JewelQuest: Yeah, that's the problem of shoehorning old elements into the story just because they were in the previous version. The big problem with David was just that he had nothing to do. He couldn't very well have gone along with Alex and company, Sam's plotline couldn't support it now, and he certainly wasn't going to join Team Rocket. Having him join the New Rockets seemed like it was going to work until I wrote the bit with Shan and realized David was far, far too powerful to let run around (basically because he was poised to end the series 10-15 chapters short, more or less the Naomi Misora problem if you've seen Death Note), so I had him run into Michael. I was actually going to draw out David's downfall for another chapter, but I just couldn't justify that what with how the last couple of segments were really more about Lindsay than David. So I pulled the plug (this also explains why David's death is a little sudden). It is, however, one of the things I'll look into expanding and revising once I get around to posting this on FF.net (I plan to start around chapter 20 and fix a few of the things that irk me about the series as posted here, either due to my own mistakes, like the David mess or the pronoun issue with Pokémon in early chapters or the fact that I really should've given more Pokémon nicknames, or otherwise because I don't want to run afoul of the Gym's rating restrictions). But at least we have Kay now, I guess.
Raleigh paced down the hallway, annoyed at the message he’d just received. Not only had that Johnny-come-lately Michael succeeded in trapping David, the psychic was now dead under the watch of Michael’s cohort Elizabeth. The fact that Raleigh didn’t know those agents existed before they killed David disturbed him. The fact that they’d so effortlessly removed his best gamepiece all but frightened him.
How many of those senior agents did Kenneth bring to Idama, anyway? Just those two? Raleigh sincerely doubted that. When his Team Rocket contacts and moles couldn’t do anything more than confirm Kenneth did indeed exist and that his arrival heralded a surge of junior Rocket agents into the country, Raleigh had to operate on gut instinct.
Raleigh threw open the doors to the New Rocket front business and stepped out onto the sidewalk in Hat Yai. Sunlight temporarily blinded him. He blinked repeatedly, and saw Adair standing by the door, leaning against the building face. Adair was his current contact within Team Rocket. Raleigh rotated through several double agents, one every few weeks, in order to keep suspicion low.
“Walk with me,” Raleigh said in a harsh, clipped tone.
“In broad daylight?” Adair wondered.
“I don’t care,” Raleigh snapped. Absolute secrecy would demand they not speak in public, but the average pedestrian was uncaring. Few even gave mind to the affairs of others, and those who did would certainly not be members of Team Rocket.
“Calm down, dude,” Adair said as he started to follow Raleigh.
Raleigh stopped in his tracks and turned to Adair. He let the look on his face speak for him, and turned back to continue walking down the street.
“Okay, so you’re mad about David,” Adair said. “What are you going to do? Stay mad? Try to get even?”
“What I’m going to do is hope he didn’t tell that Elizabeth person anything,” Raleigh answered. “While I’m doing that, I’m going to take a step back and focus on these newcomers.”
“They’re clearly highly experienced,” Adair said. “From what I can tell, they’ve only taken a few weeks to establish an infrastructure that’d take us months to begin setting up. Going off their apparently unlimited resources, I can only assume they’re Giovanni’s finest.”
“Has Roland said anything about them?”
“Roland’s just as surprised at their involvement as we are,” Adair answered. He paused briefly as the two men crossed a side street. “If anything, the fact that Kenneth’s come with his own agents means Roland’s no longer the one with the most real influence in Idama. Kenneth can’t match the sheer manpower Roland can field, but I think it’s only a matter of time before some kind of Kenneth-Juliet coalition takes over Idaman Team Rocket operations.”
Raleigh rolled his shoulders back, and heard a slight popping sound. “I’m not going to dwell on how this happened. It has, and that’s what’s important. I should be thankful we have all of Roland’s information available to us, eh?”
Adair smiled humourlessly. “We certainly wouldn’t know even this much without it. Speaking of that, what do you want me to bring back to him? I can’t exactly tell him I popped out to Hat Yai to have a chat with the New Rocket leader.”
“Same as always,” Raleigh replied.
Adair nodded. “One more thing.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I can’t keep this charade going on forever. I think certain people are getting a bit suspicious.”
Raleigh nodded slowly. He stopped and leaned against the face of a building—some shop for musical instruments. “Then you’ll have to go to ground after this. Don’t contact me. Just pretend nothing’s happening and stay out of known hot spots.”
Adair smirked. “I’ve kept myself clean this long.”
“Make sure you stay that way.”
“Speaking of that,” Adair added, but didn’t continue.
Raleigh suspected he wasn’t going to like what Adair said next. “What?”
“One of the guys who serves as an intermediary between Michael and Roland is going around asking all kinds of awkward questions. Be warned I may have to defend myself.”
“Warning heeded,” Raleigh acknowledged bitterly.
Raleigh remembered tempting fate by telling David that Roland was the biggest gun Giovanni could bring to bear. He felt like kicking himself now.
The next stop along Alex and Terry’s Neo League circuit was Chiang Mai. The city was nowhere near as ostentatious as Darkwood, but had many of the same architectural features. Alex commented after a while that it was like they took that weird double-Opelucid-layering feeling she got from Darkwood and pushed it more in one direction.
In a lot of ways, Kay’s presence was kind of like a second Marril, albeit one that could speak human languages. They had similar senses of humour, although thankfully Kay wasn’t nearly as much of an attention hog. For the sake of her trainer’s new relationship, Marril was at least putting in a token effort to warm up to Terry, but this came at no loss to Marril’s need for Alex’s constant attention.
That aside, Chiang Mai was a pretty heavy detour from Alex and Terry’s planned route. According to Kay, the gym was surprisingly easy, even adjusted for the skill difference between the three of them. The gym’s challenge backlog wasn’t too long, and the two of them were able to schedule one for the day after they arrived.
“So,” Kay said to Alex and Terry as they left the gym after booking their challenge. “Looks like registration went better than your last time.”
Terry wondered if this was really the best thing to say, but figured that Kay knew Alex better than he did. The statement would’ve warranted instant death if it came from him, but the fact that Kay was often subjected to similar kinds of gender-based scrutiny meant there was no doubt Kay was sympathetic. She’d have to have been, given the fact that Alex confided the Darkwood story to her.
Alex shrugged. “Kinda.” With a scoff, she added, “The guy ‘only’ recoiled in surprise when he figured it out.”
Kay winced. “Damn. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Alex said. She forced a smile. “At least the line he tried on me afterwards was hilarious.”
“Oh?”
“Well, he didn’t want to look like a jerk, so he kinda fumbled around being all, ‘It’s just… you look… really young… for 22…’”
Kay smirked. “Well, you do, but not enough that it’d be surprising.”
“You’re luckier than I am in that area,” Alex pointed out.
Frowning, Kay replied, “Except when they ask to see a second piece of ID trying to get into a bar. Or when you get people who ask if your parents are around.”
“Grass is always greener, I guess.”
“Tell you what, let science advance a few centuries and I’ll take you up on that body-swapping offer.”
“I can just imagine the ads now,” Alex mused. “Stuff like, ’22-year old body, slightly used, originally masculine, altered with extensive estrogen treatments. A good fixer-upper that still needs some work. Brain not included.’”
“Can’t be worse than some of the Pokémon ads I’ve seen,” Kay replied. “Dear gods, you’d think breeding licences flat-up didn’t exist given how many people don’t seem to have them.”
“The gods’d have to exist to have anything to do with it,” Alex mumbled scornfully. A moment later, she added, “Sorry, Terry.”
Terry gave a quiet grunt of acknowledgement. While he did believe in the gods in a loose sense, he didn’t really hold to any specific system of faith, so he didn’t mind Alex’s sometimes caustic atheism—if anything, her apologies for slights against the gods were on the cute side. As far as Terry was concerned, the gods themselves were less important than the lessons to be learned from them.
Kay sighed and surreptitiously glanced back at Terry. He sensed a story behind this, one that Kay and Alex knew very well but that Kay didn’t trust him with yet. Terry didn’t feel like prying. In fact, he didn’t feel like entering the conversation at all.
In a way, Terry found the emergence of that fabled thing he thought of as Girl Talk slightly intimidating. It wasn’t a result of any particular subject matter— he simply felt oddly compelled to silence while Alex and Kay chatted about anything, even League-related stuff he could and probably should have gotten in on. The fear was doubly irrational because Kay wasn’t really a woman. She was assigned female at birth and used female pronouns, but existed outside the socially-defined constructs of “man” and “woman.” Terry felt chagrined at how he could so easily accept that Alex was simply a woman assigned male at birth, yet for Kay, who was really neither male nor female, it required significant mental effort and constant self-reminding. That special effort made Terry feel like a bad person for requiring it.
“So,” Kay said. “What now?”
“Chiang Mai apparently has some pretty awesome Pokémon contests,” Alex said. “I was thinking we could catch one. You know, just sit back and watch some Pokémon do things other than beat each other unconscious.”
“Cool,” Kay replied. After a pause, she added, “You know, contests were always one of those things that I understand what you’re supposed to do, but I just can’t make them work.”
“Me neither,” Alex said. “I can be all, like, okay let’s get this pattern down, and let’s practice it, but in the end it just never really works. I dunno how you get that problem, though. I mean, aren’t you the one who’s all into pattern-based battling? What’s your excuse, eh?”
Terry scoffed. “Pattern-based? Really?”
“It speaks,” Kay commented. She turned her head back towards Alex. “Have you taught it any other tricks yet?”
Terry rolled his eyes. As far as he could tell, this was simply Kay’s sense of humour, and she meant no ill will by it. The fact that Alex often traded these mock insults with Kay was proof enough of that. He didn’t want to be the one to make a big deal of it and ask Kay to stop, but the fact remained that it was wearing enough when it was Alex doing it. Kay didn’t have the advantage of being a friend of two and a half years, so even pretend barbs hurt like the real thing.
“What’s wrong with patterns?” Alex asked. “I mean, I don’t use them myself, but there’s nothing wrong with them.”
“What happens when you break the pattern?” Terry countered. Patterns, strings of attacks chained together, were a style he’d tried before and wound up discarding. They were tremendously effective when they worked, but had such narrow uses that training for situational adaptability was the better choice.
“Branching patterns, dude,” Kay said.
“I don’t see how you can branch off enough to cover all the realistic scenarios, let alone the corner cases,” Terry said.
Kay shrugged. “Not my fault if you can’t train your Pokémon very well. Or if your Pokémon aren’t smart enough.”
That one didn’t feel like a mock insult. Frustration welled up within Terry. “All right, then show me. I wanna see this firsthand.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “You really want to battle Kay?”
“Why not?”
Alex’s answer was a simple shrug.
“Do we have time to get to a battle park and back before the day’s contest?” Kay asked.
Alex pulled out her cell phone and thumbed the power button briefly. “Probably. Go ahead. You versus Terry is something I have to see.”
After a few moments of struggling with an uncooperative cell phone app, Alex located a park with battle areas and led the two belligerents to it. The miniature arenas were as basic as possible, simply being large asphalt slabs surrounded by chain link fences. Bigger Pokémon would be uncomfortable battling in such cramped conditions, but Terry’s Eeveelutions would be just fine.
Alex’s offer to ref the match was a token gesture, although it did let her announce the start. Theoretically, if they were to follow League rules strictly it’d let Alex set bench size as well, but Alex deferred that to Terry, who opted for a bench size of one.
For whatever idiosyncratic reason, Alex only counted to two instead of three when announcing the start time, which threw off Terry but not Kay. As a result, Terry saw Kay’s Blaziken materialize while Espeon’s pokéball was still in the air.
“Blaziken, eh?” Terry mused to himself. This wouldn’t be so bad, even with the bench drawing the battle out. “Espeon, Psychic!”
Kay’s order was much quieter. “Fahrenheit, small-size rush.”
Espeon’s eyes glowed azure, but his psychic powers weren’t enough to stop Fahrenheit the Blaziken from getting into close combat range and pummelling him with repeated blows. Fahrenheit finished that initial combo with a fierce uppercut, sending Espeon several metres upwards. Fahrenheit jumped up after Espeon, spun around in midair, and kicked the psychic away. Espeon hit the ground rolling, squealing in pain.
Okay, lucky shot, Terry thought sourly as he switched out Espeon in favour of Jolteon. He knew what to expect now. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alex watching and smirking.
“Thunder Wave!” Terry ordered, trying to ignore the fact that his girlfriend seemed to be silently cheering for his opponent.
Fahrenheit could ignore psychic attacks due to momentum, but he couldn’t ignore electricity. The flaming bird twitched as electricity coursed over his body.
“Defensive opening,” Kay said.
Fahrenheit kicked sand up from the asphalt towards Jolteon. He then followed by leaping at Jolteon, but spasmed and stopped before he could continue the combo.
“Thunderbolt!” Terry shouted.
Electric arcs played over Fahrenheit’s body, but he still didn’t yield. Flexing his muscles, he threw off the thunderbolt, seeming to suffer only a minimal amount of pain.
“Small-size balance, second half,” Kay said.
Fahrenheit swept his leg across Jolteon’s knees, tripping her to the ground. He followed with a fierce karate chop to Jolteon’s back, eliciting a yelp of pain.
“All right, that’s enough,” Terry grumbled, recalling Jolteon. “You’ve made your point. You can train a Blaziken to attack faster than normal so that when you combo out you instantly beat me.”
Everything within Terry screamed at him to try and turn this loss into some kind of pyrrhic victory, to attack any satisfaction Kay found in winning. He squashed these petty feelings—even though, objectively speaking, all Kay did was combine multiple orders into single ones, the fact remained she won fairly. Sour as losing was, he’d have to deal with it.
A hug from Alex helped dispel some of these feelings. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“So I guess I can see why she said she can solo lower-end Neo League gyms,” Terry commented, glancing across the arena at Kay, who was visibly going out of her way to check her pokéballs for problems at a glacial pace. Letting Terry have this comforting moment with Alex. “What an idiot I was.”
Alex turned towards Kay, called out, “Meet you in a few by the main gate, okay?” and led Terry away. In a slightly annoyed tone, she asked, “So what if you were? A challenge like this is nothing. I guarantee Kay isn’t going to dwell on it. After a day or two, she probably won’t even think about it at all.”
“Still. What was I going to prove?”
“That you were annoyed enough to do this,” Alex said. “She’s fairly perceptive. She isn’t going to write this off as ‘Terry being an idiot.’ If anything, she’s going to ask herself just why you threw down the gauntlet when you did. She’ll wonder if anything she did contributed to it. And she’ll probably realize what really happened there.”
Terry shook his head helplessly. In a lot of ways, he’d rather Kay think him an idiot than realize the petty reason he challenged her. But regardless, he felt really drained. Bottled up emotions bursting the dam had a habit of doing that, and the fact that he’d started a battle out of childish insecurity made him feel even worse. Kay was an old friend of Alex's, and it was natural they'd want to spend some time catching up. There was no reason to act possessive of Alex, as if Kay was somehow threatening. It was a stupid knee-jerk reaction and Terry told himself he deserved this humiliation.
His problem, though, and he'd have to be the one to work to fix it. Still, Alex was a very understanding person, and Terry wanted to trust that Kay was too. He leaned over and kissed Alex on the forehead.
Alex smiled and subconsciously bit her bottom lip. “Looks like you picked up in a hurry.”
“Well, I figure I’ll definitely feel better later, so I’m taking an advance to get it started sooner,” Terry replied. He put an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s not keep Kay waiting.”
Chapter 18 - Afternoon Stroll
Raleigh paced down the hallway, annoyed at the message he’d just received. Not only had that Johnny-come-lately Michael succeeded in trapping David, the psychic was now dead under the watch of Michael’s cohort Elizabeth. The fact that Raleigh didn’t know those agents existed before they killed David disturbed him. The fact that they’d so effortlessly removed his best gamepiece all but frightened him.
How many of those senior agents did Kenneth bring to Idama, anyway? Just those two? Raleigh sincerely doubted that. When his Team Rocket contacts and moles couldn’t do anything more than confirm Kenneth did indeed exist and that his arrival heralded a surge of junior Rocket agents into the country, Raleigh had to operate on gut instinct.
Raleigh threw open the doors to the New Rocket front business and stepped out onto the sidewalk in Hat Yai. Sunlight temporarily blinded him. He blinked repeatedly, and saw Adair standing by the door, leaning against the building face. Adair was his current contact within Team Rocket. Raleigh rotated through several double agents, one every few weeks, in order to keep suspicion low.
“Walk with me,” Raleigh said in a harsh, clipped tone.
“In broad daylight?” Adair wondered.
“I don’t care,” Raleigh snapped. Absolute secrecy would demand they not speak in public, but the average pedestrian was uncaring. Few even gave mind to the affairs of others, and those who did would certainly not be members of Team Rocket.
“Calm down, dude,” Adair said as he started to follow Raleigh.
Raleigh stopped in his tracks and turned to Adair. He let the look on his face speak for him, and turned back to continue walking down the street.
“Okay, so you’re mad about David,” Adair said. “What are you going to do? Stay mad? Try to get even?”
“What I’m going to do is hope he didn’t tell that Elizabeth person anything,” Raleigh answered. “While I’m doing that, I’m going to take a step back and focus on these newcomers.”
“They’re clearly highly experienced,” Adair said. “From what I can tell, they’ve only taken a few weeks to establish an infrastructure that’d take us months to begin setting up. Going off their apparently unlimited resources, I can only assume they’re Giovanni’s finest.”
“Has Roland said anything about them?”
“Roland’s just as surprised at their involvement as we are,” Adair answered. He paused briefly as the two men crossed a side street. “If anything, the fact that Kenneth’s come with his own agents means Roland’s no longer the one with the most real influence in Idama. Kenneth can’t match the sheer manpower Roland can field, but I think it’s only a matter of time before some kind of Kenneth-Juliet coalition takes over Idaman Team Rocket operations.”
Raleigh rolled his shoulders back, and heard a slight popping sound. “I’m not going to dwell on how this happened. It has, and that’s what’s important. I should be thankful we have all of Roland’s information available to us, eh?”
Adair smiled humourlessly. “We certainly wouldn’t know even this much without it. Speaking of that, what do you want me to bring back to him? I can’t exactly tell him I popped out to Hat Yai to have a chat with the New Rocket leader.”
“Same as always,” Raleigh replied.
Adair nodded. “One more thing.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I can’t keep this charade going on forever. I think certain people are getting a bit suspicious.”
Raleigh nodded slowly. He stopped and leaned against the face of a building—some shop for musical instruments. “Then you’ll have to go to ground after this. Don’t contact me. Just pretend nothing’s happening and stay out of known hot spots.”
Adair smirked. “I’ve kept myself clean this long.”
“Make sure you stay that way.”
“Speaking of that,” Adair added, but didn’t continue.
Raleigh suspected he wasn’t going to like what Adair said next. “What?”
“One of the guys who serves as an intermediary between Michael and Roland is going around asking all kinds of awkward questions. Be warned I may have to defend myself.”
“Warning heeded,” Raleigh acknowledged bitterly.
Raleigh remembered tempting fate by telling David that Roland was the biggest gun Giovanni could bring to bear. He felt like kicking himself now.
The next stop along Alex and Terry’s Neo League circuit was Chiang Mai. The city was nowhere near as ostentatious as Darkwood, but had many of the same architectural features. Alex commented after a while that it was like they took that weird double-Opelucid-layering feeling she got from Darkwood and pushed it more in one direction.
In a lot of ways, Kay’s presence was kind of like a second Marril, albeit one that could speak human languages. They had similar senses of humour, although thankfully Kay wasn’t nearly as much of an attention hog. For the sake of her trainer’s new relationship, Marril was at least putting in a token effort to warm up to Terry, but this came at no loss to Marril’s need for Alex’s constant attention.
That aside, Chiang Mai was a pretty heavy detour from Alex and Terry’s planned route. According to Kay, the gym was surprisingly easy, even adjusted for the skill difference between the three of them. The gym’s challenge backlog wasn’t too long, and the two of them were able to schedule one for the day after they arrived.
“So,” Kay said to Alex and Terry as they left the gym after booking their challenge. “Looks like registration went better than your last time.”
Terry wondered if this was really the best thing to say, but figured that Kay knew Alex better than he did. The statement would’ve warranted instant death if it came from him, but the fact that Kay was often subjected to similar kinds of gender-based scrutiny meant there was no doubt Kay was sympathetic. She’d have to have been, given the fact that Alex confided the Darkwood story to her.
Alex shrugged. “Kinda.” With a scoff, she added, “The guy ‘only’ recoiled in surprise when he figured it out.”
Kay winced. “Damn. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Alex said. She forced a smile. “At least the line he tried on me afterwards was hilarious.”
“Oh?”
“Well, he didn’t want to look like a jerk, so he kinda fumbled around being all, ‘It’s just… you look… really young… for 22…’”
Kay smirked. “Well, you do, but not enough that it’d be surprising.”
“You’re luckier than I am in that area,” Alex pointed out.
Frowning, Kay replied, “Except when they ask to see a second piece of ID trying to get into a bar. Or when you get people who ask if your parents are around.”
“Grass is always greener, I guess.”
“Tell you what, let science advance a few centuries and I’ll take you up on that body-swapping offer.”
“I can just imagine the ads now,” Alex mused. “Stuff like, ’22-year old body, slightly used, originally masculine, altered with extensive estrogen treatments. A good fixer-upper that still needs some work. Brain not included.’”
“Can’t be worse than some of the Pokémon ads I’ve seen,” Kay replied. “Dear gods, you’d think breeding licences flat-up didn’t exist given how many people don’t seem to have them.”
“The gods’d have to exist to have anything to do with it,” Alex mumbled scornfully. A moment later, she added, “Sorry, Terry.”
Terry gave a quiet grunt of acknowledgement. While he did believe in the gods in a loose sense, he didn’t really hold to any specific system of faith, so he didn’t mind Alex’s sometimes caustic atheism—if anything, her apologies for slights against the gods were on the cute side. As far as Terry was concerned, the gods themselves were less important than the lessons to be learned from them.
Kay sighed and surreptitiously glanced back at Terry. He sensed a story behind this, one that Kay and Alex knew very well but that Kay didn’t trust him with yet. Terry didn’t feel like prying. In fact, he didn’t feel like entering the conversation at all.
In a way, Terry found the emergence of that fabled thing he thought of as Girl Talk slightly intimidating. It wasn’t a result of any particular subject matter— he simply felt oddly compelled to silence while Alex and Kay chatted about anything, even League-related stuff he could and probably should have gotten in on. The fear was doubly irrational because Kay wasn’t really a woman. She was assigned female at birth and used female pronouns, but existed outside the socially-defined constructs of “man” and “woman.” Terry felt chagrined at how he could so easily accept that Alex was simply a woman assigned male at birth, yet for Kay, who was really neither male nor female, it required significant mental effort and constant self-reminding. That special effort made Terry feel like a bad person for requiring it.
“So,” Kay said. “What now?”
“Chiang Mai apparently has some pretty awesome Pokémon contests,” Alex said. “I was thinking we could catch one. You know, just sit back and watch some Pokémon do things other than beat each other unconscious.”
“Cool,” Kay replied. After a pause, she added, “You know, contests were always one of those things that I understand what you’re supposed to do, but I just can’t make them work.”
“Me neither,” Alex said. “I can be all, like, okay let’s get this pattern down, and let’s practice it, but in the end it just never really works. I dunno how you get that problem, though. I mean, aren’t you the one who’s all into pattern-based battling? What’s your excuse, eh?”
Terry scoffed. “Pattern-based? Really?”
“It speaks,” Kay commented. She turned her head back towards Alex. “Have you taught it any other tricks yet?”
Terry rolled his eyes. As far as he could tell, this was simply Kay’s sense of humour, and she meant no ill will by it. The fact that Alex often traded these mock insults with Kay was proof enough of that. He didn’t want to be the one to make a big deal of it and ask Kay to stop, but the fact remained that it was wearing enough when it was Alex doing it. Kay didn’t have the advantage of being a friend of two and a half years, so even pretend barbs hurt like the real thing.
“What’s wrong with patterns?” Alex asked. “I mean, I don’t use them myself, but there’s nothing wrong with them.”
“What happens when you break the pattern?” Terry countered. Patterns, strings of attacks chained together, were a style he’d tried before and wound up discarding. They were tremendously effective when they worked, but had such narrow uses that training for situational adaptability was the better choice.
“Branching patterns, dude,” Kay said.
“I don’t see how you can branch off enough to cover all the realistic scenarios, let alone the corner cases,” Terry said.
Kay shrugged. “Not my fault if you can’t train your Pokémon very well. Or if your Pokémon aren’t smart enough.”
That one didn’t feel like a mock insult. Frustration welled up within Terry. “All right, then show me. I wanna see this firsthand.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “You really want to battle Kay?”
“Why not?”
Alex’s answer was a simple shrug.
“Do we have time to get to a battle park and back before the day’s contest?” Kay asked.
Alex pulled out her cell phone and thumbed the power button briefly. “Probably. Go ahead. You versus Terry is something I have to see.”
After a few moments of struggling with an uncooperative cell phone app, Alex located a park with battle areas and led the two belligerents to it. The miniature arenas were as basic as possible, simply being large asphalt slabs surrounded by chain link fences. Bigger Pokémon would be uncomfortable battling in such cramped conditions, but Terry’s Eeveelutions would be just fine.
Alex’s offer to ref the match was a token gesture, although it did let her announce the start. Theoretically, if they were to follow League rules strictly it’d let Alex set bench size as well, but Alex deferred that to Terry, who opted for a bench size of one.
For whatever idiosyncratic reason, Alex only counted to two instead of three when announcing the start time, which threw off Terry but not Kay. As a result, Terry saw Kay’s Blaziken materialize while Espeon’s pokéball was still in the air.
“Blaziken, eh?” Terry mused to himself. This wouldn’t be so bad, even with the bench drawing the battle out. “Espeon, Psychic!”
Kay’s order was much quieter. “Fahrenheit, small-size rush.”
Espeon’s eyes glowed azure, but his psychic powers weren’t enough to stop Fahrenheit the Blaziken from getting into close combat range and pummelling him with repeated blows. Fahrenheit finished that initial combo with a fierce uppercut, sending Espeon several metres upwards. Fahrenheit jumped up after Espeon, spun around in midair, and kicked the psychic away. Espeon hit the ground rolling, squealing in pain.
Okay, lucky shot, Terry thought sourly as he switched out Espeon in favour of Jolteon. He knew what to expect now. He wouldn’t be caught off guard again. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alex watching and smirking.
“Thunder Wave!” Terry ordered, trying to ignore the fact that his girlfriend seemed to be silently cheering for his opponent.
Fahrenheit could ignore psychic attacks due to momentum, but he couldn’t ignore electricity. The flaming bird twitched as electricity coursed over his body.
“Defensive opening,” Kay said.
Fahrenheit kicked sand up from the asphalt towards Jolteon. He then followed by leaping at Jolteon, but spasmed and stopped before he could continue the combo.
“Thunderbolt!” Terry shouted.
Electric arcs played over Fahrenheit’s body, but he still didn’t yield. Flexing his muscles, he threw off the thunderbolt, seeming to suffer only a minimal amount of pain.
“Small-size balance, second half,” Kay said.
Fahrenheit swept his leg across Jolteon’s knees, tripping her to the ground. He followed with a fierce karate chop to Jolteon’s back, eliciting a yelp of pain.
“All right, that’s enough,” Terry grumbled, recalling Jolteon. “You’ve made your point. You can train a Blaziken to attack faster than normal so that when you combo out you instantly beat me.”
Everything within Terry screamed at him to try and turn this loss into some kind of pyrrhic victory, to attack any satisfaction Kay found in winning. He squashed these petty feelings—even though, objectively speaking, all Kay did was combine multiple orders into single ones, the fact remained she won fairly. Sour as losing was, he’d have to deal with it.
A hug from Alex helped dispel some of these feelings. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“So I guess I can see why she said she can solo lower-end Neo League gyms,” Terry commented, glancing across the arena at Kay, who was visibly going out of her way to check her pokéballs for problems at a glacial pace. Letting Terry have this comforting moment with Alex. “What an idiot I was.”
Alex turned towards Kay, called out, “Meet you in a few by the main gate, okay?” and led Terry away. In a slightly annoyed tone, she asked, “So what if you were? A challenge like this is nothing. I guarantee Kay isn’t going to dwell on it. After a day or two, she probably won’t even think about it at all.”
“Still. What was I going to prove?”
“That you were annoyed enough to do this,” Alex said. “She’s fairly perceptive. She isn’t going to write this off as ‘Terry being an idiot.’ If anything, she’s going to ask herself just why you threw down the gauntlet when you did. She’ll wonder if anything she did contributed to it. And she’ll probably realize what really happened there.”
Terry shook his head helplessly. In a lot of ways, he’d rather Kay think him an idiot than realize the petty reason he challenged her. But regardless, he felt really drained. Bottled up emotions bursting the dam had a habit of doing that, and the fact that he’d started a battle out of childish insecurity made him feel even worse. Kay was an old friend of Alex's, and it was natural they'd want to spend some time catching up. There was no reason to act possessive of Alex, as if Kay was somehow threatening. It was a stupid knee-jerk reaction and Terry told himself he deserved this humiliation.
His problem, though, and he'd have to be the one to work to fix it. Still, Alex was a very understanding person, and Terry wanted to trust that Kay was too. He leaned over and kissed Alex on the forehead.
Alex smiled and subconsciously bit her bottom lip. “Looks like you picked up in a hurry.”
“Well, I figure I’ll definitely feel better later, so I’m taking an advance to get it started sooner,” Terry replied. He put an arm around Alex’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s not keep Kay waiting.”
