Broken Souls

All Four One: Round Two

The next room we enter is a perfect replication of a forest, with suffocating vines on all sides and massive trees leaning over our heads as we approach the battlefield, which is thick with dark, tall grasses. Our next opponent stands at the other side, smiling as if he's already won.

I remember him from a magazine I read once- he's the former leader of some gym in Kanto. He must have been promoted here from his former position. I wonder who's watching his gym now... if Morty's taught me anything, it's that requirements for gym leaders are always looser than you think they are.

"Well, well, you must be the newest challenger. My name is Koga, and as you may have guessed, I am the second member of the Elite Four. I prefer to live in shadows, though I suppose you hope to blind me with your skill. Do not expect this battle to be so straightforward. Sleep, confusion, poison... I hope to put you through the gauntlet of strange and wonderful tactics involved in Pokemon battling, instead of making this battle simply a show of brute force. Prepare to become victim to my web of sinister techniques!"

"Oh yeah? Good luck catching Pisces in anything." cheers Fang from the side.

Koga throws out his first Pokemon without a word, and a sneering Ariados enters the field.

"Minerva." I say, and the golden Ninetails steps forwards, still full of adrenaline from the last battle.

The Ariados throws a net of webbing at her paws, a direct hit, and Minerva falls flat on her face. Her opponent wastes no time scuttling across the battlefield, its pincers chittering in excitement as it closes in, but just as Reginae threw the Slowbro in the last battle, the distance makes all the difference. She hits it with a Fire Blast straight to the face, and as it falls at her feet, the webbing boils up. She's melting it with her paws, I realize.

She looks to Koga instead of me, as if begging for her next challenge, and Koga releases his next Pokemon, this time a Forretress.

"Bug and steel?" I ask, more than a little incredulous. "That's your strategy? Alright then, we can play this game. Minerva, Fire Blast." I swipe my hand dramatically to the side. Minerva reacts in perfect unison, her glorious star of fire sweeping the field and blazing through the grass in its wake.

Koga makes a quick upwards motion with his hand, and the Forretress closes itself into its shell and deflects the attack with a wall of blue energy. It's Protect.

The two Pokemon face each other, both of them silently sizing up the other. Minerva's face splits into a growl but the Forretress doesn't react at all. Its unblinking eyes stare back at her, daring her to try anything smart, and she paces the ground.

Let's finish this. Minerva says.

"Not as easy as you thought, is it?" asks Koga, hands folded behind his back.

"That won't save you twice." I tell him.

"Oh? It doesn't need to." Koga says, gesturing outwards.

"What do you-" Minerva starts, and the Forretress goes into its shell again, spinning faster and faster. With firepower to rival Minerva's, it generates a massive shockwave of energy, incinerating all the grass in its wake and brightening the entire clearing.

The Forretress lies at the center when the blast clears, tilted over, and Minerva lies on her side. Explosion. I run to her, inhaling embers, and fall to her side. The ground is still hot and my pants are burning up but it's all worth it when I see the faint quiver of motion as her sides rise and fall. Her eyes are open, too, open and conscious. Oh thank Arceus.

"I'm alive." she tells me, though her eyes swim with pain. I want to pick her up, but she's much too heavy, and Fang at my side drops a Hyper Potion onto my lap. The Pokedex dings, and out of the corner of my eye I see 3 HP for Minerva and 1 PP for Fire Blast. This is what happens when you let your guard down. If she had been pawsteps closer, this would have ended far differently.