I spent the next few days settling into a steady rhythm. I studied in the morning and trained Flaaffy in the evening. Apart from eating, the only break I took was to watch Darren’s matches. He was dominating all of them and was famous by this stage. Auri was a powerhouse, like always. She didn’t win every time, in fact, chances were she couldn’t even take one opponent down. What she was unstoppable at was preparing the field for Wish. A glaring disadvantage for many water-types was that land terrain was wholly unsuitable. By using Auri’s innate terraforming abilities, and Wish’s immense capacity of generating water, Darren had found a way to bypass that. The strategy relied on Auri being able to set up, and she was tough enough to deliver without fail.
Once Wish came out, the battle was practically over. Pound for pound, there wasn’t another competitor that hit harder, and Schooled, Wish was heavy. I’d heard more than one voice complain it wasn’t fair to have such an obviously powerful Pokémon in a tournament for beginners. They conveniently left out that by this stage, all the fighters left were beyond the beginner level. Whether it was Jade and her team of fully evolved bug-types – she made it to the semi-finals but lost to a trainer with not just one, but two Magmars on his team – or Darren’s opponent in round seven who let loose with a Gyarados (it was the closest Auri came to being knocked out before she could prepare for Wish, but there was a reason Gyarados were scared of Wishiwashi) almost none of the trainers that made it that far did so without either significant backing, or an extraordinarily fortunate encounter. The romantic idea of new trainers being on equal footing, gathering companions at a steady rate to reach full potential by the end of the year was destroyed before I even realized I had it.
The closest to that ideal was Luca. She made it to the last sixteen with just Buzzkill where she faced off against Auri. It was my favourite match of the tournament. Buzzkill had Auri on the back foot for almost the entire battle. A combination of moves like Taunt, Substitute, Flatter, and Encore kept Auri from coordinating her attacks. Along with Buzzkill’s natural speed, Auri was having difficulty landing any hits. A well-timed Toxic further tilted the battle in Buzzkill’s favour, and his switching up from close-range Poison Jabs to long-distance Venoshocks further kept Auri from finding her rhythm. With how things were going, Darren was ready to switch Auri out – she had already done her job, after all. Auri was having none of it. She had just come from her five-win streak the day before and was determined to take down the annoyance. She just needed to land one good Stomping Tantrum and that would be it. She was certainly in the right state of mind for it.
Buzzkill was gearing up for the final blow when it happened. He moved in an enthralling manner, sharp motions kicking up sand and eyes focused on Auri. It was my first time seeing Swords Dance in person and the beauty of it gave me an instant understanding of why those choreographed Pokémon shows were so popular. If the rest of the dance genre of moves were as impressive, I wanted to go to one. His performance, as good as it was, was overshadowed by the events immediately after. He’d sprang in to land the finishing Poison Jab on a dazed and confused Auri, when he had to spring back again without connecting. Even in her state, Auri had a glint of violence in her eyes, and the will to overcome triggered the white light that surrounded her.
If I thought there had been excitement during Flaaffy’s evolution, it was something else for Auri. There were already few enough sightings of a Larvitar, having one evolve right before their eyes was an honour for everyone present. Later, I found out it was an even bigger deal than I thought it was at first. There was no prior footage of a Larvitar evolving in Silín, and researchers and scientists dove into studying it with a passion. It all went a bit over my head, to be honest, but it was heartwarming, if a little bitter, seeing the clip played over and over again on the TV. Auri was great, of course, but Flaaffy deserved just as much attention.
After she evolved, Auri executed a Stomping Tantrum so powerful that I was pretty sure it qualified as an Earthquake. It tore through Buzzkill’s tricks and KO’d him in one hit. I went back to studying after the match, so I’m not entirely sure what went on after I left, but I did see Darren and Luca talking – the typical after battle niceties, and Sunny wasn’t hiding. It probably helped that Luca’s friends weren’t around.
Studying was exhausting, but once I got into it, surprisingly fun. I went down so many Diglett-holes it seemed never-ending. The Webdex was only scratching the surface, and it became clear to me it was the bare minimum for any serious trainer. It was during this time I realized what I was missing out on by quitting school to go on this journey. On the other hand, the only school I could have realistically gone to was the online one I’d completed my Junior cycle at, and with an internet that could imprison a Porygon, I wasn’t going to learn anything from that.
With the driving motivation of not being caught blindsided again, the university’s resources, and Godfrey’s guidance, I was making more progress than I could have hoped. Comfey was also a help, as she insisted by jumping up and down on the back of my hand when I was thanking Godfrey for his.
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“Yes, thank you too,” I told her and meant it. She controlled her scent to keep me focused, and when my attention inevitably wandered despite that, she was the first to notice and snapped me back into it by pointing to a word on the screen and asking me how to say it. Whether she could actually read or not was a complete mystery to me. You could never tell with fairy-types.
If I spent my mornings coming to understand that Pokémon training was about more than just battles, and that the nutritional, emotional, physical, and psychological needs of every Pokémon had to be met to raise a powerful combatant, and these all varied wildly from species to species, and then again within species and the whole thing was complicated and convoluted enough to make me want to set a Houndour on the library, then my evenings were spent finding out that Flaaffy was the best Pokémon ever.
“How are you today, big girl?” I asked. She sparked in reply and mashed her little paws together.
“Good, let’s see what you can do,” I said. I stuck a metal pole in the ground and had her fire continuous Thunder Shocks at it. They were already stronger and went on for longer than typical Thunder Shocks, but they would need to be amped up to another level to classify as Thunderbolts. I wasn’t certain Flaaffy could do it, from what I’d read, her species usually struggled at controlling enough power precisely enough to execute the move effectively. They were better at generating large outbursts of electricity, which made them pick up moves like Discharge and Thunder naturally. It didn’t mean they couldn’t learn Thunderbolt. If I had enough money, a TM would be an easy way to train the move. If anyone could do it alone, though, it was Flaaffy.
I’d dug into my dwindling finances to pay for a full checkup for her at the Pokémon Centre. This wasn’t just about health, but it included a full report on body strength, muscle mass, reaction time, voltage output, and so on. I compared the document with the average values for a newly evolved Flaaffy I found on Webdex. I wasn’t surprised to see Flaaffy with better numbers in pretty much every field – our family weren’t the best Mareep breeders around for nothing – but the extent to which she excelled was pretty shocking.
In particular, her voltage output and control were high for her level. Proof of that was that she learned Electro Ball all by herself midbattle. It was a nice move to have, but rather unfortunate for the Mareep line who were typically slow. True, with Agility, Flaaffy could still make decent use out of it, but it would become increasingly less useful as she settled into what I hoped would be her long-term battle style. Her line, and particularly Ampharos, were defensive fighters. From the videos I’d seen of high-level battles, they stuck to one spot on the field, bathing everything around them in electricity. They looked to be a pain to deal with. Unless they were up against a ground-type, in which case something had gone very wrong over the course of the match, the only way to beat them was to whittle away at them while enduring the electricity coursing through the very air around them. They were the natural counters for many speed-focused and glass-cannon builds. I was glad she was on my team.
For now, she was working on control. Her power would increase naturally with time, and while we weren’t going to neglect training it, it was more useful to work on precision at the moment. Having Thunderbolt would be an immense boost, and long-term, the ability to switch from wide-range attacks and directed ones would put her a step above most of the Ampharos in the recordings I’d seen. After all, no matter how powerful a discharge was, if it was concentrated into one bolt, it was always going to pack a bigger punch.
“Okay, I said. “Again.”
Facing the pole, she used Charge until sparks flew from her wool. Then she released it as tightly as she could. She was progressing well, but the grass around her was still getting singed, and Charge was reaching its capacity far too soon. Sparks meant the electricity was leaking, which meant her control was lacking. The longer she could hold Charge, the better. At least, I was hoping I understood the study Godfrey had found for me right.
Too soon, we came to the end of the tournament and the time I would be saying goodbye to Rondo approached. I had mixed feelings about the city. I put that aside. First, was the final match. It was on the main stage and had an actual seating area. Now that all other matches were over, the number of cameras focused on the one battle was very intimidating. Because I knew him well, I could tell that Darren was still shaken by the events a few days ago. But I had to look for it. I imagined to all others he looked as cool and collected as a Glaceon in an ice bath. He was up against the guy with the two Magmars – I wasn’t interested enough in him to remember his name. He was technically a second-year trainer, but he justified entering the tournament saying he had quit halfway through the past year. He was met with varying degrees of acceptance.
The place was packed and so noisy I couldn’t even hear Sunny speaking right beside me. I pointed to my ear and shook my head and hoped she understood that I couldn’t muster up the concentration to listen properly. I did not like crowds.
For so much hype, the battle itself was disappointing. The other guy relied too much on his Tangrowth, which did succeed in wearing down Auri, but nowhere near fast enough. Darren swapped her out before she fainted and Wish took the spotlight. It did seem like Tangrowth might have a chance, having managed to latch on to Wish with a Giga Drain, but Wish began bellowing, and it became clear very fast that Uproar was damaging him far more than he was hurting Wish. Still, Wish wasn’t unscathed and if the guy had other Pokémon, he might have been able to win. However, he just had the two Magmars, and neither lasted more than three seconds against even a weakened Wish.
