The New Normal - 15-16

The New Normal – 15-16 – Getting Along

I picked up the phone, “Hello, this is John. Am I speaking to Elesa?”

“Yes it is.” Elesa replied, “I got your number from Iris, so I hope you don’t mind me contacting you out of the blue like this.”

“Not at all. I was going to do the same.” I said, “But I hope you’re glad to be saddled with me as your partner for this tournament. Because I’m an ambitious man, and I intend to be winning the whole thing.”

I heard her chuckle, “If Iris didn’t get paired up with Karen I think she would have been pouting seeing us paired together. Out of everyone, she wanted to be paired with you and Karen the most – probably because you two are the closest with her. Though I’m sorry to tell you that you were her second choice.”

“Ouch, my poor heart.” I said dramatically, “How would I ever recover from this?”

She chuckled, “Must be because Karen’s able to relate to her more.”

“Nah, I knew that Karen would grow closer to her than I would. Karen’s always been very good with children.” I replied, “It makes sense that they’d get along so well.”

Elesa nodded, “Myself and the other Gym Leaders also get along with Iris quite well too. I’ve spoken to her quite a lot. At first, I thought she’d really struggle to be a Gym Leader; her talent as a trainer notwithstanding. But while she isn’t perfect at it, she’s a really attentive and quick learner – so it’s been a pleasure to speak with her whenever she asks us for advice.”

“But anyways, enough about her for the moment, I called you here to talk about our upcoming partnership.” She continued, “Now, I’m not sure how much you know about me, but I’ve actually done quite a lot of reading up on you beforehand. I’ve watched the recording of how you stomped over Grimsley’s team with your starter several times now, so I definitely don’t have any complaints in terms of strength. In fact, I just hope you don’t find me lacking – I know I’m the one that’s going to be dragging you down.”

“You know, my first partner in the previous Tournament said pretty much the same thing, and we ended up making it to the Top 3 and winning the whole thing. So you don’t have anything to worry about.” I said reassuringly, “And besides, I know you’re a hard worker, which is all that I really ask for.”

“In that case, I’ll thank you in advance for your patience and assistance.” She said, “Let’s work well together.”

I nodded, “We have a full week before our first battle in the Tournament is going to take place, so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it. I know we’ve already burnt through most of the day, but I see no reason why we can’t get started today. If you’re up for it, could you come meet me at the Celestic Town Research Centre? We can start training there.”

“…Why there? Is there a training field there?” Elesa asked confusedly, “And would they even let you use it?”

“Cynthia’s the de-facto leader there, and I’m dating her. And I’m also—”

“Never mind. I understand.” She interrupted me, “I keep forgetting that you’re somehow dating the Champion of Sinnoh. If we have some spare time, I’d love to ask how you both even met and got together.”

“Sure, maybe over a meal. If she’s free maybe I can ask Cynthia to join us.” I said.

“That’d be lovely.” I could feel her smiling over the phone, “Anyways, I’ll meet you at Celestic Town. See you there.”

We reconvened there shortly afterwards, and after exchanging a round of greetings with the researchers and scientists where I introduced Elesa to them, Elesa and I got to work in one of the training fields.

“I think it’s best to start off with the Pokémon that we plan to use.” I said, “Why not you start first?”

She nodded and proceeded to release her team – which consisted of two Emolgas, Galvantula, Eelektross, Stunfisk, and finally her starter Zebstrika.

I inspected her team with a thoughtful glance, though her Emolga, Galvantula, and Zebstrika were the ones that caught my attention the most. I may have yet to see them in action, but from what I knew of these Pokémon based on my metaknowledge, I expected all three of them to be very agile and evasive attackers that could prove useful when fighting in a 2v2.

There was a lot of possibilities there… especially if they were as fast and as mobile as I hoped they were.

In the meantime, I released my full team for her to see. It was pretty amusing seeing her shocked expression when she saw just how varied my team was. From the hulking representations of strength in Tyrant, Smough, and Vordt, the healing supporters in Klee, Luna, and Euphie, and then the ‘tricksters’ in Ornstein, Wraith, Pixel, and Winston.

I deliberately chose not to send out both Tails and Audino for now. Sadly, they weren’t going to be strong enough to be a useable option in the tournament, so there was no need to complicate matters for now.

Elesa took a moment to inspect my full team. I noticed that though the visible strength of my bruisers was clearly the most impressive for her, it was my more ‘unique’ Pokémon like Wraith, Klee, and Pixel that really caught her interest.

“…I think it would be better if we have a match between us to show off what we can do.” She eventually said, “It’s probably easier for us both if we can visualize what the other can do.”

“That’s fine by me.” I nodded, and the two of us moved to take our positions as our sparring began. We started with the more ‘simple’ Pokémon first, leaving the more ‘complex’ Pokémon like Wraith and Pixel for last.

Therefore, I stood back and observed the battles carefully – my eyes scanning over her Pokémon to take in and absorb every last bit of detail that I could extract. We had deliberately chosen to not give our Pokémon any instructions just so that we could observe them as they fought purely with their trained instincts.

From what I managed to observe, I wasn’t all too surprised by her fighting style or competence. Elesa fought exactly how I expected her to, using her Pokémon’s natural speed and agility to dodge past attacks while bombarding their foes with high power Electric attacks that would stun and shock them. And when their opponents inevitably got paralysed, this only furthered increased the speed gap between them that made them increasingly vulnerable to being blasted down.

However, what was particularly impressive was that both her Emolgas and Zebstrika had the ability Motor Drive, which would boost their speed whenever they were struck by an Electric attack. So what she did was that her Pokémon would intermittently fire off Discharges that would hit themselves, thereby boosting their speed even further and quickly allowing their Pokémon to reach ridiculous levels of speed. It was like replicating the effects of the Speed Boost ability.

And when her Pokémon got that fast, it was actually a pain to hit them with any direct attacks. When I had Ornstein face off against her Emolga, just to see if he would be able to match the Electric type with his own great speed, I found out the hard way that even with all the speed training that I had done, Ornstein just wasn’t fast enough.

At the beginning of the fight their speeds were equal, but Emolga was rapidly able to ramp up with Motor Drive and simply became too fast for Ornstein to catch as he was whittled down by Thunderbolts and Discharges.

Not only that, but even the likes of Pixel – who mostly relied on Special Attacks – struggled to land a hit on the zooming Emolga. It was only when Pixel swapped to large area-of-effect attacks like Blizzard did it finally manage to catch the Emolga.

However, I noticed that there was a notable weakness in Elesa’s team. For all their incredible speed, her Pokémon were incredibly fragile. Maybe it was just because my Pokémon hit harder than your average Pokémon, but a single well-placed Rock Throw from Smough managed to instantly take out Emolga from practically full health. Sure, it was a supereffective hit, but Smough hadn’t even buffed himself up yet with Belly Drum.

…Maybe my standards were just different after what my Pokémon were usually expected to fight against. Perhaps I was being unfair to Elesa about how frail her Pokémon actually was because of my Pokémon’s ‘above average’ strength. But either way, it confirmed to me that if her Pokémon failed to use their great speed to dodge out of the way of an attack, then that attack was going to hurt.

The other weakness was that her firepower was not the best. It was definitely above average, but compared to the other Electric type specialist that I knew, like Volkner, her damage was lacking. For example, Volkner’s Electivire was like a one man army in battles, able to unleash a crackling storm of devastation around it as it pummelled and zapped everything around it.

In his previous Tournament run, Volkner’s starter was even able to match up well against Pryce’s own starter – which was a Pokémon that had done significant damage to Emperor. That was a testament of Electivire’s incredible strength and firepower.

On the other hand, even Elesa’s most powerful attackers in Zebstrika and Eelektross couldn’t come close to that level of firepower that Volkner had displayed. I had deliberately matched them against my most defensive Pokémon in Smough and Klee, just to test just how powerful their non-boosted attacks could be. And after some testing, they did manage to do some respectable damage against my two Pokémon, but it would still take many more hits before they could bring my defensive behemoths down.

Meanwhile, the rest of her team… let’s just say that they struggled significantly against Smough and Klee in the offense department if they remained unbuffed.

So that made it absolutely clear to me that, against the level of opponents that we were about to face off against, Elesa would struggle heavily to carry a fight on her own – unless she managed to somehow find the time to buff up her Pokémon significantly.

This was very different with Roxanne, as Roxanne had the power and the defenses to both dish out and take damage, but not the speed and mobility.

Despite this, I didn’t have a problem with Elesa’s relative lack of power, as power was something that I had in spades. After seeing her team and their strengths, I already figured that we were going to be a speed-power duo. With me being the latter, obviously.

It was Ornstein and Smough all over again.

Stupid jokes aside, after we had run through all of our battles, Elesa was very interested in asking me all sorts of questions about my more unique Pokémon. She wanted to know everything she could about Wraith’s illusions, Pixel’s type switching, and just how resilient my Pokémon could be.

“…I know we have Zoroark back in Unova, but in all my years of being a Gym Leader, I’ve not fought a Zoroark or Zorua a single time. They are rare Pokémon.” She told me, “Can all Zoroark’s do this with their Illusion ability? Or is it just because yours is a Sinnoh variant?”

“From what I’ve read, I don’t think mine being a Sinnoh variant has any effect on its Illusion ability.” I replied, “Both of our variants can accomplish this with enough training. Though I am proud to say that my Zoroark would probably be better at it than theirs.”

“Fascinating.” She remarked, “And what about your Porygon-Z? Are they all able to switch their Types so freely?”

“…Probably, if they’re willing to put in a lot of time into training up their Porygon-Z to be like mine.” I answered, “I was the first to do it, but I’m sure many others are currently following in my footsteps. Though I have yet to see another Porygon be used in a high level battle so far.”

“But I’m assuming that all of our upcoming opponents would likely know of your Pokémon and their capabilities, right?” She asked.

“Yes, that’s right.” I nodded, “I’ve made no secret of them, so they should know what to expect.”

“…In that case, I think it’d be better for you to be the one that takes the lead in this partnership.” She said, “It just makes sense since you’re more familiar with our opponents and their capabilities than I am. Not only that, since most of our strategies are going to revolve around the firepower that your Pokémon can bring to bear, it makes more sense for you to organise our strategies.”

“Sure.” I was happy to accept that, “Then let’s go over a few things that I’ve already thought of…”

Thus, I relayed the basics of what I believed our team strategy should look like, basing it off what I observed were the strengths and weaknesses of her team. I tried my best to explain it in terms where she wouldn’t take it as me criticising her, since I didn’t want her to think I was insulting her.

Fortunately, Elesa was nowhere near as prideful as I feared, and she was much more thoughtful and analytical too. I quickly came to learn that even though she was a supermodel and one of Unova’s greatest fashion icons, she clearly didn’t rely on her looks when it came to being a Gym Leader. She was insightful and reflective, and the more that we spoke, the more that I found her to be a great partner to have for the upcoming Tournament.

There was still a lot of work to be done before we can properly work together in a fight. But, so far, I had no complaints about working with Elesa. In fact, I would go as far as to say that we worked well together, and I felt like this was definitely going to be the beginning of a fruitful partnership.

So, since we didn’t have much time remaining in the day, as the sky gradually turned dark, I decided that we could take it easy and use the rest of our time today to just allow our Pokémon to get to know each other better. If they could get familiar with each other, then hopefully they would be able to communicate and understand each other better during their fights.

Therefore, Elesa and I sat back and simply allowed our Pokémon to spend time and play around together. And as the two of us leaned back against a tree, we chatted about all kinds of things – some related to the Tournament, some mundane – as we got to actually know each other better. Our conversation flowed easily and smoothly, and I could feel that we were definitely becoming fast friends.

Because of that, the more we talked, the more confident I felt about winning this Tournament.

===================

(Pokémon POV)

While their trainers were talking and getting to know each other better, the Pokémon were doing the same thing.

“So was your trainer telling the truth?” An Emolga asked curiously, “Did you really fight against a Legendary?”

“We did. The battle had left its mark, but we made it out in one piece.” Klaus replied, “Make no mistake. We were lucky that our trainer managed to awaken the Legendary Titan and have it fight by our side, or else we likely would not have made it out of that battle.”

“But we still would have fought regardless.” Vordt added, “Our trainer was never going to run away from such a battle – and we vowed to always stay by his side.”

“So if that’s story is true, then that probably means all the other stuff that our trainer looked up about yours is true as well, right?” The other Emolga asked, “Where you were all involved in fighting against several criminal organisations?”

“Our pack does not lie.” Wraith growled.

Klee nodded, “Recently, it feels like we’ve fought against more criminals than regular trainers. So I’m glad things have returned to normal. I didn’t like hurting all those Pokémon. They didn’t deserve it.”

“However, knowing our trainer, it’s probably only a matter of time before we get wrapped up in a similar situation once again.” Luna pointed out, “Our trainer is very active in making sure criminals are dealt with. Speaking of which, have you all dealt with criminals before?”

“Rarely.” Eelektross answered, “Our trainer is usually more focused on her Gym Leader duties. And it’s not like our home had any big criminal outbreaks.”

“Lucky.” Klee remarked, “Those are never fun.”

Then Zebstrika stepped forwards, letting out a small spark of electricity to catch everyone’s attention, “We’ve gone too far off topic. Our trainers want us to be more familiar with each other’s capabilities so that we can better fight alongside each other. We have battles to win, after all. Or perhaps we can restart the sparring if you are all amenable to this.”

“Didn’t we just spar already?” Stunfisk asked lazily as it let out a yawn, “We don’t need to go over this again. And besides, Snorlax over there’s already asleep.”

Stunfisk pointed to the side, where Smough was lying down on his back as he snored loudly, uncaring of the discussions that were happening around him.

“A few quick spars is not going to be sufficient at telling us everything we need to know.” Zebstrika countered, “Our opponents in the upcoming battles are going to be tough. And I want to make sure our trainer doesn’t get humiliated with an early defeat.”

“That is a good attitude to have.” A deep, rumbling voice echoed across the training field as Tyrant lumbered forwards towards them. Even though he didn’t intend to pick a fight, the sheer terrifying pressure that emanated from him was enough to cause most of Elesa’s Pokémon to flinch back instinctively.

Amongst them, only Zebstrika had no reaction.

Tyrant obviously noticed this and merely smiled, “There is no need to be afraid. Your trainer is partnered with mine. We are allies together. My fists will not turn against you. Only our opponents need fear them.”

That caused Klaus to let out a sigh, “Tyrant, you’re frightening them again. You need to learn to appear more friendly.”

“Ah, but being friendly is not my role.” Tyrant replied, “That’s reserved for our pink friends. If John ever wants a friendly face, then Klee, Luna, and Euphie would suit the role better. I don’t think a face as ugly as mine would be suitable. As John would put it – I’m the stick. The strong threat to back up his words.”

“…Yes, that seems pretty obvious to us.” Eelektross agreed after recovering from his slight shock, though it was still a little wary, “With strength like that, no wonder your trainer seemed so confident that we could win the whole tournament.”

“Of course. That should be the expectation.” Tyrant smiled, “And now that you’re saddled along with us, then that expectation becomes yours too. John would never tolerate aiming for anything other than first place. And – more importantly for you all – neither will I.”

The underlying threat in Tyrant’s voice only caused another wave of nervous tension to wash over Elesa’s Pokémon. It was a purely instinctual response, caused by their natural reaction to a terrifying difference in strength.

Fortunately, that tension was broken as Klee clapped her hands, “Okay—no need to scare them any further, Tyrant. You’ve done enough. Now shoo, go over there and try to wake up Smough if you can. You know how hungry he gets after a nap, and I doubt our trainer’s going to want to feed him again. You’re not wanted right now, so shoo, shoo.”

As Klee waved him away, Tyrant let out a rumbling laugh, but he obeyed and walked over to where Smough was still asleep. Klee watched him go, before turning back to Elesa’s Pokémon with a cheerful smile on her face.

“Sorry about him, everyone. Tyrant can be a bit intense, but he means well. He’s just very protective of us and wants us to be the best we can be.” She said.

“It’s not a problem. I understand the sentiment, and I knew he meant us no harm.” Zebstrika replied.

Klee smiled, “I appreciate your understanding. Anyways, let’s not worry too much about how we’re going to win the entire tournament right now. Instead, we just need to get to know each other better and figure out how we can best work together. Once our teamwork becomes more coordinated, than the wins will come easily! All we need to do is to trust in each other, and I can promise you that all of us are very welcoming! Feel free to ask us whatever you’d like, just like you were doing before!”

“Oh! Oh! In that case, I have another question!” One Emolga chimed up, “What do you guys do in your free time?”

“Honestly, we’re pretty boring Pokémon.” Klee chuckled, “Our trainer’s not like yours. He doesn’t really have that many hobbies that we can participate in. He has a lot of meetings though, mostly dealing with ‘politics’.”

That word caused Wraith to growl, “’Politics’. Disgusting.”

“So he doesn’t dress you up or bring you to shows?” Emolga asked curiously.

“Yep! He doesn’t! And we’re okay with that!” Euphie replied, “After all, we knew the type of person he was when we chose to follow him. We wouldn’t have done so otherwise. We’re all battlers at heart.”

“Father is not one for dress up.” Ornstein agreed, “Neither is his partner. They have more… practical pursuits.”

“Although I would not mind for the public to see my august self from time to time.” Winston added while puffing out his chest, “The public deserve to be blessed with my shiny form every once in a while.”

“Be quiet, you. You’re not blessing anyone with that appearance, shiny or no.” Zephyr squawked, “And no matter what you say, you’re never going to be more beautiful than Euphie.”

“Hehe, sorry Winston, but it’s true.” Euphie giggled, “I’m just too cute.”

“THAT. STATEMENT. IS. FACTUAL.” Pixel agreed.

“Oh, so do the public get to meet you often?” Emolga continued to ask.

“Rarely. Again, our trainer is not the type to show us off.” Klee responded, “Our fame comes from our strength and our ability to fight and defeat any opponent that dares challenges our trainer. With such a reputation for strength, there’s really no need for us to show off any more.”

Luna then pointed a finger forwards at Tyrant, “And that guy over there’s the most famous among us. Almost all of Indigo, Hoenn, and Sinnoh would be able to recognise him from his name alone. He’s as famous as any Champion’s starter.”

“We know. We watched him defeat our own Champion’s starter.” Galvantula nodded, “That had been quite the eye-opener.”

“Maybe one day we can become that strong and famous too!” Emolga exclaimed.

“You can be.” Vordt replied, “This tournament is your opportunity to do so. So if you stick by us, fight alongside us, and prove your strength and ability to the world – then I’m sure you will all earn the recognition you deserve.”

“And don’t forget to expect the unexpected.” Ornstein added, “If there is anything you should know about Father, it’s that things are always interesting when he’s involved.”

A.N. A slower chapter this time that was mainly focused on introducing the partnership between John and Elesa. And because I saw comments about people wanting to see more of Pokémon POV, I felt like having a segment where both of their Pokémon are able to communicate with each other could be good. I won’t be doing too many of these Pokémon POV sections, but I feel like every once in a while could be a good idea. Let me know if you liked it and I hope you enjoyed!