Chapter 14 "Battle Tournament pt III"

While my match was ongoing, the other matches were also happening. Gary won against John with John just not able to get around the type advantage. Cynthia beat Ethan pretty badly. Unfortunately due to the Sandstorm the Gible called up, Cynthia wasn't able to stop Gible from getting rather rough with Ethan's Cyndaquil. And Andrew managed to scrape a win against Lily by using Ghost type moves against Lunatone. Which gave us an interesting final four. I would be going up against Gary, while Andrew would be having a rematch with Cynthia.

Hopefully he would be more prepared, but from what I understand most Dragon type pokemon only know so many moves in their first stage. So, Andrew probably didn't stand a chance against Cynthia.

The more interesting match would be me and Gary. I know Gary has some tricks up his sleeve. We'll probably see more than a few of them, especially as he's been training Squirtle's long range attacks to try and get an advantage over other people.

I walk out onto the field with Gary on the other side. Neither of us willing to wait, we look to the referee.

The ref gives his normal speech. As soon as he's done, we both let our pokemon out.

"Let's go Danu!" I say, while Gary goes, "Squirtle, I choose you!"

And of course, instantly, both of us start setting the field. Danu goes straight into Grassy Terrain, while Squirtle uses a Withdraw.

Knowing that if Squirtle sets up to many Withdraws we will lose from just the fact that we can't hurt him, I change things up a little.

"Danu, Leaf Spin and move closer!"

Danu quickly uses Magical Leaf to create the spinning wall of leaves, and starts running towards Squirtle.

"Squirtle, keep your distance and use Water Gun!" Gary says. I know he's been working on getting Squirtle to learn Ice Beam, but either it isn't quite ready yet, or he's holding it back.

Danu gets closer, and this is when it becomes apparent that a part of our training has been successful. Danu is just a little bit faster than the small turtle pokemon. While Squirtle is moving away, Danu is still gaining on him, and the 'Leaf Spin' is mitigating the water guns that Squirtle is able to fire.

Gary, seeing this unfold, quickly changes tactics. "Withdraw, then use Rapid Spin!"

That would normally be a tough move for us to deal with, but I think I have a solution.

"Danu, set up another Leaf Spin on Squirtle!" Another sign of the success of our training, is that Danu doesn't even question this, just does it. As Squirtle uses Withdraw once more, a small spinning cloud of leaves appears around him.

"Now, Danu, Leaf in the Wind!" Doing as instructed, she dodges the rapid spin from Squirtle, and just as Squirtle pops his head out to see where Danu is for another attack, I shout, "Execute!"

And Squirtle gets pelted by a Magical Leaf that followed him just waiting to strike.

But he's still not out. Gary looks over at me and says, "We're gonna have to go for it. Squirtle, use Ice Beam!"

That was what I was worried about. We'll see if Squirtle can actually use it or not but it looks like Gary was just trying to hold it back for either John or Cynthia.

"Danu, Leaf in the wind! Get close!"

Squirtle inhales, and a small light blue orb appears in front of it's mouth. Danu, seeing this, waits for Squirtle to start his exhale before dodging to the left. Squirtle doesn't turn, so I know that he's only just gotten the hang of using the move. Still doesn't have good control on it yet.

"Danu, go for it! Tackle!" I call out, and Danu responds. Running in and smashing Squirtle directly in the side of the head with her own, Squirtle seems to bounce away, but it's already over. Squirtle fainted. It must have been the combination of Danu's Leaf Spin with a Tackle that was just too much after the previous hit.

Gary recalls Squirtle, saying something to the pokeball after Squirtle is back in. Danu runs up to me, moves off, and I congratulate her. Then I recall her myself, and walk over to shake Gary's hand.

"You know Gary, if you had focused on Ice Beam a little bit sooner, you might have won that."

"Yeah, but Ice Beam is one of the few moves that Cynthia's Gible is weak to. And no offense to Andrew, but I don't see him beating Cynthia. She's kind of a monster. Plus that Gible knows more Dragon type moves than the Dreepy."

We both walk off the field, continuing to talk all the way to the seats next to my parents. Gary might not be my best friend, but once he got over himself, he's not a bad guy.

*****

As we predicted, Andrew lost once more to Cynthia. While it was a much closer match, Dreepy just didn't have the moves to really fight Gible. Not anyone's fault, especially as it was kind of hard to get info on what moves Dreepy could learn. Galar wasn't officially part of the Alliance yet, so Galar wasn't willing to share the combat info on one of their regional pokemon.

Thus, Andrew had a bit of a harder time trying to discover what moves Dreepy could learn. Infestation was a decent bug type move, even if it was only considered decent because it set up a damage over time effect. Astonish, Quick Attack, and Bite seemed to be Dreepy's only other moves. Of course, Andrew did try to set something else up, having Dreepy use a Disable which he hadn't done before. However, Disable only prolonged the inevitable.

Still, neither of them seemed to upset about it. Andrew even shook Cynthia's hand and said something to her which got her to give him a smile. And when the match between Andrew and Gary started, Dreepy didn't seem to be upset at all.

Gary and Andrew's match was the last for today, with Cynthia and me battling tomorrow. This way everyone got to watch the final match, and those who weren't interested in who made third place could take the rest of today off.

Of course, I stayed. Lucy and my family also stayed as did the Professor, and a quiet man who look slightly like John. Considering the Red jacket and the semi blank stare along with the seeming aura of uninterest he had, I could only assume this was Red, Johns dad.

The fight was actually super interesting. Gary had Squirtle use the same initial tactic he tried against me, while Andrew had Dreepy use Quick Attack to get close before using Infestation. Gary promptly had Squirtle use Ice Beam, trying to end the match quickly.

However, Andrew had Dreepy dodge and use Disable, which took the super effective Ice move off the table. With Dreepy being so close, Gary didn't have much of a choice so he started having Squirtle use Withdraw and waited for an opportunity.

Unfortunately for Andrew, he got that opportunity fairly quickly. Dreepy tried to use a Bite on Squirtle, which didn't do much, however it did set up Dreepy to get hit by a Scald. I didn't even realize that Gary had been working on getting that move, though it made sense. Gary and Squirtle must have been working on it when they weren't training with us.

Of course, Gary got lucky and Dreepy was burned as well. With Infestation not dealing enough damage, and Squirtle tanking the small hits that Dreepy was giving out, it was over with another well timed water gun.

Afterwards John, Gary and I met back up. After the congratulations and the good lucks for tomorrow, we got to hanging out a little bit. Of course, John's dad didn't stay too long, just long enough to see my match and Gary's. But still, to have Red show up at all was somewhat astonishing.

Of course, we also talked about the other thing.

"You think Turtwig will be all right?" John asked.

"I think he'll probably be fine." I say, "I mean, Paul only had him for a short period of time. Pokemon that are in their baby stages are a bit more resilient mentally than ones that are mature. If Turtwig had been a Torterra, we would have had serious issues. The last time a full grown pokemon was abandoned like that, it wasn't pretty."

John and Gary both shudder at my mentioning this. The last recorded incident of someone abandoning a fully grown pokemon was from back when John's Dad was still on his journey. Someone had abandoned a Nidoking, and had been apparently abusing it since it was a Nidoran. No one except the court officials knew the full story, but that Nidoking had been strong enough to cause a Pokemon Tide. The enraged pokemon promptly led it to attack first two smaller towns before reaching Pewter City. If it wasn't for the fact that Pewter city was a major city and had a lot of resources, not to mention it wasn't that far away from the Indigo Plateau, the Nidoking would have done a lot more damage.

It only came out that this was caused by abandonment afterwards. Apparently, several trainers had tried to catch the Nidoking to end the tide, but Nidoking's Pokeball hadn't been properly destroyed. So no one could catch him.

"But like I said, younger pokemon tend to be more mentally resilient. I'm sure that Turtwig will be fine. Granted, I'm pretty sure he'll get sent back to Sinnoh, but Professor Oak said he would ask Prof. Rowan if he could keep Turtwig for a while."

Gary smirks, "Yeah I heard. You're already looking to become a Pokemon Professor yourself aren't you?"

I blush a little, "Yeah. Kind of. I want to help pokemon with mental issues. I mean, Danu had some issues when I first got her, and I can only imagine…"

Both John and Gary wave their hands to stop me. John goes, "It's okay man. We get it. Nobody is perfect and when you add Pokemon to that equation, you get a lot of people that do some messed up stuff."

Gary also chimes in with, "Just imagine that your work might actually help create a whole new field of Pokemon Medicine or something. Gramps was actually kind of thrilled by it. I could tell cause he wouldn't stop talking about it at dinner last night. Every other word was about considering the mental aspects of pokemon and how much good this could do." He rolls his eyes.