Disclaimer: Pokémon is still owned by The Pokémon Company, which in turn is owned by Nintendo, Game Freak, and probably others I forgot. The following fanfiction is me playing around in their sandbox, using characters they envisioned and created, except for the odd character that wasn't. I own nothing of this.
Chapter 7: Tourist Attractions
Serena lifted her left leg, stretching it for the fifth time in the last hour at least. It was the day after Danny and Max had won a badge in Cyllage City, and overnight, the rain had completely soaked most of the lower half of Route 10, just not the parts closest to Cyllage.
Serena was cold, tired, wet, and her knee was starting to pulse along with her heartbeat. Not good.
She felt one of the boys open her pack, taking one of the items out before pulling the cord to close it just a bit too hard, jerking her back. "Oops," Danny said as he steadied her immediately. "Here. You need this."
Serena accepted the portable crutch, fiddling with it until it reached the length she was most comfortable with. "I'm sorry boys..."
"Don't be," Max told her. "You can't help your leg, or the weather." She saw the younger boy check the map, looking around for landmarks to use. "Should be a mile. Can you manage?"
As it turned out, she couldn't, and just as the Pokémon Center became visible downhill, Serena stopped walking. Even with the crutch, her knee was throbbing too much, hurting too much, and with every step Serena took with the weight on her back, it felt like it was going to give, which would have sent her into the dirt. "Stupid knee!" She adjusted the crutch slightly, feeling it start to sink into the soggy ground.
Danny helped her to take the pack off, which was a literal load off her knee. "You can walk it like this?"
"Hopefully," Serena replied, glaring at her knee. It wouldn't help, but it felt good. "But what about my pack?"
"Simple," Max spoke up. "I go on ahead, get a room, drop my pack, and come back. Shouldn't take long."
Danny hummed agreement, and Serena didn't see a problem with that either. "You don't mind carrying my pack for a bit?"
"We walked thirteen miles today already. What's..." Max looked up and down the road, seeming to gauge the distance. "Half a mile more?"
"Too much for me."
"Extenuating circumstances. Now, I'll be back. Don't kiss too much."
Serena swore telling Max about Shauna's words in the theatre had been the worst idea of her life.
The younger boy walked off at a pace Serena was sure she couldn't have matched even before her knee happened. "Are you certain he doesn't like that Linda girl?"
"Pretty sure," Danny repeated himself. They'd had this conversation before, and sadly, the answer didn't change. "Him making fun of you is good, actually. Means he feels he can do that."
"Is that boy logic?" Serena wondered, studying Danny as she asked her question. "I mean, you two are best friends, and you insult each other so often."
"It's how we work. Trust me, Max does it with his sister too, and worse," Danny told her. "And she returns the favour. Hard."
Serena hadn't seen May and Max do that all too much, but Danny had known him for far longer, and she assumed he wouldn't lie to her. "So more Max logic than boy logic?"
"If you want to call it that." Danny spread his hands as he looked up and down at the crutch. "I'm just glad we're here, and not a mile back. I know we have tents and all, but..."
Serena followed Danny's gaze upward, seeing grey clouds speed across the sky, left to right. "Yeah," she agreed, trying to imagine her knee after a night in the cold and wet weather. "At least it's not freezing." Oh, that would have been the worst...
"But then the road wouldn't have been as muddy."
Serena conceded the point. "How long until Max returns?"
"Quarter of an hour?" Danny ventured after looking up and down the road in the same way Max had done earlier. "He's nearly halfway there, but then he has to talk to Nurse Joy."
"Hope it's not too bus… Hey!"
Something dropped onto Serena's head, the sudden weight surprising, but not enough to do much more. "Blu, blu!" a Pokémon cried.
"Hey there," Danny said, reaching out to the Pokémon atop Serena's head. "Aren't you a curious little thing." He smiled, half at the Pokémon, half at Serena. "It's a swablu. They're actually sort of infamous for sitting on people's heads."
Carefully, leaning against a tree to balance herself, Serena undid her crutch and lifted her hat off her head with both hands. The blue-white Pokémon stayed put, chirping happily as Serena turned the hat to face her. "Hiya. You like my hat?"
The swablu made a melodic thrill before fluttering up and settling in Serena's hair, its wings by its side. She brought an arm up, running her thumb across what felt like the back of swablu's skull, to happy titters and a camera shutter clicking. "Here, go use your crutch again before you fall over," Danny said as he took her hat from her hand.
Only when leaning on the crutch did Serena feel how much that little time not using it had irritated her knee. "We're staying here a few days, I think."
Danny shrugged before snapping another picture. "Not like we have to be somewhere soon."
They waited for Max to return, most of their attention aimed at Serena's new hat. The swablu adored the attention, and its joyous cries made Serena feel better as well. This was how humans and Pokémon should interact, and not like one of those attacks in Hoenn.
Max showed up about twenty minutes after leaving them, taking one look at the three of them. "New fashion?" he asked before taking Serena's pack on her back and fiddling with the straps. "You're going to have to adjust these, sorry."
Serena waved it off. If that was everything, it'd be fine.
Somehow, she managed to make it to the Center without one of the boys needing to support her. Nurse Joy was ready for her, and she hadn't been so glad to see a wheelchair, ever, dropping into it without any care in the world. "There's a warm bath ready for you," the nurse told her as she revelled in sitting down. "As much as your knee needs cold, you need to warm up first."
Wasn't that the truth. Serena let Nurse Joy lead her to a bath in the staff area, and she smelled the bath before she saw it. She shivered with anticipation as Nurse Joy led her to a fold-up chair to sit on while undressing. She'd done that before, just not in a while, and after a rocky start with one of her shoes, she quickly fell back into the rhythm. Swablu had hopped off of her head, instead perching on the towel rack.
Serena put a hand to her knee after taking the brace off. The knee was almost painfully heated, far more than the rest of her leg, and she could feel it throb under her palm. "Blu?"
"I hurt my knee really badly last year," Serena replied, figuring swablu was wondering what was going on. "It took a long time to recover, and it's still not fully healed yet." She finished undressing, placing her socks on top of the pile of clothing. "Nurse Joy? I'm going in now."
"Okay," the nurse replied from outside the room. "I'll come back in twenty minutes with a towel, and I'll leave my eevee outside. If you need me, just tell eevee to come get me."
A short cry announced eevee's presence, but Serena only had one goal in mind: the bath. Luckily, the chair was close to the bathtub's edge, and with a bare minimum of having to lean on her bad leg, she made it in.
The soft warmth was divine, and Serena couldn't help but coo at the wonderful feeling.
It made swablu hop down to the side of the bath, carefully extending one of its wings to dip it in the water. "Careful," Serena warned, watching the small Pokémon balance itself. "It can be sli..." she trailed off as swablu fell in, wings fluttering wildly. "Slippery," she finished as she scooted forward the best she could, placing one of her arms underneath the swablu's body.
Swablu immediately stopped moving and let itself be lifted from the water, hopping down onto the floor and shaking itself, sending water everywhere, including her clothing.
Serena couldn't find it in herself to admonish the Pokémon for doing that. It was funny and cute, and it probably had learned its lesson already. She sank back, leaving only her head above water, and swablu soon took up position on the towel rack again.
The heavenly twenty minutes were over far too soon. Nurse Joy came in with a towel, but Serena successfully convinced her that drying off was something the teenager could do herself. Maybe it wasn't as fast, and some spots were really hard to reach well when you didn't want to stand up for too long, but she managed, with only a wet chair to show for it.
"Your travel companions have some ice for you to put on that knee," Nurse Joy told her as she applied the compression bandage around Serena's knee. "I want you to ice it at least twice today, and come to my sister tomorrow morning for another bandage like this. And as little walking as you can manage. Walking the distance from your wheelchair to the toilet is as much as you're allowed to until one of us says otherwise."
"I can do the bandaging myself, Nurse Joy," Serena tried as she felt the swablu settle on her head again, bristling in her damp hair. "You knew it was wet, swablu."
"You'll have to show my sister that tomorrow," Nurse Joy replied calmly. "Now, do you have any Pokémon I need to check out? Maybe that swablu?"
The nurse helped Serena bridge the distance to the wheelchair. "It's not my Pokémon. Just a wild one who decided my head was a good nest." Hat or no hat, as it turned out.
"Judging by how comfortable it is, it might want to be your Pokémon." Swablu tittered enthusiastically at Nurse Joy's words, hopping down to Serena's lap and doing a little dance. "See?"
"You want to travel along?" Serena asked, and the way swablu burrowed itself into her answered that question. "Well. Welcome aboard."
~~§~~§~~
Geosenge Town was colourful, calm, and very, very rock-filled. They were standing in the main street of the town, halfway through the afternoon, and Danny counted at least five vendors of rocks of any kind: for Pokémon, for jewellery, even for ornaments to put in a living room. "So many evolution stones," Serena said, and her swablu tittered from on top of her head. "You have Pokémon who can evolve like that, right? Vulpix and poliwhirl and helioptile and clefairy?"
"I've had helioptile for what? A month?" Danny did a quick count in his head. "Yeah, about a month. I'm not even thinking about evolving her. Besides," he said as he eyed the price tag on a nearby Leaf Stone, "they are expensive and common tournament victory prizes." As Ash had proven by sending two stones over to the Maple family just from winning tournaments in Sinnoh. "Maybe this time next year or something. I'll ask Clemont what he did," he added as he remembered the Lumiose Gym Leader having a heliolisk.
"And my Pokémon don't want to evolve. I asked them this morning," Max said matter-of-factly. "What?" he added when Serena gave him a weird look. "They evolve. If they don't want to, they don't want to."
"I never thought of it like that..." Serena said, thinking hard before shrugging. "Luckily, I don't have a Pokémon like that for now, so I don't have to think about it."
Serena's words made the two boys chuckle, and with that, they left the evolutionary stones behind them, instead heading for the jewellery. Serena's mother had her birthday coming up, as had Max's mother.
Luckily, Danny's mother had a birthday in the summer, and he didn't have to think about finding her a present for ages. He'd have time to look when they got back to Lumiose, he knew that for sure.
Serena ended up buying a malachite pendant, and Max walked away with a quartz bracelet after far too long. "Finally," Danny said as they stepped out into the surprisingly decent weather. "Can we go do something fun now?" he whined.
Serena didn't take the bait. "We can go to the museum. It's got all sorts of history about Geosenge. Mum took me there two years ago, and it was great."
Max agreed quickly – he was probably in favour the moment Serena said the word 'museum' - and Danny was okay with it as well. Geosenge had a long history with many interesting things, he had read here and there, and learning more about that was a fun way to spend time.
The museum was easily located, and not very busy for a Saturday afternoon. The pensioner selling them tickets wasn't even there for two minutes before he came striding into the entrance area. He apologised profusely for not being there, telling them he had thought it was safe to go refill his cup of coffee. They just waved it off, and Danny doubted Max had even noticed the pensioner's absence too much. There was a case to the right of the entrance that had grabbed his attention immediately.
True to Serena's words, the museum was, in fact, pretty cool. Max was happily devouring every little bit of knowledge in sight, muttering under his breath whenever he saw something particularly interesting, while Danny stuck mostly to the history of the region. Rocks were nice to look at, but he didn't really need to know about that.
Eventually, they happened upon a separate dead-end room with several glass cabinets One was of a man with a floette floating near his shoulder, a runestone formation visible in the background, underneath a fiery sky. Something felt off about the painting, but Danny didn't really know what.
Ancient King 'AZ' and his beloved floette.
The other painting was far larger. On the left side, Danny saw a blue and black Pokémon with rainbow-coloured antlers, standing in a vividly painted glade. One of its legs rested atop a boulder, and it looked right, facing the other Pokémon. This one was red and black, and a bit of grey too, hovering in mid-air above a devastated desolate part of the land. Danny saw dead trees and moss, and the greenish hue to the water made it all the more creepy.
The two styles of each side met in the middle, mixing the Pokémon's influences on the visible ground in a way that made the ground look… fragile. It wasn't like the paint was cracked, but it nearly looked like it, until Danny moved and saw it was a trick of perspective.
Xerneas and Yveltal, the Mortality Duo of Kalos.
Danny took a look at the case next to the Mortality Duo's painting, finding a decayed stone etching, with a translation by the side.
Days the Duo warred, destroying Earth and Sky. Life created, uncaring. Death destroyed, indiscriminate. Life drove Death away, but Death always returned, unending, tireless.
Other cases on that side of the room told similar stories, or talked about archaeological finds supporting the hypothesis that those two Legendary Pokémon laid waste to large parts of Kalos 3000 years ago. It was the legend Max had told him about while reading up on Kalos.
Then he came to the other half of the room, passing by Serena going in the opposite direction, and found a different hypothesis.
This one spoke of an ancient 'ultimate weapon' that was used to stop an all-encompassing war. It malfunctioned, creating destructive energy that reached as far as route 13 and even route 14 north of Lumiose. The King depicted in the painting was seen as the architect of the weapon, driven to desperate measures by the death of his subjects and his partner Pokémon.
"Which version sounds more reasonable?" a cheery deep voice asked from the entrance. When Danny turned around, he saw a teenager a few years older than they were, with reddish-orange hair, wearing the uniform of the museum. "The ancient weapon, or the Legendary Pokémon?"
"Pokémon," Danny answered instantly. Max had told him enough stories of how powerful Legendary Pokémon were, and the potential for destruction they had was well-known to anyone over the age of ten in Hoenn, if not anyone over five. "They didn't have stuff like that back then."
Danny was expecting Max to back him up on that, but when he turned to his friend, he saw Max shake his head. "They did have some weird stuff back then. Pokélantis and Pokémopolis in Kanto are still barely understood." He sighed. "But Legendaries destroying a region is..."
"Something someone from Hoenn would understand," the employee interjected, smiling at them as he walked up. Serena also joined them, though she was silent. "You were incredibly lucky it ended as quickly as it did two and a half years ago. But that isn't why you are here. Do you know why we put these things in one room?"
That was a good question. Every time Danny could think of, all the evidence for a certain event happening had been in its own section, with clear markings on the floor and walls when they reached a new area. This room didn't have that. "Because they're both true?" Serena ventured.
Danny wasn't sure how both could be true, since they were talking of the same events in the same time, but with very different causes, but he saw the employee – Maël, he read – nod. "Close. We don't know which is true, not even after over a hundred years of studying this." He led them to the painting. "If we accept this, how do we explain strange readings from the route 13 soil? Even now, some ill-understood energy emanates from it. Harmless energy, but it is completely foreign to any other known Kalos route." He took about ten steps to their left. "Yet, if we assume the weapon is the cause, how do we explain findings that match a Legendary Battle in the general time frame as far away as Anistar and Couriway? The weapon only reached to Lumiose."
"You sure know a lot about this," Serena observed. and Danny nodded along.
"Grew up on it," the teenager replied easily. "My mother is the curator, as my Papa – my grandfather – was before her." He sat down on the floor with his legs crossed, and the other teenagers joined him there. "I'll ask you a question my Papa did when we made this room last year. Which version of history is scarier?"
"They're both pretty scary when you think about it," Serena said, and Danny found himself in agreement, nodding along. "Something that can destroy that much..."
"Horrifying, isn't it?" Maël stated. "I agree with you, but my Papa doesn't." He leant forward, poking Max in the shin. "You're silent. What do you think?"
Max opened and closed his mouth, seemingly thinking of something as he was about to speak. "I think..." he eventually started. "I think it's the weapon version." Danny saw Maël move his hand in a circle, telling Max to continue. "Pokémon are powerful, but raging Pokémon don't think or plan or have contingencies. Humans do. They're harder to stop."
Max took a deep breath, as if steeling himself, before starting to talk again, interrupting Maël. "Legendaries are powerful. Some are terrifyingly powerful, like lugia or groudon or yveltal, and seeing and feeling the power of those Pokémon going at it is… it's indescribable. Tornadoes and whirlpools with a single flap of kyogre's fins… Thunderstorms with lightning strikes every second… Groudon's awakening causing a volcano to appear… I know what they can do, and how much they can stand up to. Humans made that possible."
"You..." Serena started timidly, and Danny quickly turned away from Max's drawn face to Serena, who looked… scared? "You were there? That's what you're saying, right?" She saw confirmation from Max, changing her expression to something Danny couldn't read. "I thought you trusted me..." she said softly.
Danny cut Max, if he wanted to speak, off with a sharp slash of his hand. "Serena," he said softly, catching her attention. "You know how long Max and I have been friends, right?" She nodded. "I found out in July. Nearly two years after it happened," he added. "And only by accident, too. Max likes secrets a bit too much."
"Max is sitting right here," Max muttered, but for once, Danny felt no qualms about sending him a scathing glare. It shut the younger boy up.
"I can understand it even if I hate it," Danny allowed, turning back to Serena. "Imagine what your mother would say if you got into something like that. Max's parents are the same. He would have been grounded until he was an adult."
"I think you shouldn't discuss this here," Maël interrupted, reminding them that he was in the room as well, although he had gotten up when Danny wasn't looking. "I'll keep this secret, of course, but I would love to talk about groudon and kyogre. Are you here tomorrow?"
"Should be," Max said, standing up himself, but carefully avoiding all gazes. "We're in the Center."
"Brilliant!"
~~§~~§~~
Five days after Max had admitted to Serena that he'd been keeping secrets from her, and also five days after Danny and Serena had teamed up to make Max tell her a few more things after they returned to the Center, they were walking through the Reflection Cave east of Geosenge. Danny and Serena followed, while Max was walking about a dozen paces ahead, sulking still.
Danny didn't understand why, really. He had made sure Max didn't have to retell the week in Forina or that thing in Kanto with the lucario, feeding Serena a line about them being sensitive topics Max hadn't liked talking about. It was true, if Danny's memory was correct. Serena had accepted that, telling them she wouldn't press Max for answers. It had also stopped most of Serena's annoyance – which Danny had already been trying to limit by offering explanations – in its tracks, but still, Max was giving him and Serena both the cold shoulder, only interacting by necessity pretty much.
Danny wanted his friend back, but he wasn't going to grovel for it. He had some pride, and he was in the right.
He glanced aside, seeing his reflection glancing back at him, illuminated by froslass holding a torch above them. There were so many reflective surfaces in here, it was like walking through a house of mirrors at a fair, except without the maze part. He made a face, his counterpart doing the same, and Serena giggled. "This place is cool."
"Uhuh," Serena agreed, adjusting her hat so it nearly covered one of her eyes. "Looks better than I tho-ought!" she said, having to grab the hat as it slid off her head. "You know there's a legend about this cave?"
Danny saw Max's head jerk upwards before his brain caught up, remembering that he was supposed to be angry, and going back to the regularly scheduled sulking. "Tell me?"
"One of these mirrors is supposed to be a portal to an opposite world," Serena said as they turned a corner to a temporarily mirror-less stretch. "You exist in that world, but the you is the complete opposite of what you are. If you're kind here, you're cruel there and so on."
That was a really cool legend, even if it couldn't exist. "I wonder what opposite-me would be," Danny mused.
"Probably all about attacking in battle."
Danny had to agree with Serena there. He liked defending and countering in battle, so his counterpart would be all about attacking. "And you'd know exactly what you wanted to do," he replied, smiling to take the sting out. "Did you decide on the Freestyle Performance plan already?"
"Been working on it," Serena replied, one hand going to her belt. "Having swablu made it a lot easier to practice Copycat. Too bad it doesn't work with Sing."
Danny remembered zorua using Sing the night before, and shuddered. The yowling had not been calming or soothing at all, like Sing was supposed to be. "At least you found out now."
"True." Serena glanced aside and slightly up at Danny, before nodding her head at Max. "What would his opposite be?"
Danny came up with an answer faster than he was expecting himself. "Stupid and very, very simple in Pokémon battles."
Before Serena could reply, Danny heard a pitiful cry from the rocks to his right. He looked around, down since the sound came from that direction, and found the source quickly. It had come from a small grey Pokémon, with green spikes. He recognised it as a ferroseed, which were generally shy and somewhat rare Pokémon mostly found in Unova, though they were also native to Sinnoh and Kalos.
Its eyes were fogged over, and Danny felt it would shiver if it hadn't been made out of steel. "Max!" he yelled, creating a slight echo in the halls. "Need ya!"
While Max was coming, Danny carefully knelt by the Pokémon, gently putting a finger on the metal body, and finding it to be hot to the touch. Serena did the same when she saw that the ferroseed let Danny. "A fever? In a Steel-type? How does that work?"
"Same as humans," Max said snippily. "Fever's your immune system working." He tried to move the ferroseed, but couldn't. "It's stuck to the rock. Trying to eat, probably. It's how they get nutrients in the wild."
"It doesn't look alright. Can't we give it some medicine?" Serena asked.
"We don't know what caused the fever. Not every illness can be treated the same way. Fevers are also not always a sign of something worse," Max lectured as he walked around the rock ferroseed had stuck itself to. "This one probably is bad, though. Just a feeling."
Danny met Max's eyes in the semi-dark, as both froslass and baltoy had aimed their torches at someplace lower. He couldn't read his friend's face all that well, but Danny got the feeling Max wanted him to do something.
It wasn't until Max mimed taking a pokéball that Danny understood. "Capture it? Wouldn't it..."
"Should be okay," Max said. "Unless you want to break the rock and lug it around for however long," he added sarcastically.
Ignoring the tone, Danny did see the point Max was making. Steel-types were heavy as a rule, and even if it only weighed as much as his magnemite, that still was a lot of extra weight to carry to Shalour. He didn't know how far the town was, but probably at least an hour of walking away.
"Aren't Steel-types really defensive?" Serena wondered, interrupting Danny's thoughts. "That makes it perfect for you, Danny."
Danny made to tell Serena that wasn't how it worked, but Max spoke up first. "Ferrothorn looked like a Pokémon you'd like," he said. "Like dusclops. And you can always set it free if it doesn't want to be a Trainer's Pokémon."
Danny wondered if the mirror version of him would be headstrong to the point of not listening to anyone, ever. "Alright," he said, enlarging one of his empty pokéballs. "Let's hope this works."
The ferroseed barely resisted capture, and the capsule vanished, zooming off to Lumiose, and hopefully, to some healing. Danny would have used the Holo Caster to call after it, but service inside caves was terrible.
"Right. Now, on to Shalour," Max told them, immediately starting to walk, baltoy floating alongside him with the torch providing light.
Danny didn't know if Max knew he was doing it, but he was making sure he stayed a lot closer to Danny and Serena than he had done before they had found ferroseed. He could only hope it meant Max was close to making up with them.
Time to think of something suitably haughty to say.
~~§~~§~~
The Shalour City Pokémon Center had a perfect view of the city's main feature: the Tower of Mastery. It was home to many legends about Mega Evolution from ages past, when they had been nothing more than whispered tales passed down within families. The island the Tower was on was also home to the local Gym. Right now, however, there was no path to the Gym or Tower to speak of, as the tides covered the shoal that let Trainers access it.
Max hadn't imagined ever needing to know when low tide was, but to access the Gym, he had to. Thankfully, the Center posted a list with those times on the notice board. He'd seen it a few minutes before as they arrived from their trek through Reflection Cave. Danny had gone off to talk to Professor Sycamore about ferroseed, Serena had gone to get a shower, and Max had moved to the Center's back, wanting to be alone and being surprised with a beautiful sunset.
A popping sound announced the arrival of one of Max's Pokémon, and he wasn't surprised to hear his Dragon-type grumble near his feet. Nor was the pull on his trouser leg a surprise. "You'll have to get up yourself," Max told bagon, not even taking his hands off the low wall. "You're too heavy for me to lift."
The sound of annoyance was funny. Despite bagon growing a lot in the past two months, putting on at least half his previous weight and showing a lot more sinewy muscles, he was still the same downright clingy Pokémon he had been before, preferring to let Max solve a problem for him.
Max was getting better at saying no, but the bagon was still very good at wrapping his trainer around his stubby arms. At least bagon did listen to him when Max said no, and he saw the Pokémon wander off in search for a way to get up on the wall.
Max glanced a quick look down, seeing there was an empty alley below them. A fifteen foot drop, maybe? Bagon would be fine if he lost his balance, and Max could only hope there was nobody walking below. He noticed a small arena off to the side, empty now, but puddles still littered the field, and he was reasonably sure it hadn't rained today.
He looked back up at the Tower of Mastery, and blinked, twice. The Tower was hazy, like watching it through weird shutters or something, almost flickering.
And then it vanished before Max's eyes, and he didn't even blink.
He shook his head. The last time that happened, he thought it had been a lack of sleep, but Max had slept more than enough the past few days. It wasn't like he was very tired either. Reflection Cave had been easy to get through. So why was he seeing this? "Questions without answers," he murmured, annoyed. It was not the first one he had found in Kalos.
Who was Team Flare? What was their goal? What they did didn't fit with what Max knew from past experiences. Team Rocket – the organisation he mentally clarified for himself – wanted Pokémon. Team Aqua and Magma had their Legendary Pokémon. When either of them went thieving, it was usually related to their goals, but there seemed to be no common thread for them. An attack on the Laverre Pokéball Factory, Fossil thieving, an attempted raid at an archaeological excavation near Snowbelle, where no Pokémon fossils had been found… He didn't get it. The only thing he really knew was that they weren't afraid of threatening humans with their Pokémon.
Even if it had been a month, the sneasel sneaking up on him still annoyed him. How often had Team Rocket snuck up on them and they hadn't noticed? He should have been more vigilant.
Happy cries from Max's left made him refocus his gaze, and he saw bagon walking on the wall, not really balancing himself but also not really needing to: the wall was wide enough for the Dragon-type to walk on. "Gon!"
"Yes, you did it," Max said, scratching bagon underneath his chin when the youngest member of his team sat down in front of him. "Did you find something to climb?"
"Ba," the Pokémon replied, pointing left. Max followed the arm and saw a small stone bench. That'd do it. "Go-on."
"Feeling proud of yourself, aren't you?" Max smiled down at his Pokémon, not that bagon could see it. "You know, when you grow up, you won't need to worry about climbing things any longer. You'll be able to fly."
"Baaaaa..." came the dreamy reply, causing Max to chuckle softly. Bagon's Pokédex entry was proven true once again.
Realistically, he wouldn't see a salamence for years, though. Dragon-types took a long time to evolve, and while Drake had publicly boasted of training a bagon to salamence in two years, Max was nowhere near the Dragon Master's level. He'd be lucky to have one by the time he was as old as Ash.
Pokémon evolution was always a funny thing. Danny's starter was younger than Max's by a few days, but Danny already had a swampert and grovyle didn't look close to evolving. Max was also certain baltoy was older than both of them, maybe even combined, but baltoy and claydol were very long-lived to begin with. Unless something happened, baltoy would be with Max when he was Drake's age and older.
The idea of something happening chilled him, and he wished nothing would. Losing one Pokémon had been enough already.
~~§~~§~~
The opening ceremony for the Champion's League was very different from what Ash was used to from previous Leagues. It made sense: it was all about the twelve individuals and not about several hundred trainers, but seeing his achievements on a big screen, listening to the announcer read them out as he waited to emerge from the Indigo Stadium catacombs was extremely weird. He didn't think he'd done that much, but seeing all of it listed made it look like a lot.
Maybe it was a lot, and he hadn't noticed between all the stuff that he had experienced.
The applause as he walked out, pikachu naturally walking beside him, was definitely the loudest it had been yet. He was the first of two Kanto participants, but they were being introduced in chronological order, and the other one from Kanto had been the runner-up in the Silver League two months after his title.
He shook hands with all of the other competitors before moving to stand next to the man he'd beaten last June. The twenty-something year old from Violet City had dyed his hair purple since they last saw each other two days before. He probably had something in mind, but Ash didn't really want to figure that out. All he cared about was that Wesley was a genuinely easy-going guy with a deep understanding of battles.
The loss of the dragonite for the Lily of the Valley final had been huge for him, and probably the most luck Ash had ever had. A rematch with the dragonite would be a battle to remember.
Sadly, the first time they could encounter each other was in the final phase after the initial round robin group stage. Participants from the same tournament were placed in different groups. In fact, Wesley was up in the very first match, while Ash had to wait until tomorrow to get started.
Thankfully, the opening ceremony didn't last too long after the introductions. Mr. Goodshow gave a speech, as per usual, but that was it. Ash and nine others filed into the catacombs again before going back up to the stands to go watch the opening match of the tournament.
There was a VIP box reserved for participants, but Ash had no intention of going there. Instead, he went into the stands around halfway up, easily locating seven people in the audience nearby. Thankfully, the seats they had occupied started with an aisle seat, meaning he didn't have squeeze himself to pass by several others just to get to where his seat had been kept empty.
Of course, Gary had made the 'Seat Reserved' sign. Ash ripped the paper off of the seat, ignoring the crude drawing and the misspelling of his name to sit down next to his mother, left, and Professor Oak, right. Gary, Tracey, Misty, Brock, and May were further down from the Professor.
He exchanged a few words and a quick hug with his mother, while pikachu went over to misty for greetings, but the moment the scoreboard lit up, Ash's full attention went to the battle below. They were opponents, but also acquaintances. All of them wished each other the best of luck, and it was that weird mix of genuine well-wishing and insincerity.
After all, any League could only have one winner.
~~§~~§~~§~~§~~
Champion's League groups:
Group A: Hale, Brian (Alola) | Peterson, Karen (Unova) | Black, Daniel (Sinnoh) | Arrow, Wesley (Johto) | Spar, Peter (Sinnoh) | Gordon, Alice (Unova)
Group B: Chevalier, Josephine (Kalos) | Finch, Christopher (Hoenn) | Ryan, Jonathan (Unova) | Ketchum, Ash (Kanto) | Pine, Benjamin (Kanto) | Richardson, Monica (Hoenn)
Format: Round Robin, Full Battles. (Group). Knock-out, Full Battles (Final Round).
Author's Note: And a Happy New Year!
