Warning for mention of Shinichi's parents, pokemon stereotypes.


Chapter Seven - The First Battles

Announcements blare over the intercom of course, the referee a respectable distance away. Conan could swear they look familiar but the blood is buzzing in his ears. It may be structured, but it is still battle and not mobbing. He can't help the thrum of joy in his heart. Watson's ball trembles and Conan smiles.

Amuro-san smiles back as the leader calls the rules. A two-on-two, the challenger for the throne can exchange at any time, use of two healing items from the challenger's side and one from the leader proxy. Amuro-san wouldn't use items, he never did. He didn't like to waste things, even when he had the money for them. Conan offers him the same courtesy, even subconscious.

Conan waits for the man on the referee box to fall silent, their voice making his ears ring with nostalgia. But he doesn't, can't, focus on it now. Instead, he straightens and lowers himself into a familiar bow, one arm outstretched in stage greeting.

From the stands, he hears Haibara Ai whistle and cracks a grin.

This is the salute of war, he thinks, the salute of the bitter Unovan boy who threw stones at warships and broken bottles at League officials. Edogawa Conan's trust in real authority is about as low as anyone's in Plasma. He knows Amuro-san won't risk bowing back because of it. He'll probably be too offended at the blow to his pride.

Conan lifts himself straight once more, and bares his teeth. This, Amuro-san returns and tosses out a ball of his own.

It pops out, a soft little white, black, and pink bear on all fours. At the sight of him, its spherical tail wags.

From the side, Ayumi squeals. Genta, on her other side, makes an acute noise of terror.

Conan cannot blame him.

"The gym leader chooses stufful!" declares the referee and the horror kicks in on the other faces proper except he's pretty sure Haibara is grinning, the ass. Oh he will probably kill her before she kills him. Likely letting Aggie do it but neither of them need to know that. "Challenger, make your choice."

Conan resists the urge to deck the referee in the face or visibly melt and squeal because holy shit, Tim Goodman was reffing! His match! His first match in years! He makes himself focus because how awesome and useful is that?

He really only has one choice in partner and he knew it wasn't Watson. Watson would probably die at the first blow from a super powered teddy bear. At least metapod was still in the hospital. That would have been just embarrassing.

Still, Conan can't help his smile. He just can't. This is what he lived for his first time. Why would it change now?

"Ready, Aggie," he whispers to the ball. Its button flickers green. "All right. Let's go!" He tosses it and out pops his absol. Agatha lands in the dirt of the field with an incredible amount of poise, not even faltering at the sight of the tiny bear who could still break the entire floor without really trying.

"Are you out of your mind?" Mitsuhiko hollers, pulled out of good manners by the seeming utter stupidity of his choice. Genta looks a little pleased, which is fair because Conan had shown him up how many times before in the past couple of weeks? Ayumi looks, well, somewhere in the middle because cute pokemon and oh god he's insane. Haibara simply watches, but Conan is absolutely sure she's smiling too. But not for the same reason. Because she knows.

"And the challenger has chosen Absol!" Oh yes he does know that referee. "Ready… begin!"

Amuro-san whistles and the bear bounds forward. It's not very fast but it uses its forelegs to throw itself forward, black paws wrapping themselves in visible darkness. Agatha steps to the side, using a glancing blow with her paws. Stufful rolls over, landing on all fours, lunging again.

"Aggie," Conan calls. "Step lively!"

Make him squirm.

Agatha's form glimmers white as she leaps across the battlefield, dodging more furious swipes. Then, her front leg bends, too far. She skids to a halt and an orange foreleg slams into her jaw. Agatha goes flying into the nearest psychic barrier and crumples.

There were noises of distinct pain and Conan winces. But Agatha rises up and in one smooth motion, throws a blade of wind at stufful's throat. Not full power, of course, his absol had a very realistic track record on account of being almost twenty years old, but it would take more than a basic razor wind to kill a stufful anyway. It still sends the pokemon rolling, squirming and making noises of dismay and pain. Stufful soon squirms to its feet and lunges again.

Conan shifts from foot to foot. He wants to move. Real battles mean you move with your pokemon. You have to to keep their visual perspective. It's normal. But he can't because he's up in a box and the last thing he needs aside from losing is to fall off the perch. Which counts as a loss because you crack your head open. Weak.

Agatha leaps back and then forward, horn meeting forehead and separating again. Blood trails down Stufful's head and into their fur. The bear blinks it out of their eyes and bays with rage. In the next moment, the bear lunges.

Conan doesn't flinch. It's a very loud voice sure, but it's also high pitched and squeaky and not that threatening considering Amuro-san's honor bound inability to break the rules on things that please him. "Play Rough," he shouts.

And in that moment, the fight is pretty much over.

Play Rough was a move that his mother had raised this absol to master for him once, taken from the breeder most battlers went through, and through her contest years had mastered it so effectively it would have been humiliating for his pokemon not to know it.

Little disaster you are, she'd said affectionately to Shinichi once. He'd never let her live it down. Because of course it had hurt, they aren't idiots but they believed their boy was of sterner stuff than that.

... At any rate, an absol having play rough is a one-trick pony until they learn psycho cut and absolutely drive everyone up a wall. Still, for the first gym, it is a riot. Judging by Genta's creative use of an f-bomb he wasn't supposed to know anyway.

And for an absol anything could be play.

Agatha darts and drives the squeaking, angry bear into a wall corner and bats him back and forth between her front paws like an easy peasy rubber ball. Blood dots from accidental scrapes of claws and Conan whistles. Agatha leaps away as the creature lunges, head meeting chin again, clacking jaw, drawing blood, but in the right range for this play rough. Stufful flies to the ground and goes still with a groan.

"Count of 1!" calls the referee and Agatha pads back to where Conan's standing. He can't touch her, not yet, the count is still going for a few moments.

But then the referee reaches ten and whistles. "Stufful is declared unable to continue. Challenger, do you wish to continue with your pokemon?"

"I'll switch." Agatha is panting in front of him and he'd rather not risk her right now. "C'mere, Aggie."

Agatha scowls but trots to his side, settling near enough for the beam to return her. He strokes her fur, watching Amuro-san's pokemon disappear in a spot of red light.

The man grins. "You're lucky this is your first gym."

"I'm really not," Conan mutters under his breath. "Watson, let's go."

The pikachu leaps from the ball and onto the field, sparking with sheer glee.

Amuro-san smirks and releases…

"The second round is… Pikachu vs Deerling!"

"Jerk," Conan mutters, but it's all in good fun.

The second the referee calls for the start the two pokemon are off, dashing across the field in little blurs. Deerling and sawsbuck were generally fairly harmless, often eaten in parts of Galar and staples in war. But tick one off and you were almost guaranteed a broken rib or two. Them and girafarig were the worst.

But Watson is a little bit faster, zipping with the speed of a pokemon used to laps, used to dashes. After the other day, nothing is impossible to run.

His body sparks.

"Is that your style, Conan-kun?" Amuro-san asks. "Overwhelm them with pure power?"

Conan grins, savage and wild, glasses gleaming in the spotlight. "Only today," he says, and Watson streaks across the field, a volt tackle shooting star into the deerling.

Deerling swings and glows green, feelers spreading like great, deadly antlers. But still it lands and sends them both again across the stage. Watson wobbles to his paws, the pads a light pink. Deerling wobbles and begins to glow green once more.

But deerling are fragile. He topples over as Watson continues to stumble. Landing on all fours, Watson whines.

He stays standing.

Conan beams.

It shouldn't mean anything, really. It's just a gym battle. He's done them before, tens of times at this point. But it's still nice. It's still affirming. It's still good.

Then again he may also be very starved for validation at this point. Conan would not be surprised to add it to his laundry list of issues and ailments, as his mom would put it.

"Deerling is down. The challenger wins!"

The kids shriek!. Haibara claps slowly, eyes heavy on his own. He looks at her and grins wider.

She smirks back.

Honestly, he doesn't know what he expected.


Haibara trails after the children. Tsurubuya-kun (They'd introduced themselves in the stands and she'd taken it… marginally well, she still feels a sensory overload headache coming on.) is arguing with Edogawa-kun about his choice of absol against stufful, like it's a crime against nature.

"Ash did it," Edogawa-kun is saying with a small smirk.

"He only won against Brock because of the sprinklers!" the other boy snaps back, fuming.

"It was only going to work once, better it be with Aggie than someone else."

"That doesn't make any sense Conan-kun!"

"Now now," Yoshida-san starts. "It did work. I thought stufful were supposed to be rougher though."

"They gotta be domesticated," Kojima-kun says with a puff of air. "My mom does that, ya know. Rehabilitates nutso pokemon and stuff."

Tsurubuya raises an eyebrow. "Genta-kun, you were doing so well…"

"What?! What'd I say?"

Watson squeaks against the fabric of Edogawa-kun's jacket. He scratches him behind the ear.

"What do you think, Haibara-san?" Yoshida-san was looking at her. Eyes big and blue, soft and guileless.

"It was a reckless strategy," Ai finds herself saying, earning a half-hearted glare from one boy and a look of admiration from another. "But for absol, who are often put on an offensive and speedy track to survive, it was logically sound. The deerling could have gone either way. That said, it won't be the same for the rest of the battles."

"Duh," Kojima-kun said, only to get smacked in the back. "What? That's how it works though!"

"For different reasons than a Nuzlocke campaign," Edogawa-kun says with disinterest "Which she'd had to do."

The other children freeze and look at her with a whole new light. Yoshida-san, almost accusatory."You've killed pokemon?"

Ai regards them thoughtfully. Strictly speaking, of course she has. She truthfully, did have to do a Nuzlocke survival run. It's the only way to get into the Organization, no matter who your parents are or aren't. She hadn't wanted to but dying hadn't sounded great either. Should she tell them that? They are actually ten years old after all.

Edogawa-kun lets out a snort. "Guys, remember? I've killed pokemon. I've eaten them. Don't lose your heads now."

The three of them flush, abashed, and all look away, murmuring to themselves and her in apology. Ai shakes her head and glances at Edogawa-kun again.

Why was Edogawa-kun traveling with real children? Sure it was normal but most real trainers, most elite trainer wannabes anyway, went at it alone. Eventually their dreams diverged, their hearts went separate ways and they parted soon after.

She'd read Kudo Shinichi was a loner. One friend, a few colleagues, some rivals. A lot of bad eggs. Little connection with his parents. His disappearance was more remarkable for the paperwork it left behind rather than most people's concern.

So why had he chosen kids? Why not do an internship or an apprenticeship or school? Less obtrusive, more safe. What was special about them? Only one of them looks vaguely familiar to her.

"Don't think so much."

The tense cloud is gone and Edogawa-kun is step for step beside her.

"I wasn't."

"Your eyes tell otherwise." He grins. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you have a heart in there somewhere."

Of course I do, she thinks, but not over this.

But it goes unspoken and she's pulled into the conversation once more.