Dianne was horrified to learn Liepard’s final move hadn’t been an attacking move, but the move Charge instead.

  “That’s the problem with Assist: it’s always random,” I said. “But just because you thought Charge was Discharge, doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have won.”

  That wasn’t me bragging; that was me stating a fact. The thing was, Liepard’s ability, Prankster, meant all status moves could be used nearly instantly.

  And Assist was a status move that could be sped up like that.

  When combined, Liepard had the potential to use attacks faster than any other Pokémon. That even bypassed certain field effects, like the Trick Room Dianne had initially plotted. Prankster meant all status moves that Liepard used were something called “priority” moves—they were moves that had earned that name due to how their speed made them always go first, almost as if they had priority.

  The only time Liepard’s Prankster was a downside was when he was on a field effect that prevented such speedy attacks, like Psychic Terrain. Also, Dark-types tended to be able to avoid attacks sped up by Prankster, as their very nature let them predict and ignore those kinds of tricks.

  Liepard could avoid being limited by such effects by just slowing down his moves, but then he lacked the speed provided by his ability, and that meant he would risk being the one to be attacked first.

  “That’s... I never knew any of that,” Dianne said, her voice quiet as she watched me and my team eat the sandwiches she’d bought us after our match. “How did you figure all of that out?”

  “I... knew bits and pieces of it when I first became a trainer,” I said softly, staring at the bite mark I’d just left in my food. “Definitely wasn’t an expert, but I was able to look things up, and with the little bit I knew, it was just kind of... easy to piece everything together from there.”

  I wasn’t a master at Pokémon; I never had been. I didn’t know everything there was to know, no matter what world I had been in. What I did have were the videos I’d watched in the past, as well as my handful of playthroughs of the various games. That, when combined with how freely accessible most information was here, meant I had a slightly different perspective on battling than any other trainer.

  For some reason, it was easier to put things together with a background where Pokémon battles were only video games.

  My team and I ate, we chatted with Dianne, and then we got up to leave. It was past noon—time for us to move on—and we stood at the edge of Lacunosa Town, facing Dianne, finally ready to part ways.

  “I knew you’d be a good trainer for Liepard when we first made our trade,” she said to me, “but actually seeing you fight—and experiencing you fight? Yeah, I think I made a good choice with you, Nick. You make a good partner for Liepard. So we’ll be rooting for both of you! You have the support of all of us in Lacunosa!”

  Farigiraf let out a cry of agreement at her side.

  “Thanks, you two,” I said. I could feel just how wide my smile was. “I promise you, if I’m not too busy focusing on our battles, I’ll do my best to give you a shout-out in the Master Rank tournament at the end of the year.”

  Dianne snorted and hit my arm.

  Compared to our time in the Giant Chasm, traveling eastward was simple. No Pokémon attacked us, and our path never had to change in favor of avoiding something like a big herd. It was just a constant march to the east, made easy thanks to the hard work of Rangers like Dianne.

  I appreciated her that much more for it, and it was nice to be traveling on foot once again.

  But I also learned why she had said more people were traveling along this route; though few stopped for long in Lacunosa, there were plenty of trainers heading up to Opelucid or just hanging around on the Route itself to have free space to train. These high-level trainers were almost universally competing in the World Coronation Series. All of them were almost always up to have a battle—or, at least, they were willing to battle whenever they challenged me.

  Whenever I tried to challenge them, most of those higher-ranked trainers would just brush off my attempt. While they would be intrigued by some of the Pokémon on my team, whenever they asked what rank we were, I would truthfully reply that we were at the Normal Rank, and then the trainer would just politely nod and move on.

  With how the tournament was set up, it wouldn’t benefit a higher-ranked trainer to face a trainer ranked beneath them. They’d barely get any points, and a loss would be disastrous to their public record. So, it made more sense to avoid that risk by only ever battling trainers at their own rank.

  That kind of treatment just pushed me east even faster than before.

  I supposed we could have stopped to train more, but at this point, I didn’t have specifics to develop for most of my team, only the general need to increase their overall strength and stamina, which traveling through the Giant Chasm had done wonders for.

  But there was still one exception:

  Metang.

  I could tell he was far behind.

  “Look,” I said to him, crouching before him after he’d sustained another beating from challenging Valiant after we broke for lunch. “Anyone here can beat you. You saw that when you watched our battle against Dianne. At this point, there’s no questioning it: you’re weak.”

  Metang looked up at me, and his eyes burned red.

  “But,” I continued, “you’re only weak because you’re battling improperly. You always go full offense—which is great!—but we really need to get you to leverage more of what makes your species strong. Just look at Liepard; he handily won against Farigiraf, but do you really think he could take a Close Combat from Valiant?”

  Behind me, Liepard let out a sharp meow as if to argue that he could, but then Valiant looked up and over to him from where they had been resting against a tree.

  I’d never seen Liepard turn away so quickly, rushing to pretend to casually lick a paw.

  “One day, you’re going to be a Metagross. And that isn’t a promise. That’s a fact,” I said to Metang. “But you aren’t a Metagross. Not yet. You still have plenty of improvements to make before then.”

  “You’re great at dealing damage when you land your hits, and you’re even better at using your natural defense to get in close to land your attacks, but we also can’t forget everything else you can do. I’d call your base stats great for your level, but to really overpower everyone you face, we need you to train something else:”

  I placed a small rock before Metang.

  “We need to train your skill.”

  I had Metang stay out of his Pokéball while we traveled after that. Although he knew how to battle in an all-out, aggressive style, I would say he exclusively fought as a Steel type. If we wanted him to reach his peak, we couldn’t forget that he was part Psychic type, too.

  Metang was a floating Pokémon that consisted of a great deal of metal, and with that metal came strength, sturdiness, and power. However, the real threat of his species came from combining all of that with his Psychic type. Specifically, I was talking about all of the little tricks—forming barriers, using telekinesis, and enhancing the power of his move, much like how Jack’s Psychic-type Reuniclus had focused on its Hammer Arm in our battle weeks ago.

  Metang wouldn’t benefit from just raw power; he needed to actually train and practice his mental skills.

  Hence, the rock.

  For Metang, that little stone served as the perfect training aid.

  His one task while traveling was to keep that rock in the air next to him at all times. It sounded like a simple goal, but he wasn’t allowed to touch the rock. And, he wasn’t allowed to destroy it, either. Focusing on his telekinesis, this constant effort forced him to develop his Psychic-type stamina and skill.

  “I’ve trained a Psychic type before, and I’ll train a Psychic type again,” I said to him as we headed east. “You saw Farigiraf. She might have lost to Liepard, but you were never able to reach her during your spars behind Dianne’s home. Ever stop to wonder why?”

  Metang would grumble, but he would listen. He would also fight to keep the rock in the air. Whenever it slipped, or whenever he accidentally crushed it, I would just pick up another stone and hand it over. Then, his practice would resume.

  I hoped that this would help him in a variety of situations. Primarily, I wanted his movement in the air to be more effective, and he had found himself stuck in the earth at several points in the past—especially against Dianne’s Vibrava. With a greater Psychic skill behind his levitation, it would be much more difficult for him to get stuck. In a way, constantly holding up this single pebble to develop his control would eventually improve his agility.

  We continued to head eastward, but I angled our path north ever so slightly. We went just the barest amount off-route to reach a small fishing village. There, I paid an old man some of the spare cash I had leftover from my team’s nightly World Series battles, and we were able to catch a ride on his boat.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  And that boat took us across the ocean, bringing us to where Humilau sat just off the coast.

  I’d been told that Humilau City was an impressive city, one built onto an archipelago to take advantage of the area’s constant, low-lying waves. It was a city much like Hoenn’s Pacifidlog or Alola’s Seafolk Village, but where those places had buildings that floated on the water, Humilau was built into the islands themselves and had poles stuck deep down into sandy soil that served as support.

  As much as sightseeing would have interested me, I didn’t bother to check in on the place. Humilau City was said to be a wooden marvel of human engineering, but I had just one, singular purpose, instead.

  “No waiting, no walking, no delaying in the slightest,” I spoke out loud for the benefit of my recalled team. “The rest of Humilau can wait—we're heading straight to its Gym.”

  Humilau was built onto a series of islands, and the Gym itself was an enormous building set at the back of the largest mass of land. It was a greenhouse that I could look into from outside, and although the very front of it seemed to be a sealed-off lobby, from the side, I could see the imitation of a tropical coastline, complete with palm trees and a sandy beach.

  Why the Gym Leader wanted to make an artificial beach right next to an actual beach, I would never know why.

  But I stepped inside regardless, and I was uncomfortable right away.

  Even just in that front lobby, the humidity in this building was excessive, and my thick coat certainly didn’t help me resist it much. To be honest, just being in here made me worried about the status of all the electronics and loose parts I had in my backpack.

  Although the World Coronation Series was going on, there were still plenty of trainers out on their journey to take on Unova’s Pokémon Gyms. In here, chairs had been set up for trainers to wait their turn to have the chance to battle the Gym Leader.

  However, although they might have been waiting for a Gym Battle, I had sent my message first.

  “Hey,” I said, walking up to a front counter with a blonde, shirtless man reclining behind it. “I’m here for Marlon.”

  “Yeah, bro,” the man replied. “You and everyone else.”

  I felt my smile twitch, but I wasn’t here to play games or get offended. I was here to have my promotion battle, and I was here to win.

  My team and I would be at the Great Rank by the end of the day.

  “Nick,” I said, tapping the counter. “That’s my name. I’m not here for a Gym Battle. I’m here for the World Coronation Series.”

  “Yeah, and? I don’t really— Wait, you’re here for the Series?”

  The man shot up in his chair and rushed to open a drawer in his desk. The papers in there looked to be well on the path of being ruined by the humidity, but he was able to take out one note, look it over, and send me a nod.

  “Head in, bud. You’re expected.”

  Some trainers behind me groaned. I had no clue how long they’d been here.

  With lobbies like these, Gyms weren’t the same as they were in the games—dozens of trainers could come to try to battle a Gym Leader in one day. Gyms took on a variety of options to help mitigate the pressure of that flood, and that usually included requiring trainers to sign up for scheduled slots to have their battles. Sometimes, the trainers that worked under the Gym Leader—usually referred to as Gym Trainers—would even help out as well. Those tough trainers would take their strongest teams and fight challengers at the behest of the person in charge.

  As I passed through a door that led to the back, I entered the main room and could see an entire indoor beach. Plenty of Gym Trainers were present off to the sides, either swimming in the water or training with their Water-type Pokémon.

  In the far back, however, I could see a certain battle taking place.

  There, an incredibly tanned man wearing far-too-tight wetsuit pants grinned as he fought a trainer on a field that was half beach, half water.

  “Surf, Tirtouga!” he shouted, giving an order to a small, hard-shelled turtle Pokémon. Tirtouga wasn’t even a fully evolved species; this Gym Battle was probably the challenger’s third or fourth.

  With his shout, his opponent’s eyes widened; the trainer facing him seemed far too familiar with that attack.

  “Cottonee, into the air!” she yelled.

  But the man facing her just smiled, and he confidently swiped his thumb under his nose.

  “Too slow,” Marlon said.

  The tidal wave formed by Tirtouga’s Surf crashed down, utterly soaking the cotton that made up the Cottonee. The usually lighter-than-air Pokémon was weighed down by the sogginess inflicted by the move, and the battle shifted to be in Marlon’s favor, even with the Cottonee’s Grass-type advantage.

  I found a nice boulder to sit on and watched the battle progress. Silently, I did have to ask myself why this place didn’t have any benches or chairs.

  “Marlon,” I eventually said, walking up to the Gym Leader after the challenger just barely managed to win thanks to the Whirlipede they sent out. “I’m here for our battle.”

  “Huh? So soon? Thought I usually get a break—”

  “Our World Coronation Series battle,” I said.

  Marlon’s blue eyes widened ever so slightly at that clarification, but then he gained a wide grin.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Because of you, dude, I’m going to be able to take an even longer break.”

  Upon my request, we left that awfully humid Gym, and Marlon stepped away to exchange his Pokéballs—as a Gym Leader, he was personally responsible for training dozens of Pokémon at a variety of levels. He had to be able to manage reasonable fights against any possible strength of trainer.

  Even with my request to leave, we didn’t move that far away from the building. Marlon just ran a hand through his blue hair to bring it out of his face, and then he led me to a beach just past the Gym’s back.

  There were still no benches out here.

  “Alright, dude,” he said, turning to face me. “So you’re...”

  “Nick,” I answered. “It’s nice to meet you. You accepted the offer for my official promotion match just a few days ago?”

  “Yup!” Marlon’s reply was cheerful, and it exposed his perfectly white teeth. “But I do that a lot. We have an automatic system set up to accept any nearby challenge posted online.”

  He laughed proudly, firmly planting his hands on his hips. The faintest bit of ocean spray that lingered on him caused his abs to glisten.

  There was a reason he was so popular, especially since he hadn’t been involved with the mess at the Pokémon League that occurred last year.

  “So... you do this a lot?” I asked, unable to stop my curiosity. “Promotion battles? But... you’re still in the Great Rank? Like, these battles should be giving you a bunch of points as a reward and encouragement, so shouldn’t that mean you have enough to be promoted? And shouldn’t a Gym Leader like you be at the Ultra Rank like the rest?

  Marlon blinked at my onslaught of questions, and then he let out another laugh.

  “Sure, but I like the Great Rank!” he answered, smiling as he cast his gaze out toward the waves. “I even asked the tournament officials if I could stay at it without being promoted. See, dude, I like my job. I like my setup. But what I really like is the ocean. Being the person who helps with so many promotion battles gives me a bit of leniency—and every time I accept one, I can take a longer break than usual and spend that time connecting to the sea!”

  He turned to smile brightly at me, and his expression practically glinted in the midday sun.

  I stared at him.

  “So you don’t want to compete?” I asked.

  Marlon just shook his head.

  “Don’t get me wrong, dude. I love the whole concept of the tournament itself. But it’s all just so... serious, y’know? I’m a trainer because I like it. Nothing more complicated than that. Sure, I could try to push for a higher rank, or I could just stay here, have some battles, appreciate the vibes, and just kind of... go with the flow?”

  He laughed at his pun.

  “...I see,” I said quietly.

  There wasn’t a trick. His placement wasn’t malicious. It was something he had done completely of his own choice.

  And I understood his reasoning.

  However, I wanted to have that reasoning. In fact, I basically had that reasoning for almost the entire time I was in Paldea.

  There was something so appealing about just being able to do your own thing, and it was a wonder that Marlon had secured exactly that for himself. I knew that, technically, I could always just drop all of this and move on, but I just...

  I couldn’t.

  I wanted to relax, and there were times that I did, but we were in this tournament to secure ourselves a better future. We needed to win, but we really needed to gather the strength required to defeat anyone or anything we chose to defeat.

  “Have you had a promotion battle before, little dude?” Marlon suddenly asked.

  “No,” I said. “This is my first.”

  Nodding, he turned to properly face me from where he’d been looking toward the waves. With that, he grinned again, and he didn’t hesitate to explain the rules.

  “Essentially, since this is an official promotion match, we’ll be having a double battle with the standard competitive ruleset,” Marlon said. “We have our teams, and we’ll be using four Pokémon each, but all information about our full teams will be public and has to be exchanged before our match.”

  “That’s... an interesting choice,” I said.

  “Trust me, just about every trainer with a Zoroark was not happy with the ‘team preview’ rule,” Marlon quipped. “But competitive battling is all about making the right decisions. Sharing team information is there to level the playing field—it forces trainers to fight with their heads instead of trying to force a win with surprise tricks.”

  “I can respect that, I guess.”

  Marlon reached behind him and pulled out a paper that looked to have been soaked but dried.

  I took it, paused, then carefully retrieved my tablet to hand it over. Trainers competing in the World Series had profiles on both the official Pokémon League’s main website and the tournament’s website itself. Everything that I’d ever shown in battle was recorded there, and getting my Pokémon treated at a Pokémon Center usually saw the specific details be updated.

  Generally, these summaries were just a list of a trainer’s known Pokémon and their most preferred moves. However, they also listed any demonstrated abilities, but they didn’t break down a Pokémon’s strengths, weaknesses, battling style, or anything like that. The listings were solely just a way to see an overall summary of what your opponent had to offer before the battle could begin.

  For Marlon, he had a team of Water types. All Water types. I wasn’t too surprised, given that he was a Water-type specialist. Every Gym Leader had a theme, and his was the ocean.

  Looking it over, I wasn’t surprised to see the evolved form of Tirtouga—Carracosta—listed there. Nor was I surprised to see the common-to-Unova species like Jellicent and Alomomola.

  “You have four Pokémon?” Marlon suddenly asked.

  “Yup. Just those four,” I said, reading over the damp piece of paper. “So you won’t need to guess what I’ll be using in our fight.”

  Even if I still had just three team members, I would have fought Marlon regardless, but I would have risked a two-on-one situation and been at an enormous disadvantage. Even if Metang wasn’t as strong as he already was, a fourth Pokémon was valuable just for the fact that it could help take hits.

  I knew I could have probably planned something more for Marlon’s team, but it was pretty obvious what he was going to do. Likely a lot of Water-type attacks, and maybe a use of Rain Dance. His Mantine had the Swift Swim ability, so I’d need to be wary about it doubling its speed with that.

  However, his team followed a pretty straightforward and effective strategy, so I didn’t need to bother with any special plan. This was a Great Rank match, after all. Marlon wouldn’t be using the best of the best of his Pokémon, only maybe one or two of his core team members. After all, if his team was too strong, then this would have been a battle unsuitable for a Great Rank promotion match, and the tournament officials wouldn’t have approved it.

  I was confident in my team’s chances to win.

  “Alright. We’re good,” I said after taking only a handful of seconds to skim over the paper.

  “I guess I am, too. Neither of us looked that hard at the summaries, huh?” Marlon said with a laugh.

  I just shrugged slightly.

  “There’s no point in waiting. Let’s battle now.”

  We split to take up positions on opposite sides of the beach. The ocean’s waves gently lapped at the water’s edge to my left. I knew this location heavily favored Marlon, but I didn’t care.

  Power was power, and even the terrain itself could be pushed straight through. My team’s power was our best strength, as circular as that sounded. No matter how Marlon fought, we would always find ourselves—

  BEEP.

  “A phone?” Marlon asked.

  I froze where I had been reaching for my team’s Pokéballs, and that dreadful noise echoed out again.

  BEEP.

  As that screech pierced through the air, Marlon stared at me, and I found myself unable to do anything but stare back.

  BEEP.

  It wasn’t a ringtone, but it was a notice of an incoming call. Though I’d been in this world for just over a year, I didn’t have anyone close who would be contacting me right now, especially since I’d only just parted with Dianne a few days ago.

  “You... gonna get that?” Marlon asked as the beeping continued.

  “I am,” I said, drawing back my arm. “Can I have a minute?”

  Marlon had no objections whatsoever; in fact, he was able to tell that this would take a while. Right as I turned away, he wasted no time at all to change course and immediately dive into the sea.

  I walked over to hide behind a large rock, and once I was there, I did my best not to cringe.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  Rotom’s face appeared on the screen of my watch, and he grimly nodded his head.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I checked the screen once he let his image fade, and I was proven right when I saw just who was listed on the watch’s display.

  La Primera.

  The Chairwoman.

  The Champion of Paldea.

  Her name sat at the forefront of my mind:

  “Geeta,” I mumbled.

  Slowly, I did my best to smile as I tapped the screen to answer the call.

  After all, it wouldn’t do me any good to look so tense when speaking to my sponsor.

  If you’re interested in learning more about this insane combination Liepard has access to:

  (Also, it might be worth looking up the strategic monstrosity known as “Dive Cats.” There’s a reason I had Nick have a Liepard instead of a Persian.)

  Next chapter is the conversation and the battle against Marlon. While there won’t be any incredibly advanced strategies just yet, double battles like it will be inspired by VGC.

  I polled the option for “double battles” when narrowing down my ideas for this story, and while it did get some votes, it wasn’t too popular. I’m looking to tread a narrow path between the two options, where the vast majority of battles in this fiction will be single battles, but the official, major tournament matches will be double battles, instead. I'm looking forward to including some actual competitive strategies once those official battles start to pick up.

  Also, the exchange of team information is part of how tournaments are run in real life, same as how trainers choose four out of six Pokémon to include in a match (but these won’t be best of three). Funnily enough, the “team preview” feature premiered in the same generation that introduced Zoroark, ruining its tricks. I made sure to reference that aspect in this chapter with Marlon's comments.

  Pokémon (and people) mentioned in this chapter:

  /

  Nick’s Team:

  Iron Valiant

  enormous thank you to everyone reading! Your support keeps this story going.