I hate writing battles. I hate writing battles. ...Did I mention that I hate writing battles? XD
{19} defeat means unity, not friendship
There had been a private discussion between the three remaining Go-Rock Quads over who was to be going with Casey and company on the rest of their trek. While the four not in on the action loitered around the campsite, they had all scurried into a large (and surprisingly soundproof) tent in order to determine the victim.
Judging from the loud moaning now spilling from that very tent, everyone realized it was going to be Clyde.
This was confirmed when, a few minutes later, the same man climbed out of the tent with a very sour expression on his face. He retained the same frown as he stormed up to Casey.
"Okay, kid," he said. "Here's how it's going to go down. I don't enjoy traveling with a swarm of weaklings, alright? So as the leader of the group, you're gonna pit all of your Pokémon against all of mine. If you beat me, I'll come along on your stupid journey with you or whatever. If you lose, we forget all of this even happened."
"And there's no way to convince you otherwise? Or get the others to go?" he asked.
"If Billy's got his mind set on something it's pretty much final." He put his hands on his hips. "Deal?"
"I suppose so… yeah. Deal."
"Good. We're pretty close to the edge of the woods now, so maybe one of your Pokémon Center things might have an open battlefield out back.."
As the group turned as one and began trekking towards the edge of the forest – with Billy leading the procession, naturally – Tiffany drifted towards the back of the group and tapped Casey on the shoulder. "Hey. Um, I need to tell you a few things about Clyde, okay? It's just so that nothing, um, especially crazy happens when you're around him. He's sort of…um, weird with his quirks and stuff."
Casey looked up. He was initially quite surprised to see a good-looking woman spouting the word 'um' a mile a minute almost directly in his face, but after a second cleared his head and confirmed her intention. "Okay. What about him?"
"Well, there's actually only two things I need to warn you about, but, um, they're pretty serious." Casey nodded as a signal for her to continue. "Okay. Um, first thing is, I just needed to tell you, that he really, um, really hates Garret. So if you do find him you've got to, um, remind Clyde that he needs to get in touch with us. He has our Pokégear numbers, so, um, that shouldn't be too hard."
"Okay," said Casey. "We can do that."
"But, but, um," continued Tiffany. "That's, um, not all, and that's like the least serious, okay? So, um, the next most serious is that he's kind of…" She looked up and made sure Clyde was out of earshot before leaning even closer (unnerving Casey even further in the process) and whispering, "…um, he's kind of lazy."
Casey was about to shout out the last word in surprise, but only the 'L' got out before Tiffany quickly slapped her hand over his mouth with a small squeak. Clyde turned around and shot them both a hostile glare, but a second later he had returned to what he was doing and continued to walk forward while looking at the ground.
"That connects with the last thing, um, see," said Tiffany, now visibly unnerved. "He… um… try not to let him hear, you know, that word. And never, ever, EVER call him that."
"Why? What happens then?"
"Um…" Tiffany looked away. "Omigawd (um), you really don't want to know, but (um) if you do he's definitely not going to be in your good books, and (um) he doesn't react well to being called (um) the L word. I mean it. It's like… it's like… oh, what's that literary thingy that people (um) give book characters when they… um… oh yeah. It's like his berserk button. It's bad. Seriously (um) bad. Okay. So don't call him that."
Still struggling to make sense of her detached speech, Casey said, "Um… okay."
Clyde's prediction had been correct – when they arrived back at Fort Rhion's Pokémon Center, the Joy cheerfully informed them that a battlefield had just been vacated and that they could enter right away.
Casey bowed his head respectfully and said, "Thank you."
Clyde grunted his acceptance.
The Joy was not at all unfazed by these two very different competitors; after all, there were a lot of adults who still held the mindset that their age automatically puts them over younger Trainers. She didn't ask to watch the match; that would be invasion of privacy, and she had Pokémon to attend to anyway. However, she made a mental note to find out how it ended when they left. Despite the friend-to-all-living-things outlook universal to all Joys worth their salt, watching someone get their just desserts was also a sport she didn't mind.
Grant was nominated to be the referee, and he stepped into the field in the appropriate position. "The battle between Clyde Gordon of Wintown and Casey Blair of Calda City will now begin. Trainers, send out your first Pokémon." He took a few steps backward as both of them flung Pokéballs high into the air. Casey didn't look particularly pleased with having to fight who he (sort of) hoped to be his new traveling companion, but Clyde betrayed no facial expression beside that of utmost boredom.
Unsurprisingly, Clyde released his Slakoth first. He didn't bother to initiate any flashy "Pokémon GO!" sequences, but simply took the Pokéball out of its previous residence – his large pocket – and said "Slakoth" while tossing the Pokéball to the ground.
The Pokémon gave a little grunt and pulled itself up onto a four-legged position, almost like a dog.
Casey, on the other hand, released a Pokémon none of his traveling companions had remembered he had – a small blue Pokémon with a wide tail and a giant white circle on its stomach, with a black swirling line in the middle of that. It had two small legs, but no arms, and little beady eyes.
"Poli-wag!" chirped the Water-type in question.
Clyde gave a little smirk. "Oh, come
on. You're gonna give me that little blob to fight against? Your funeral, I guess… Slakoth, use Yawn!"
The Pokémon almost immediately opened its mouth and took a huge intake of air, making its small body quiver – and making Poliwag quiver, too. The Pokémon staggered back a bit, but Casey (who could only see the back of its body) didn't quite realize that the Pokémon's eyelids were quickly getting heavier. It was for this reason that he continued to act as if nothing was wrong – and, of course, nobody wanted to yell out the effects of Yawn. (If they did, Tiffany and Billy would definitely shush them.)
"Use Water Gun!" This time, Casey had taken the trouble to learn his Pokémon's attacks beforehand so as not to set up another Larvitar incident.
The Tadpole Pokémon gave a small "wag" of acceptance and took another deep breath, this time returning Slakoth's favor by delivering a steady jet of water directly into his face. The Normal-type gurgled and flailed, falling over in the process, but eventually he dragged himself to another canine position. He did this, apparently, exclusively for the pleasure of watching Poliwag collapse and begin to take very slow breaths. At that point, the reality of Yawn dawned upon Casey.
He scowled. "Oh… Poliwag's asleep, isn't she?"
"Yep," replied Clyde with a smug smile. "I did tell you my Pokémon is capable of beating yours into next week, right?"
"Yeah, maybe if it bothers to," remarked the young man, pointing to Slakoth. He had flopped down from his sitting position until he was laying belly-down on the floor, watching the antics with its head over its outstretched, fuzzy arms.
"Oh, that," said Clyde nonchalantly. "Sure, whatever. It'll respond eventually. Slakoth, whenever you're done loafing, use Scratch."
A few seconds passed as Slakoth scratched itself behind the ear and Poliwag snoozed on, but soon enough the Normal-type returned to puppy position. Almost immediately he began scampering across the dirt-covered field at a speed very unnatural for a Pokémon of his physical determination, and eventually skidded to a halt before Poliwag – sending a spray of dirt into the sleeping Pokémon's face. She merely moaned, as if her mother was waking her up from a particularly nice sleep, and rolled over. Slakoth found much enjoyment in this, and promptly began raking the snoozing Poliwag with its claws. The Pokémon twitched and winced in its sleep, but failed to wake up.
Seeing that the Poliwag had responded, Slakoth gave a sound of satisfaction and plodded to its proper place, where it laid itself down again to watch. Yet again, Poliwag simply snoozed on.
Casey was beginning to get fed up with this. "Poliwag!" he yelled to the Pokémon in question. "It's been four turns, and he's only attacked you for one! This could be easy if we keep ourselves away from that Yawn!"
Much to his surprise, the Pokémon stirred. Poliwag soon pushed herself to her feet, looking around and blinking. "Poli…?"
"Good morning, sunshine," grunted Clyde, staring down the small yellow Pokémon. "Slakoth, she looks a little tired, doesn't she?"
"Slaaaaah."
"Mhm, yeah, I thought so too. You know, I heard Toxic does wonders for groggy minds… Slakoth, be a gentleman. Help her out."
"Slaaah." Slakoth was considerably more pleased with this attack; all that moving and arm-flailing really got tedious. He simply hunkered down on the ground and opened his mouth, letting a rather unsanitary-looking black smoke pour out of its open jaw and zoom towards Poliwag. Before her Trainer could even make a command for her to get out of the line of fire, she began coughing – and breathing in the smoke. Somehow sensing its objective had been completed, the rest of the smog lowered to the ground and eventually disappeared.
When Poliwag breathed, a few purple bubbles spilled out of her mouth and she began another coughing fit.
"Oh, that's not good," said Sheridan, cringing. "If Poliwag is coughing all the time…"
"…She might not be able to move as well," finished Grant bemusedly. "Yeah."
Casey, by now, saw that something was going very wrong in his battle so far. What had Tiffany said? That Clyde was hopelessly lazy? Unless someone else had trained his Pokémon for him and drilled all of the strategies into his head mercilessly, right now he didn't seem to fit the description – the strategies seemed perfectly legitimate (and perfectly useful), and he even went so far as to make degrading comments in the middle of the match.
Poliwag continued to wheeze bubbles. Slakoth shuffled around to find a comfortable position, and simply watched her from there, content with lying in the sunshine in the middle of battle.
Casey put his hands on his hips and thought. If he had Poliwag use Water Gun or Bubblebeam, what would happen to the poison erupting out of her mouth in a bubbly mess? Would it screw up her summoning of water and make the Pokémon choke, or would it mingle in with her Water attacks and make some sort of hybrid Water-Poison attack? As Casey pondered the possible after-effects of using another Water move, Clyde's eyebrows furrowed.
Then he frowned.
Then he shifted his weight.
Then he crossed his arms.
Then he said, "Slakoth, use Scratch."
Slakoth obliged with another "Skaaaaa" and began plodding towards Poliwag again at a rather leisurely pace, taking his sweet time to make a move. He had actually gone ahead and raked Poliwag's swirl-shaped gut again before Casey came to a decision.
"Poliwag, Water Gun."
Poliwag opened its mouth to unleash another small flood of water upon Slakoth, and just as Casey had (sort of) predicted, along came lots of tiny purple droplets with it.
Now, water doesn't cause any pain when it comes in contact with eyes of any variety, including the eyes of Pokémon. Usually all it does is get in the way and make the victim blink a lot, and complain about itchiness and maybe even a little bit of swelling. All in all, nothing too serious.
Unfortunately, though, the same could not be said for poison.
Slakoth backed off, paws over its eyes, and began bawling like a little child. The loud noise caused Poliwag to whimper, but she eventually got over it and stared down the Pokémon.
Slakoth staggered to a halt in his crying, dropped to all four paws, and eventually collapsed. Clyde sighed and returned his Pokémon, pocketing the red-and-white Pokéball like the failure of his Pokémon to defeat the other had simply been a bother to him. He went to reach for another one when, much to all spectators' surprise (this includes the Trainers in the fight), Poliwag took a giant gasp of air and fainted on the spot.
"Poison got to her," said Casey, biting his lip. "Well… good job, Poliwag." Casey tried to ignore how strange that sentence felt coming out of his mouth.
"Poliwag is unable to battle," said Grant in an uncharacteristically firm voice. "On the other hand, so has Slakoth. That leaves the match in a draw! Trainers, send out your next Pokémon."
Both Trainers had recalled their fallen Pokémon, and neither one of them wanted to be the first to follow Grant's instructions.
"Come on," said Clyde impatiently. "Pick someone."
Casey paused for a second before responding: "Not before you do."
"Look, I know who I'm gonna use, alright? So just send out your stupid Pokémon and let's get this over with."
"Fine by me." Casey turned to Rotom, who was hovering next to him and beaming like a crazy person, and gave him a look that implied, 'Get out here'. Rotom understood his expression and floated out onto the field without a word, having Beast rear up and roar ferociously. (Unfortunately, Beast could only make the movements and so Rotom had to do the roaring. It ended up coming out as "Rrooooooooooooorawr!", only serving to make Clyde snicker.)
When the man realized that Casey was actually serious about sending out Rotom, he rolled his eyes and released another Pokémon. It was somewhat like Slakoth, but stood on two legs and bore white fur. The most important difference, though, was that it was quickly hopping from foot to foot as if it was preparing to fight even then.
"Meet Vigoroth," said Clyde with a wave of his hand. "I think you'll find him much, much worse."
Vigoroth shot his opponent a toothy grin.
"I'd be right in assuming he's not—" Casey stopped himself halfway through the sentence, remembering Clyde's mysterious but distinctly bad reaction to the word 'lazy'. "...assuming he's not going to lie around so much in the middle of the fight, right?"
"Yes you would," said Clyde. "Brick Break!"
Vigoroth immediately dived for Rotom, bearing a speed none of the opposition had expected, and promptly began a barrage of punches. Rotom was squealing in pain almost immediately, but Vigoroth paid it no mind and only hopped away after Rotom had been slammed once with each fist. He had hardly returned to his battling position when Casey's command made itself present:
"Thundershock!"
Rotom gave a little grin and let Beast perform another of his mute roars before charging up a considerable amount of electrical energy. Once that had been accomplished, Beast's jaws opened and fired the stream of electricity directly at Vigoroth. The Pokémon in question gave a booming laugh and promptly leaped out of the way, landing on all fours and quickly returning to a two-footed stance.
A few of the onlookers bit their lips, Go-Rock Quad or not.
"And again." Vigoroth leaped in again, dropping to all fours in order to scramble towards Rotom but quickly springing up into the air. This time around, he could only get in one punch before the Wild Monkey Pokémon received a faceful of Beast and sprang back in surprise. While it wasn't exactly an Astonish attack, the toothy and glowing jaw of a not-quite-canine head was certainly good at making the Pokémon retreat.
Vigoroth hopped back to its position with a yowl – and then another yowl. For, you see, Vigoroth had just realized that he was being surrounded by glowing balls of electricity, sending thin streams of the same sort of energy between them. The wads of energy then proceeded to get slowly closer to him. The Pokémon looked around for help and then jumped up in the air, finding no other way to avoid the Thunder Wave. However, that too was in vain; the fence of electricity moved with him and eventually consumed the Pokémon, leaving jolts of electricity to flicker across the wild fur and its owner to moan in pain.
Vigoroth got over it quickly, though. Upon its Trainer's request, the Wild Monkey Pokémon screeched and hopped towards Rotom again – it was running on three legs, with the fourth held high in the air. Truth be told, the entire thing looked pretty strange until you took into account the fact that Vigoroth was using Fury Swipes and brought that high-held claw down on Rotom's body with a roar of triumph.
Rotom smiled widely as the claw passed right through him.
"What the…" Clyde spluttered. "What on Earth did you do?"
Casey shrugged. "I don't know."
Clyde scowled at his opponent's lack of knowledge, while Sheridan had descended into a giggle fit. She could be vaguely heard gasping the word "Immunities!" between bouts of laughter.
Clyde rolled his eyes and said, "Whatever. Vigoroth, just use… just use Brick Break or something."
His Pokémon didn't attack, but instead turned around and gave his Trainer a look that practically screamed "I am
very disappointed in you". Of course, this unexpected act of humanity in a Pokémon character was promptly cut short from another Thundershock, courtesy of Rotom.
Vigoroth swiveled back around and immediately bounded in for more Fury Swipes, but this time Rotom simply giggled and levitated out of the way. The white Pokémon was now at the stage where it would be snorting steam out of its nostrils – Vigoroth was just that angry. And it showed as the Pokémon began jumping up and down, screeching angrily and shaking its fists up at the floating form of Rotom. (Caro scowled.)
Rotom seemed insistent on staying up there, so Clyde rolled his eyes. "Your idiot Pokémon just made this an awful lot harder," he told Casey with the tone of someone completely missing the point of a Pokémon battle. Which he was. "Vigoroth, use Uproar!"
Vigoroth immediately set to work carrying out its Trainer's command, doing so by stomping its feet and waving its arms in a sporadic little dance and screaming like a maniac. Casey took a step back, covering his ears. 'How on Earth is that… that
noise an actual move?!?'
Regardless of
how Uproar got into the ranks of Pokémon moves, Vigoroth used it, and with a yell Rotom's presence up in the air faltered. Casey could see that Rotom wouldn't stay up there much longer, despite the fact that he had managed to keep himself levitating up until this point, and decided to make good use of the opportunity while it presented itself. "Rotom, use Thundersho—"
"VIGAAAAAAA! VIGAAAAAARAAAAAAROOOOOOOOOOOOTH! VIGARAAAAAHRARRRRRARRRRRARRRRRR~!"
Sheridan blinked and said, "Oh dear."
Before Rotom could make a movement, Vigoroth continued on its one-man rampage on everyone else's eardrums. With the combined pressure of charging a Thunderbolt and trying to ignore Vigoroth's Jigglypuff impersonation (though it wasn't doing any damage, Rotom could still hear it), the Ghost-type simply stopped floating. Casey realized exactly what would happen to Rotom's metal coating were it to hit the ground at its current speed, and shoved his hand in the side pocket of his backpack in a frantic search for Rotom's Pokéball.
He realized exactly where Rotom's Pokéball was as the creature hit the ground with a stomach-lurching crunch.
The red glow surrounding Rotom dimmed until it was barely visible, and Beast was sucked back into the core.
"Oh," said Casey. "Um… should I carry him?"
"Return him to his Pokéball, stupid."
"I can't do that!" retorted Casey, clenching his fists and very much wishing he hadn't gotten into this battle with Clyde at all. "His Pokéball…" The boy suddenly realized that there was no easy way for him to explain just what caused Rotom to turn into its current form, and he simply settled with an immensely pathetic "…can't actually be used right now."
Clyde rolled his eyes. "Well, toss him up in the air for all I care. If you were stupid enough to make his Pokéball malfunction, then there's—"
"Be quiet, will you?" snapped Casey as he trudged onto the battlefield, scooping up Rotom. "
I didn't do anything to Rotom's Pokéball. If you had noticed the shape it's been taking this entire time then
maybe you would have bothered to…"
"
Trainers!"
Grant stopped the argument with great speed. Neither of them were actually aware his voice was even capable of reaching this level of intensity.
Clyde put his hands in his pockets. "Whatever."
Casey shot him a warning look and then sent out yet another Pokémon, this one being the small green dragon known to many as Larvitar. His Trainer wasted no time in commanding the Pokémon to use Rock Slide, for which it happily obliged. The Pokémon put its claws to the ground, ripping out two disproportionately large boulders in each hand, and flung them at Vigoroth.
Unfortunately, Vigoroth was in the middle of running towards Larvitar with Fury Swipes at the time, and failed to notice. For that reason, the already severely winded Vigoroth got a faceful of boulder.
It dropped on the spot.
There were a few beats of silence, then…
"Vigoroth is unable to battle! Clyde, do you have another Pokémon?"
The man shook his head numbly.
"In that case, victory goes to Casey." He gestured towards the young man with his hand. "The match is over, and due to the bargain set at the beginning of the match, Clyde now has to come along with us." He walked out of the battlefield and took the long way around, eventually passing the others (who were sitting on benches constructed to hold onlookers) and stopping to stand behind them. "My work here is done."
Clyde mumbled a few words that would make Honchkrow blush and returned his Pokémon.
