Chapter 11 "Parent's Week pt. II

The third stage of the contest was the Dance portion, where Lyra probably would have done well for herself. Totodile certainly had a bit of spunk. However, the other performers did pretty good all things considered. Nobody froze up because they were on stage in front of roughly two hundred people or anything like that. And some of the dance routines were hilarious.

After that, the judges graded everyone's performances, and another half of them were cut. This actually brought it down to 8. Cynthia got knocked out, as her Gible didn't really do anything for the dance other than run around in a circle biting the air. Serena and Lucy both made it through though.

And wasn't that a thought. I was kind of looking forward to Lucy winning. At least, I hoped she would win. She's kind of awesome and should have something to show she was here this summer.

The contest in all was kind of weird to me. The first part gave me a slight sense of Déjà vu. All it was was the judges going to each pokemon and looking them over. They had a list of things to look at for each pokemon. Based on that list, they scored them for healthiness, appearance, etc. Then the second stage was allowed to start.

Second was an obstacle course. They had three courses set up, one for land, water, and flying. Only two people had pokemon capable of flying, and neither made it to the next round, but the amount of preparation for this was admirable. Anyway, each pokemon had to navigate the obstacle course correctly and based on how quickly it was done and how many errors were made decided the second score.

At this point, everyone who had under thirty points was eliminated. With three judges each giving individual scores, but none of those scores were able to go higher than 10, this meant some people who didn't score as high on the first stage but did well on the second were able to move on. Lyra was actually eliminated because her Totodile kept making errors at the second stage. Still she ended up with a 28, so it was rather close for her.

For the third round, it's supposed to be a Dance contest. Each pokemon is given a song to dance to, and they have to correctly complete the dance. Anything beyond that was beyond me though. Cynthia ended up getting knocked out though. Her Gible just didn't have the coordination to actually dance. As everyone who didn't have 45 points was eliminated, that left a whole four for the last round.

Lucy, and the rich kids as I had started to think of them.

The last round is Move Use. Seeing what combos and how much control each pokemon has over there moved. Lucy's Chimchar did an impressive looking hip hop dance, with the fire from his Ember attack bouncing around of his hands and feet. The others were pretty good as well, but they didn't stand out like Chimchar did.

Still, the judges determined that one of the other kids won. According to them, it was because even though the move didn't go over as well with the crowd, the other kid had a higher score going in to the last round, and his pokemon impressed by using two moves to make it seem like there was a series of multicolored waves in the pool provided for water type pokemon. The kid, Aaron Montsor and his partner Surskit.

To be fair, I couldn't deny that it was impressive. And as he won by having 64 points compared to Lucy's 60, I felt that he might have a bit more experience. Which wouldn't save him once it was time for Lucy to really compete.

According to Dad, just the fact that they managed to get 60 points in a "kid" contest was already rather impressive. Apparently, actual contests went to 120 and if you didn't score at least 45 in the first two rounds you were asked to step down. It wasn't uncommon for the higher end contests to start eliminations in the first round.

Anyway, I congratulated Lucy on getting second. She kind of turned red for a second, and thanked me for the support. Then I asked her if she wanted to join us for dinner, since I knew she didn't have family that were actually here.

She turned even more red, before looking at the floor and saying, "I don't want to intrude…"

Thankfully, my Uncle chose that moment to speak up.

"Nonsense, come join us. Talented young lady like yourself, I'm sure you've already got plans for the future and all that. But if one of those plans isn't to compete on the Contest Circuit, I know some people's numbers that would love to watch the video of the contest you just were in.

In the end, Lucy joined us for dinner, and we went to bed. Happy, and Lucy having a small silver trophy from her win.

*****

The next day, we watched the Obstacle Course. Apparently the obstacle course is a mandatory thing in School, as it teaches and helps train certain survival skills. Climbing, jumping, running, and quick thinking. It's actually part of the Physical Education Class, and every student at Oak Academy was required to be able to complete the course before graduation.

As Danu isn't really able to help with this one and it's required to have your pokemon with you to compete, we sat out. We both wanted to compete in the Battle Tournament as well so we skipped this. John and his Charmander are going to compete though. As is Gary and Squirtle. In fact, only a handful of people decided to stay out of this, Lucy and I included.

Of course, Uncle Lance is rather impressed by the event, and after watching some of it, so am I. Whoever built this course for Professor Oak really did a good job. They have recreated almost a dozen different obstacles that trainers might encounter in the wild. From poles that vary in thickness and are fairly close together to simulate a forest, to stepping stones above a pool of water. They also have a bunch of other things that are just meant to simulate difficult rock climbing situations and the like.

The nice part is, it's a timed event. Each participant has to complete the course, but they can skip different obstacles. Thing is, if you skip an obstacle, you get a penalty time added on to your total. The posted average time is thirty minutes for rookie trainers, while the highest it tests for is Upper Intermediate trainers who have an average time of ten minutes. Considering Upper Intermediate trainers have the availability of all ten pokemon allowed, that makes sense.

That is another thing that we discovered. Professor Oak introduced the whole trainer and pokemon ranks to us, but it's a lot more involved than that first explanation. Of course, I'm not sure about the Pokemon ranks as apparently we'll cover those more in school. But for trainers, you have at each rank three stages. Low, Normal, and Upper. Low stage Basic trainers are those who just started and haven't earned many points or their first badge. While Upper stage Basic are those who have completed one of the requirements to advance in rank, but haven't met the other. For example if someone has more than thirty Alliance points, but hasn't earned their third gym badge they would be considered Upper Basic.

The requirements get more complex the higher you go, but that's the general idea. It wouldn't make any sense to have Elite trainers trying to earn their twentieth gym badge unless they had some very good reasons to. Additionally, after 8 gym badges, gyms have other options for how to deal with trainers. I asked my mom about that and she chuckled.

"Well, the last trainer we had that wanted my badge but was over leveled for it. We battled of course, but in addition to the battle I asked him to change the lightbulbs on the radio tower to earn his badge. Others have other requirements, but mine is normally a high risk job that needs to be done but would be too dangerous for weaker people."

So yeah, I have that to look forward to as well.

Anyhow, the Obstacle course went pretty well. John managed to get a solid forty minute time, due to penalties. He wasn't willing to do the water obstacles with his Charmander, which is understandable. Gary did a little bit better, getting a thirty five minute time. He had to restart a couple of obstacles, as he either fell or his Squirtle did. However, he still did the obstacles faster than the penalty would have been for skipping it. Just not fast enough to beat the average.

Once that was done, I congratulated them. We went out for Pizza with our families, and once again I dragged Lucy along as well.