Speed of Weakness

Info and Intro.

Please also check out "Base of Mysterious Info". It is the first book and will have some scenes that will put this together. All books of this series are working hand in hand.

Onto the intro.

{~!*!~}

"Just give up already." Joel's voice sounded so distant as he aborted capture for the second time. "There's, what, three more challenges? Just beat those instead."

"I haven't beaten this one though." Which seemed strange; they'd done this Relic challenge how many times now? Enough for him to have memorized the inscriptions on each plinth, enough times for him to be able to trace the correct path in each maze, Hell, he was pretty sure that wretched Salamence recognized him, the number of times he'd captured it.

And yet somehow, he hadn't completed the Challenge of Fire.

Getting through the area was easy enough, honestly it was probably the easiest area to traverse out of the four Relic challenges. Capturing the Charizard at the end, on the other hand, was a different story.

Sage wasn't exactly sure why it was so difficult to capture. It was true he didn't encounter wild Charizards much, they were extremely rare even in their home region, let alone in Fiore, but the other Pokémon in the Relic challenge weren't all that common either and he'd never had any trouble with them. The first time he'd faced off against that Salamence, it had taken him nearly thirty loops and five minutes of his time. Now he could do it in seconds.

"One more try. Then we'll move on."

Joel rolled his eyes, barely concealing his annoyance. "Fine. But I'm not staying."

"Where are you going?"

"Well I'm not standing here watching you again. I'll be in the next room."

"The Flygon room?"

"Yeah, think it's that one." He turned on his heel. "If you're not done when I get back, we're leaving."

Sage nodded mutely, loading another disk into his styler. It was becoming no secret that Joel was gradually losing interest in this Relic challenge; it had started off as sighs of annoyance, throwaway quips, "God, you're obsessed with that bloody challenge", and had since escalated into loud, open groans any time a mere trip to Summerland was even mentioned.

It didn't bother him at first, he could shake it off with either teasing or self-deprecation (usually the former), but now he was starting to realize he would probably have to find someone else to accompany him to these challenges. Maybe he could convince that Cameron guy to come along. He could use some toughening up if he wanted to be a base leader.

The Charizard had since flown up to an overhang some good few meters above the floor of the maze, and was bearing down on him with the smuggest face Sage had ever seen on a reptile. He knew Pokémon were as capable of expressing the same range of emotions as humans, he was a Ranger for crying out loud, he'd just never seen an expression quite like that. Hell, not even Joel could pull off a look so sickeningly shit-eating and smug.

"I'll capture you. Whether you like it or not, I'll capture you."

The Charizard snorted, white smoke starting to stream slowly out of its flared nostrils, before it hauled itself lazily into the air and started circling overhead, now billowing thick smoke. It was taunting him, he could tell. Capture discs couldn't fly after all, not unless he felt like slinging it into the air and praying he could close his loop in time. Which was something he was certainly not attempting. Joel still hadn't let him forget the last time he attempted that. Besides, he was running low on discs.