The battle seemed no different than the ones before it.
No, strike that; it seemed WORSE than the battles before it. At least during the other ones the voices had left Cly with multiple Pokemon able to fight the Gym Leader at the battle's beginning. Now, despite only Emboar having the strength to battle, they had decided it was a splendid idea to challenge Elesa for- how many times was it now? Nine? Ten? Whatever the number was, it was definitely too many times, too long stuck in the same gym, too long struggling to win a battle that her Pokemon clearly weren't ready for. Maybe it would have been possible under normal circumstances, with Cly being able to use some sort of strategy, without the voices spamming useless moves half the time and laughing at the pain these mistakes caused. But now? Why would the tenth time go any differently than the ninth, or the fifth, or the second, especially when she was starting out in worse shape than before?
She had tried to walk away at first, to let her Pokemon rest at least a little bit before the inevitable next challenge, but nothing was ever that simple, not with the voices in control. And before she knew it, she was in battle. Emboar versus Elesa. One against five.
As she stood there, watching the bright lights dance across the stage, Cly felt painfully aware of how ugly she looked compared to Elesa. Elesa was clearly made to be a model- skinny, beautiful, with blemish-less skin and gorgeously-tailored clothes. Cly? She'd never aimed to be a model, and it showed. Even before her journey across Unova, half her clothes hadn't fit, she was gangly and scruffy, and nobody (except some of the voices, probably the more delusional ones) had ever spontaneously called her pretty. Four days in, and her clothes were baggy and sweaty and stained, her hair was hopelessly frizzed and tangled, and she was covered in bruises and scrapes from the constant ramming into walls and ledges. Cly knew that she wasn't worthy of stepping foot onto this big grand stage, not really. She never would have been up here if it weren't for the voices, certainly, and maybe that was how it was meant to be.
But this wasn't a beauty pageant, thank goodness. It was a battle. Not that that made the odds of her winning any better, but at least the noisy and fast-paced fight was a good means of distraction from her self-conscious thoughts.
One of Elesa's Emolgas was taken down fairly quickly by a burst of her Emboar's flames as he rammed into the flying rodent's flimsy body. Emolga was cute, Cly noted, cute and small and exceedingly pretty, just like its owner. Everything that Cly wasn't. And her Pokemon weren't, either; oh, maybe a while back her Tepig had been tiny and adorable, but not anymore. Her Pokemon were powerful, intimidating, but certainly not cute.
And next up was… Elesa's Lanturn. A Water-type. Emboar was doomed, of course. Cly was tempted to close her eyes and wait for the inevitable, but she couldn't help but watch the fight, holding a morbid interest in seeing her Pokemon struggle for survival.
Wiping. That's what the voices called it when she lost a battle, wiping. It was such an innocent term. It sounded like a simple wiping of the slate, a return to normalcy. But Cly had learned the truth, learned it hundreds of times over by now. Wiping meant falling to the floor and passing out on impact. Wiping meant waking up in the Pokemon Center with no idea how she'd gotten there. Wiping meant, all too often, a struggle to escape the Center without using the dreaded PC, being stuck walking back and forth for far too long.
And the voices were now calling for her to wipe.
The first blast of water that the Lanturn shot out hit the wall next to her Emboar rather than the Fire-type itself, but Cly knew better than to find relief in this fluke. A few flames couldn't do much against a fish, and it was only a matter of time until the Lanturn gave off a burst of water that hit and felled its target.
But the Emboar's flames turned out to be stronger than she'd imagined. Before the Lanturn could get in a second attack, it fell to the ground, motionless, its body burned to an extent no Burn Heal could fix.
Elesa's Electabuzz fell to a forceful kick, but not before getting in a forceful attack that left its marks on the struggling Emboar. And then it was the Zebstrika's turn… in a single blow, not only was Emboar sent flying across the stage, but its body started giving off sparks that slowed its movement. Cly's lone conscious Pokemon was now paralyzed, injured, and barely able to stand up.
Maybe the voices were right. Maybe she did need to wipe again. And again, and again…
And after Emboar got in another hit, just before Zebstrika was about to fall over, Elesa used a Hyper Potion on her Pokemon, and the Electric-type ran across the stage, filled with energy once again. Potions were one of the many useful battle strategies that the voices had more or less ruled out for Cly. The rare times that they had her use a healing item, it was almost always when it didn't need to be used, accomplishing nothing but wasting her time and money and items and probably causing yet another wipe. She had given up on that possibility a while ago, but it still hurt to see another Trainer take advantage of the items that she never could.
…but, right after being helped by that Hyper Potion, the Zebstrika fell victim to another blast of fire and keeled over with a single hit. It seemed that Elesa too could waste her healing items.
Teh urn, the voices begun chanting. She'd deciphered that phrase after the first dozen or so times they'd started to repeat it while controlling her actions. The run. It meant they thought that she was about to win a tough battle, that she would soon succeed against all odds in whatever challenge she now faced.
Emboar was still struggling to move, but every attack was hitting hard, and none had missed their target yet… Maybe the voices were right. Maybe this was the run.
Only one remained; Elesa, too, now only had one Pokemon out of five able to fight. But her Ampharos was raring to go, fleet of foot and with a steely gleam in its eyes. It wouldn't go down without a fight. But then again, neither would Cly and her Emboar, not if she had anything to say about it.
The Ampharos zoomed across the stage, tackling Emboar with a jolt of electricity that threw it to the ground. The Fire-type stood still for one second… two seconds… Cly held her breath. This was it. This had to be.
But then, Emboar slowly got back on its feet, panting and grunting. The Pokemon looked like he was about to fall over with every step he took… and yet, when he shot flames at the opposing Ampharos, the Fire-type's aim was true, and his target collapsed immediately. Only after Elesa had returned her Pokemon to its Poke Ball did Emboar cease his struggle to remain conscious, eyelids drooping as Cly recalled him.
And she had won. And she was in the spotlight now, and the glowing screen behind the stage displayed her picture, dirt and all.
As Elesa handed over her Badge and a TM, Cly stared at the Poke Ball in her hand of the Emboar that had fought so valiantly for her, attacking over and over again even when his body had screamed out for rest. The voices had two names for it- besides Emboar, which was rather impersonal- and as she felt the cold metal of the Poke Ball push against the palm of her hand, she pondered the meanings of the two nicknames. Over the years, the girl had learned the value of having the right name; it was only fair that she made sure her comrades had fitting names as well.
Bacon. That was what they had started with, the nickname they'd used from the moment she grabbed the Fire-type's Poke Ball so long ago. It was the first name the voices had ever given, before they really knew what her first Pokemon could do, back when they had planned to release the Tepig as soon as she had as much as a single Pokemon to use as a replacement. But her Emboar's flames consumed his opponents, not himself; her Emboar had a strength all its own, rather than being merely a fuel for the energetic movement of others.
Another name had emerged later, after her Emboar had proven his worth, once most of the cries to let him go had died down. Wilbur. It was a reference to a book Cly had read and reread countless times when she was a child, though it had been years since she had last picked it up, and she could only remember the basic details of the plot now. Though the book was named after another, Wilbur was a main character, perhaps the main character, of the story. And he had been destined for death from the start, until a mysterious benefactor had pointed out the creature's value that had gone unnoticed by all the rest, using a phrase that the voices now repeated over and over.
Some pig.
As Cly stepped off the stage, she smiled widely, grateful that this Wilbur, too, had escaped the slaughterhouse.