Pikachu vs Raichu

The day was finally here, after a whole week of making our way to Vermilion city, we were finally here. A weeks worth of training had seen Sandshrew master his various claw moves and now incorporating them into his battle.

Pidgeotto was already nearing evolution, something about finally mastering Hurricane gave it a power boost. It's brave bird was faster and more powerful and its air slash was brutal.

Our 3 newest members have come a long way, but they haven't quite mastered their moves I picked for them. Thankfully all of the Pokémon have not lost their drive to continue growing in strength, with arguably Charmander being the most serious about getting stronger to prove his worth.

I took this week to make minor adjustments to my various moves and practicing the speed in which I can use them. I've also made sure to not slack on my speed training, my normal sprint could be comparable to some Pokémon's quick attack. Though not much faster.

Ash has been very proud of our progress, he compliments us all daily on our constant improvements. It's weird and endearing being praised by someone who is technically younger than you, but I play the dutiful Pokémon and accept my praises.

One thing I find so strange is how we managed to catch nothing but prideful Pokémon. I mean if I wasn't there to zap the other 5 from time to time they would have egos the size of Wailords. Pidgeotto being the only current evolution on the team teases the other incessantly. While between the 3 starters it's a constant race to prove their stronger than the other.

I have to be careful stopping that because competition is a good thing especially when we're trying to become strong. However too far and it could breed a subconscious dislike between the 3. Sandshrew is the least problematic, but he does have his moments. After mastering his claw attacks he seemed to think he could beat me now, but after a thorough thrashing I put him back in his place.

Walking into the gym we are met by Surge, truly a hulking man. He's almost as tall as 2 Ash's from my point of view. With the familiar baby taunt from Surge, me and Ash enter the field to battle his Raichu.

"This will be a 1 on 1 match. Is the challenger ready?" Surge

"Ya! Lets go Pikachu!" Ash

I leap from his shoulder into the arena and see Surge throwing out his Raichu. The Raichu sees me and begins to laugh.

"Rai rai!" (Hahaha what are you doing here baby Pokémon!)

"Pika chuuuu!" (We'll see who's laughing after the match tubby!)

The Raichu growled at being called tubby and charged the electricity in its cheeks in preparation for the match, I followed suit generating my own electricity.

"Begin!" Referee

"Pikachu use quick attack" Ash

"Raichu hit em with your thunderbolt!" Surge

Seeing the powerful electric attack coming towards me I activate quick attack and seemingly instantly disappear from my previous spot. I'm now to the side of the Raichu who's looking at the smoke from his thunderbolt triumphantly, guess it's time to surprise him.

Keeping up my speed I transition into a volt tackle and hit Raichu from behind, sending it front flipping until it could stop itself. However I was already on top of it and bringing down an iron tail, and then following that up with a thunder punch.

These moves aren't entirely effective against an electric type, so while it stunned the Raichu for a second, it didn't do enough to knock it out. Surge called for a body slam over and over, but Raichu continued to be too slow and wearing itself out. Ash called for another quick attack and I obliged by hitting the Raichu as it was just about to stand up from its most recent body slam.

I continued with an onslaught quick attacks everytime the Raichu tried to stand, further infuriating it. This lead to it unleashing a series of powerful thunderbolts at me, but I was still able to easily dodge because of its angered state. I went for another quick attack to stop it's attacks and while it was on the ground I leaped up and with a flip I came down with a powerful iron tail. Finally knocking out the Raichu, and giving us our 3rd gym badge.

Surge was dumbfounded, but Ash and gang just looked on knowingly, since they knew how strong I was. Recalling his Raichu, Surge then started to walk across the arena where I was waiting back on my perch on Ash's shoulder.

"That's one powerful Pikachu, though it's electric attacks aren't as strong as they could be. Here's your badge, and here's a thunder stone in case you ever decided to evolve your Pikachu. A gift from me to you for such a great battle." Surge

"Thank you for the great battle, Pikachu and I have trained hard to make him as strong as possible." Ash looks at the stone in Surge's hand before continuing. "Though it's up to Pikachu if he wants to evolve or not." He finishes while looking to me on his shoulder.

I'm currently thinking hard about the stone. Am I not strong enough in this form? Surge said it himself my electric attacks are not that strong, and I've been training them everyday since I came to this world. Is this not something you can obtain from working on it, is the only way to get a power up to my electric power to evolve?

Pikachu had a lot of great wins in the show, but would he have been able to do the same against another powerful electric type Pokémon? He never fought Paul's electrivire from what I can remember. And this weak Raichu shrugged off my volt tackle like it was just a normal tackle. I would also get stronger myself, not just my electric attacks.

I look from the stone to the battlefield where you can still see the craters from Raichus thunderbolts, and then back to the stone. Leaping off Ash's shoulder I fire my own full power thunderbolt near Raichu's and the difference was staggering. My crater was maybe half the size if I was being generous probably more like only a third as big.

It seems I've found my answer. I can't expect to force the others in the party to evolve to get their strongest form, if I won't comprise as well just because I like this smaller Pikachu form. Bulbasaur in the show actively fought his evolution one episode, but now he's agreed to evolve. It's obvious this is no longer the show no matter what now. As soon as I decided to start training us or maybe even before when I stopped Team Rocket In Viridian.

This is not the show. Turning around seeing everyone staring at me questioningly, I make my way back over to where Surge is still holding the stone. With one look at Ash's belt of Pokéball, then up to Ash where I give him a nod before grabbing the Thunderstone. Even with me defeating Raichu in the battle, it seems like Raichu still wins out in the end. I'll be the strongest Raichu this Pokémon world has seen, scratch that strongest Electric type Pokémon.

Now that I was a Raichu, my training had completely switched. Well not completely, but for now my main focus was making sure I didn't lose my speed and agility. I knew my electric moves were stronger, but I couldn't lose what made me as a Pikachu so fierce. Truthfully I think I gained a speed boost when I evolved, and Pidgeotto seems to agree.

Although I don't feel as comfortable making tight turns or sudden movements, I'll need to get stronger to be able to control my body as freely as a I could while a Pikachu, so that means I've joined Charmander, Sandshrew and Squirtle in their strength training. Mostly just lifting or carrying rocks, but I've been going the extra mile to carry more and run faster when carrying the rocks.

I've got to set an example right? One positive that's come from my evolution is it fanning the flames of competition between the other 4 non evolved party members to be the next to evolve. Sandshrew is the closest and just a few more battles I think he'll evolve.

After him is probably Bulbasaur, which is kind of funny considering he never evolved in the show. A few tough battles and perfecting the grass moves I had him start, and I could definitely see him evolving.

Though the most likely to evolve next is Pidgeotto, Ash is likely to use her in the battle against Erika the grass gym leader, and maybe Charmander if Pidgeotto somehow gets knocked out. I don't see that happening though.

Either way we have plenty of time to go through our evolutions before the Indigo League. Also I guess with no Team Rocket to actively seek us out, we are just very unassuming band of trainers. I was really expecting to still get an invite from a Rocket grunt to the St. Anne, but they just all ignored us. Which means we will have to walk to our next destination rather than taking a luxurious cruise. Sigh.

Since we couldn't take the cruise and end up on some crazy journey that somehow leads us to Safron, we now had to slightly double back and take a winding route through the forest again to get there. This journey will take us about a week or 2 on foot depending on if we get detoured or not.

This also means we skip the area completely where Butterfree gets released, so I didn't even need to worry about it. So with gym badge in hand we make our way northeast ish. That's another thing that's been confusing, the world is not set up like the map in the game at all. From Pallet to Viridian is a straight shot and it goes all down hill from there.

In the game you continue north to Pewter, but here it's more like you gotta go North east with the indigo plateau still being to the west. Cerulean is directly east, but Vermillion kind of comes back down south and west slightly to have it separated from Pallet town by a mountain and a vast forest.

Now we must take a route that goes around an inlet of water northeast to Saffron, though it's slightly more east than north. Lavender isn't even in our path you actually have to go West from Saffron to get to it and it connects to no other towns. Celadon is to the East from Saffron. That's all for now, but it's so confusing to my internal compass to find out that Pewter wasn't just directly North or Viridian.

We've come across a trail that leads to a rest stop just off the route we've been traveling on for the last 2 days. Misty of course insisted that we stop and get some sleep in actual beds, and as a Pokémon who doesn't like his Pokéball I was in agreement with her.

After about 10 minutes we came across the building that's supposed to be the rest stop and spotted some trainers watching these other 2 trainers battling. We obviously joined in the crowd, and surprisingly I saw a familiar face. A red headed boy battling with a Pikachu, it was Ritchie.

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Chapter end

Ash's current Pokémon

Raichu

Butterfree-Oak

Pidgeotto

Sandshrew

Bulbasaur

Charmander

Squirtle

Krabby-Oak

I'm fully expecting a ton of people to drop this after me evolving Pikachu into Raichu. I'm expecting to see the Raichu hate and all that jazz, but I also haven't read any Pokémon fan fics where he evolves so I thought it was perfect and tried to explain as best I could to make it okay, though for a lot it will never be okay. For that I'm sorry.

I really did think hard about it though, with Pikachu not getting the power up from the water wheel in Pewter he's just not as strong. Even that was just a one time usage. I tried to justify it also by making sure as a Pikachu he was as fast as he was gonna get, and I used the game evolution style to where he still got a speed boost from evolving.

He's just gonna be a little bigger and not as cute, though Raichu is still pretty cute imo. I'll also think about making a map of what I think the Kanto region looks like and I'll make sure to put it on deviant art, as well in the chapter comments of every chapter(hopefully I don't forget.) For now I'll just try to describe it so you can get a rough estimate.

Hope everyone liked the cheeky title too. "Pikachu vs Raichu" doubled as MC fighting surge's Raichu and MC's tough choice to evolve or not. Hope a few of you got a laugh from it or something lol.

Also decided to introduce Ritchie early and don't worry he won't be joining us on our journey. Just thought I'd fan that rivalry a little a bit.

Hope you enjoyed. -SS