The joint was down some musty stairs on a side street. Unless you were looking for it, you'd probably miss it, especially in the dark, which is when I went. The stairs led to a dingy sort of place. It was bigger than I expected, but not classier. The floor was dry, hard dirt that some joker had painted a circle in the middle of like it was some kind of grass-free soccer game.
The fellow who owned the joint had arranged tables around the perimeter, but there were so many people crowded in there that they spilled into the centre, some at tables, some leaning against the walls, others sitting on the ground breathing in the musty air.
There was a stage at the far end where jazz was playing when we walked in and the whole thing was lit by candles and a couple of chandelures that I'm sure the guy had just for the atmosphere. They floated at either end of the hall, tilting and swinging to the music. There were a few other pokemon around the edges, in the shadows and on the stage, but the whole cacophonous atmosphere didn't leave you anywhere to focus. You just sort of became a part of it.
I could tell Felix was suspicious as soon as our feet touched the dirt. I'd grown to trust him over the years, especially through the war. His ears perked up and he held up his stubby, black tail like he does when he's alert. I know I said it was suspicious, but that doesn't mean we were uneasy. The shadows and the chaos of the place were perfect for a feint attack and he could read my resolve, so I knew he'd be all right.
I leaned against a wall, equidistant between two of the candles so we were in the shadows a bit more and we stood and watched. There was some music being played on the stage like we were in some gin joint before the war. They were playing jazz that, had I not been on a job, I'd have tapped my foot to. A few people were dancing, local dames and fellows. I could tell because the few pokemon they did have kicking around their heels were grimers and rattata, like they just emerged from the sewers. There were the occasional patrats and lillipups, but they weren't too surprising either.
Finally the music stopped and chatter softened while the dancers cleared the floor, making the sides even more cramped, so some jack with a pidove on his shoulder was right up against me. He stepped on my foot and Felix bared his teeth, smoke rising out from under his gums and this pidove fellow told me to take it easy. He'd probably never seen a houndour before. He didn't look old enough to have fought in the war.
Finally, some chap in an old bowler like my father would have worn took the microphone and started jabbering at us. First he's thanking us for coming and then he's going on about the wonderful potential he sees in all the trainers here. That's when it fell into place for me.
Trainers. They were battling. Well, there was nothing wrong with the odd battle here and there. A spirited competition was a healthy practice, so perhaps my job was done, if there truly weren't any lawbreakers skulking down here in the Castelia depths. But that's not what the rumours were, I reminded myself. Some fanatical folks might think battling was the devil, but that was between them and their consciences. The law saw it, and still does see it, as sport, so that's how I saw it. But I wasn't leaving till I knew everything in that cellar was clean, even the gin.
The chap on the stage was still hollering, "I invite challengers! Which of you believes that he or she can withstand the force and power of Castelia's own champion, Gretta Oberon!?"
He sort of sidled away and from the back of the stage we hear the click, click of someone's heels and out of the dark this dame emerges like a submarine surfacing. She's got her dark hair all tied up behind her head and black was kind of her theme. She had a black skirt that hugged her alright, but was a bit long for my liking, and a black blouse with one of those thick, pointy collars the women wore back then. She wore this purple belt to tie it all together and her lipstick was purple too. She would've been pretty, except for all the black and purple.
The queer thing about it though, was she was supposed to be a pokemon trainer, but I didn't see any pokemon. Seemed to me it wouldn't be too hard a challenge. Some young kid who'd been dancing earlier and was probably half cut by that point must have thought the same as me, so he stepped up into the middle of the cleared area. He said he'd challenge her and his name was Frankie. Frankie at least had an apricorn that he pulled out and it released a timburr.
I figured Frankie must have come from the logging camps because what other kind of person wastes an apricorn on a timburr. If you're going to pay an arm and a leg for something to keep a pokemon cooped up, you might as well make it a hostile one. When I'd first got Felix, I'd been scared I'd have to bite the bullet and get someone to fix me an apricorn, but all he needed actually was some hard training. No, this kid Frankie, he was fresh from the lumber camps with more money than he knew what to do with.
Casually, like she was throwing coins in a fountain, this Oberon lady tosses something down from the stage and onto the battle floor. At first I thought it was another apricorn, but I noticed it wasn't made of anything natural. One half was red and the other half was white and when it opened up, some other kind of light came out like no apricorn I'd ever seen. What appeared was an umbreon. That's when I knew she was loaded. No jane in Castelia City walks around with an umbreon and a fancy apricorn while she's wearing purple lipstick.
I would have liked to lean over to the pidove boy beside me, but I didn't have to because his shoulder was pressed up against mine like we were magikarp in a net.
"What's that?" I said.
He seemed all giddy to explain it to me, like maybe he was new and hadn't got to tell anyone yet, "It's a pokeball. It's like an apricorn, but it works better."
That was the rumour I'd heard floating around. This dame, Oberon, she was why I'd come.
I figured Frankie's timburr would take down that umbreon in seconds, but Oberon had raised it to be fast and she'd taught it psychic. Timburr crashed harder than those trees Frankie'd been cutting all summer. It went like that; one trainer after the other.
Some of these trainers coming up had six pokemon with them. Not following them around, of course, and not in apricorns either. They were securely fastened to their belts in these pokeballs. No wonder I hadn't seen that many pokemon when we entered that dive, they were all tucked away in some sort of electronic storage. The umbreon took down rattatas, zubats, woobats, grimers and others. All of them were equally as pitiful when they tried anything. I wasn't sure if this Oberon dame was talented or if she'd just bought a strong pokemon from some place like Kalos and brought it back to show off to us.
The crowd finally lost the wind in its sails when a slick jack with too white a shirt and too greasy a crown stepped up with his scraggy. No pokeballs for this jack. He looked like he knew how to keep a pokemon.
The whole crowd sort of wavered in this uncertainty. Scraggy could take a dark type to town. We all knew it. I heard Felix give a bit of a whine down by my feet, like he was saying, "Spot, I know how this is going to go." We'd busted up a couple of places and run into a scraggy or two. It hadn't been a Sunday picnic, that's for sure. And Felix could breathe fire.
So this scraggy started swaggering around, like it's the king of the dirt floor, and the whole basement knew that spells trouble for long ears over there. Before too much swaggering could be done though, Miss Oberon calls at her umbreon to use quick attack and the scraggy's knocked on its side. It got up though and kept on swaggering, much to the bewilderment of its black and gold foe, who looked around again like someone was calling its name from the shadows.
So the umbreon fell and hurt itself, the scraggy gave it a good wallop of a brickbreak and the creature went flying like a rag doll. This Oberon jane had trained it well though, so it hopped back up and in an instant it used confuse ray and now we had two pokemon stumbling around like piplups in the dark. Even I was a bit confused.
It didn't seem like this was going to go anywhere, but Oberon had other plans. She knew her pokemon's power was way up and she planned on using it. She got in two quick attacks before buddy slick could run his hand through his hair. The scraggy tried one more kick, but it went flying past and that's when umbreon snapped out of it. The yellow-toothed scrapper didn't have enough moxie to take another quick attack. It was down in a flash and the whole place erupted like Mount Chimney.
That was it. Slick had to carry his lame pokemon off the battle floor, but Oberon there, she just held out a pokeball and her umbreon turned into light before disappearing into the ball entirely. She turned and disappeared past the microphone and the drum set that were still sitting on the stage. A fellow in saggy suspenders went up and started tapping on the drums. I snuck along the wall towards the back.