Growth

I know journeying is supposed to be a time-consuming activity, but it still annoyed me that we didn't get to Kalium Town until shortly before suppertime. Fey pointed out I accidentally added two hours to my trip by stopping at that natural spring, which was a little farther south than the path I needed to take. At least I got a new pokémon out of it. Sigurd followed me quite a bit through the woods. As a foamert, Sigurd wasn't a terribly quick mover, but that little slug had a remarkable ability to jump over fallen trees and other obstacles, though most of them were low enough for the thing to squeeze under. Fey gave me a few tips for getting started with a brand new pokémon.

But I think I forgot all those tips when we entered Kalium Town and I was overwhelmed by the color yellow. The streets were lined with giant bananas. Some were used as support beams for tents and booths, some were used as flagpoles and fence posts, and some of them were real. Or so Fey said. She may have been pulling my leg.

"This must be the Banana Festival you mentioned," I muttered. "They really beat you over the head with it, don't they?"

"It's a big event," Fey assured him. "Bananas are the chief produce here. These things are popular all over the region. The festival uses the bananas as a theme, and it marks the prime season for banana harvesting, but it's really just an excuse to have a festival. There're games and shows and rides…"

"You never need an excuse for rides," I pointed out. "Do they have roller coasters?"

"Yes, but they're the small ones that move at slow speeds for the kids. One of them goes through the dark, though."

"Awesome! Let's go!"

Fey giggled. "I guess I can show you around a little, but there's a show a little later I don't want to miss."

"Shows are cool. What kind of show?"

"Wrestling."

I put on a huge, amused grin. "You're a wrestling chick?"

I couldn't quite tell if she was offended by the word "chick," but her tone was less jovial when she said, "It's not normal wrestling. People compete against pokémon."

"Seriously? Isn't that a little stacked?" I know it wouldn't take much effort to wrestle Reggie into submission, but the Elder had a tyranitar that seemed impossible to tackle. Six-and-a-half feet tall, five hundred pounds… He used to use it to stamp down the fields for planting and to assist in lifting heavy things—like support beams for barn raisings or my neighbor's fat dad when he'd had too much to drink. I couldn't imagine anyone fighting a pokémon that big. "What kind of competition are we talking?"

She smiled like she was going to enjoy seeing my reaction to this awesome sight. "The favored challenger is a fully grown hariyama."

I narrowed my eyes, like seeing through tunnel vision would help me visualize something I didn't recognize, and then reached into my pocket for my pokédex. "Hariyama, hariyama," I repeated as I searched for a picture.

"It's a hulking beast a lot like a sumo wrestler. Think eight feet tall and eight hundred pounds in a very rotund body." I finally found the entry for hariyama in my pokédex. Her description was pretty spot-on, though she left out the part where its hands were wide enough to cover a class of school children in the rain.

A wolf whistle escaped my lips as I noted the size of the pokémon. Then I realized, "You said 'challenger.' Who's the champion?"

"You'll see."

I mocked disinterest in the topic. "Fine. I don't care, anyway. I wanna ride a roller coaster that roller coasters in the dark. How much should I be willing to bet the cars are shaped like bananas?"

Fey chuckled in reply. "I won't bet against you."

It felt a little strange for me, but this was the first time I separated myself from Reggie since I first opened his pokéball. Fey suggested it would be easy for me to lose track of such a rambunctious critter in the crowds the festival attracted, so I recalled him into the pokéball while we walked around.

We wandered through the festival toward the back end where the roller coasters were located. In hindsight, it's easy for me to say I wasn't surprised by all the aipoms and chimchars wandering the grounds. In the moment, however, I was a bit struck by the sheer numbers of them. Monkey pokémon everywhere. That part was pretty cool. The part that was less cool was how many people walked around wearing banana costumes. The first few were funny, especially the idea of someone walking around all day basically wearing a one-piece dress just to look like a banana, and one of them had a propeller on top. One of them was impressive with its quality build and incredible attention to detail: I brushed against him as I walked by just to figure out the costume felt like a real banana rind. Somehow, a young lady managed to make bananas sexy by wearing a yellow, skintight, tube-style dress that looked like it was peeling where she unzipped it to her chest. But most of the costumes were sad—bulky and flimsy like they was sewn from two-dollar materials.

"Aren't those costumes hot?" I asked Fey.

"I imagine the fabric retains heat pretty well when the sun's out like this, but I don't know for sure. I've never worn one."

"Why would you? You just wear a cape in the middle of the hottest day on record. Dressing like a seeded fruit is probably low on your list of oddities."

"Yeah, well, sunscreen only goes so far. It's less of a hassle than carrying an umbrella around all day." I could just imagine that. An umbrella where the tube looked like a banana fruit and the ribs looked like the peel.

"Thank god for fashion sense. What's that?"

There was a stage set up in what may have been the center of this town. It was pretty basic and looked like something that could be built in an hour—just a raised floor with no more area than a typical bedroom. A crowd was gathered around the stage with standing-room-only available; the three-row bleachers rolled out for the festival were overflowing. Two people stood onstage with microphones in hand.

"That's the stage," Fey answered simply. "It's where all the shows play throughout the festival. This is the talent show. As soon as they announce a winner, the wrestling show will start."

"Talent show? Are you sure? It sounds like an alleged comedy duo."

She chuckled. "You don't like the jokes?"

Here's why. Though Fey stayed back and didn't get close to the crowd, I worked my way around to one of the speakers so I could hear. One lanky guy whose hair made him resemble a mop looked confused while his portly partner with the rosy cheeks was eating a banana whole—rind and all.

"Why are you eating a banana with the skin on?"

"It's alright. I know what's inside."

Somehow, that made the crowd laugh. It was probably out of pity.

"What would you do if you saw a blue banana?"

"Try to cheer it up, of course."

I winced noticeably at that one. The guy next to me noticed and shot me a bit of a dirty look. Either this was some really big conspiracy where everyone knew the jokes weren't that funny and was trying to make me feel like an idiot, or I really was in a class of my own here. I ducked my head as an insincere—but accepted—apology.

"What's yellow and flashes?"

The fat guy pointed into the crowd at the young lady I saw earlier in the sexy dress. "Her, with any luck." I could tell from the lanky guy's reaction as he smacked his partner in the back of the head and busted out laughing that it wasn't part of the script.

"Okay, that one was a little funny," I admitted to the angry guy. He wasn't impressed with my attempt at reconciliation. I wasn't going to wait through the entire act. I'd had enough of these two.

Fey gave me a sympathetic head tilt as I rejoined her, feeling rather confused and a bit annoyed. "What's with that guy?"

"Did you tell him what you thought of the act?"

"Kind of."

The corners of her mouth pulled into the slightest of smiles. "You insulted his son's comedy."

I looked back at the angry guy and watched how heartily he laughed at each joke. He was always the first to start clapping after a punch line. Now that I could see him and the portly comedian in the same view, I realized they had the same cheeks. "Wow. I can't believe I missed that."

"You just got focused on the jokes. Not everyone at the talent show tells jokes. Some people dance, some people do odd tricks, and some people sing."

"That sounds like a lot of fun, though you'd never catch me pretending I can sing."

"No, your talent seems to be more along the lines of creativity."

"How so?"

She lifted her chin as she inhaled—that was a behavior that always preceded a smug comment intended to prove a point. "Have you named your foamert yet?"

"I think so. I figured I'd just call him Sigurd—kind of a mispronunciation of sluggard."

"And did you have any backup choices you considered?"

"Sure. I thought about calling him Frothy Freeman. Bubbles was an obvious choice. Lather is the Best Medicine, or Lats for short. S-Car was in the running before I realized he couldn't go very fast."

"And there are more, I'm sure," she said with a smile. She motioned past me with her, almost using her chin to point. "You wanted to find the roller coasters, right?"

"Absolutely." I already knew which direction to follow to find the roller coasters. One jutted into the sky much higher than the booths selling random bobbles, games, and foods that I'm pretty sure were intended to cause internal injuries. Who deep fries bananas in butter? Pineapples, sure, but bananas are just crossing a line.

Once I rounded Gourmand's Alley, I got a much better view of the roller coasters. Fey was not underselling them when she said they were intended for kids. One of them was a single banana car with eight seats running a short circuit around a track with no more than a twelve-degree grade. Hardly worth writing home about.

The second coaster was better. I wasn't sure exactly what happened in the sheltered portion, but the puddles of water accumulating around the outside suggested there was water involved, and the screams coming from that side further suggested the water was some surprise to the riders. Another section of that coaster swung outside and had a single loop-the-loop in the open sun. That's where I saw the inverted carriage: The seats were on the underside of the rail.

"You didn't say anything about it being an inverted roller coaster."

Fey chuckled. "I figured you'd like that. The line's not too long, either. Most people are back there at the talent show." She noticed my grimace and explained to me, "The roller coaster will be here until closing. The talent show is a one-time thing. People will swarm to their last chance here after the shows are over."

"That makes sense," I uttered, but I only heard most of what she said. Exiting the inverted coaster with the mass of people was Brooke, and she was wearing a polo-style shirt—bright yellow with a bunch of bananas drawn in white across her torso. Her hair was curled and she wore sunglasses that had bananas on the rims. It was not her usual fashion.

And she looked only mildly amused to see me. It was difficult for her to hide her disappointment, but I think it gave way to legitimate curiosity. I only know that because she didn't walk away from me. When she saw me approach, she actually folded her arms over her chest and waited for me.

"Tell me you're wearing that shirt because someone has to spot you from space."

"Fashion advice from a guy who wore crew socks with shorts every day for a year," she smirked.

"My ankles get cold. What's with the glasses?"

"Complimentary for my victory at the Field Gym. They're cheesy, I know, but I figured I'd stick around for the day and enjoy the festival. It only happens once a year." She grinned at me. "Care for a pokémon battle?"

"A battle? Here?"

"Why not? I want to see how much you've grown since the other day." Tipping her head backward, she said, "There's a small area back here specifically designated for battles. Little kids have been back there all day, but I'm pretty sure we can borrow the field for two minutes."

"You figure two minutes is enough?"

"Not exactly, but I added an extra forty seconds to console you after I win."

"Ah, that's funny. Did you hear that, Fey? Fey?" When I turned around, my tall tour guide wasn't there. I looked around for her cloak but I couldn't locate it anywhere nearby. Apparently she just disappeared. I wonder why.

Brooke looked confused, possibly a bit offended. "Fey? That almost sounds like a girl's name."

"I don't know if she's male or female," I joked. "She told me she's female and I believed her because she was wearing a skirt and has softer skin than I do. I'm not sure where she went, though. I thought she was right behind me."

"Don't you wish? Let's just do this battle, Romeo."

The field she mentioned was at the northeast end of the town, only a few meters beyond the last of the festival tents. It was a small clearing with clumps of dirt and sod strewn all about. From the appearance, battles were pretty common in the area throughout the year—not just today. Maybe some pickup games of football, too.

"Are we doing one-on-one?" I asked her.

Brooke's eyes popped open with surprise. "Does that question mean you actually managed to capture a second pokémon?"

"Yes, I did," I replied. "It's a foamert. Want to see?"

"Not really. I'm more interested in how Reggie compares with Lykos." She pulled a pokéball from her side and spun it around her palm once. "You game?"

"Yeah, I think so." I whipped out Reggie's pokéball out and pressed the release trigger. The device sprung open as the electromagnetic energy poured out and resumed its original shape—a twenty-pound fur ball with a cat grin. Reggie was immensely excited to get back out of the ball. He ran straight back to me and rubbed up against my leg. "Hey, buddy," I told him as I knelt and began rubbing his face. "I'm happy to see you, too."

Laughter escaped Brooke's lips as she rubbed her head. "Oh, man. You so don't have a battler's spirit. You still act like a kid."

"Yeah? How do you do it?"

She grinned. She pressed the release trigger on her pokéball and continued staring at me while the disproportionately large mass of red energy fell to the ground and took shape. The scenario felt slow to me as I tried to take in all the new information. First of all, the body of this pokémon was much bigger than I remembered. From what I remembered, Brooke's canisouse was about the same length as my knee to the ground—my hip to the ground if he stretched his paws out—and weighed maybe fifteen pounds—overall about the same as Reggie. This pokémon was clearly not the same: Now it was as long as my entire body without stretching and had to weigh at least what I weighed, though probably a bit more.

The weight was distributed across the body differently now. To start, the tail was twice as big around as a canisouse's tail. The hind legs appeared much thicker than the forelegs, but the back was quite pointed around the top of the spine. The entire body was bulkier and the white fur was tinged with blue, most prominently around the crest of the skull. From the tip of the snout to between the ears, blue fur took a shape resembling a stripe. Actually, when the wind blew through the fur and made it dance, the crest looked more like a small stream of water waves.

I definitely recognized the snarl and that flame of dislike behind the eyes, though. It was much more frightening coming from a creature my size.

"What in the world did you do to Lykos?" I asked her.

"You really are clueless. I didn't do anything to him. Lykos evolved. My little canisouse has become a delycan."

Well, this isn't going to be as easy as last time.

"Water Pulse."

"Use Ember!"

Reggie produced a pretty hefty stream of fire in front of him. Lykos produced a massive ring of water-based energy that pulsated and burst suddenly into physical water. Not only did the attack slam heavily into Reggie, but the castoff drenched me, as well.

Not easy at all.

"What in the world was that?" I asked. It wasn't a physical attack, at least at first. It was like a blast of imaginary power—imaginary in the sense of being nonphysical—followed by the instantaneous transformation of that imaginary matter into real matter. I know it sounds like some next-level metaphysical stuff that can't be explained by a fifteen-year-old whose understanding of physics is rudimentary at best, and that's exactly why the event caught me so off guard.

"It was a Water Pulse," Brooke explained. "A pulsating blast of water that strikes with a lot of power. More than Reggie can handle at his level." She was probably right. Lord knows I felt like I was hit by a fire hose, and I didn't suffer the full brunt of the attack, plus I can handle water better than Reggie can.

But even Brooke was amazed by the sight of Reggie holding steady on his feet. His eyes were closed, his legs shook, and he looked in terrible pain, but he was up. "He survived that attack?" I hoped she meant that he should have passed out—not that she intended to kill him.

"Little guy's tougher than I thought."

"Then we'll just have to give him another Water Pulse," Brooke growled.

Lykos moved with such speed and force that I couldn't offer another command. My mind drew a complete… Um… I couldn't even remember what you draw when your mind draws a…

My mouth didn't work, but my eye still caught sight of something. At the instant Lykos barked out another pulse, the air itself around Reggie's body seemed like it was on fire as he used Ember again by himself. Even Brooke had to notice how much bigger the flame was this time. When the water hit the fire, much of it evaporated instantaneously and blinded me with heavy vapor.

"Reggie?"

The steam cleared quickly, revealing Reggie lying unconscious on the ground, completely soaked. I pulled him into my arms and felt his breathing. He was okay, but wounded pretty heavily. No cuts or bleeding. It seemed more like an allergic reaction, or maybe some form of internal bruising. Old Man Max said potions would help with that, right? I reached into the little sack and found one of the purple bottles. The spray nozzle made the application of the lotion much easier and quicker. I sprayed it over Reggie's body until the bottle was empty, and then I helped massage the potion into his skin.

"I can't believe it took two Water Pulses to take him out," Brooke commented. "I guess you're not an abject failure as a trainer, after all, though you definitely lack the battling edge. Lykos was still tired after running the gamut at the Field Gym and he won without a hitch."

"Typing can mean the difference in battle," I uttered quietly, stroking Reggie's fur. I looked up at Brooke. "Or it can mean squat. Just wait until the next time we battle."

"I don't think so," she laughed me off. She stroked Lykos's head, evoking a pleasant whimper from him, and then recalled him into the pokéball. "As far as I'm concerned, we're done. You'll never be able to catch up to me. I'm way too far ahead of you." She walked away from me doing that cocky strut she had—the one where her hips popped so far with each step I kinda hoped she would sprain something just for karmic justice.

"She may be right this time," I whispered as I recalled my sleepy pokémon into his pokéball. "Then again, if going to a gym is what built up Lykos so much, then maybe that's what we should do."

Brooke and Lykos has grown a lot stronger in a short period of time while Gus and Reggie are still acting like kids. Will Gus be able to catch up?
Thanks again to WolfSummoner93 for submitting Fey. Where'd she go?
Next time: The Field Gym is closed during festival hours, and so Gus will need to find lodging for the night. What's a Pokémon Center, anyway?

Trivia: Canisouse is named from canis and douse, representing a watery canine. Similarly, delycan comes from deluge and lycan, representing a wolf, specifically, with greater amounts of water power.