recall them and send out something else instead. Practice moves that counter their weaknesses, evasive maneuvers, stuff like that.”
“Your next preliminary match is the day after tomorrow, right?”
May nodded. “Not that I have to worry much. It’s the guy we saw in that desert-themed match, remember? The one who lost, with the Glaceon.”
“Oh, yeah.” Mark paused. “Was he really that bad?”
“Well,” May replied with a shrug, “I guess it was more his choice of Pokémon than him, per se. Maybe he learned from his mistakes with that after his first match. Still nothing special, though. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with him.”
Mark just nodded, wishing he had her confidence. He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact he might actually qualify to the knockout phase; he’d been hoping for it, sure, but the prospect of actually having to start preparing for it and modifying his strategies for six-on-six switchless was oddly intimidating. In the preliminaries, he’d felt like he was just battling some kids like himself. If he qualified for the knockout rounds, he’d be facing some of the top sixteen first-time trainers in Ouen this year. How could he possibly be a match for
them?
It suddenly struck him for the first time now, as they were walking through the door into the trainer lodge, that if he qualified, that made
him one of those top sixteen trainers. That couldn’t be right. There was no way he would actually qualify. He hadn’t even won both of his preliminary matches. May had to be mistaken somehow.
He summoned the courage to articulate his concerns once they’d gotten lunch from the buffet and sat down at their usual table.
“Well,” May said, “as I keep saying, winning isn’t the point in the preliminaries. It’s all about showing off your Pokémon and your strategic thinking for the judges. You have a Dragonite and a Letaligon. You can sometimes strategize when you put your mind to it. You got pretty lucky by getting decent opponents. Thus, points. It’s as simple as that.”
“Lucky?” Mark repeated sceptically.
“Yes, lucky,” she said with an emphatic nod. “You made yourself look better than you are. How impressed do you think the judges are that I beat Pipsqueak Ketchum the other day? You actually got to show off some of the best you can do, especially earlier. I mean, I can guarantee you that you got more points just now than I got for my first match. Some kids here probably think they’ll qualify just because they won two matches through brute force against people who were obviously worse than them, when in reality people who lose against somebody good while using some strategy are getting much more points.”
“So you think I really will qualify?” Mark asked hesitantly.
“Well, of course I don’t
know if you’ll qualify, but stop thinking you’re out just because you lost a preliminary match. I’d think you have a chance, personally.”
That was the end of that conversation; Mark still wasn’t sure if he should dare to get his hopes up, but decided to take May’s advice about preparing for the knockout rounds in case he did qualify – tomorrow, anyway. He didn’t feel like training today.
Once they’d finished eating, May went off to train while Mark retreated to his room and took out Letaligon’s Pokéball. He sat down on his bed and took a deep breath before he dropped the ball onto the floor and it released Letaligon in a flash of light.
“I did it,” she said, only moments after she had fully materialized. “I evolved.”
Her tone was strange: she sounded part incredulous, part triumphant and part somehow expectant. She looked down at her strong, black claws for a moment, flexing them, and then turned towards Mark, waiting for some sort of an answer.
“Congratulations,” he said, not sure quite what he wanted to say or how to say it. “I mean, wow. I really didn’t think you’d do it.”
“But I did,” she replied insistently. “You all thought I couldn’t evolve and I still did.”
Mark looked at her. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
“You wanted me to stop,” she went on, still looking at him. “You told me it wouldn’t work, but it did.”
“Yeah,” Mark replied again. “I guess I was wrong.” He wondered momentarily what Nurse Joy of Acaria City would think of where this conversation was going. At least Letaligon looked slightly more satisfied now, stopped staring at Mark and looked around the room for a moment; it occurred to Mark that it must feel a lot smaller to her now that she was a Letaligon.
“When do we go back to Ruxido?” she asked at last.
“Not until after the League, remember,” Mark said. “You were going to stay throughout the League and then we’d go there to release you.”
“Oh,” Letaligon answered and did not say anything more, but by now Mark had realized what it was he had really wanted to talk to her about.
“So Letaligon,” he began, “are you still... do you still want to kill your father?”
“Yes,” she said with a hint of defensive stubbornness to her voice. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
Because Charmeleon had grown out of wanting to kill Scyther when he evolved. Because her evolution had been a sort of final chance for that entire situation to resolve itself before anybody had to be killed. But he didn’t say anything.
“So… yeah, you were going to stay and continue to battle,” he said eventually. When he got no immediate answer, he added, “You kind of have to now, since without Gyarados I only have six Pokémon. I can’t make a full team without you.”
“Yes,” she replied distractedly as she examined the armor on her back. “I will. I just forgot.” She looked up. “Can I go back in my Pokéball now?”
Mark nodded and took out her ball to recall her.
-------
The next day, while May was off training for her second preliminary match, Mark lay in his bed with his sketchbook and began to put together a type vulnerability chart for his team. It was an idea that had popped into his head the day before: since he only had six Pokémon, it would be nice to get a good idea of what the major weaknesses of his team were and how to take measures against them.
His team’s great weak spot was clearly the Rock weakness, with Charizard, Dragonite and Scyther all vulnerable, but on the upside, both Sandslash and Letaligon would be solid choices for dealing with Rock-types. Ice-types were also a threat to Sandslash, Dragonite and Scyther, but he had Charizard and Letaligon for them. Among the more minor weaknesses was Ground, for both Jolteon and Letaligon, though he of course had three Flying-types to take advantage of that…
He stopped all of a sudden. This really wasn’t the right way to approach this, was it? In a battle with no switching, compounded weaknesses could hardly be as much of a problem as otherwise. Each Rock-type brought out into battle would only get to take down exactly one Pokémon that was weak to it, but he could then send out something that wasn’t weak to it to beat it, without the opponent ever getting to take advantage of the fact Mark might have other Pokémon that were also weak to Rock.
He tore the page out of the sketchbook, crumpled it and threw it into the garbage before starting over by writing up a simple list of his Pokémon and their weaknesses.
Charizard (Fire/Flying) – weak to Rock (x2), Water, Electric
Jolteon (Electric) – weak to Ground
Sandslash (Ground) – weak to Water, Grass, Ice
Dragonite (Dragon/Flying) – weak to Ice (x2), Rock, Dragon
Scyther (Bug/Flying) – weak to Rock (x2), Ice, Electric, Fire
Letaligon (Normal/Steel) – weak to Fighting (x2), Ground, Fire
Charizard. Rock, Water and Electric. What would he do against those types when unable to switch? He had no super-effective moves against any of them and probably couldn’t learn a lot. The only type that would give him a fighting chance against Electric-types was Ground – he was pretty sure Charizard could learn the Earthquake TM. He’d have to shell out some money for it, but if he qualified, it would probably be worth it.
Earthquake would also help against Rock-types – which left Water. Water Pokémon were only weak to Grass and Electric attacks, and he was pretty sure Charizard couldn’t get any of those. Or could he? He seemed to remember looking at a list sometime and being surprised by how many Pokémon could learn attacks like Thunder Fang, Fire Fang and Thunderpunch. Perhaps Charizard was one of them. And what Grass attacks were there again? The drains, Razor Leaf, Vine Whip – no way – Grass Knot, Leaf Blade, Solarbeam...
An image popped up in his head: a televised Old-Timers’ League match, himself gazing mesmerized at the Charizard on the screen as it gathered the sun’s energy into an orb in its mouth and fired a bright beam of light at the Swampert on the other side of the arena while the latter’s trainer stared in horror. Charizard
could learn Solarbeam. Better still, he thought with a grin as he wrote it down, Solarbeam benefitted from Sunny Day just like his Fire moves, and it would beat Rock-types too. With it and Earthquake, Charizard should be reasonably well off no matter what was brought out against him.
Jolteon was more problematic. He definitely couldn’t learn any Water, Grass or Ice moves to employ against the Ground-types that would inevitably be sent out against him. He did have Swift, but that wouldn’t be very effective against the many Ground-types that were also Rock or Steel, and it wasn’t an overly powerful attack anyhow. He had Pin Missile, but being a physical attack, that would probably be even worse. Mark frowned. Could Jolteon learn any other good special attacks that would help him against Ground-types? He couldn’t really remember. Perhaps he should keep Jolteon for later when he could go to the library and look it up.
Sandslash. He’d always been a bit lacking in the moves department – usually, Mark had just stuck with Earthquake, but that wouldn’t work now. The problem was that he was pretty sure there was no way Sandslash could learn Grass or Electric attacks that might beat Water-type opponents, and while he did have Gyro Ball, a Steel attack, which he could employ against Ice-types, and Poison Sting, which Grass-types would be vulnerable to, neither was a very reliably powerful attack. Admittedly only Grass was actually resistant to Earthquake, so he could still use that, but the situation was still pretty poor. And what about Flying-types, who would be immune to Earthquake altogether? Could Sandslash learn any Rock attacks? He thought about it. Yeah, he had Rollout, didn’t he? Though that wasn’t the best choice. Perhaps he could learn Rock Slide? He was pretty sure there was a TM for that. He made a note to look it up. That would also come in handy against the Ice-types. What about Grass-types? Could he learn Aerial Ace? That would be a possibility too.
Dragonite had a bigger movepool; he had Fire Punch against the Ice-types, Dragon Rush against other Dragon-types, and Aqua Tail against the Rock-types. He had a pretty solid way of defending himself against most anything, as far as Mark could tell. Nothing to worry about, then.
Scyther was troublesome; he had four weaknesses and not the widest variety of moves in the world. Though he had Brick Break against Rock-types, it was still a physical attack, which didn’t mix well with the generally good physical defensive abilities of most Rock Pokémon; he’d have to be careful. Brick Break would also help against Ice-types. Electric and Fire Pokémon, on the other hand, he had nothing especially good against, and Mark doubted he could learn anything that would be – he just couldn’t picture Scyther learning Ground, Rock or Water attacks. Perhaps he’d look it up anyway just in case.
And finally, Letaligon. She had Aerial Ace for any Fighting-types she might have to face, but Ground and Fire-types were harder to work around. Could she perhaps learn Earthquake too? That would handle the Fire-types. But Water, Grass or Ice moves for the Ground-types just weren’t likely. She’d have to stick with her Normal or Steel attacks. They wouldn’t be that bad, anyway.
He looked over the notes he’d written down. That was several TMs he’d have to get to try to counter all his Pokémon’s weaknesses. He sighed. He couldn’t go buying them now – he probably wouldn’t qualify at all, and then there was no real reason to get them unless they were about to battle legendaries of particular types. But if he did qualify and bought all the TMs afterwards, they wouldn’t have as much time to practice the new attacks before the start of the knockout rounds, and he could imagine that it would take some practice for them to master moves of completely different elements well enough to hold their own against something with a type advantage. The extra days would probably count.
He put the sketchbook down on the bedside table and thought about it. He wanted to be hopeful – even May was hopeful on his behalf, which was saying something – but he really could not reasonably believe he would qualify, and since he was still wasting his parents’ money, he really owed it to them to be reasonable about it.
Especially since his parents thought he was dead.
“They don’t,” said a voice in his head; Mark momentarily jumped. It had been a while since he’d spoken to Chaletwo and the sensation had become bizarrely unfamiliar.
“Hm?” he asked aloud.
“They don’t think you’re dead,” Chaletwo repeated.
Mark furrowed his brow. “Really? Then what do they think?”
“They don’t think anything,” Chaletwo answered.
“Or rather, they don’t think about you. If they’re reminded that you exist, they’ll briefly remember you’re out on a Pokémon journey and then move on to thinking about something else. That’s what the memory modification does. It makes the memory of you feel like something unimportant and vague, and completely dissociates it from the death at the Pokémon Festival, if they remember that at all.”
“Huh.” Mark somehow wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of that better or worse than the idea that they thought he was dead. It was a bit creepy to think that they were pretty much being mind-controlled, unable to think about certain things – it seemed like it couldn’t actually be
them if they weren’t worrying about him all the time.
On the other hand, though he hadn’t really thought about it before, he couldn’t even imagine what kind of grief his parents had gone through when they’d heard he had died. They loved him more than anything else in the world. They’d probably been mortified. They must have cried for days. It was probably a good thing they could no longer remember it.
And then it struck him, strangely, almost absurdly: his parents loved him. They really,
really loved him. Looking back, he’d been a really annoying, obnoxious kid, really, always whining that they were overprotective and that he wanted to go on a Pokémon journey – he still didn’t think it had been
right of them to forbid him to go, but suddenly it didn’t seem quite so horribly wrong. “I promise I won’t get myself killed,” he had shouted as he waved goodbye, as a joke – and what had he then ended up doing? He’d gone and confirmed all their suspicions, gotten himself killed by Chaletwo just like they’d feared all along. They’d just been trying to keep him safe – their methods had been misguided, maybe, but they really didn’t exist just to make his life difficult. And, well, he’d always
known that, nominally, but somehow this was the first time he truly realized it.
It struck him then, too, that he didn’t have ‘parent problems’ like Letaligon. How could he even begin to think that? Her father had rejected her because she wasn’t shiny. His had always loved him. He was lucky. They weren’t the same at all.
And somehow, strangely, that made him feel better about it. He still hated the idea of Letaligon killing anyone – but he knew his Pokémon had killed before, and suddenly it didn’t really matter anymore that it was her father. What made him being her father meaningful, anyway, if he’d never cared? He still wished she would get over it, but the thought was no longer as personally disturbing as it had used to be.
He blinked and started to chuckle. Realizing how much his own parents loved him (it sounded so stupid and cheesy in retrospect) had made him feel better about patricide. That didn’t even make sense.
He lay there for a moment, thinking, but then stood up, picked up his sketchbook and headed off to the library to look up those TMs.
-------
May’s second preliminary battle went swimmingly – it was a little harder than she’d expected, or so she said afterwards, but she nonetheless won with her Blaziken comfortably healthy, if tired, by the time he delivered the final blow, and overall, though Mark probably wasn’t the best judge of it, her strategies had at least
looked impressive.
After that, there were two tense days of waiting while the judging on all the battles was finalized, and the pair of them was briefly reunited as May helped him and the Pokémon get into the switchless mindset – she also voiced her approval of most of the TMs he had written down – though Mark could not shake off the thought of how stupid he would feel if it all turned out to be for nothing. He found himself swinging repeatedly between thinking he’d probably make the cut after all – usually after May talked him up some – and being convinced there was simply no way; by the evening of the ninth of August, he had simply decided to keep his expectations low, partly so he wouldn’t be disappointed and partly just to decide
something.
Finally, on the morning of the tenth, May dragged him out of bed at ten minutes to nine, hissing that everybody else was already waiting outside by the announcement screen.
Still half-asleep, he gobbled up some breakfast while May drummed her fingers on the table and gave him a speech. Apparently, she’d been trying to wake him up since half past the hour and had already had her breakfast, though for all Mark remembered she could as well have been making that up. Then she had apparently somehow used her name tag in a creative way to break into his room to wake him, which was kind of creepy, but he had to consider it a possibility, since he was pretty sure he’d locked the door the previous night. After May had checked her watch conspicuously several times, she finally ordered him to leave his half-eaten bacon and ushered him outside to the crowd of trainers while what he had managed to eat turned into butterflies in his stomach.
Mark couldn’t really see a thing; although the announcement screen was mounted on the top of a metal pole, there were too many people taller than him standing on tiptoe to see over one another’s heads all around. He could make out between a couple of heads that the screen was still blank, though. He looked unsurely up at May.
“It should be coming,” she muttered without looking at him, and he tried to shift himself to the left in the hope that that would give him a convenient gap to look through; it didn’t. He briefly considered going farther away so his line of sight would go over the crowd, but then realized that then he probably wouldn’t be able to read what was on it from that far away anyway.
The screen flickered to life, immediately eliciting gasps and shouts from the waiting trainers, and the butterflies in Mark’s stomach redoubled their fluttering efforts. He tried to push himself up using May’s shoulder as leverage, but she elbowed him away. The standard blue background came on the screen, and then he couldn’t see a thing as somebody quickly pushed past him to fill the only gap he had.
There was an explosion of disappointed groans, punctuated by a few screams of joy. Mark’s heart skipped a beat as he made a final attempt to see something and then looked hopelessly up at May – she stood on tiptoe, craning her neck over the people in front of her, and then –
“I’m in!” she said and looked at him with a grin. His gaze alone must have gotten the message that he couldn’t see anything across, because she almost immediately looked back at the screen. “And so are you – congratulations, Mark!”
For a moment he looked at her quizzically, having somehow forgotten exactly what they were there for. Even after he’d blinked that off, it took a few more seconds for it to sink in. “Wait, really?” he asked over the noise of the squabbling trainers. “I qualified?”
“Yup,” she said. “It’s right there.”
The crowd was already thinning a little, so by shifting around some, Mark managed to finally get a good look at the screen for himself. It was a simple list of sixteen names – he noticed Aaron White’s there before he found his own, but once he’d found it, it was definitely there. He read it a few times over to make sure.
He hadn’t meant to be
this surprised if he managed to qualify. He’d thought he was reasonably used to the idea by now. The next thing to pop up in his head was that all the training and preparations wouldn’t be for nothing after all.
After that,
I’d like to see Mrs. Grodski’s face if she heard that I just qualified to the knockout rounds of the League! He grinned widely at the thought.
“So,” May asked, “since we’re both moving on to the knockout rounds, how about some joint training?”
“Not yet,” he replied, still grinning. “I’ve got some TMs to buy.”
-------
For the next few days, they continued to train, mostly practicing their Pokémon’s various weakness-countering moves. On the thirteenth, the first elimination round matchups were published; Mark’s opponent was another one of those vaguely familiar faces he couldn’t put his finger on, some guy named Michael Willows, while May was matched against none other than Aaron White. “Consider your defeat avenged,” she’d said with bemusement upon finding out. Afterwards, they went to the library together to look up their opponents’ teams and then separated to prepare for their battles.
“Okay, guys,” Mark told his Pokémon at their usual training spot. “This guy has nine Pokémon of a variety of types. Let’s see...” He looked at his notebook. “Blastoise, Breloom, Donphan, Flareon, Gallade, Lucario, Manectric, Scizor...” Mark glanced at Scyther; the Pokémon winced and looked away. “...And Staraptor.”
“Three Fighting-types,” Letaligon was quick to point out.
Mark nodded. “Yeah. That’ll only really be a problem for you, though.” He paused. “Well, first things first. Who has the least of a disadvantage against all of them, who could open the battle?”
“Dragonite,” Charizard said immediately.
Mark looked over the list again. Yes, Michael Willows had no Ice, Rock or Dragon-types at all. “Okay, we’ll start with him, then, if it’s okay with you?”
Dragonite nodded in agreement along with the others.
They ran over a few hypothetical scenarios of how the battle might go from there; the first ended uncomfortably with Michael’s Flareon and one extra Pokémon against Letaligon, and the rest had a worrying tendency to end pessimistically, though Letaligon was quick to point out that they were not accounting for the fact Michael would have to pick out his team of six beforehand and that they could win even when at a disadvantage.
“There’s another thing,” Mark said before they went to lunch. “This guy is thirteen. His profile says he’s participated in leagues in other regions. I mean, the Pokémon he’s using now have obviously not been in continuous training all that time, and if any of them were brought over from the other regions, they’ve regressed to around the levels of most of the trainers here, but he probably has a lot more experience as a trainer than most. I’m a bit worried about that.”
Scyther shrugged. “If he’s still playing in the regional Newcomers’ Leagues and starting over his training every time, he can’t be very confident in his abilities.”
“I guess,” Mark said reluctantly, still not convinced. “His team seems pretty good, though.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Dragonite. “Even if we lose, it’s great to have gotten this far.”
Mark nodded. He was right about that. Again, Mrs. Grodski’s imaginary scandalized expression popped up in his head and made him chuckle. At least he’d exceeded
her expectations already. Anything more was just a bonus, right?