Chapter 12 "Battle Tournament pt I"

The next day started the Battle Tournament. After wishing both John and Gary good luck, we split up. The tournament hall was split up into different sections, six in total. With close to seventy kids all participating, we were all excited.

Each area was labeled as either Fire, Water, Grass, Normal, Flying, and Ground. Of course, that wasn't a description of the battlefields, but a way to separate us into groups to make things faster. Oddly enough, I ended up in the Normal group. John was in the Ground group, and Gary was in the Water group. Each group had eleven kids, with two groups having twelve kids. Gary was in one of the groups with twelve, while John and I were in groups with eleven.

My first opponent was one of the rich kids I had seen around the camp occasionally. He didn't really group up with the conceited ones, but he didn't go out of his way to separate himself either. Arnold Waterwalker, was his name. From an offshoot of the Waterflowers that run the Cerulean Gym. Guess it makes sense that he wouldn't quite fit with the rich kid group, though clearly his family did well for themselves.

We both approached the Trainer Boxes, and a referee announced, "This match is between Arnold Waterwalker of Cerulean City, and Arthur Goldenrod of Goldenrod City. It is a One versus One match. The first trainer to have his Pokemon faint or to recall their pokemon will lose. BEGIN!"

"Danu!" I call out as I toss my pokeball up. I hear him call out his Pokemon, a Krabby, and the battle is on.

"Danu, set the field," I call out first, and I see a frown from him at the unusual command. Danu goes ahead though, using Grassy Terrain. As soon as she finishes that, she goes ahead and starts using Magical Leaf in the method we've been practicing.

Of course, Arnold wasn't going to just let us set up. "Krabby, use Vice Grip!"

A good move under normal circumstances. Danu has the type advantage, and normally if a strong attacker gets close it means Danu would lose. But that's if we had been training like normal.

"Danu, go ahead and use the leaves to teach him why that would be a bad idea!" I can almost feel the grin that Danu has at that command.

And sure enough, Krabby comes rushing in, only to get battered away by the Magical Leaf attack Danu has started to swirl around herself. She isn't quite to the point where she could just block everything with that, but one pokemon running at her? She just slammed it into the side walking Krabby.

While that firmly interrupted Krabby's advance, Danu goes ahead and uses another Magical Leaf to get her defense back up.

Arnold decides trying to tell Krabby to attack directly like that isn't a great option, so tries longer range. "Krabby, Bubble!"

Hopefully my next opponent will have a better battle sense. Calling out what move your pokemon will use seems a little counter productive to me at least.

"Danu, Leaf in the Wind." I say calmly but loud enough to be heard. Leaf in the Wind is my command for her to dodge incoming attacks, and to slam the Magical Leaf into the opponent at range.

Which Danu does with beautiful efficiency. She runs and slides to the left of the Bubble attack, before slamming the Magical Leaf attack down from above the Krabby. With that, Krabby stumbles for a second before collapsing.

"Krabby is unable to battle!" the Ref calls, "The winner is Chikorita!"

*****

Our next two battles go pretty similarly. A Cubone who managed to use Tearful Look after getting hit the first time took the longest, while the other battle against a male Nidoran went just as quickly as the first battle because the trainer was overconfident. Of course, having managed to teach Danu Safeguard was supposed to be a trump card for later, but it couldn't be helped. With Safeguard active, I had her barrage the Nidoran with Magical Leaf while getting closer, and then finished it with a solid tackle.

After the guy with a Cubone, we actually merged with another group so we had enough trainers for the third round. So the Nidoran guy was from the Grass group. Only one trainer from the Grass group advanced.

With that, we had our top nine. Obviously not an even number, and I got lucky enough to get the by. At least, that's what my dad told me. The final three rounds would be held tomorrow as there just wasn't enough time today to get through it all.

We walked around the camp, and I got a brief history of why Pallet Town was still a town instead of a full blown city like New Bark City.

My dad started it off after I asked with, "Well it's like this. When Professor Oak was still a young man he used to be one of the best. Got a lot of money from winning several tournaments, not to mention the prize money from winning the Indigo and Silver League Tournaments. But nobody knew what he was doing with the money until later. Most assumed that he had invested some and used the rest to get his pokemon to a frankly obscene level of strength."

My mom continued, "It wasn't until later that people discovered that he had been buying up a sizable amount of land to the south of Viridian City. By this point, he had managed to acquire almost as much land as some of the big name clans, and he had done it under their noses as well. Which didn't sit well with them, but when they tried to force the issue they discovered why it is a bad idea to challenge a Champion level trainer with high rank pokemon."

Lance chuckled, "Following that particular event, the Alliance sent some representatives to find out what he was doing. Much to their surprise when they came to visit!"

All of the adults laugh for a moment. My friends and I just looked at them for a moment, before my dad picked up the story again.

"So when the Alliance agents arrived, they found a small community situated in the middle of the land Oak had bought. They kept it respectful unlike the clan members that had come calling before, so they weren't shown the way out. And Oak explained his plan to them. Pallet Town is also known by the nickname, 'the Town of Monsters', because that is exactly what it is."

"Oak's son Blue, and Asagi Ketchum's son Red became the first Pallet Champions, however almost every person that lives in Pallet Town is an Elite to Champion level trainer. Oak wanted a community that allowed the best of the best to get away from the typical drudge of the other cities. The Oak Pokemon Lab came next, and used up the majority of the land he had bought to provide plenty of space to all of the trainers pokemons. With that kind of defense, and the resident's having to be invited to live in Pallet Town, the town has never grown very big. Oak is still the technical mayor of the town as well."

Lance speaks up again, "No technicality, he just leaves the day to day running of the town to either his daughter in law, or the other people he's chosen to have important roles in the town. I don't think the town numbers more than two hundred people. And that's including the teachers at the Academy."

"Oh yeah," my mom says, "After the town and lab had been up for a few years, Oak became a Pokemon Professor. He and a few others designed the Pokedex and associated apps that we've seen become popular over the last couple years. But more importantly when he became a professor he decided to build the school. The Oak Pokemon Academy quickly became the number one school in the region. Though Pokemon Tech likes to say that they're better because they are more inclusive."

"Doesn't matter," my dad says, "Pokemon Tech hasn't updated their information in at least a decade. While Oak Academy stays at the front of the pack of schools that people want to go to. Only thing Pokemon Tech has is that it's right near Saffron City, which is the central hub for most of Kanto. "

My mom nods, "Yes dear." Looking back at us, "That's a very brief history of Pallet Town of course, and when you go to school they'll have some history classes you'll attend. The main point for most people here, is that if you get to a high trainer rank, you might qualify to buy a house here. Also, if you play your cards right, then you can also own a bunch of land and built a town on it."

After that, we wandered around some more. Both Gary and John made it into the top nine, and had battle first thing in the morning, so we didn't want to stay up too late. Especially since Cynthia also made it into the top nine. Steven Stone didn't, but he came really close. Unfortunately, he ran into someone that was using a Growlithe and due to the fire attacks his Beldum was knocked out.

Actually, the top nine didn't surprise me too much. Besides myself, John and Gary, we had Cynthia, Ethan Gold, two of the rich kid trainers from Hoenn, another from Sinnoh, and lastly was one from Kanto. The Kanto guy was Andrew Spirit, who apparently was the grandson of Agatha from the Kanto elite four. He had the Dreepy I met before, Claire having given it to Agatha so she could give it to her Grandson. The two from Hoenn where Lily and May Juxta, a pair of psychics with a Lunatone and a Solrock. And the person from Sinnoh was a jerk named Paul. At least, he was a jerk to everyone I had ever seen him with. He had a Turtwig, that being the pokemon that wasn't chosen because Cynthia already had Gible.

Any way I looked at it, the Finals were going to be interesting!