"I hope you don't mind me using my eighth badge team," Koga said from the other side of the battlefield in the gym, the sun barely peeking in from the window situated high in the wall behind him.
It would be night soon.
"I'll only use four Pokemon while you can use all that you have," the man explained.
Joey raised an eyebrow from where he was standing and scuffed his sneakers on the dirt beneath to test its compactness. Relatively hard, a bit of a bigger challenge than usual.
"Why?" he asked.
"I'll be able to determine if you pass with a seventh or eighth badge team," Koga replied. "And this way, you get more of a learning experience. See it as preparation for Cerulean. I heard you struggled there last year." A small smirk crawled its way onto his face.
Joey scoffed. "Mind games won't work," he shot back. "Prepare to lose entirely on your battling merit instead."
"I'm shaking in my boots," Koga drawled as he gripped a Pokeball at his waist.
"This is a gym battle between gym leader Koga and challenger Jojo. The gym leader will use four Pokemon while Jojo will use up to six. Both trainers are allowed one switch!" Janine shouted shrilly from the side in a relatively young voice as she raised her flags and retreated out of the field and to the side.
"You can do it, Joey!" Jessie shouted from the stands, being the only spectator of the day.
"WuW!" the Wurmple on her shoulder shouted.
Happiny, for her part, didn't look too happy to suddenly be sharing her trainer.
"Trainers, release your Pokemon!" The referee announced, swinging her flag again.
Joey tapped one of the release buttons on his belt while Koga threw a Pokeball into the air.
A Diglett appeared on the ground, and a Venomoth appeared in the air.
"Sandstorm," Joey ordered immediately, idly wondering if he should switch, before deciding against it. Diglett could handle a poison type that just happened to be able to fly. His moves were still super-effective, and he could still resist any poison-type attacks the best.
Grains of sand and a weak tornado quickly formed on the battlefield while Venomoth spat out a truly industrial amount of yellow powder, which must have been stun spore. The yellow mixed in with the sand, but it was the next move that really made Joey click his tongue.
"Hurricane!" Koga ordered loudly. "Opposite direction."
The Venomoth flapped its wings, dodged a Mud Bomb thrown its way and released a windstorm that clashed against the sandstorm for supremacy and forcefully dissipated it by disrupting the wind funnel that was supposed to keep it going.
It also had the added benefit of spreading the stun spore literally everywhere. The entire ground was yellow now. Spores and sand. It looked like a beach where you died if you inhaled the particles.
Diglett had thankfully already gone underground, so he wasn't affected by the spores. Still, it was a bit problematic for him to come up now if he didn't want to immediately get paralysed.
Koga, for his part, also wasn't just going to let Joey think and was already ordering his next moves. "Poison Powder, Sleep Powder, Silver Wind," he ordered rapidly, purple and then green powder falling to the ground, before being picked up by a light green wind and spread all around the arena.
Naturally, Joey hadn't come to THE poison type gym without a counter to a very simple setup, so, after seeing the ground become a mess of colours, he ordered his counter.
"Earthquake," he said, and the ground started shaking violently, the powders and sand mixing together like in a mixer, turning a very awkward light brown with dots of purple, yellow and green. "Mud," Joey ordered next, at which Diglett shot out of the earth with a Mud Bomb above his head, which protected him from the powders.
"Double Team," Koga ordered, but the Mud Bomb wasn't meant for any of his now twelve Venomoth.
The big ball of mud travelled straight up, before exploding in a shower of liquid which promptly fell to the floor and moistened it. The ground was now a poisonous soup more than it was an actual battlefield. Diglett moved through it with ease, regardless, simply using his control over the ground to always keep a small barrier of separation between himself and harmful substances.
Koga raised an eyebrow. "Silver Wind," he said uncaringly, at which all the Venomoth copies started flapping their wings.
Joey remembered that the move was relatively energy-intensive and started to suspect what the man was going for.
Not that he could do anything about it for the moment. "Bomb Artillery," Joey ordered next. Diglett once again picked up a Mud Bomb and launched it in the air.
Then he did it again, and again, and again. The sky became a poisonous brown, every single speck of it absolutely covered in mud.
Venomoth was doing its best deflecting the closest clusters of mud with Silver Wind and dodging the rest with Double Team, its stats constantly increasing.
"Venomoth might be immune to her own product, but your other Pokemon won't be," Joey said in a bored tone of voice while wagging his finger at the gym leader. "No Baton Pass for you."
Koga scoffed. "A strategy worthy of a seventh badge battle," he retorted sarcastically. "Unfortunately for you, this is a level beyond that." He looked at Venomoth as it zoomed around, hyped on its own boosts and nodded in a satisfied manner. "Disable then switch," he ordered.
The bug suddenly stopped in mid-air, caught a chunk of mud right in the wing, but glinted its eyes at Diglett and successfully disabled Mud Bomb. Then it disappeared back into its Pokeball. A large purple piece of chemical waste that smelled of sewage was released immediately after.
"Mukk," the new Pokemon groaned as its form bubbled, flashing a brief white to signify that it had received all the boosts from Venomoth.
"Sandstorm," Joey ordered, a new sandstorm being picked up immediately.
Koga, unfortunately, wasn't having any of it. "Rain Dance," he said simply, causing his Pokemon to raise its arms into the sky and for the moisture levels of the battlefield to suddenly increase. "Water trumps ground," the gym leader said in an unimpressed voice as it started raining.
The rain quickly fought down the Sandstorm, leaving Joey with a Diglett who'd had one move disabled, was swimming in actual sludge and facing a several-times boosted Muk.
"Earthquake," Joey ordered, not too bothered. Diglett strained against the ground for a moment, infused with Venomoth's type energy as it was, before it all started shaking.
"Protect," Koga ordered from the other side, Muk enveloping itself in a protective barrier as the world around it shook.
"Again," Joey ordered ruthlessly as the barrier expired alongside the shaking.
Diglett didn't respond, slumped over where he'd emerged from the ground, a snot bubble coming from his nostril.
"It's hard to control the ground while using a move, and Diglett can't be underground while using Earthquake," Koga commented from the other side of the battlefield. "It seems your luck has run out." He turned to his Muk. "Mud Bomb. Give it a taste of its own medicine."
"Sleep Talk," Joey ordered as Muk gathered up a ball of poisonous mud to throw at Diglett. The ground suddenly started shaking again. Weaker this time. Joey recognised a low Magnitude, but still, it was super effective and Muk cringed in place as the Mud Bomb flew towards Diglett and slapped him straight in the face amidst the rain.
"Sleep Talk," Joey said again, silently thanking Koga that he'd disabled Mud Bomb which wouldn't be that useful in that situation, especially considering the many stacks of double teams that Muk had.
"End it, Giga Drain," Koga suddenly said.
Joey's hand flew to his belt faster than ever before and just as Diglett threw its Mud Slap and Muk manifested a green energy, Diglett was recalled back into his ball.
"Switch," Joey said idly.
"Harden," Koga ordered immediately and Muk abandoned its now targetless Giga Drain to shine a bright white signifying an increase in its defence.
"Misdreavus, Ominous Wind full strength," Joey ordered as he released his ghost type onto the field.
He'd noted that the Rain Dance had started weakening, and the dark winds that Misdreavus kicked up immediately dispelled the rain. "Thanks for the trick, old man," Joey said idly.
"Poison Gas," Koga said simply from the other side of the field, his Muk spewing out purple gas from its mouth in one great exhale.
"Astonish," Joey said.
Misdreavus flashed forward, enveloping in ghostly energies, grimacing as she was poisoned by the incredibly potent gas now spread in the air.
Muk, however, having inherited an incredible amount of evasive ability, managed to just about snake its large body out of the way.
"Venoshock," Koga ordered, and it was almost impossible for Misdreavus to dodge from so close.
So Joey decided that she wouldn't. "Trade it for Hypnosis," he ordered, Misdreavus remaining in place and taking the Venoshock right in the face.
It was a testament to her training and perhaps the poison resistance of ghost types that Misdreavus managed to fight through what was doubtlessly an incredibly painful Venoshock to deliver a textbook Hypnosis.
Muk collapsed in itself as it fell asleep, while Misdreavus sank to the floor with a grimace on her large, expressive face.
"Dream Eater," Joey said, but just as the attack was about to go through, Muk was recalled in a red beam.
The trainer sighed. At least they'd gotten rid of the ridiculous number of stacks the Pokemon had, he consoled himself.
"Waiting the whole ten seconds?" Joey asked sarcastically as Koga made no move to call out his next Pokemon. "We really need to get Nasty Plot," Joey muttered to himself as he ordered an Ominous Wind, which had at least a small chance of boosting Misdreavus' stats. "How was your Muk unaffected by all the poison in the ground from Venomoth?" he shouted to the gym leader as the clock ticked and the dark wind billowed.
"They're teammates, they've gotten used to it," Koga replied from the other side with a shrug before pulling out a Pokeball and throwing out an Arbok to face the already flagging Misdreavus. That Venoshock had been nasty, and the ghost was clearly struggling. She likely only had one more in her.
Joey sighed. "Astonish," he ordered, Misdreavus shooting forward again.
"Poison Sting," Koga retorted, causing his Arbok to open its mouth and shoot out a wide cone of poison that covered half the field.
"Dip down and Shadow Sneak," Joey said, at which Misdreavus abandoned the Astonish and fell into her own shadow. A moment later, she was emerging from right behind Arbok.
A moment later, a brutal Iron Tail slammed into her and threw her through the entire field to slam into the psychic barrier protecting the trainers.
Out cold.
Joey recalled his ghost with a frown and thought about his next pick.
Misdreavus had done a good job, denying the setup of Venomoth into Super Muk. Now her team would have to deal with the rest.
He had several secret weapons that worked against Poison Types. Diglett was super effective, Slugma was quite capable of destroying most smaller powders before they infected her, but against Arbok? There was only one choice.
"Metapod," Joey said as he summoned his trusty bug type onto the field.
The green immediately seethed frothing purple poison onto the floor and shouted her name. "Metapod!"
Arbok turned its head to give a concerned look at its trainer.
"She's had to be held back from the last two gym battles," Joey briefly explained.
"Understandable," Koga replied. "Nevertheless, Hyper Beam."
Arbok reared its head back, orange light coalescing in front of its mouth.
A second later, the world was bathed in a bright orange light.
Joey squinted his eyes to try and keep up with what happened and saw how Metapod shot a Bullet String underneath herself just in time to catapult herself into the air, thus managing to dodge the first impact.
Then the Hyper Beam exploded in an expanding blast of force and sent the bug shooting to the other side of the field towards the Arbok due to the positioning of the blast.
Metapod gleamed an iron silver in the fading light. "Meeettaappoooddddddddd!!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Tail," Koga ordered simply after the soundwave of the blast had finished washing over them and echoing across the gym.
Arbok, seemingly unable to use a move but very capable of simply swinging its tail, spun in place and smacked Metapod straight in the face.
The only thing was. After the impact, Metapod wasn't sent careening back where she came from, as could have initially been suspected, but stayed latched shut on the Arbok's tail, her mouth glowing green with Bug Bite. String suddenly started emerging from her mouth, starting to cover the Arbok up from the bottom.
The only thing Koga could do in that situation was… "Fire Fang."
Arbok's large jaw unhinged and became fire. The gleaming fangs shot towards Metapod.
Joey suddenly received a flashback from a very distant past…
"Jump inside and Iron Defence," he shouted.
Metapod, trusting him, completely unlatched herself from the Arbok's tail and let herself be eaten.
One issue. Top to bottom, Metapod was now a very large Pokemon. And while this Arbok was a relatively large and impressive specimen, much larger than the Arbok that Metapod had fought all those months ago, she was now also bigger.
She got stuck, each end of the crescent sticking respectively to the bottom and upper jaw.
"Rest," Joey ordered, causing his Metapod to go lights out.
"Stockpile," Koga ordered on the other hand.
"Sleep Talk," Joey said next, causing a deluge of string to be shot right down the Arbok's gullet.
"Stockpile," Koga said again.
"Sleep Talk," Metapod hardened again, becoming even more resistant to the crushing force of the jaw, although the somewhat lingering fire was flickering on her carapace somewhat painfully.
"Stockpile," Koga said one last time.
"Sleep Talk," Joey said through gritted teeth. Finally, the move he wanted emerged, and a wave of electricity was thrown right into Arbok's gullet, scorching its insides.
The Arbok tried hissing its name as it wiggled, but it couldn't even pronounce it through the obstruction.
Unfortunately, what was stockpiled eventually had to be released.
Stockpile was a move that functioned in an interesting way. Every use of the move multiplied the eventual effect by one. One could either use the stockpile to multiply Spit Up, a damaging move, or Swallow, a self-healing move.
Koga went with the former, and considering that a "Spit Up!" with three stacks of Stockpile was twice as powerful as a Hyper Beam didn't leave Joey with much hope for Metapod.
He could only helplessly order one last "Sleep Talk," as the world once again exploded in light, this time white and purple.
A corona of light and the sound of a nuke combined themselves to shake the air before eventually obliterating the psychic barriers protecting the trainers with a resounding crack that was lost in the boom.
Joey was forced to retreat several steps as the winds created by the explosion cut straight through his clothes and into his flesh.
He blinked away the lights, looked to the side to confirm that Janine and Jessie were ok, they were, before turning to look at the state of the battlefield.
The bad news was that Metapod was completely and utterly knocked out, burns and dents all over her body.
The good news was that so was Arbok
The snake was scorched nearly beyond recognition, mouth still hanging loose, now missing all of its fangs and looking like charcoal.
Koga recalled his Pokemon while Joey did the same.
"I wasn't expecting the mobility," the gym leader admitted. "I thought that the Hyper Beam would knock a few more screws loose since there was nothing to latch a String Shot to on the field."
"It was mostly luck," Joey replied. "Had Metapod not found the correct angle to travel with the blast, it would have been the right call."
"Had, should, would, could," Koga said softly as he gripped his next Pokeball and raised his arm.
Joey mimicked the gesture, and they released their next Pokemon at the same time.
Out of his four, Koga had shown his Venomoth, Muk and lost his Arbok, while Joey had lost Misdreavus and Metapod but still had Rattata, Slugma and a Diglett running on half tank. A pure three versus three, then, no switches.
Venomoth reappeared on Koga's side of the field while Slugma appeared on Joey's.
He'd been tempted to send out Diglett, considering the advantage ground types had against poison, but now he was happy he hadn't. Diglett would be better against Muk or whatever fourth Koga had chosen.
"The floor is lava," Joey ordered, causing Slugma to summon forth a powerful Lava Plume beneath Venomoth.
"Silver Wind," Koga ordered meanwhile, making his tired Venomoth commit to its bit of the switch buffer. He didn't bother trying to powder the arena again, which was smart considering Slugma would simply burn any powder on contact.
Venomoth buzzed around in the air, alternating between Silver Wind and Double Team as more and more lava started covering the field.
Joey's idea was that if the floor was lava, then if Koga didn't have any other floating or flying Pokemon on his team, then Baton Pass would become unfeasible. He trusted Slugma to take on Venomoth, meanwhile.
Unfortunately, luck wasn't on his side there and what he ended up facing after the Baton Pass was a rather enormous floating Wheezing, which had its evasiveness and everything else boosted.
He tssked. "Amnesia," he ordered, making his fire slug tilt its head cutely to the side as its special defence increased.
"Rain Dance," Koga ordered, meanwhile, which was really just all kinds of fucked up.
The droplets promptly started falling, and while Joey was happy to get another use of Amnesia, he wasn't too thrilled to see all his lava disappear in literal smoke and steam.
"Poison Gas," Koga ordered next, seemingly uncaring about the Amnesia stacking, which worried Joey, but not enough to not max out Slugma's special defence.
While Slugma glowed, Weezing ascended closer to the raincloud it had summoned and inhaled a large amount of what must have been poison gas into it.
The falling rain suddenly gained a worrying purple tint.
Joey frowned. "Flamethrower," he ordered, wanting to test the usability of fire moves in such weather.
The cone of fire was half as big as it should have been, but the small amount of poison in the rain did ignite for a brief second, and before Joey could think on it too much, Koga showed him why he hadn't minded letting him stack his Amnesia.
"Haze," he ordered simply, causing Weezing to emit an icy fog from its mouth, which quickly covered the battlefield, no matter how much Slugma's Flamethrower tried to fight against it.
The haze removed all stat-boosting effects, both from Slugma and Weezing, to be fair, but Slugma was out there in the poison rain while Weezing was technically as fresh as a daisy.
Slugma suddenly flinched, and Joey scowled as he watched purple veins suddenly crisscross its body. While Flame Body protected Slugma from small amounts of poison, getting constantly exposed through raindrops, which also counteracted its ability, was one way to fight through that barrier.
If Joey had any switches left, this was when he would have used them.
Instead, he simply had to watch as Weezing once again reapplied its Poison Rain combo before coming in with an Assurance, a move that dealt double damage to targets who'd already been hurt recently, for example by poison, which wiped out Slugma in exchange for one Ancient Power in the face.
Three Pokemon left for the gym leader, and two for Joey who waited the full ten seconds before sending out Rattata.
"We're down two to three," he said reluctantly, having had very different expectations for this battle. "It's on you and Diglett now."
"Rarara," his starter said confidently as his fur grew wet under the poison rain.
"Quick attack into trick," Joey said quietly for only his starter to hear.
Rattata blurred forward in a white line of light.
"Protect and let it get poisoned," Koga said from the other side of the arena.
Joey smirked as Rattata halted its Quick Attack right in front of Weezing and used the secret they'd learned specifically for this gym and which had allowed Rattata to consistently defeat Misdreavus in their spars.
Dark energy surged through Rattata as he said something and pulled his fingers to Weezing in a come here gesture.
The Weezing, for its part, simply exploded with a serene look on its face.
The arena disappeared in a bright light for the third time that day.
Joey stared angrily at the dissipating smoke, the blast having broken up the rain.
Protect and Nasty Plot, so many moves he still needed. But in the end, there'd always be something unexpected waiting for him, no? It was impossible to be a master for all.
The smoke from the explosion cleared, revealing a knocked-out Rattata and Weezing laying on the ground.
Both were promptly recalled.
"You're on your last," Koga commented calmly. "I still have Venomoth and Muk, while you have Diglett. I'll send out Venomoth, just for your information. She still has a few Double Teams and a Baton Pass in her."
"Shut up and fight me," Joey replied with an angry scowl as he gripped Diglett's Pokeball.
"Admirable spirit, but that won't always be enough," Koga replied as both trainers sent out their Pokemon.
Joey raised an eyebrow when he saw the Muk on the other side.
"Earthquake," he ordered immediately, not willing to lose out on the opportunity.
The Muk exploded.
The battlefield disappeared in a flash of light.
The smoke dissipated.
Both Diglett and Muk lay knocked out and scorched on the floor.
"I lied," Koga said simply as he recalled his Pokemon. "I don't do repeats, nor do I flip coins."
Janine raised her flag while Joey sighed and dragged a hand down his face. He recalled Diglett.
"The gym leader wins," Janine announced with what Joey thought was a bit too much schadenfreude in her voice.
Joey and Koga met in the middle of the field and shook hands, after which Joey looked down at his hand, surprised to find a small pink badge laying on his palm.
"I got the badge?" he asked in a confused voice.
"I lied about another thing," Koga said. "That wasn't my eighth badge team."
Joey's eyes widened in realisation. "You mean?" he asked.
The gym leader nodded. "It was my personal team."
"What, so you almost lost to a seventh badge trainer with your personal team?" Joey joked while thinking about the fact that Koga was a future Elite Four Member and that he'd just fought his personal team. That was huge.
"I could have dragged down Diglett without Explosion by taking some extra time, then you would have lost two to five," Koga retorted while shaking his head. "I was simply teaching you a lesson."
"Lesson learned," Joey said with a sigh. "I need to learn Protect."
Koga furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?" he asked. "The lesson was obviously that you need to learn Explosion."
Joey stared at the man blankly, not knowing if he was joking or not.
The older man's face, pulled into a permanent hard frown, didn't budge.
"But if that was your personal team, then I don't quite know where I stand," Joey muttered eventually.
"High seventh badge level punching up due to the match-ups in this case," Koga replied as the two of them made their way to the side of the scorched, poisoned, exploded, exploded battlefield. It was basically just a crater full of hardened lava and shit at this point. "You had Slugma, Diglett, Misdreavus and Metapod all very suited for taking on Poison types. Had I fielded my Eight badge team, you would have likely won by a hair. For the eight badge, I generally leave out either Muk or Weezing, but leave in Venomoth and Arbok, then I allow the challenger to use six Pokemon, which you obviously don't have. Unfortunately, just as your team is suited for taking on Poison types, it's unsuited for water types. You're a few months away from your eighth badge."
"Thanks," Joey muttered, before sighing. "That's a good assessment."
The gym leader nodded, hiding his lower face in his scarf. "Yes, now talking about assessments, you asked for ninja manuals over the winter break, so there will be one last optional part of this gym challenge."
Joey raised an eyebrow. "That being?"
"One last fight," Koga said. "Between you and me."
-/-
AN: Reached another 100 follower milestone over on Royalroad, synchronizing now. Hope you're enjoying the quick updates!
Check out my new story! Re: Villain (to Hero)