Two whole weeks of nearly nonstop battling at the Kalos Pokémon League had left Lance exhausted. The champions from all the regions had come to Kalos for three weeks to participate in the Pokémon World Tournament, which was held in a different region every year. The trainers participating this year were notoriously tough, but Lance had made his way to the semifinals, although it had cost him some sleep.
As he entered his hotel room in the "Le Spritz" hotel, Lance let his cape fall to the floor and plopped himself on the rather large couch. His dragonite, also tired from flying and battling for days on end, sat on the couch, ignoring how it creaked under her bulky dragon body. Lance lazily let all his other dragons out of their pokéballs and they too curled up to take naps. None of them would be very energetic today - Lance could tell. "So, Resa, you want to watch the Pokémon Battle Channel or brain-rotting cartoons?" Lance asked his dragonite next to him. He placed his hand on her head so he could hear her thoughts with his special powers.
I like cartoons, especially the brain-rotting ones, she smiled.
Lance sighed. Sometimes he wished that he didn't have psychic powers so he couldn't tell what pokémon were thinking. He picked up the remote for the T.V. and pressed the power button. Nothing happened. He pressed it multiple times, but the T.V. stayed the same sorry gray color and didn't show a single sign of life.
Lance was starting to get angry and eventually, after many failed attempts at turning on the T.V., he threw the remote in rage, making a dent and a black mark on the normally tan wall.
Don't get so worked up, Resa said sleepily. Just change the batteries or something…
Lance got up to retrieve the remote off the floor and opened up the back. The place where the batteries should have been was empty and scratched up, as if tiny claws had been playing with it.
"What the…?" Lance was confused. He didn't have any pokémon that had claws that small. As he thought about this, he suddenly he heard a noise and turned around.
Sitting on the kitchen counter behind the couch was an unusually large spritzee that was holding something black and round in its purple feet.
The batteries…" Lance growled as he recognized the objects the fairy pokémon was holding. "You took my batteries, out of all of the things valuable I have?! What's wrong with you, you sack of flying fairy loaf?"
"Spritz!" the spritzee cried in a deep man-voice, an unusual tone for such a small, girly pokémon. Lance was starting to get creeped out, and so were all of his dragon pokémon who had made their way over to the counter as well.
"What are you, a spritzee on steroids?" Lance couldn't explain the spritzee's strange attributes any other way.
"Spritz!" it yelled again.
"Can I have my batteries now?" Lance asked, suppressing his frustration and trying to stay calm so the spritzee wouldn't be scared off.
"SPRITZ!" the spritzee yelled in an even deeper demon-like voice as its scleras turned black and its pupils glowed red. It fluffed out its fur menacingly, looking five times its size. You want your little batteries back so you can go watch your little T.V.? Will that make you happy? the spritzee asked in telepathy, its mind-voice also demonically low-pitched.
"Yes, that would make me happy," Lance replied carefully. "Especially since those are the last batteries I have and the stores are closed at eight, which makes no sense, but it's true. So can I have them back now…please?"
The spritzee rubbed its wing on its beak in thought. Oh, how about…NO! These batteries are mine now, hedgehog-head, and they will stay mine for all of eternity!
"Hedgehog-head?" Lance repeated to himself, brushing his hand through his crimson hair that always stood up in spikes. "What kind of fairy pokémon are you, anyway?"
The demonic kind! The spritzee cackled with maniacal laughter.
Lance couldn't take it anymore - this was getting too weird for him. He liked pokémon more than most people, but this…thing did not seem like one at all. He lunged at the spritzee, trying to grab the batteries, but the swift ball of fluff managed to fly up towards the ceiling. I will kill you all, the spritzee said, surveying Lance and all his dragons. And then I will take your place as the champion of the Kanto and Johto regions, where I will gain world domination, ally myself with Giratina, and turn this sorry universe to its former dust state. And you little whiners can do nothing about it. Hahaha!
Lance exchanged a bewildered glance with his dragonite. "So, why do you need my batteries?" he asked.
The spritzee narrowed its eyes. The batteries are for powering up a device that will make me even stronger, and soon no dragon pokémon will be able to withstand my fairy-type attacks! The spritzee cackled maniacally again and flew out of the window that Lance didn't even notice was opened.
"We have to stop him!" Lance yelled to his dragons as he put his cape back on, "or we might be in trouble…I think?"
Lance jumped out the window onto his dragonite and flew after the evil spritzee with his dragons following close behind. They followed the spritzee to an abandoned warehouse a few miles away.
As it entered the warehouse, the spritzee flew over to a large, strange machine at the back of the room and placed the two batteries in a small compartment on the side of the machine. Lance, arriving only a few seconds later, ran up to the spritzee and managed to grab one of its purple feet before it flew into a chamber in the machine.
"I won't let you do this!" Lance yelled.
Eat my smelly dust, freakface! The spritzee said as it spewed out a cloud of fruity-smelling perfume, something spritzees were known to do. The perfume got all over Lance and he stepped back in disgust, letting go of the pokémon's feet. "Ughh…I can taste it! Why did you have to do that?"
Now you'll smell like a girl for weeks! The spritzee laughed as it pressed a button on the machine and closed the chamber door around itself. Immediately a cloud of pink gas enveloped the spritzee until it filled the whole chamber. After a minute or so, the spritzee burst out of the chamber and the cloud dissipated ominously.
Lance and his dragon pokémon stared in awe at the changed spritzee. It was now even larger, buffer, and surrounded by a bright pink haze.
"Finally!" The spritzee yelled, this time out loud. "Now I am officially Lord Spritzee, and all dragon and fairy pokémon will bow to my Arceus-crushing power!"
Lance exchanged a horrified glance with his dragonite. He wasn't sure if his dragon pokémon would ever withstand a powerful mutant fairy pokémon, but he would never know if he didn't try.
"Wave," he called to his dragalge, "use Sludge Bomb on that spritzee!"
Wave obeyed and shot a large ball of poison sludge at the abominable fairy. Despite the poison-type moves being supereffective on fairy-type pokémon, the move did nothing at all to the spritzee.
"You think you can defeat me with your puny poison-type moves?" the spritzee laughed. "You have made a very stupid mistake, because I cannot be defeated!" It cackled as it grabbed the batteries and flew out a window towards the dark, moonlit ocean.
Lance and his dragons followed as they saw the spritzee whip up a whirlwind around itself as it hovered about ten feet above the wave-crested water. Lance had to think for a minute before he decided what his next move would be. This probably wouldn't be a good battle to lose. He concentrated as hard as he could to figure out what this strange pokémon was actually weak to.
If that poison-type move didn't affect that spritzee, then that means that it is also a steel type, because the only type unaffected by poison-type attacks is the steel type!
Use a fire-type move then, Resa added, making Lance jump as he heard her voice in his head. He didn't even realize that she had been listening to his thoughts the whole time, but nevertheless she was right. He decided that his charizard would be the best for testing out if the spritzee really was weak to fire, so he commanded the fiery not-dragon-type pokémon to use the ultimate fire-type move: Blast Burn. Charizard's body glowed with a menacing fiery light as it shot huge rockets of flame towards the spritzee. The fairy pokémon just laughed as it saw the fire coming towards it.
"Ha! You cannot destroy me with that fire! I have created a watery vortex around myself that will distinguish any fla-" the spritzee was cut off as charizard's fire evaporated the "impenetrable" watery vortex almost instantly and engulfed it in vicious flames. When the fire finally faded away, all that was left of the spritzee was a charred, furrless form. The spritzee, however, was still alive, but without its airy fur it could no longer fly and started to fall down towards the waves.
Lance felt sick to his stomach; it was completely against his nature to kill a pokémon. A while ago he may have been able to do so to a human, but now he couldn't bear to kill or hurt anything, and he surely hadn't expected just one fire-type move to completely obliterate a large, mutated spritzee. In fact, it didn't seem to make sense at all. He commanded his dragonite to fly down after the charred pokémon, attempting to catch it before it hit the water.
"Curse you and your knowledge of type matchups!" the spritzee yelled to Lance as it fell. "You may have defeated me now, but this is not over!" Just before the spritzee hit the water it exploded into a pile of black fuzz, perfume, and two batteries. Lance had been too late to catch the fairy pokémon, but he was able to pick up the batteries, and sure enough, they were for the remote. Looking back one last time at the black fuzz on the ocean's surface that was now being dispersed by the waves, Lance felt his heart sink a little as a familiar cold feeling crept up his spine.
Don't worry about the spritzee, Resa the dragonite reassured him. It was evil anyway, and it didn't seem like a pokémon at all. I think you did the right thing. Besides, who knew it would be destroyed by that?
"Thank you, Resa." Lance petted the dragon's head, doing the same to Charizard when he flew over with an apologetic look on its face. "Let's just go home and watch T.V. now. I think I might enjoy the cartoons for once."
Resa smiled as she flew back to the hotel room. Lance was finally able to put the batteries back into the remote, but as he pressed the power button for the T.V., the remote exploded into a cloud of even fruitier-smelling perfume. Cursing, Lance tried to get the stench off himself, and then, to his horror, he remembered that he had an important meeting the next day at the PWT. And he smelled like a million spritzees.
Lance jolted awake, only to see that he was in his bedroom in the Indigo Plateau with his dragonite standing over him worriedly. "What the…" he was confused until he finally realized that he had only had a nightmare.
Resa the dragonite laughed as Lance told her about the demonic spritzee. That's ridiculous! You really need psychological help, she joked. Now why don't we watch real T.V. - you don't look like you want to go back to sleep.
Lance agreed and followed her to the couch in front of the T.V. He picked up his remote off the couch and pressed the power button, but nothing happened. "That's weird…" he muttered to himself, his nightmare going through his mind again as he turned the device over to open up the back. To his horror - once again - the batteries were gone and there were little claw marks all over the compartment where they should have been.
Lance fell to his knees, irrationally afraid that his dream would come true and he would have to relive everything in real life. The thought of that happening made him feel ill. "Noooooooo! Why?! Not again!" Lance screamed, waking up all of his other dragon pokémon that had been sleeping. None of them understood why having no batteries was such a big deal as they watched their trainer have a panic attack.
Cynthia's glaceon was much more lethargic than usual. He had been fine earlier that day when she had visited Lance at the Indigo Plateau, but a few hours after she had returned to the villa she was renting near Goldenrod City, he had become weaker and refused to eat any poffins she offered him. This wasn't the first time her glaceon had gotten sick from something inedible he ate. He was always chewing on stuff that the average pokémon would know not to eat.
Cynthia inspected the glaceon as he lay on the floor and noticed that he had strips of dark gray plastic stuck it in his front paws between his claws. She pulled the strips out, but had no luck identifying where they could have come from; it could have been from any plastic object. With no luck, Cynthia pressed the button of glaceon's pokéball and made the pokémon teleport inside. She quickly headed to the Pokémon Center, hoping no trainers would ask to challenge her to a battle. Being the Champion of the Sinnoh region, it was hard to walk somewhere without some trainer wanting to battle and use up some valuable research time.
This time, however, she successfully arrived at the Pokémon Center without any setbacks. She showed her glaceon to Nurse Joy, who put him on a cart and had Chansey roll it into the X-ray room. Cynthia waited anxiously outside the room until Nurse Joy finally came back with the results.
"Well," Nurse Joy looked at her tablet as she spoke, "it looks like your glaceon has eaten two batteries. It shouldn't take long to get them out of his system, so he should be battle-ready by tomorrow at the latest."
Cynthia sighed, not surprised at the news that she had gotten multiple times before. She looked through the glass window at her glaceon lying on the cart under the X-ray machine, and realizing that she was staring at him, he looked up at her and smiled guiltily.
Cynthia facepalmed, hoping that the batteries Glaceon had eaten weren't from anything that was important to Lance.