Searching Far and Wide - 10

Pewter City IV

Another thing Pierce had started doing soon after Lily and him arrived at the city was going to the Pewter Gym. A building he’d been in awe of, for sure, but it also was a target of his at this point. He wouldn’t be battling there for a while yet, of course, but he would come back with a team better suited for it later down the line. He did wonder though, if Brock would still be there whenever he came back.

Because he was the leader at the moment, not his father. Considering that and the fact that the Rocket Team was around, that meant that either Ash hadn’t come around for a visit just yet or that he was in a world without Ash. The only comfort of that latter option was that Red could still be a thing. Pierce really didn’t want to be in a world without a hero to take care of the bigger problems.

He just wanted a peaceful life, dammit.

Back on topic, Pierce visited the Gym from time to time. Not to challenge but to spectate challenges. Contrary to what his anime knowledge said, you couldn’t just watch for free, however, which he once more should have expected. ‘Goddamnit, the anime is useless,’ he’d grumbled back at the time. However, the silver lining was that there were several ways to get around watching battles.

The expensive way was to pay for every individual match, of course, but his eyes had basically glossed right over that option. He was good in the money department but he wasn’t loaded. The slightly better option was a pass that would let him watch any match that happened for a week after he bought it. There was also the full season pass, but that was basically for locals, which didn’t quite work for him, sadly.

Thus, he’d gone for the week ticket.

He didn’t watch every match though, of course. There were challenges at the place that happened basically all day. Most of the time, it was Brock that fought, but sometimes one of his brothers would take his place. Everytime that latter option happened though, as far as he’d seen, it was against someone within the range of no badges to two badges max, which Pierce supposed made sense.

It’d been very educational to watch the battles, full of different battle styles and all. Most of them were low level, but Pierce had been fortunate enough to catch a guy with five badges that had decided to re-challenge all the gyms for the new season. That fight had been much more interesting than any other, that was for sure.

It also further cemented a piece of knowledge that Pierce had found on the internet. Gyms rotated pokemon a lot for challenges, even for fights in the same level they’d change up their teams every fight. More importantly, they adapted the skill level of the pokemon used to whatever the badge number of their opponent was. ‘So, no coming back with a bunch of badges and fighting weak geodude and onix, sadly,’ Pierce had realized, a little nervous about that piece of knowledge.

As it was, all he could do was take notes on how Brock fought and the weaknesses that the rock types displayed in the matches he saw. There were type weaknesses, of course, but most of them also seemed to be slow. If they somehow managed to deal with that disadvantage – with Rollout, for example – they usually still had trouble with accuracy. So, mobility was something he could take advantage of and something Narcissa had a lot of. That was good.

A good few hours of every day was spent watching battles and furthering his knowledge on the rock typing and sometimes other typings that the challengers would use. Pierce didn’t know what would be useful later down the line, so everything he could, he tried to learn. Not only against but in favor of every pokemon used. After all, maybe he’d get one of the pokemon he saw battling at a later point.

It was just a shame that Narcissa wasn’t able to witness the battles. He’d have had to pay extra for that, and maybe he was a bit of a cheapskate, but he didn’t think it was worth it. Sure, his beedrill would have enjoyed them and they’d have pumped her up to train more, but his bug type really didn’t need extra motivation. Besides, watching some battles at the pokemon center computers worked well enough.

‘I still feel bad about it though,’ Pierce thought to himself one of those days as he watched an oddish go against a geodude. Maybe he could ask at the reception if there was any way to know when another “big” battle would take place. He could pay the extra price of a match like that. Narcissa would love that… Even if it probably would also fuel her battle maniac tendencies.

Pierce was starting to be resigned to those already, quite honestly.

He’d probably have to take a job or two to make himself feel better regarding money, he supposed. He did have to make more as it was, since… Well, he was good for the moment, but one or two additions to his team could easily change that. It’d be better to be prepared for any eventuality. There were, after all, a number of pokemon that eat a lot and the last thing Pierce wanted was to end up with one of those and short on money because he hadn’t prepared beforehand.

‘Focus on the fight, Pierce, you can theorize teams and money later,’ he thought, turning back to see the oddish win the fight. Salvadore, the third oldest brother in the family, released a rhyhorn after that. ‘They do make the Weasleys look like they had restraint, man,’ Pierce thought wryly before shaking his head and actually concentrating on the fights.

[}-o-{]

“All good, right?” Pierce asked, turning to the person that had hired him for the day and probably the following days until he left Pewter. The job with the beedrill had been good, but a one time thing. This new one though, might just keep him occupied and money flowing for the time he’d be around. It was hard work, but at least it meant that Narcissa had space to train and he could be lazy and skip a few days of work out… For the most part.

His beedrill was enough of a taskmaster to expect him to do some exercises even with the job.

“Yeah, all good, go along now, girl,” his employer said, giving the ponyta he’d been working on a pat on the side that sent the fire type out to the field. Not before it gave an appreciative neigh to which he smiled.

“You are welcome. Have fun with the rest, yeah?” Pierce said, to which the pokemon nodded and went on to join the rest of the ponyta in the ranch together with a few rapidash too. Once she moved away, he deflated a little, groaning and stretching as he tried to make the aches of having to check and pick out the hooves of all those fire types had caused him.

“Yes, it gets like that,” the old man that had hired him, someone that usually left most of the work to his son’s family, told him. Apparently, the family of the aforementioned son had gone on a vacation so the man had to hire trainers in the meantime. His age had gotten to him, as he’d told Pierce while he worked, so he’d been unable to take care of his ranch by himself as he’d once done. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Hopefully before I’m done here in Pewter,” Pierce replied with a sigh. “Anyway, what’s next?” he asked then, trying to get work done before his body decided that it wanted to be lazy. It’d be really nice to have a somewhat stable source of income for the rest of his stay at Pewter, which was the main reason he’d gotten the job which could be repeated for a few days.

Single jobs like the one about the beedrill were nice and all, keeping the interesting factor since each would be a new experience. However, it’d also mean that the pay would vary and he may not even get paid if things didn’t work out. Hell, he was still waiting for the pay of the job at that one farm. He’d gotten a message that the arrangement had worked so far, but the owner would wait a day or two more and that’d be it. Pierce didn’t think he’d be scammed per se, but it’d be much better if he could just be paid and be done with it, quite honestly.

“Well, now we gotta get the stables ready for the night,” Arnold told him, shifting where he stood, sort of rotating on his cane to face the aforementioned building. “Replace bedding and clean any messes that the little shits might have caused. After that, it’s mostly all about checking their food and water and the stock of both. Once that is done, then we can both take care of the pokemon. Who knows, you might even learn something,” the man commented, drawing a grin from Pierce.

Good thing he’d brought his backpack with him. He’d want to take notes of whatever the old man told him, that was for sure. Hell, he already needed to do that about picking out the hooves of the ponyta and rapidash. Who knew, maybe not one of those, but he might get another horse-like pokemon. Or maybe Lily would, or some other friend of his down the line. It’d be nice to know regardless.

Besides, pokemon were interesting to learn about, that was for sure.

‘If only college was half this much fun to study for,’ he thought with a grin. He was even excited for work as things stood. That didn’t last long though, since most of it was repetition and there wasn’t all that much to learn, but it still wasn’t all that bad. Arnold, the old guy that he was, had a lot of stories to tell.

Apparently, he’d been caring for the ponyta/rapidash for his whole life. It was a business that his father had started and he’d carried on doing through his life. His son was apparently going to take over it like he’d done when his father passed and so the whole thing would continue existing it seemed.

He didn’t breed the pokemon for any particular purpose though. He sold for trainers, coordinators and even racers. Granted, it seemed that his pokemon were better for the latter than any of the other two, but Pierce had been told repeatedly that Arnold’s fire types had done well in any of the fields they could participate in. The old man was probably biased, but from what Pierce had seen of the pokemon, they looked good enough for that to be true.

On top of family business stories though, Arnold just had a lot of things to say in general. Small nuggets of wisdom that were dropped randomly in between the stories. Which made it very fortunate that Pierce found all of them fascinating. Maybe to other people they’d have been boring old man tales, but the fact that they took place in the pokemon world made them sound very interesting to Pierce. ‘It’s like hearing fanfiction as real life tales,’  he thought, very amused by the idea.

Arnold also had a lot to say about taking care of pokemon in general, with some experience in other lines besides the ponyta one. Pierce did his absolute best to commit as much of it to memory while he worked and note everything down whenever he had a moment to do so. Fortunately, the old man was more than willing to give him a minute or two here and there to do that.

Pierce was pretty sure that he was glad to have someone actually listen to him, but refrained from actually commenting on that.

[}-o-{]

“Gym Trainer Forrest will release his pokemon first,” Salvadore, the referee of the battle he was waiting for, announced from the side of the battlefield. Pierce had his notebook at the ready and he was watching intently, but writing things down would probably be far from something that he’d focus on right then and there. After all… Well, he didn’t think he wanted to miss a single second of this fight. Narcissa, next to him, flew forward, draping her stingers over the railing that faced the battle.

The oldest brother, besides Brock, pulled a pokeball from his belt and soon released a pokemon. A strange, turtle-like creature appeared, with a bright red shell and white circles around the entries to it. Out of them came weird, yellow limbs that looked like tentacles and a head that didn’t differ much from those. The first time that Pierce had seen it, he hadn’t remembered the thing's name or even the typing, but he did now.

‘Shuckle, bug type with a secondary rock type,’ he thought, remembering some of the notes he’d taken once he went back to the Pokemon Center and looked the creature up. It was a fortunate choice, all things considered.

“Challenger Lillian, please release your first pokemon,” Salvadore called out then, and Pierce’s friend nodded, pulling her own pokeball from her belt. Lily had decided, midway through the week in which they waited for the tournament he’d told her about when they arrived, that she was going to challenge the gym. It’d be a nice way to check her pokemon’s strength to see if she stood a chance, in her words.

From her pokeball came Talon, as Pierce expected. Not only had she told him that she’d start off with her “weaker” pokemon – type-wise, that is – but Shuckle received normal damage from Flying type attacks. Chances were that she wouldn’t have that luck in the next pokemon choice. Talon would still be at a disadvantage against rock type attacks, but… Well, that was going to happen no matter what.

“Start!” Salvadore called then.

“Peck, quick!” Lily called instantly towards her bird, who had been flying in circles over its side of the battlefield.

“Bide,” Forrest said, a slight frown on his face. His voice was lower, but then again, his pokemon was lying on the ground right in front of him. Pierce had to wonder what Lily would do against that command. Bide was a move that basically had the pokemon tank attacks until it unleashed one that was even stronger than whatever it had been hit with. A dangerous thing to go against, but an equally dangerous technique to use. Wait too long, and your pokemon would be out before it could even do its thing. Wait too little, and it wouldn’t do as much damage as you probably wanted.

“Stop that, Growl and Leer!” Lily called then, an intense look on her face as she regarded the two pokemon. “And don’t let up!” she decided to go with. Probably as good a way to do it as any other. She could have done nothing at all, but Forrest would have probably done nothing too until something happened. Bide had a small base cost of energy even if the pokemon wasn’t hit with anything.

By using debilitating moves, she was doing something while also not dealing any damage to charge Bide with. Smart, really. Pierce wasn’t completely sold on debuff moves, especially those similar to the ones she used, since it didn’t seem to him like they did much at all. However, he’d freely admit that in the situation she was in, that was probably the best call he could think of. There was Aerial Ace too, but that was only if the attack’s damage was enough to take the opponent in one hit, which it probably wasn’t.

Obviously, Forrest didn’t just sit there.

“Constrict, Shuckle,” the boy called, his already naturally narrowed eyes doing so further as her frown became even more pronounced. Then, out of nowhere, energy coalesced around Talon in small tentacles that tried to trap him. Tried being the operative word. However, even if they failed to grab onto him, the spearow still was hit by a few of them, destabilizing his flying. “Again,” Forrest commanded, receiving a small nod from his bug type.

“Go for it again, Peck!” Lily told her pokemon, which did exactly that. It dove straight towards the small pokemon almost making Pierce think that the spearow had gotten confused and had decided to go for an Aerial Ace. He hadn’t though, but he did use that added speed the fall gave him to avoid the new attack that came for him. “Another, keep it up!” Lily called once the first Peck landed.

“Withdraw,” Forrest said then, making his pokemon pull into its shell. Unlucky for Pierce’s friend, he supposed. Talon had only gotten two hits before that happened, but then again, maybe it was insulting to the Gym Trainer to expect him not to make such a call.

“Stay close, Peck it as soon as it comes out!” Lily ordered her pokemon, frowning even though she had the upper hand. Things would depend on Forrest from there, the battle was basically stopped until the bug type came out. Although, Pierce wondered if there was a reason she wasn’t using debuffs once more. Was it because she didn’t want to miss a single second just in case? Or had she just forgotten? ‘Gotta ask her after this is over,’ Pierce thought to himself, risking a few seconds to make a quick note about that in his notebook.

He almost sighed in relief that the single second it took didn’t bring anything new to the battle.

“Come out,” Forrest said and Shuckle peeked back out almost instantly. Just as fast though, Talon batted his wings and rushed it. “Wrap,” the Gym Trainer said though.

“No!” Lily exclaimed when her flying type was caught between Shuckle’s weird tentacle limbs. “Peck it! It won’t let go, so do damage!” she called, the desperation of the order bleeding into her voice. It was justified though, since Talon’s one good point was that it flew, which made it difficult to reach for Shuckle. It was unfortunate that they lacked range and just as unfortunate that their opponent had an effective way to take his mobility out of the equation.

So, that’s how the rest of that battle, if it could be called that, went. Shuckle wrapped and squeezed the poor bird while Talon did his best to Peck the thing into submission. It was… Not a good sight, but Pierce had learned that sometimes battles just weren’t pretty shows. That’s what coordinator battles were supposed to be. In a normal battle, anything that could get you a win was fair game, as long as you didn’t break any rules. Hell, from what he’d seen in forums, people were liable to go against you if you avoided such ways in favor of the “cool”.

To most, it seemed to mean that one wasn’t trying hard enough. Pierce could sort of see the reasoning behind that, he supposed. Fortunately, many trainers got away with it, one just had to do it consistently. You couldn’t go for a cool fight against one opponent and then play every trick on someone else. The only excuse people would give was if you were trying to stay true to your personal style, whatever that might be. It was a loose set of unofficial rules, but it was interesting all the same.

“Both pokemon are unable to continue,” the referee announced then and Pierce gave his friend a nervous, hopeful look. It seemed that Lily might just be alright. After all, Talon was the weak link for the battle and he’d done alright. Now it was time to hope that whatever Forrest let out wouldn’t be something that was actually strong against Root.

The boy then released his pokemon with his lips pursed, evidently the fight wasn’t going as he’d hoped, but Pierce couldn’t say why that was. From all the challenges he’d witnessed so far, he hadn’t seen anyone causing the Gym Trainers to feel bad, really. Regardless, Pierce’s attention was brought back to the pokemon that was let out in the battlefield and a grin spread over his face. He hadn’t seen that one just yet, but he’d found it in his many searches regarding rock types. A fake tree-like creature with a long brown body and two short toe-less legs waved its “hands” around, wiggling the green spheres at the end of them.

‘Sudowoodo, full rock typing,’ Pierce noted to himself. That had been an interesting fact when he’d seen the thing. He’d fully expected it to at least have a secondary grass typing, if not a main one. But nope, he’d been baited, it seemed.

Back to the battle, it was already looking good for Lily. Sudowoodo didn’t have any advantages against Root that Pierce could remember. Even the rough memories he had of its possible moveset weren’t very encouraging. ‘Well, from the natural move list, that is. Not sure if it’s trained for any other move or if it has an egg move,’ he considered as Lily let out her pokemon.

If anything, Root’s release seemed to sour Forrest’s mood even more, which was really curious.

“Begin!” Salvadore called then and both trainers called moves instantly.

“Vine Whip!”

“Rock Throw!”

Pierce was somewhat taken aback that those were the only commands that were used after that. Both pokemon simply continued fighting with their orders and nothing else. To some extent, Pierce guessed it made sense. Root didn’t really have much else to throw that would do more damage than Vine Whip. Leech Seed, maybe, but that was more likely to be used later if it got wounded enough to guarantee needing the healing.

As for Sudowoodo, well, he was much less knowledgeable about that one, but he supposed if all Forrest was doing was giving his pokemon directions about how to use the move, then it was likely it was the best thing it had available for use. It was interesting though, certainly a contrast to what Pierce had seen about trainers throwing around move after move. Why switch though, when what you were doing was the best you could do?

Granted, there could be an element of surprise thrown in there or some other type of attempt at getting the opponent off guard, but this was a low level battle. It was unlikely that either side had all that much to work with. After all, Pierce had seen Forrest battle a guy with two badges and that had shown him that even if he was no Brock, he could hold himself to the level of a Gym Battle.

“Sudowoodo is unable to battle!” Salvadore announced eventually, which made all the sense in the world. No matter how much Forrest tried to hit more with different tactics, the fact of the matter was that Lily had been working on her own side of things to get things in her favor too. In the end, all had been decided by typing, but that was more of a statement of how close the battle was than any unfairness, really. Sometimes you were just unlucky and picked rock against paper, it was how battles were.

Relaxing where he sat, now that his friend had won, Pierce traded a look with Narcissa. Less than a minute later, the beedrill had already latched onto his back as they walked out of the stands. He’d probably come back to see some more matches, maybe with Lily in tow, but as it was, he wanted to talk with his friend away from the small gathering of people that was also watching the matches.

“Congrats,” he said as he saw his friend, talking with both Root and Talon, the latter of which she was carrying in her arms, since he’d probably barely recovered from being taken out in the battle. “A visit to the Pokemon Center before anything else, is what I’m guessing?”

“Thanks, and yes,” Lily said, beaming at him as she stood up with her bird in hand. A bird that seemed to be glaring at anything and everything. Evidently, it didn’t like the fact that it had been taken out. Either that or that his win wasn’t decisive enough, Pierce supposed. Root, for his part, seemed to be very proud of himself, if the way he was almost preening was any indication. “That was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. Good thing it wasn’t against Brock, or I might just have lost.”

“You didn’t, so you are officially a one badge trainer and officially better than poor old me. Whatever shall I do?” Pierce said, never really dropping the grin or the cheer in his voice. The comment drew a giggle from the girl as he followed her out. He could accompany her to the Pokemon Center. Somehow, it felt sort of rude to just leave her alone, she was his friend, after all. He could come watch more battles later.

“Well, maybe if you caught something else you could give it a try. I know Narcissa could take care of any first pokemon they let out in there,” Lily told him, and he didn’t even need to look at her to know his beedrill was very happy with hearing that. “But I guess you wouldn’t have time to really train it for a while.”

“Yeah, it’s just going to be regular battles for me,” Pierce replied with a shrug, a gesture that didn’t even disturb Narcissa anymore. The beedrill had even gotten the hang of going along with such things in her desire to cling to him for whatever reason. “And honestly, I’m fine with that,” he added, because it was true. He had no rush to get through the circuit.

Sure, he wanted to help Narcissa get stronger and all that, but that didn’t mean he had to aim to win the League in a year or anything. He could do that in a few years time or however long it took him. On top of that, it wasn’t like it was required to actually participate in the League to be recognized as a strong trainer or for Narcissa to be recognized as a strong pokemon.

“I mean, aren’t you interested in checking some of the pokemon nearby? There’s some decent choices I wouldn’t-”

The conversation was otherwise interrupted when they heard a loud explosion in the distance.

Looking around, shocked, it didn’t take the two of them long to find out where it had come from.

There was a smoke plum, a big one, coming from Mt. Moon.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Well, first Gym Battle of the fic, even if it wasn’t Pierce’s. I hope it wasn’t too bad, but pokemon battles will probably be – ironically, maybe – the hardest part about writing this fic. I can only do my best and wait for you guys to decide how it was.

Also, trouble on the horizon, it seems, literally at that. Whatever could that be? What a mystery, huh?

Regarding update time: This post was made at the usual time instead of the time I have been testing with this and DbD, I know. I’m an impatient bastard and I couldn’t wait to get it out there, so since I was free, I did it. I wanted to know though, would it be fine by you if I held the update time a bit flexibly? I’ve had several times when the update time is a bit inconvenient and I’d like to know if it’d be annoying or something if I had to do it earlier or later for whatever reason.

Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Squirtle, Charmander or Bulbasaur? I like Bulbasaur better. Don’t get me wrong, the pseudo-dragon that’s Charizard is cool and all, but I picked Bulbasaur for my first game because my friends had already picked the other two and I grew attached to it.

See you.