Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Rain Dance ❯ Pensive ( Chapter 10 )

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The rain beat on the window pane like a snare, and Batoy off-handedly wondered if the large crashes were hail or just oversized water droplets. Jet sat in his arms, silent as he’d been for the past two hours. The little weasel had even eaten in silence, and for the entirety of those two hours since he’d been awake, he hadn’t even looked at Batoy. It wasn’t that he was upset with the boy; on the contrary, he felt nothing but love, but the fact that he’d lost was humiliating. Jet’s ears folded solemnly. How could he have lost? They did everything right. They watched the opponent’s movements. They struck at every available opportunity. Why did they lose? Batoy gently rubbed the back of Jet’s neck. He knew better than to offer pity or sympathies. Jet had too much pride for that. Even a simple ‘You did your best,’ would send the weasel into a near unrecoverable state of depression. Besides, he’d been staring out the window ever since Mia’d treated them to dinner. They’d been completely outplayed and he couldn’t figure out how or why. By all rights, they should have won.

“I don’t get it, Jet…” Batoy found himself muttering. “I keep going over and over it, and I just can’t seem to figure out how she was able to beat us so… so… thoroughly, I guess…” Jet stayed silent. “We got stomped… I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt….” The Quilava shook his head. The image of the Natu constantly battering him, forcing him to cover himself futilely with his paws… he was ashamed of it. ~Quill…~ he grunted, pawing at his snout. “Yeah, I know,” Batoy said with a sigh. “You don’t want to think of it, but you keep doing it… sorry….” But it wasn’t the last thing he’d say on the matter. “Still… we gotta figure it out… she’s fighting in the tournament, and if she does, we gotta find a way to beat her….”

As if those words were a summon, Mia appeared, materializing into Batoy’s peripheral with an almost spectral grace. But yet, she didn’t approach for several moments, staying just to Batoy’s peripheral, as if contemplating the two. Batoy would be the first to turn, and only then did Mia approach. Jet kept his head down, refusing to make eye contact with the Natu that stayed at her chest. And strangely, the bird remained silent as well, as if it were common knowledge that should she speak, Jet would erupt into a snarling, vicious, uncontrollable beast.

But the awkward air between them was too much for Mia to bear, and she roughly laid a hand on Batoy’s shoulder. “Okay, cut it out, all of you,” she said in a voice full of command and authority. “We had a battle, we won, you guys lost. It was the rain or whatever. You weren’t fighting at full strength. You were hungry. Whatever. I’ve put all the possible reasons out there for you to rationalize, but there’s no reason to be so damned depressed about it. Stop acting like babies.” She pulled out a pokeball and recalled the Natu into it.

Batoy opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words. Likewise, Jet gave a discontent ‘humph’. “It’s easy to say that if you win…” Batoy muttered.

“What did you say?” Mia’s tone turned icy, and Batoy could feel the blood in his veins freeze, and even Jet’s body seemed to chill drastically. “You think that I’m saying this just because I won? I didn’t realize that you were such an arrogant, stuck-up little brat.”

“I…”

“I don’t fight to win or lose. I fight to fight. I fight because I chose to, and I want to. I play aggressively because I can, and I don’t care what the outcome is. As long as I enjoy it, I’m having a good time. I’d been hoping you’d be similar, but I guess I was wrong about that. There was something inside of me that warned me, but I ignored it. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

“No… it’s just….” Batoy looked down, his face red, and that terrible feeling of tears trying to build up forcing its way to his eyes was unbearable. “We just… really wanted to win… both of us… we haven’t… had the best streak lately, and… it was just getting overwhelming…”

“So what?”

Batoy glanced up, swallowing his surprise. “H-Huh?”

“So what if you haven’t been winning matches, or the choices you make aren’t the best. If you’re just going to give up every time something goes wrong, you don’t have a right to train Pokemon. Heck, you don’t even have a right to be a human, because humans are marked by their determination and will to endure the toughest hardships! It’s been like that since the beginning of history, in every war, and tribulation.”

Looking down, Batoy swallowed. He couldn’t think of a way to respond. Part of him desperately wanted to cling to the notion that he was helpless, that everything that’d happened was beyond his control, and he was unable to do anything about it. Another part wanted to lash out for her, insistent that her words came only from a victor’s standpoint. And yet another couldn’t even look up due to shame welling up within him. That part was what caused Jet to murr and lick at Batoy’s nose. “I guess… we still have a lot we gotta learn…”

Mia’s shoulders fell slightly, and she smiled. “That’s good. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rip into you like that. It’s just that things like that are triggers for me. It’s just sets me off. As long as you’re trying your best, it really shouldn’t matter what the outcome is. You don’t have to like it, but you should at least accept it, even if you’re not satisfied. That’s what I do.”

“I guess you’re right…” Batoy said softly, his mind in a tumble. How could he accept the fact that he was basically living on borrowed time now? How could he accept that all his effort had been meaningless in the end, and he’d gotten one of his own Pokemon killed for nothing? “Aren’t there somethings that you can’t accept because they’re so terrible, though?”

“No, you have to always accept responsibility for something; no matter how bad it was, if it were your fault, you need to deal with it. Even if you had nothing to do with it, you can’t just pretend like it never happened. You’d just be lying to yourself.”

“I guess so….” It left a bad feeling in his stomach, thinking about Meta. His gut tied. Jet looked up and gave a whimper. Batoy glanced out the window, watching the falling rain cascade against the pane. “Why does it always have to rain so much here…?”

“Huh? What’s wrong with a little rain? You act like you’re terrified of it or something.”

Batoy winced slightly, and then looked away from the window. What remained of his noodles had grown cold an hour ago. He briefly entertained the thought of his stomach still being peckish in a futile attempt to keep from responding. “It’s just… I don’t like getting wet; that’s all. And Jet’s a fire-type. He doesn’t like rain, either…”

Mia tilted an eyebrow but only nodded. “Alright, fair enough,” she said. An awkward silence threatened to follow, and she grinned again. “You and Jet seem to have an incredible synergy going on,” she said in an attempt to keep the conversation going. “How’d you two end up so close? When’d you meet and all? That Flare Blitz was really impressive. It’s not a move you see where I come from.”

A grin came across Batoy’s face as the memories of his birthday came back to him. “Heh… it was the best day of my life. I remember it so well. The sky was so clear and blue… it was really warm, too. My mother gave me Jet on my birthday. I was ten years old, I think. Jet was a lot smaller back then. He was just a Cyndaquil.”

“So you got it from your mother on your birthday. That’s pretty cute. You’re from Hoenn, aren’t you? I didn’t think Cyndaquil could be found there.”

“They can’t. My mother said that she’d ordered Jet just for me, but I really don’t know where he’s originally from…”

“Well, they say that you can tell where a Pokemon’s born by the attacks it learns. Some attacks only Pokemon in certain regions can use. Like, Ponyta from the Sevii Islands learn Quick Attack shortly after they can stand, but Ponyta in Hoenn only learn Tackle. And I heard that in Sinnoh, Rapidash can learn Megahorn, which they can’t anywhere else. I think it has to do with the environment, but I’m not an expert on that field.”

“So… if we looked at what attacks Jet uses, we can figure out where he may come from?”

“It’s a definite possibly, especially considering how limited that species is when it comes to attacks.” Jet growled slightly, but Mia waved her hands and laughed. “Oh, I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. Just that Cyndaquils, Quilavas, and Typhlosions tend to need to train to learn different moves.”

“So where does Jet come from, do you know?”

Mia shook her head. “Unfortunately, no… I don’t really know much about anything that isn’t a psychic Pokemon. I could tell you where an Abra is from, no problem, but I’m about clueless on anything else. The most I know is that he didn’t come from Kanto. We don’t have Cyndaquil.”

“But… you know about attacks….”

“Yeah, that’s standard gym training, right there.” Mia smiled apologetically. “We learn about different Pokemon that trainers use in battles against us. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. Maybe if you talked to a breeder, you’d be able to find out where your mother bought Jet. Speaking of which, why’d you name him that?”

“Well, when Jet was really little, he had trouble controlling the flames on his back. They’d randomly flare up and stuff and I thought it was kinda like a jet engine, so I named him like that. He liked the name.” Batoy scratched behind Jet’s ear, and the fire-type cooed in pleasure.

“It must’ve been really nice getting a Pokemon as a birthday present. Your mother must’ve wanted you to become a trainer and travel around.”

Batoy’s smile faded slightly. “Yeah… I promised Jet just a few days after we met that I’d take him around the world to see and experience everything…”

“You don’t sound too happy about that….”

“Well, stuff happened shortly after that and I wasn’t able to make good of that promise. It’s what I really want to do…”

“Hmm… I see… and I bet Jet wants to take challenges and fight. He seems like the fiery, aggressive type, heh. That’s a fire-type for ya, I guess. What other Pokemon do you have?”

“Well… they’re…” Batoy hesitated a bit. “They’re not really my Pokemon… I mean… I didn’t capture them.”

“Hmm?”

“Well...” Batoy struggled for a decent way of putting it. Saying he stole them wouldn’t be the most eloquent approach. “Ollie and Manual were someone else’s Pokemon.”

“Oh, so you traded for them…?” Mia’s lowered tone caused Batoy to wince mentally.

“Not… exactly….”

Mia’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean to tell me that you…?”

“N-no, it’s not like that! They were really abused, and I couldn’t just leave them to suffer like that… I had to rescue them… would you have just left them all alone and injured and abandoned?”

“Well… how were they being abused?”

“They were being overworked to exhaustion… when Jet and I found Ollie, he was lying unconscious in a field… we were gonna take him to a center but his owner came and snapped at us… he said that Ollie was being punished for not having enough power, even after evolution… I don’t think Ollie even wanted to evolve… he and his brother looked like they’d even been beaten because of it… could you blame me for wanting to save them?”

“No, but… you should have let them go instead of keeping them with you….”

“I tried, but they were so weak… if I’d just let them go, anything could’ve happened to them. I tried to let them go when they were better, but by that time, we’d become good friends and they wanted to come with me. I… kept Meta, too… because I wanted all three of them to be together…. I should’ve let her go….”

“Well, I suppose it really wouldn’t be productive to bring her up… I’m not gonna say whether what you did was wrong or right, especially since I wasn’t there, but… I suppose it’s just something I won’t bring up again.” But before another awkward silence could descend, she spoke again. “So… you said Ollie and Manual were brothers, right? What are they like? Anything like Jet?”

Batoy smiled a bit. “Not even close… Jet loves fighting while Ollie and Manual… well, Manual pretty young and is up for anything, but Ollie doesn’t like it. I don’t try to make him unless I really need him. He’s really timid. Manual’s weird. He’s really powerful, but he’s also really young, so he gets scared sometimes. But he wasn’t abused as much as Ollie was. They’re not like Jet at all.”

Mia nodded slightly. “Hmm, I could understand why they’d be at least a little tentative.”

Adjusting Jet in his lap, Batoy tilted his head. “Hey, what about you? What kind of Pokemon are your partners?”

“Oh, well, um…” Mia blinked for a moment before brushing a bit of hair behind her head. “For some reason, I didn’t even think you’d ask me. Anyways, you’ve met Elya already. She was my most recent addition, actually. We met on Fortune Island in the Sevii Island chain. I was doing some research for my gym on the local fauna when I stumbled upon her. She’d fallen out of her nest by unseasonably strong winds coming from the west… probably originating from the Tanoby Ruins. Anyways, when I managed to return her, she had become so attached to me that it would’ve just been trouble to leave her alone. Her parents seemed grateful as well, for some bizarre reason.”

Jet snorted and flicked an ear. Obviously; the thing was such a major pain. Who wouldn’t have wanted to be rid of it? Batoy boxed him behind the ears, causing a light yelp in surprise. “Be nice,” Batoy warned lightly without even looking down. Jet pouted. ~Quilava…~ It was the truth…

“Heh, anyways,” continued Mia, chuckling a bit. “Elya proved to be a really big help with my research, even though she had this tendency to eat my food. Especially my crackers.” She gave a small huff. “They were good crackers, too… I need to see if they sell any in this city….” She glanced at Batoy. “You know what I’m talking about? They’re the small oval butter crackers that are kinda thin and easy to break? I think they come from the same place that markets the Moomoo Milk.”

Batoy shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a clue. They sound tasty, though.”

“Oh, I see… oh well. I’ll just have to check around tomorrow.”

“So, what were you doing on… uh… Fortune Island, was it?”

“Oh, right. Sorry, I got caught up rambling a little.” Grinning, Mia stretched her arms over her head. “Well, like I said, I was doing some research. The Saffron City Gym wanted someone to take a trip to the island to check on the local fauna… the wildlife and the plant-life,” she added, seeing Batoy’s confused expression. “Anyways, we’d gotten reports that some of the Pokemon were acting strangely, being unusually friendly or aggressive or things like that, and because there are a good number of psychic-types there, it was of interest. So I volunteered. It basically ended up like an all-expenses paid vacation, which was pretty cool.”

“I wish I got a vacation….”

“Oh, you work?”

“Oh, n-no!” Batoy said, tensing a bit. “Just mumbling. Go ahead.”

“Uh-huh… anyways, turns out that what was causing the Pokemon to act weird was the same thing that caused the winds that knocked poor Elya out of her nest. Apparently, there was a mass buildup of the Unown that lived in the Tanobi Ruins on Seven Island and their psychic powers were raging out of control. With Elya’s help, we managed to calm them down and get them to disperse, but it wasn’t easy. It really forced our bond to strengthen in a hurry.”

Batoy nodded, but desperately tried to hide the fact that he had no idea what an Unown was. “That sounds pretty cool. So, is your Gym sending you to Full Moon Island?”

“Oh, you remember about that, huh?” Mia looked genuinely surprised. “I wouldn’t have expected anyone to really remember. Anyways, you could say that. I am getting funding for checking the place out.”

“Are there psychic-type Pokemon there, too?”

Mia looked at him for a moment before nodding. “From… what we’ve heard, there’s one in particular that sounds rather interesting. I want to see it.”

“It only appears on the Full Moon?”

“Something like that, I guess. You’re pretty good at retention, I’ll give you that much.” Batoy blushed a bit . “Anyways, it’s supposed to be a magnificent Pokemon to behold, so Sabrina asked me if I wanted to take off for an… excursion. I couldn’t refuse!” she said with a laugh.

“That’s so awesome…” Batoy murmured. “I wish I could go see something like that…”

Looking at him again, Mia nodded after a moment. “Well, let’s see. If you want and really have nothing better to do, you’re welcome to tag along after the tournament. We’ll travel to Canalave City and take a ferry there. But, I’m traveling on foot, so if you’re used to getting rides or whatever, you’ll be in for a rough time.”

“Wow, are you serious?” Batoy asked, his eyes lighting. “That’s awesome!” Jet’s eyes opened wide with surprise as the boy squeezed the Quilava to his chest, prompting a few squeals out in protest of the suddenly rough affection. “Jet and I are used to being on foot, too, so we should be okay.” He was literally squirming in his seat, and Mia gave him an odd look. Batoy halted his motions and released his strangling hold on Jet, and the Quilava gasped for air. “Sorry…eh heh heh….”

“It’s okay,” Mia said, casting a glance to the watch on her wrist. “Anyways, this’s been fun. I’m going to head out since it’s getting late. I have lots of stuff I need to do tomorrow, and I need to wake up early! Dunno what you two have planned, but whatever it is, I hope you have fun.” Mia stood up, leaving a few bills on the table. “You can use that to pay for the food since I’m treating.”

“You don’t have…”

“Nope, I’m treating,” she said, giving Batoy a smiling glare that dared him to protest. He didn’t. I guess I’ll see you guys in a couple of days, and if, by then, you still want to go to Full Moon Island, we’ll go from there. Have fun, don’t get in trouble, and, well,” Mia gave a shrug, “all that other good stuff.”

She gave a small salute with two fingers, and as Batoy waved her goodbye, she slid on the hood to her light jacket and stepped back into the rain, which had softened to a slow drum-roll. The boy sighed and let Jet crawl on top of the table. His elation had fallen as quickly as it came. “I dunno, boy…” he said, resting his elbows on the table. “I wanna go away, but… I wanna go home, too. I want Dad to be proud of me.”

Jet nuzzled against Batoy’s arm as the boy bit his lip. “We have to do well in that show…” he muttered. “There’s just no other way. Ollie, Manual, me, you… we’re all gonna have to do our best. Otherwise… otherwise, there’s no way Dad would even look at us.” Batoy glanced towards the door. The rain wasn’t too heavy, and if he moved quickly, he could get back to the breeding center without getting too wet. The sky had grown darker; it must’ve been around eight in the evening. “I guess we’d better get going, too, before it starts up again.”