Chapter 27

“I cannot believe you,” you say. “How could you do this right before a battle? Do you want to lose?”

“If it would get you to piss off and leave me alone, I wouldn’t say no.” The great Nathaniel Morgan leans heavily against the dresser and stares into the mirror, poking ruefully at the purple scab on his split lip.

“Leave you alone? You think I would leave you alone after you decided to spend the night before a big battle getting drunk and starting fights? Even if we win, you had better believe I will not let you do that again!”

The great Nathaniel Morgan winces. “If you don’t keep it the fuck down I’m probably gonna die before we even reach the stadium. I mean you obviously don’t give a shit about murdering people, but it’s gonna be kinda hard for me to battle if I’m fucking dead.” He drags a hand over the front of the shirt he fell asleep in, squinting into the mirror, and apparently decides it’ll do. You follow him as he stumbles around the apartment, gathering things he drunkenly scattered the night before.

“I was worried when I came back and you were not here,” you say, ignoring his groaned request for you to shut up. “I thought you decided to run away after all. You had enough time that you could have gone anywhere you liked. But no. You were too stupid even to take advantage of that.”

“Graveler,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters, raising her pokéball, and the rock-type appears in front of him. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes roll up to follow her trainer as he climbs onto her back, and you think even she must notice his condition. Nevertheless, she starts forward without complaint when he points at the door.

You follow, your every footfall accompanied by a spray of dancing embers, mane blazing and spitting with agitation. “When I finally got worried enough to go looking, you were not even five streets away, seeing how many bars you could get thrown out of. I cannot believe you. Did you just not care about this battle? Did you think it would not matter?” You pause a second, drawing breath to start in on your next point, then realize this isn’t the right street. “Where are you going? The stadium is that way!”

“Coffee,” the great Nathaniel Morgan grunts. “Don’t care what you do to me, I ain’t fighting nobody without no fucking caffeine.”

He looks entirely wretched, slouched there on Graveler’s back, bruised and unshaven and shielding his eyes from the midmorning sunlight. A wave of disgust stops up your throat, so strong you have to stop and measure your words carefully. “I will get the coffee. I will,” you say as he starts to protest, underlining your words with a burst of flame. “You go on to the stadium, and I will catch you. Now! Faster!”

The idiot, you think to yourself as you speed to the first coffee shop you see. You spent all yesterday doing important things, even getting him his stupid license cleared, and he was out wasting money and turning himself even more useless than usual. If you hadn’t dragged him back to the apartment yourself, who knows if he’d have bothered to show up to the battle at all.

You get the coffee, the strongest they’ll make for you, and tear off across the plateau. It doesn’t take long to catch up with Graveler’s plodding steps, and you thrust the coffee at the great Nathaniel Morgan, just barely squashing the impulse to dump it on him instead. That’d wake him up all right.

The great Nathaniel Morgan takes a sip and winces. “What, no fucking sugar?”

You let out a bark of anger that comes out flame-edged, and the great Nathaniel Morgan looks taken aback. “Holy shit. Excuse me for fucking living.”

“Go!” you howl. “Go, go! We are going to be late!”

You slow down once you pass into the shadow of the stadium, tipping your head all the way back to see the top of its looming walls. You’ve been to tournaments before, of course, but always as a spectator. Now you’re going down underneath the stands, listening to the ambient rumble of thousands and thousands of people moving around up above, laughing, chatting, shifting in the close-ranked seats as they settle in for the fight. The crowd-noise already echoes from the concrete walls, and soon it will rise even higher, drowning you in its roar when you knock out an enemy, when you win everything, the whole match, the tournament, and everyone cheers for you and you alone. You stand watching the patch of light at the far end of the tunnel, imagining, while the great Nathaniel Morgan checks in with the stadium staff, recalls Graveler, and tosses his empty coffee cup into a corner, ignoring a dirty look from one of the field hands.

The human comes up beside you, fidgeting and rubbing at his face like the crowd-noise is painful. You feel like you’ve been standing there for weeks, bouncing on the balls of your feet and shedding excited flames, when the announcer starts up. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first quarterfinal match of the Indigo League Championship!”

“Oh, God,” the great Nathaniel Morgan groans, pressing both hands against his temples and ducking his head as the crowd explodes with a roar that vibrates in the pit of your chest. “We’ve got a great battle for you today, folks. Let’s give it up for our trainers! In the red corner, hailing from Pewter City, iiiiit’s Jason Muskowitz!”

You rock up onto your toes and crane your neck, trying to see out onto the field, then wobble and have to drop back. The noise of the crowd beats against you, and your flames leap higher, flaring and dancing in a long contrail behind you. The great Nathaniel Morgan sidles away, watching you from the corner of his eye.

“And in the blue corner, from Saffron City, it’s the Great Nathaniel Morgan!”

“Oh, for fuck’s–” the great Nathaniel Morgan starts, but you don’t stick around to hear where he goes with it. You dash forward, only to stop dead just outside the tunnel, overwhelmed by the sound and the lights and the sheer enormity of the field.

“Move it,” the great Nathaniel Morgan growls as he passes you, head bowed and looking the very opposite of awed. It’s almost criminal how unexcited he is.

You follow him to where the referee waits with Jason Muskowitz, over by the side of the arena. The referee nods as the great Nathaniel Morgan comes up, then starts talking over the announcer, who’s rattling off the rules of the match for the crowd. “Okay, awesome. You guys know how the platforms work? Good. Just signal for me if you have any trouble. It’s the usual rules, four on four, no time limit. Got it? Great. Shake hands, please.”

“Good luck,” Jason Muskowitz says as he releases the great Nathaniel Morgan’s hand. He’s around sixteen, you’d guess, and already at least four inches taller than the great Nathaniel Morgan, all big smile and acne.

“Go fuck yourself,” the great Nathaniel Morgan snarls.

“Whoah!” the ref says as Jason Muskowitz recoils. “Hey. Keep it clean, all right? Pull something like that during the match and it’s a warning.”

“Fuck you, too,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says before turning to head for his box. You stay behind a moment, looking between the scowling referee and the hunched shoulders of your “trainer.” You suppose you shouldn’t be surprised that he’d take every opportunity to be awful.

The great Nathaniel Morgan’s already slotting his pokédex into the reader on his platform when you step up next to him. He activates the box, and the metal beneath you shudders. Then you’re airborne, guardrails sliding up on all sides. The great Nathaniel Morgan grabs one as soon as it locks into place, leaning on it hard as the platform comes to rest with a grinding lurch. The stadium’s screen lights up with a close-up of the great Nathaniel Morgan on one side and Jason Muskowitz on the other, four pokéball icons below each.

You poke your head between the bars supporting the guardrail. The field looks so much smaller from up here! You wrap your tail around a bar and lean out even farther, feeling like you’re floating on the crowd’s cheers.

You want to be first. You want to fight. You want to win.

Down below the referee gives his signal. “Trainers ready… Begin!”

Jason Muskowitz tosses a pokéball into the air at the same time that the great Nathaniel Morgan says, “Absol.”

It seems like it takes a long, long time for the pokéball’s light to stream out, long enough for the excitement racing through your veins to chill to freezing slush. A crobat takes shape, sparkling suggestions of wings beating even before she properly solidifies. Your side of the field remains empty.

“Absol!” the great Nathaniel Morgan says again, louder, and the crowd murmurs like an outgoing tide, seventy thousand people waiting, watching, wondering.

She can’t do this. She can’t. The great Nathaniel Morgan already announced her as his choice; it’s too late for him to take it back. If she doesn’t show up, she’ll be out, and the great Nathaniel Morgan’ll be down one before the first attack.

He finally looks awake, gripping the railing so hard his arms are shaking–or maybe they’re shaking so hard he needs to hang on for dear life. He leans even farther out than you, bloodshot eyes scouring the arena, mouth half open like he can’t decide whether he should call again, whether he should commit. Because if he calls again, and she doesn’t arrive…

The crobat’s shadow moves. The crowd gasps, and you swear you can feel the breath being drawn into all those thousands of throats. Then it breaks into screaming cheers as Absol steps into the light, casual and unhurried.

“Now there’s someone who knows how to make an entrance!” the announcer booms over the tumult. The great Nathaniel Morgan collapses against the railing, one arm hanging limply over it while he wheezes for breath.

“Fuck,” he gasps, wiping sweat off his brow. “Fuck, I am not even ready to deal with this shit today.”

Absol trots over to his side of the arena like she doesn’t even notice the crowd, turns back to face the crobat, and stands at calm attention. The crobat swoops down until she’s hovering just below her trainer’s platform. “Crobat versus Absol,” the referee says. “The first round will now–begin!”

“Dodger, rain dance!” Jason Muskowitz calls. The crobat flits up and away, climbing so high you can barely see her against the cloudless blue sky.

When no counter-command comes, you turn to the great Nathaniel Morgan, tail twitching in agitation. Dodger’s already starting her attack; what’s he waiting for? He’s not even paying proper attention to the crobat, his eyes on Absol instead. “Thunder,” he says.

You watch Dodger on the stadium’s huge video screen. The bat’s four wings let her execute all kinds of intricate swoops and tumbles, trailing arcs of blue light as she stirs dark storm clouds out of calm air. Absol’s stock-still, unruffled. There’s a brief sparkle of electricity around her scythe, and then the clouds open with a roar, sending a bolt of lightning down on the heels of the first raindrops.

“Somebody’s not playing around,” the announcer says. “Looks like Dodger was ready for that, though.”

The bat’s shooting towards the ground unscathed, and she probably doesn’t even need her trainer’s yell of, “U-turn!”

“Detect. Thunder,” the great Nathaniel Morgan counters.

Still Absol doesn’t move. The crobat’s on her before the great Nathaniel Morgan even finishes giving his command, slashing out of the air like a purple bullet. Absol might duck, might shift an inch to the side; whatever she does, it’s too minute for you to see, but it’s enough to send Dodger sweeping past rather than striking her target. Her wings flail as she tries to make a quick change of direction, and another brief crackle announces Absol’s follow-up attack. This time Dodger’s caught. She plows into the earth, electricity sizzling in the air around her, and Jason Muskowitz has a pokéball ready a second later.

“Switch! Auger, you’re up!”

Modest applause starts up, and the great Nathaniel Morgan’s head jerks up, a brief expression of panic crossing his face as he stares at the endless rows of spectators.

“Doesn’t like crobat against Absol,” the announcer muses as Dodger’s rescued by a burst of red light. “Good on Nathaniel for blocking the U-turn switch. And now we–oh.” There’s another faint cheer from the crowd as the next pokémon takes shape. “Kabutops is on the field! Not every day you see one of those.”

The great Nathaniel Morgan mutters something to himself. He’s still leaning way out over the railing, every inch of him tense. He squeezes his eyes shut a second, then says, “Hail.”

You catch the flicker of a grimace across Jason Muskowitz’s face. “Waterfall,” he says.

“Ooh, that’s going to hurt,” the announcer says as Kabutops rockets across the arena in a jet of swirling water. He crashes into Absol, nearly carrying her out of bounds with the force of the attack. They land in an ungainly tangle, a brief flare of blue light the only sign of Absol’s attack. Kabutops lunges with his scythes, and Absol blocks with her own, then swipes her head sideways to send a dark pulse into Kabutops’ chest. The rock-type staggers, then ducks as a chunk of hail bounces off the broad shield of his head. Chunks of ice mingle with the sheeting rain until the weather shifts entirely to hail, golf-ball-sized hunks of ice pattering down on the arena.

“Blizzard and get down,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says.

“Dig, Auger!”

The kabutops dives into the earth as easily as though it were water, disappearing with a couple quick twitches of his armored back. The freezing wind Absol called rises too late, and the great Nathaniel Morgan hisses a curse. His hands are white-knuckled on the railing next to you.

The arena is obscured by a wall of swirling white, and when the winds die away the field’s piled deep, snow mounding up against the barrier. Absol’s nowhere to be seen, buried by her own attack.

The pristine surface of the snow cracks and splits as Auger forces his way through, shaking heavy slush from his armor. “Future sight,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, and a low hum fills the air.

Auger chitters and swipes a scythe through the nearest drift but strikes nothing but powder. “Don’t bother. Surf,” Jason Muskowitz says.

“Dark pulse!”

A snow mound near the center of the arena splits and sloughs away as Absol stands. Auger raises a claw to slice her dark pulse neatly in half, the other probing beneath the snow. The snowpack fissures and water wells up from the cracks, seeping at first then swelling and rising into a wave that sweeps across the whole arena, hissing and frothing and hiding the battlefield behind a wall of water.

The wave breaks, throwing droplets and spatters against the barrier thirty feet high, and starts to drain away. Absol appears, treading water until the level falls enough for her to stand. Meanwhile Auger slides below the surface. For a moment liquid eddies around the kabutops’ back-spikes, but then they sink, leaving not even a ripple behind. The water level’s stabilized at about three feet deep, plenty for the sleek kabutops to move around in.

A second later the water next to Absol explodes in a whirl of blades, and then she’s gone, leaving only churning ripples behind. “Rock slide! Rock slide!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells, and you wonder if he’s gone crazy.

“What are you doing?” you hiss at him. “Absol won’t be able to hit with that!”

The water swirls and froths, and then Absol’s head reappears, a gray-white smudge against the dirty brown of the water. A great rumbling shakes the arena, the ground itself groaning as dozens of boulders tear free of the earth, rising dripping into the air. They hang there a moment, outlined by a glittering halo of deflected hailstones, then drop, throwing water in all directions as they land with huge, thudding splashes.

There’s no sign of Auger, but you can’t imagine the sleek, wickedly fast pokémon getting trapped under one of those. “Now get out!” the great Nathaniel Morgan says.

“Aqua jet!”

You don’t even realize what the great Nathaniel Morgan meant at first, but Absol approaches the nearest boulder without hesitation, reaching up to lock her claws into its side.

Auger rockets out of the water and slams into her, knocking her back into open water. “Out! Get out!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells, and Absol thrashes around at random, teeth and blade glancing off Auger’s rocky armor. She gets her claws on the rock again, kicking backwards to drive Auger off, and scrambles up the side. Auger bursts from the water, propelled by another aqua jet, but you catch the brief gleam of energy in Absol’s eyes, and she drops flat against the boulder, the kabutops flying past a hair’s breadth overhead.

Absol crawls to the peak of the rock and clings there, sodden fur splayed out in all directions. She’s all thin, gangly legs and too-big head without the volume of her fur hiding her shape, and you can’t help but grin. Absol hates getting wet. You can only imagine how furious she is right now.

“Thunder!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells.

Now it’s Jason Muskowitz’s turn to yell for Auger to get out of the water. The kabutops leaps high, propelling himself with another aqua jet. There’s a thrumming noise, and a ball of psychic energy materializes from nowhere, shooting into the kabutops and knocking him back into the water with a pluming splash. A second later a searing bolt of lightning stabs down, sending up a cloud of acrid steam.

“Again!” the great Nathaniel Morgan barks.

“Come on, Auger! Get out and use surf!” Jason Muskowitz calls.

Absol sparks with electricity, and Auger, scorched but still fighting, makes another arcing leap. The flash of lightning blurs your vision with tears, green and purple afterimages blocking your view of the field. You don’t really need to see, though. You hear the click of claws on rock, the faint scraping of Auger’s armor plates. The great Nathaniel Morgan curses passionately, albeit very quietly, and you know it must have been a miss.

Your sight returns from the edges in, giving you a partial view of another tidal wave rising, toppling with a crash that rattles your platform. Absol’s gone. Auger’s gone. Only the very tops of the boulders remain visible, plate-sized dots of solid ground like scattered stepping-stones.

Absol appears, a whirl of white paws and black claws reaching for the air. Auger’s spiked back humps up out of the water next to her, and absol and kabutops both slip back under the surface. “Come on. Come on!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells. “Get away!”

The water’s surface ripples slowly back to calm. Bubbles rise. Bubbles cease. “Yield,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “Yield!”

The referee waves a flag, and a buzzer sounds around the arena. The absol icon on the screen overhead has an “X” superimposed over it. Finally the surface breaks and Absol reappears, coughing and spitting up water. Nothing stops her as she struggles over to the edge of the arena, pushing through the barrier and falling into empty air on the far side.

Only now, as Absol’s mobbed by the blissey and audino standing by on heal duty, do you become aware of the announcer, realize you’d been too involved in the battle to even notice him. “Early lead for Muskowitz,” he says while the great Nathaniel Morgan runs his hands back and forth over the pokéballs on his belt, face stretched taut in a grimace. “That absol did some damage, though. Auger’s in rough shape, and Dodger can’t be feeling great, either.”

You could take the kabutops. A punch or two and he’d go down. And you could tank a couple surfs, no problem. But your eyes keep being drawn to the dark, smooth surface of the water. You imagine Auger slipping through it, skirting underwater boulders with limbs tucked close to body. Swift, streamlined, an ancient predator in his element.

The great Nathaniel Morgan finally stills. “Go, Sableye!” he calls.

No one comes.

He slams his palm into the railing, and you jump in surprise. “Don’t you mess with me!” he screams. He’s dripping sweat, eyes wide and fever-bright as he clings to the railing for support.

Eskar gives it a few seconds, then appears in a swirl of ectoplasm, alighting on one of the boulders. There’s hardly room for her to stand without the water sucking at her toes. She does one of her 180 head-turns and gives the great Nathaniel Morgan her toothiest smile, then peers into the water, seeking her opponent.

A good choice, you think as the referee raises his flags again. It won’t matter if she gets pulled underwater. She doesn’t need to breathe.

“Kabutops versus Sableye,” the referee says. “Begin!”

“Stand your ground. Get ready to attack when you see it,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says.

“Hydro pump.”

Eskar stands stock-still on her tiny patch of ground, hailstones passing straight through her and bouncing off the rock under her feet. She works her claws back and forth, limbering them up, head turning in sudden jerks as she waits for her opponent to appear.

Auger’s head pops out of the water near one corner of the arena, and he blasts a thick column of water into Eskar’s chest. The sableye goes flying, but flips herself around midair, a shadow ball swirling between her claws. She lobs the attack at Auger–or where Auger was. The ball of ectoplasm sets up a huge splash as it hits the water, but there’s no sign of the kabutops.

Eskar glides down to the top of another boulder, a trick of her ectoplasm turning her fall into more of a sideways drift. She’s quicker on the draw this time, and her shadow ball’s in the air hardly a second after Auger’s head rises above the surface.

All that means is it gets blasted apart by the hydro pump, which slams into Eskar next. “Okay, never mind,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters as the ghost sails, shrieking, across the battlefield. “Uh, ominous wind! Don’t give it anywhere to hide!”

“Aqua jet, then night slash!”

Eskar alights on another boulder and raises her claws. The air darkens, swirling with indistinct, inky shapes. Auger explodes out of the water a second later and slams into her. She clings to her perch by toes alone, and Auger sprawls across the top of the boulder, stuck half-in, half-out of her body.

Eskar lifts her arms higher, and the ominous wind picks up, a cyclone of shadows with her and Auger at its center. The kabutops’ scythes skitter over the surface of the boulder as he tries to pull himself back into the water, and Jason Muskowitz yells commands, but perhaps Auger doesn’t hear them. Perhaps he’s too tired to obey. Eskar herself vanishes into the dark air, at last even her glittering smile fading into the streaming shadows.

Auger makes one last heroic effort to rise, scythe braced against the rock and gills fanning wearily, but he never makes it past his knees. In the midst of the shrieking, keening wind, he finally collapses.

“Kabutops is unable to battle!” the referee calls, and then, when the attack keeps going, “That means stop! Call off your pokémon!”

“Sableye!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells, and at last the ominous wind dies down. One of Eskar’s bright cackles cuts through the air, but she doesn’t reappear.

“Return, Auger. Go, Cryn!” Jason Muskowitz’s next pokéball’s in the air before Auger even leaves the battlefield. A cradily bursts into existence in midair, landing squarely on one of the boulders and latching on with suction-cupped feet.

“What the fuck,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters as the referee announces the next round. “Is he fucking made of money?”

“Start with ingrain, Cryn,” Jason Muskowitz says. The grass-type’s neck stretches towards the sky, his tentacles working on empty air, and pale roots spread from the tips of his feet, creeping down the side of the boulder and disappearing into the water.

“Uhh, sh–um, uh, use shadow claw!”

“Stockpile.”

“Wait–taunt!”

Eskar materializes next to Cryn, burying her claws in the cradily’s thick trunk. A faint glow suffuses the air around Cryn, but Eskar ignores it, cackling and ripping another wound down the grass-type’s side.

“I said taunt, god–dnnnrgh!”

“Maybe she is not obeying you because you are not giving very good commands,” you say.

“She’s obeying me,” the great Nathaniel Morgan snaps, gesturing to the arena. Apparently Eskar’s decided there’s no reason not to combine her taunts with some actual damage. She leaps in to claw at Cryn’s trunk, then darts away again, chattering insults all the while. The cradily ignores her, face towards the sky, as a last scattering of hailstones plunges into the water and sunlight breaks through the sullen clouds.

“Slow, aren’t we?” Eskar says. “Slow, slow, slow! Where are your eyes, sea-flower? Not proper eyes, no, silly glowy things, can’t halfway see in the sun!”

Cryn’s still ignoring her, or at least pretending to, but his tentacles twitch. Bizarre though Eskar’s jabs are, you bet the cradily’s going to try strangling her any second.

“Slow, slow, slow!” Eskar chants. Her claws drip blue, and she slices into Cryn’s side again. “Look at me, sea-flower! Can you even see me with those not-eyes? Eyeless!”

Cryn’s head swings slowly down, her gaze lowering to meet Eskar’s broad, razor-sharp smile. There’s a brief moment where green light glints from the facets of Eskar’s eyes and her grin is transformed to a grimace of dismay, and then a huge energy ball, at least as big around as Cryn’s head, knocks the ghost into the water.

“What the fuck?” the great Nathaniel Morgan breathes, eyes huge and fearful as he stares at the place where Eskar disappeared.

Jason Muskowitz can’t have heard what his opponent said, but the expression must be obvious enough. “You asked for it,” he says with a laugh. “Keep them coming, Cryn!”

“Stay away!” the great Nathaniel Morgan barks when Eskar’s head pops up and prompts the release of another oversized energy ball.

“What the fuck what the fuck,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says to himself, drumming his fingers on the railing. Eskar’s making good on his command, popping in and out of sight all around the arena, appearing only long enough to shout a taunt or two, entice Cryn to send an energy ball her way, then disappear.

“No way in hell a cradily should be throwing around something that strong,” the great Nathaniel Morgan grumbles. “It’s gotta be boosted. What the fuck what the fuck.”

Something white clings to the boulder serving as Eskar’s latest perch, white and lacy. Roots. You see more root-tips now you’re looking. They’re creeping quietly out of the water, and how many more are under the surface, stretching twisted fingers through the water, slowly drinking it in?

The gashes in Cryn’s side are scabbing over. Eskar keeps dodging, but if she gets hit by one of those energy balls she’s going to be in trouble. You could swear they’re getting bigger, too. And once Cryn’s anger runs out, what then? She goes back to stockpiling until Eskar can’t do enough damage to stay ahead of ingrain’s healing.

“Gotta be boosted,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters. “Gotta be. Gotta be. Sableye! Get in there with shadow sneak, then punishment!”

Eskar disappears again, then pops out of Cryn’s shadow with a chuckle, smacking the cradily on the side. Then she takes a firmer stance, black energy rippling around her claws, and slams her palm into Cryn’s trunk with the most satisfying crack you’ve ever heard.

Cryn squeals and recoils, tentacles drawn in tight around his head. Eskar cackles with delight and smacks him with another punishment, leaving a second black-rimmed crater on his trunk.

“Okay. Giga drain.”

Cryn’s head snaps forward much quicker than you were expecting. His tentacles wrap Eskar tight, green light pulsing through them, and he hauls her into the air. Eskar lets out a shriek like you’ve never heard from her, going rigid as the green glow lances into her body. Energy flares, and Cryn opens his tentacles, letting Eskar’s limp body drop to the boulder in front of him.

“What?” The great Nathaniel Morgan stands frozen, his nervous fidgeting finally stilled.

Eskar lies face-down, unmoving, wisps of ectoplasm drifting from holes drilled into her by the giga drain. One of the marks her punishment attack left behind is gone, and the other has faded to nothing more than a dusky bruise.

“Sableye is unable to battle. Yanma, please retrieve her for healing,” says the referee.

“What?” The great Nathaniel Morgan watches the yanma take flight from the sidelines, flitting over and gathering Eskar’s unconscious body up in his claws. He carries her over to the medical staff, and two chansey pounce on her immediately, brandishing revives and chirping at each other for getting in the way. You scan the group, wondering if Absol might be there, watching from the sidelines, but she’s already gone.

“Go.”

You turn to find the great Nathaniel Morgan staring at you, mouth set in a tight line. He looks awful, haggard and tense and much too thin. “Go. Get out there,” he snaps.

It’s reasonable of him, you suppose. It’s not like he has anyone else with good attacks for a cradily. And every second he wastes vacillating over who to send out, Cryn’s roots restore more health.

You jump up onto the railing, then hurl yourself off. It’s a good fifteen-foot drop, daunting for a human but no problem for you. You land crouching on one of the boulders, which is a bit higher and drier than it used to be. All those roots are doing a number on the water level.

Cryn’s gleaming yellow eyes peer out at you from the cavern of his skull. Eskar was right; they do seem off somehow, unreal, floating in void.

In the distance the crowd sighs, applauds. The announcer blathers. The referee says something, and then: “Get it!”

You’d appreciate something more concrete, but to be fair, get it is all you want to do anyway. You jump from rock to rock, drawing back your fist as you rush towards Cryn. You throw all the momentum of your charge behind the first blow, then follow up with a barrage of punches and kicks, each landing with a satisfying crack from Cryn’s subcutaneous armor, the rocky layer that gives the cradily his shape.

You work fast, ducking under Cryn’s waving tentacles. Maybe Eskar couldn’t keep this up, but you–

Cryn’s tentacles wrap around your arm, and before you can wrench free they glow green with the start of a giga drain attack. There’s a twinge of pain as tendrils of light burrow under your skin, and then–then you’re on your knees, the rock inches from your nose, and you can’t think how you got here. You drag in a deep breath, as if the giga drain sucked even the air from your lungs, ripped it away along with your energy. It’s a struggle to raise your head, fatigue draping your entire body like a heavy blanket.

Cryn can’t be that strong. You even resisted that attack. There’s no way a giga drain could have–and you were at full health, you hadn’t taken any hits.

Cryn’s head hangs over you, drooping down like he feels the same weight you do. Glowing yellow eyes blink against a dark field, curious, watching.

You realize the great Nathaniel Morgan’s saying something. Burn the roots. Cut them off. You squint and try to focus on the rock in front of you, still feeling drained and lightheaded. White smears resolve into pale worming lines, the moist network of roots anchoring Cryn to the rock. Here and there a flicker of green light sparks in the white as nutrients are converted to grass-type power.

You close your fingers, clutching a fistful of feathery roots. Now you remember your fire, now you feel the spark of power still burning inside you. You’re not done for yet. The roots in your hand crumple into ash, which you let sift through your fingers. Weariness falls away as you start moving again in earnest, flames roaring from your fists as you burn holes in Cryn’s root network. All your attention is on the fire and the movement; you’re so absorbed that the great Nathaniel Morgan’s distant yells barely register.

The water that hits you burns, not with heat but with salt, searing your eyes, extinguishing your flames, bowling you over in a wave of cold and dark that redoubles when you hit the water and sink.

You float then, dreamlike in the murk, surrounded by waving ghostly root-tips. It’s the cold that hurts more than anything else, the touch of death itself for a creature that’s always burning, and it’s like all your senses have grown duller without your fire to illuminate the world. But though it’s and dark it’s also peaceful. You could rest here, sleep forever. You watch a couple bubbles drift lazily from your nose to tangle in the root mat.

What on earth is that cradily? Even with a water attack, he shouldn’t have been able to hurt you this badly.

Something’s not right. You can’t lose like this. Not you. Not to some random pokémon that’s way more powerful than he should be.

Heat builds in your crown again–so there’s fire in you still. You float a while longer and think about that. That cradily’s sitting on his rock, waiting to see if you’ll come back up or not. Probably he already thinks he’s won. As if. Like you’d lose to some dumb cheater’s plant.

Your crown ignites in a froth of bubbles and swirling water. Suffocation tightens in your chest as warmth spreads back through your limbs. You need air if your fire’s really going to blaze, but for the moment, your anger is enough. You hold tight to the molten core inside you as the water around you bubbles and roils, sinking, sinking until you feel solid ground under your feet.

You kick off with all your might, crown roaring up as you pass from water into air. Everything blurs as searing power gathering inside you, cheering crowd, yelling trainers, Cryn’s glowing yellow eyes. You let go, and Cryn bows backwards as a scalding wave of heat slams into him, the roots at his base shriveling in blackened curls.

You land straight in front of him, wrapped in a bubble of scalding heat, more roots withering and dying at your feet. Cryn rallies, gathering water for another brine attack, but you reach out and grab his neck, forcing his face up towards the sky.

Cryn’s tentacles worm across your arm, prodding and slithering and trying to catch hold, but sheer heat prevents them from getting a grip. New roots already seek from the cradily’s base, spreading questing tendrils into the air, and you won’t let them, you won’t stand by while Cryn heals back everything you’ve accomplished. You pull on Cryn’s neck with one hand, blow a gush of flames over his base with the other, and slowly, slowly the cradily comes unstuck. Suction cups yield one by one until the grass-type comes free with a lurch and a noise like ripping fabric as the last of his roots tear away.

You heft Cryn over your head with a triumphant screech, flames leaping higher in exhilaration, and hurl the cradily as far away as you can. He hits the water with a deeply satisfying plonk.

You feel good about this. You throw back your head and scream, shooting fire into the air, and the crowd screams with you, the noise rumbling against, practically solid. You keep feeling good, in fact, until Jason Muskowitz says, “Uh, okay. Ingrain again.”

You snap your attention to the place where Cryn sank, but can see nothing but the last ripples left by his plunge. Of course. Cradily live underwater, don’t they? You went and chucked him right into his natural habitat.

You imagine him down there, sending out more roots, slowly restoring himself to fighting shape. Now there’s no way for you to hit him without diving in, that or throwing so much fire at the arena that you evaporate all the water and end up too tired to do anything else.

The triumph burning at your core turns to icy humiliation. The great Nathaniel Morgan’s calling you an idiot, and he’s right, oh, for once he’s right.

“Brine again,” Jason Muskowitz says, and you fall over backwards as a powerful jet of water hits the side of your boulder. Most of it sprays wildly into the air, but a few drops splash on you, their numbing chill reminding you how delicate your flame really is.

“Hmm. Angle it down some,” Jason Muskowitz says.

“Role play! Role play, god–you–are you paying any fu–any attention?”

Role play? That’s a psychic move. Can infernape even learn that?

You leap to another boulder, and Cryn’s brine gushes through empty air behind you, completely soaking your old perch.

And what’s cradily’s ability, anyway? Suction cups? What good would that do? If you get stuck in one spot, you won’t be able to avoid Cryn’s attacks.

“Okay, reposition,” Jason Muskowitz says.

“Role play!”

You don’t know. You’re tired and wet, and your opponent’s out of reach, sniping you from safety. Maybe the great Nathaniel Morgan is wrong. Maybe infernape can’t even learn that attack, and he’s outing you in front of everyone. But his are the only words you have left.

You close your eyes and dig your toes into the rock. These are your roots, anchoring you to the earth. You sway from the waist, one single, sinuous motion. This is your trunk. This is what connects you to the rest of the world. You raise your arms over your head and spread you fingers, wiggling them. These are your tentacles, always moving, seeking for food. You are rock and plant alike, old as the bones of the earth, slow, patient, reaching.

Sometimes you think there are parts of pokémon battles that would be kind of weird if you weren’t doing them specifically so you could beat other people up.

There’s a heady moment of double vision as you draw air into your lungs and water over your gills at the same time. Your finger-tentacles reach and stretch, and then you’re back in your usual body again, feeling tingly and strange. You shift weight from foot to foot, lift one up and look at the sole, but no, you’re not stuck to anything.

“Ancient power,” Jason Muskowitz says, and he sounds annoyed.

“Get in the water, go! Dive in!”

Well, why stop obeying crazy commands now? Spiky hunks of stone rise humming around you, and you leap over them as they swoop in to attack, hitting the water in a shallow dive.

The water breaks over you, cool and soothing. It closes over your head, presses in on all sides, supporting you, lending you strength. You hold your hands out in front of you in disbelief, trying to grasp the water like it’s a solid object, feeling it sing with energy as it passes between your fingers.

So this is Cryn’s secret. His roots weren’t just soaking up health. He was drinking in the water’s power to fuel his attacks. That’s how he became so strong. And now that strength is yours.

You rise to the surface and gulp in a deep breath, then slip under again, stroking between the reaching tendrils of Cryn’s roots. Your fire blazes hot, so hot you feel it on the back of your neck even underwater, and each motion, each movement through the water brings a new wave of strength.

You slip around the side of a boulder, and there they are, the yellow spots glowing in the murk. Cryn sends a storm of rocks at you, you knock them aside with a contemptuous burst of fighting energy. Cryn’s powerful, pulling his strength from the water. Now that you know his trick, it’s time show him what a real battler can do with it.

You compact the fire inside you, squeeze it within a fist of resolve. It pushes back, boiling white-hot as you concentrate its power into a tiny pinprick. You envision it as a miniature star, glittering in the midst of darkness, flickering, dancing, churning, burning. You crush it down and down until it can shrink no more and–as all stars must, when compressed by impossible weight–explodes.

You don’t know if the roar’s from the flames themselves or the sound of water flashing into steam. The boulder behind you cracks, a sharp snapping noise like breaking bone, and you’re standing on dry ground, unable to see anything through curtains of superheated vapor. A mist of water droplets hangs in the air, and you would raise a hand to snatch them and feel new energy flow into you, but you waver instead, sit down hard, squelching in mud and a tangle of waterlogged roots.

“And that, folks, is what a blast burn looks like,” the announcer says. “Visibility is low right now, but I think the referee is going to–yes, there’s the call!”

“Cradily is unable to battle!” comes the distant voice, and you raise your head, trying to see through the drifting haze. Jason Muskowitz must be doing the same, because he doesn’t recall his pokémon right away, not until the clouds have dissipated enough for you to see Cryn lying motionless in the mud.

You lean back with a sigh, stretching your toes in the mud. Water’s lapping at you now, only ankle-deep. You watch it swirl in slow revolutions around your feet, draining steadily into your body. Any second now there’s going to be another pokémon to fight, but for the moment you can relax, victorious, wrapped in warm curtains of steam.

There’s the crack of a pokéball opening far overhead. “Dodger, go! Rain dance!”

“Slack off!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells. Oh, right. Him.

You sprawl out in the mud, exposing as much of yourself to the water as possible, and look up at the sky overhead. Clouds billow and churn as Dodger dances, a far-off angular shadow. You stretch languidly, then let your hands fall back into the water, leaving your muscles loose and relaxed. A wave of energy chases out aches and pains, strengthens your fiery core. But slacking off isn’t just relaxing. You’re trading energy for health, and you’ll only feel more tired afterward, especially on the heels of that blast burn.

A few fat raindrops splash into the water around you, and you lean your head back with a sigh as the downpour picks up. You’re going to have to get up in a second, aren’t you?

“Aerial ace, go!”

“Get it with flamethrower!”

There isn’t even time to lament the end of your break. You rock back to your feet, conjuring a seed of flame in your palm. The rain might give Dodger some protection from your fire, but it also fuels it, your stolen ability drawing raindrops towards you and rendering them into more energy.

Dodger swirls down from above, and you raise your hand, blowing a stream of fire at her. It’s magical, how easy it is to call so much flame. The flamethrower is searing white, thicker around than the crobat’s body.

She dodges it, of course, spiraling around your attack with minute adjustments of her four wings. You bring your free hand up too slowly, and Dodger slams into you, slicing across your chest with her claws. Then she’s gone again.

“Haze, now!”

“Get it with a heat wave!”

You spin on your heel, ignoring the blood trickling down your front, and spread your arms to send a furnace blast of heat soaring across the field. Meanwhile Dodger spins in place, a dark mist rising around her. The heat wave sweeps over her, and she falters, but the haze spreads anyway, overtaking you and plunging you into chill darkness.

The clammy fog leeches away your borrowed strength, your flames dying back to their usual steady crackle. You frown and bend down to scoop up a handful of water. It sits warm in your palm, but the fog laps the blush of energy away before it can travel up your arm.

“Aerial ace!” The snap of approaching wings is your only warning before Dodger swoops out of the fog, raking claws across your shoulder as she shoots past. You fire a flamethrower after her, annoyed with how much smaller it is than the one you conjured a second ago.

Raindrops patter through the fog around you, tingling against your skin. “Swift!” the great Nathaniel Morgan shouts, somewhere far away. He must not be able to see anything, either.

The world around you is dim and shifting, full of the looming hulks of risen boulders and a swampy mess of water and strangling roots. You sweep an arc of bright stars into the air and watch them speed out into the haze. They must strike, somewhere, but Dodger doesn’t make a sound.

You open your hand, palm full of glittering lights, and stare into the distance, listening. With the haze drawing off your extra energy, fatigue’s taking hold. Your heavy breathing stirs and swirls the haze; Dodger won’t have any trouble finding you. She can’t be feeling great either, though, after Absol’s thunder and your heat wave.

When you launch your next wave of stars, you can hear the attack hit home, energy fizzing off something to your right. You get your arms up just in time, block the worst of Dodger’s aerial ace when she slams into you again. She flees as always, but you launch after her with a mach punch, knocking her to the ground.

All at once you’re trying to hold the bat down while she smacks you with all four wings, hissing furious epithets. You hit her square in the face with a crackling thunder punch. She seizes up for a second, then goes right back to flailing, now snapping bursts of razor-edged flying energy in your face, opening dozens of cuts down your chest. You grit your teeth and punch her again.

“Dodger?” Jason Muskowitz asks nervously as his pokémon screeches.

“Yeah, get it!” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “Knock it down!”

A little late, you think as you raise an arm to shield yourself from an air cutter. Dodger bucks and twists under your weight, never giving up her attacks, but another couple punches are enough to knock her out. You get up and limp away, ginger in each movement. The air cutters opened wounds like a thousand paper cuts all down your front, and raindrops burn as they roll down your skin.

Unlike the trainers, the referee’s equipment can see through the haze. “Dodger is unable to battle,” he says. The crowd breaks into cheering, and you realize they must have been watching clouds of gray fog for the last few minutes. Not exactly thrilling.

The haze is clearing now, though; you can see the misty humps of boulders stretching out across the field. Then there’s a flash of light, one that grows and grows and finally forms up into a looming shadow that can barely wedge itself between the rocks. You instinctively pump your flames higher as the temperature plummets. Now you’re adding to the haze with puffs of condensation from your breath.

“Okay, Colossus, get ready,” Jason Muskowitz says.

“What the fuck is that?” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters.

“Last pokémon for the red corner,” says the referee. “Avalugg versus infernape. Begin!”

“Slack off again,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says after a pause.

“Earthquake.”

“No, wait! Protect!”

You wrench yourself back to your feet, trying to project the energy you’d gathered for healing into a shield. The avalugg lets out a groan like a landslide and stomps one huge foot. The first ripple of seismic energy knocks you to all fours and shakes you to the core, and your desperate attempts at raising a defense crumble. Rising tremors bounce you off ground and rock until you can do no more than tuck your head between your arms, draw your knees up, and wait for it to be over.

It feels like an eternity before the tremors die away. The haze is truly fading now, and the rain with it, so new sunlight gleams from the avalugg’s icy armor. You’ve never seen one in person, certainly didn’t expect to encounter one here. You uncurl, just a little bit, and stop as bruises howl a chorus joined by the shrill voices of the cuts Dodger left behind. You could stand. You could. But at the moment you just don’t want to.

“Yield,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says quietly, and you snap upright, crown blazing. How dare he presume you can’t go on? Fractures grate and sear red lines of pain across your vision, and you fold up again, clutching your side.

You stay in your huddled crouch until the yanma arrives, then struggle to your feet, waving away the bug’s offer of help. She hovers just behind while you limp off the field, multifaceted red eyes reflecting a hundred different angles on your shame. You manage to hold it together until you can collapse in the hospital area, swarmed by blissey and audino brandishing potions and water and snacks. In what feels like two seconds your injuries have vanished and you’re sitting with a towel thrown over you, moodily crunching a berry granola bar. Meanwhile, the great Nathaniel Morgan dithers.

“Avalugg seems to have taken our Great Nathaniel Morgan by surprise,” the announcer says. “This is the last pokémon for the match. What will it be?”

You frown. Graveler? It’ll be her, yes. She should bust up all that ice no problem. She’s weak to it, sure, but it’s not like any of the others have much going for them. Still the great Nathaniel Morgan stands with his hand at his belt, staring at the avalugg like it’s some alien spacecraft that’s touched down right in front of him.

“Thirty seconds,” the referee says warningly, and at last the great Nathaniel Morgan moves. He grabs the front ball off his belt and hurls it over the railing, shouting, “Mightyena, go!”

Your flames sputter with nerves as you watch Mightyena shake energy out of her fur and crouch in a ready stance. Her head turns this way and that as she takes in the devastated arena, newly fissured by the earthquake.

“Mightyena versus avalugg. The final round will now begin!”

“Iron tail, Mightyena!”

“Iron defense!”

If Mightyena’s intimidated by her opponent, she gives no sign of it. She makes running jumps from one boulder to the next, then throws herself straight at Colossus, tail dragging a bright arc of steel energy. The attack lands with a loud crack, and Colossus strains towards Mightyena, snapping at her with icicle-crusted jaws.

There’s no way the ponderous avalugg can hope to catch Mightyena, though, and Colossus subsides with a grumble when the dark-type leaps to smack her with another iron tail. The avalugg settles lower on her trunklike legs, and her icy sheen turns to liquid shimmer as metallic energy flows over her body. Mightyena’s first two attacks left thin fissures on her icy hide, but a third iron tail makes only a shallow dent.

“Surf,” Jason Muskowitz says, and Colossus grunts and gives herself a shake, sending fragments of ice skittering and sleeting from her back. The avalugg stomps her feet one at a time, punching holes in the soggy ground. Water swirls and gushes into the deep pits, four streams rising and joining into a vast tidal wave that even Mightyena, quick as she is, can’t avoid. She vanishes into a surging, white-capped wall of water, and surfaces again at the far edge of the arena where the wave froths uselessly against the energy barrier.

“Avalanche,” Jason Muskowitz says as a dripping Mightyena crawls atop a boulder.

“Uh, swagg–no, yawn.”

The air around Colossus crackles with cold, snowflakes whirling from the edges of the avalugg’s icy armor. Faint rumbles emanate from underground, the surface of the water rippling as the earth beneath it shakes. Mightyena stares into the face of Colossus’ gathering fury and lets out a huge, languid yawn.

Colossus roars, snow and ice and rock fountaining up around her and raining down towards Mightyena. The dark-type jumps away, skipping boulder to boulder just ahead of the wave of debris. She stays at a distance, racing away again when Colossus sends another cascade of ice in her direction. A second avalanche crashes to earth, bits of gravel and ice pinging from the energy barrier and a particularly large hunk of earth knocking Mightyena into the water. But Colossus’ mouth gapes in a yawn, not another bellow, and her eyes drop closed.

There’s no great toppled-mountain crash, no huge impact as the avalugg’s weight comes down. The ice-type’s sturdy limbs barely keep her belly off the ground in the fist place, so her sleepy collapse is one of inches alone.

“Snore,” Jason Muskowitz says.

The great Nathaniel Morgan’s “Oh, come the–come on!” is roundly drowned out by the shatteringly loud noise Colossus makes, like a glacier calving into the sea. Mightyena winces, pressing her ears flat against her skull.

“Go on, get in there! Super fang!”

Mightyena skips from one boulder to the next, rushing bravely into Colossus’ roaring snores, then launches herself and catches the edge of the ice-type’s body in her teeth. She looks absurd hanging there with a mouthful of ice, but her jaws glow with power, and white lines radiate across Colossus’ broad back, accompanied by a long series of cracks and groans. Ice fissures wherever the energy touches, and Colossus’ armor falls away in huge chunks, pieces of ice the size of cinderblocks plunging into the water.

The avalugg wakes with a pained groan, and Mightyena darts away, watching from a safe distance as one whole half of the ice-type’s body sloughs away.

The great Nathaniel Morgan takes a deep breath. “Okay, now use–”

“Recover.”

“No!”

But Colossus is standing now, and the grinding crunch of ice starts up again, new armor thrusting its way out of the avalugg’s mantle. The ice rebuilds itself in fast motion, and within seconds Colossus’ back is as broad and whole as it ever was. The great Nathaniel Morgan hangs on the railing open-mouthed, and Mightyena stands frozen, looking up at an opponent who looms as large as ever, all traces of the battle’s wear gone from her icy skin.

“Now ice fang!” Colossus turns ponderously, and at last Mightyena gets moving. She evades the avalugg’s snapping teeth and jumps in with another iron tail, which clangs against Colossus’ armor to no apparent affect.

“Nate!” she yells as she races to stay ahead of Colossus’ attacks, getting in an iron tail here and there where she can. “Any ideas, Nate?”

Her trainer’s still clinging to the railing and staring mutely at the battle below. You wish you could climb back up there and smack him.

Mightyena botches her landing after another iron tail, feet slipping in the slick mass of roots covering a boulder. Colossus’ neck shoots out like a snapping turtle’s, her huge teeth closing on Mightyena’s side.

Mightyena yelps as Colossus bites down, swatting at the ice-type’s face with her tail. “Mightyena! Use…” But he can’t finish. You stand on the sidelines with anxiety boiling in your chest and crown-flames rippling. The nurse pokémon edge in closer like they’re preparing to restrain you, to stop you from doing anything foolish.

Mightyena gets an idea herself, and when Colossus drops her she goes for a jump that takes her all the way onto the avalugg’s back. She lands with paws splayed wide, claws locked against sliding, and Colossus doesn’t appear to realize she’s up there; the ice-type probably can’t feel anything through all that armor. Mightyena sniffs curiously at the living ice under her paws, takes a couple experimental licks, then gives it a solid smack with her tail.

“Rapid spin, Colossus!”

Mightyena tries to brace herself, but a kick of Colossus’ sturdy legs sends her into a wicked spin, balanced like a top on the jagged point of her chest. Mightyena flies off with a “yipe!” of surprise, splashing down in the water.

“Blizzard, now!”

Colossus raises herself again, rocking side to side as she releases a blast of bitterly cold air in all directions. The water around her freezes with a sudden, explosive snap!–with Mightyena under it.

“Mightyena!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells. “Mightyena!”

Colossus turns slowly to face the spot where Mightyena sank, expressionless, ready. Flames dance around your clenched fist, and you hold your breath, chest tight with worry. You imagine yourself down there, dazed from the cold and clawing at the ice as the slow, terrible realization of being trapped creeps over you. Mightyena won’t be able to break through with a physical attack, not without some kind of leverage, and you don’t think she has any special attacks strong enough to shatter the ice, either.

“It’s looking grim for The Great Nathaniel Morgan and Mightyena,” the announcer says, and the great Nathaniel Morgan flinches. As the crowd murmurs and sighs, it’s like he suddenly remembers where he is, head jerking up as he stares into the stands.

You hiss steam between your teeth. He needs to come up with something. He needs to come up with something right now, not gawk around helplessly. Idiot, idiot human, if only it was you up there in the trainer’s box.

It takes the crowd’s collective gasp to bring his attention back to the field. Mightyena’s splashing around in an open patch of water near the edge of the arena, claws rasping across the ice as she tries to pull herself out. The ice cracks and sinks beneath her, dumping her back into the water.

“Mightyena!” the great Nathaniel Morgan yells to his soaked and shivering pokémon. “Mightyena, you have to. You have to…” He bows his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “You have to…”

“Okay,” Jason Muskowitz says. “Blizzard again.”

“Fuck you!” the great Nathaniel Morgan screams as Colossus sends another wave of snow and ice howling across the arena.

“Dude, chill out. It’s just a battle,” Jason Muskowitz mutters, so soft you’re sure you’re the only one to hear it.

“Warning for the blue corner,” the referee begins, one flag going up, but the great Nathaniel Morgan talks over him. “I forfeit.”

You twist around so fast you wrench your neck, thinking you must have misheard, that your anxious mind is playing tricks. “I said I fucking forfeit!” the great Nathaniel Morgan hollers down at the referee, who’s still trying to say something. He thrusts Mightyena’s pokéball out over the railing, recalling her in a slashing burst of red light. And that’s the last you see, because that’s the moment you find out just how fast a League-trained chansey can move.