The first few levels went quicker than Ash would've liked. Many were empty—this certainly wasn't the most popular gym in Kanto—and those that weren't had trainers that had clearly targeted aspiring gyms due to their relative easiness.

Ash's first real opponent was a Kanto Navy Ensign. He stood six feet tall and while Ash couldn't really tell if his bulk was composed primarily of muscle or adipose, it didn't really matter—he was an intimidating figure regardless. He introduced himself as Alberto, and had an interesting accent—Urubos perhaps?

He had a sharp look about him regardless, sharper than any of those before him, and Ash twisted a Pokeball in his hand as he waited for Alberto's signal—both would release at the same time.

"Go!"

Two identical flashes of light revealed a Feraligatr and Zeus. Nice.

"Spark." Ash whispered. Across from him Alberto let out a sharp whistle—he wasn't the first trainer Ash had met that gave out silent commands (AJ had that honor), but this was the first time that it occurred to Ash that he may want to look into a way to do that too.

In front of him Zeus let out a rather unfocused bolt of electricity as ice-energy began to glow around the Feraligatr's mouth while the massive Pokemon darted towards Zeus with surprising speed.

Both moves hit, but thanks to the spark's super-effectiveness and Zeus's familiarization with ice fang, one of the Pokemon came out of the encounter looking much more worse for the wear than the other.

Before Ash had time to give another command Alberto whistled again. While Ash could tell it wasn't the same whistle as the one before, he had no clue what move it meant.

"Spark again." Ash whispered—don't fix what isn't broken.

Zeus leapt forward and attacked his larger opponent once more as the Feraligatr began to thrash around wildly—flail. Shit. Ash would have to end this fast.

"Quick, Zeus! Another Spark!"

The two Pokemon clashed again, and while the Feraligatr had definitely fainted Zeus didn't look far from collapse either. Ash grit his teeth—he hadn't even considered a way to defend against flail, and he had lucked out that the water type didn't know any ground moves—he knew for a fact that Feraligatr could learn earthquake. He didn't have much time to consider that, though—Alberto was already pulling out his next Pokemon. Ash quickly recalled Zeus and withdrew his next Pokemon—Boreas, a safe bet given that it would be super effective against grass, a frequent mainstay on sailing-based teams.

Across from him a Mamoswine appeared and his luck disappeared. (Really? Mamoswine? Really, Alberto? What kind of sailor are you?) The dragon type gym ran on two Pokemon battles—he could only use the first two Pokemon he pulled out, and neither of them were even a little effective against Mamoswine.

Damn it.

Still, he had a plan.

"Double team, Boreas, until I tell you to stop."

The Staraptor immediately followed its trainer's instructions as across from the room Alberto let out a series of piercing whistles.

Ice attacks rained on Boreas from every angle, but he managed to avoid many of them, dancing about the air and constantly forcing his energy out to make him more evasive. Nevertheless, the Mamoswine still got more than a few glancing shots off of Boreas, but Ash was counting on that.

"Come on… come on… just a little longer…" A shard of ice slashed across Boreas's side and Ash knew he wouldn't be able to take another hit, no matter how glancing.

"Endeavor and quick attack!" He whispered. He clenched his fists as Mamoswine let out a loud roar and outright charged towards Boreas, who was having trouble staying in the air. Boreas faltered, but managed to both dodge and get off endeavor with few issues. Unfortunately, before he could get off quick attack the Mamoswine slammed into him. It wasn't even an ice move, it looked like Takedown, but it was more than enough to knock Boreas out.

Ash quickly swapped his Staraptor for his Luxio. Alberto swapped the Mamoswine's ice moves for its ground-type set just as fast.

It took one hit for Zeus to get knocked out. A mud slap, of all things—a move that Zeus could even perform!—and it had downed Zeus before he could even try for a counterattack.

Alberto watched him as Ash numbly returned Zeus. This was only his second major loss, and it was in an aspiring gym. And not even with the leader! It was… it was…

"Bad luck, kid." Alberto said. "You were right to guess that most sailors wouldn't have a Mamoswine on their teams—hell, the only reason I have one is because before I was in the Navy I lived in the mountains."

Ash stared at him, then shook his head and laughed, shaking Alberto's hand. "It was a good match, but I didn't lose because of bad luck. I need to improve my Pokemon's movepools, and work on choosing Pokemon that can compensate for each other's weaknesses in battles. Even if you didn't have a Mamoswine, there was a good chance that you'd have an ice type, and I didn't even think of that. Still, at least some good will come out of this—my Staraptor was getting a big head, and hopefully this'll deflate it a bit."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Alberto asked. "I know it's hard for you youngsters to lose battles, especially ones you thought you were gonna win."

Ash grimaced at being called a youngster, but that was what he was—every other trainer class had requirements and while it might've been nice to be called a black-belt, he sure as hell wasn't going to go through the strenuous physical training required for that class.

"Yeah, I just… I haven't been having the best time, recently. I was really looking forward to a win, you know?"

"Well, there's always next time." Alberto said, patting his shoulder. "Just keep on moving. Everyone loses sometimes, I promise. The real mark of a trainer is the ability to keep on going afterwards and not give up."

Ash thanked Alberto again for the battle, and the advice, and walked back down the seven flights of stairs and out of the tower. The gatekeeper, Stan, let him go to the Pokemon Center for an hour to heal up his Pokemon, before directing him to the third floor. He showed him a small room to the side he could use when not competing, and told Ash to listen to the ringing of the bells to tell when it was his time to fight—four clangs and he was up. Stan would collect him personally after everyone else had gone around again for his own turn. There were, apparently, about 40 trainers currently trying for the badge, and about four of them were trying for the fourth badge.

The minute the gatekeeper left Ash let out all of his Pokemon. It was a bit cramped, but if Ash pressed himself completely against Bacchus and Sparta held Eacus, then everyone could fit okay.

"We lost." Ash said. Rip off the band aid, right?

Bacchus was so surprised that he nearly hopped into the ceiling, knocking Ash towards Tyche, who spun out of the way but hit Sparta in the process, knocking him and Eacus into Boreas while Ash slammed into Zeus, who let out a small amount of electricity (Ash really had to do something about that) which targeted Triton, causing him to try to lash out in turn.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" As Ash shouted the bell at the base of the tower clanged three times. "Everyone, settle down. Everything's okay. Here, Eacus, let me hold you for a bit, and—Wow you're getting big—and Boreas, could you move over… yes, over there… and then… yes! That's it. Okay, is everyone comfortable?"

His team let out various noises, of acknowledgement more than confirmation, but they weren't exactly overwhelmed with choices.

"Fine, fine." Ash said as Eacus settled into his lap (he, at least, seemed comfortable.) "So, here's what happened. After Tyche's battle with the Weezing Zeus went up against a Feraligatr and won, but got pretty hurt in the process. I predicted his next Pokemon wrong and brought out Boreas when I shouldn't have and… I mean, he tried as hard as he could but Alberto brought out a Mamoswine.

Boreas shuffled a bit and huffed. It was obviously still more than a little upset that it had been knocked out—the last time that had happened might've been when he evolved for the first time in Cerulean City.

The rest of the team also looked more than a little disappointed. After everything that happened they had been looking for a nice win just as much as Ash had, and Ash knew it was his fault that they hadn't gotten it—he'd bet anything that Tyche, Bacchus, Triton, and Sparta all would have been able to take the Mamoswine out if given the chance, but Ash had spent to little time considering what Alberto's second Pokemon would be—grass types were common, yes, but so were electric types, and Ash hadn't even considered that. He grimaced. Pokemon Champions didn't make mistakes like that. They didn't make mistakes (in battling, at least) at all. The one thing that Ash had always been very, very good at was Pokemon battling and now?

It was probably just the stress, he knew, but going home would only exacerbate it, his location a constant reminder of his failure. He had to continue on, but with more thought and effort than before. He'd immediately assumed that an aspiring gym couldn't be that hard, and look how that turned out.

The bell clanged four times.

"We'll talk more later, guys. I'll try to do something to make it up to you—implement more training, and the like—but for now we have to battle some." Ash recalled his Pokemon and opened the door back into the main area of the floor. It was time to put thoughts into actions and actually battle smarter, instead of relying on the sheer strength of his Pokemon.

He won the battle, and the one after it. Between the two he took out his Pokemon one by one, working with them each individually on how to improve.

With Tyche, his first ever Pokemon, who he had taken to instantly and who had grown tremendously, he worked on Imprison. It was a bit of a silly move, but the next in line for her to use, and Ash knew better now than to try to send her out only against Pokemon she was strong to. His last loss proved that that wasn't a particularly useful line of thinking—no trainer ever wanted to be predictable, so he had to be careful to try to plan for all situations. Given the relative difficulty of learning the move, however (what with it necessitating a bit of the type of energy of every other known attack to perform), Ash decided to leave it at that for now, though he knew that if he wanted to start with non-verbal battling he'd have the best chance with her.

With Bacchus, his first addition to his party, he worked on tactics against fire types, or more specifically how to live even after taking super-effective hits. He also had Bacchus start practicing releasing stun spores and poison powder on top of his skin as soon as he entered battle. Ash hoped that with enough practice the tactic could mimic abilities like Static or Poison Point.

With Boreas, his second selection Pokemon, he worked on speed. Boreas hadn't taken the loss well, so Ash had Zeus hit the Staraptor with Spark repeatedly until he started to falter, and then practice speed like that. It wasn't an enjoyable experience for anyone involved, but if Ash and Boreas wanted the Staraptor's stamina to improve that was the only way to go about it.

With Triton, the first non-selection Pokemon he captured without a battle (an increasingly common practice for Ash), Ash worked on power. While he and Leaf had been riding Shimmer neither had been particularly comfortable being in the water with so many powerful Pokemon without a powerful one of their own in position to defend them, so Ash decided to acquiesce to Triton's desires and start prepping him to try Ocean fighting. Unfortunately in the small enclosed room there wasn't much of a chance of practicing moves underwater, but Ash had Triton do all of the exercises they'd learned from AJ over and over again until he simply couldn't anymore. It wasn't the best method, but until the Seagallop came there wasn't really another one available. Thankfully, the good Professor had implied that it wouldn't take more than a day or two.

But until that happened Ash kept on working with his Pokemon, turning to his Luxio Zeus next. Zeus's training consisted of one aspect and one aspect only: NO MORE SPARKS! The Luxio had an incredibly annoying habit of shooting off electricity whenever he experienced any emotion at all, and while Ash knew that was a common aspect of electric Pokemon, he'd prefer not to have to deal with constant jolts every time he tried to interact with one of his Pokemon.

After Zeus he moved to the youngest team member, Eacus. Eacus was significantly larger now, and while he was nowhere near evolution Ash judged him to be somewhat close to the level most of the rest of the team was at around the time of the Cerulean Gym, or a bit higher. The Houndour's job was easy: learn Bite. Given that his "rival" Zeus (the two really couldn't help but compete) already knew the move, Eacus was more focused than ever on his training, and by the end of their session Ash could proudly say that there were only a few more hours until Eacus had it down pat.

Finally Ash worked with Sparta. While the fighting type spent most of the session working on Mind Reader with Tyche, Ash also set aside more than a bit of time to focus on the Hitmonlee's prior maltreatment. According to every Pokemon psychology book Ash had ever read, Pokemon did not always react well to past abuse, particularly if it happened for an extended period of time. While Eacus mostly got out of that because he had been with Damian for such a short time, Sparta was by all accounts high-risk, which meant that he was liable to snap and begin attacking. While his Serious nature and, oddly enough, fighting type decreased the risk (for a reason beyond the understanding of researchers, Fighting types were much less likely to have these 'psychotic breaks'), they didn't get rid of it, so Ash knew he had to spend some time at least every other day giving Sparta one-on-one attention and feeding it its favorite foods to diminish the risk of human-hate, like the Bulbasaur from so long ago had.

Ash had only managed to go through his entire roster once and pull out Tyche to start the rota again when the bell started ringing 10 times, the sign that the Seagallop had arrived. As he exited the tower he heard Stan grumbling about unexpected trips. He guessed it was more than a little inconvenient for the gym that the Ferry had made the detour, but he was more than ready to get back to the mainland himself, so he felt little sympathy.

As he headed towards the ship he kept an eye out for Leaf, eventually spotting her just as he was boarding.

He called out to her and they met on the deck of the Ferry, pausing their salutations as the intercom stuttered on.

"Hello, this is your captain John B. John speaking. As this was an unforeseen stop to the trip we will be resuming our regular route at this time. Our next stop will be at the Mechanical Monsters Themepark, before we will arrive on our next destination of Porta Vista on Three Island. After a one day stop there, we will make our way to Vermillion again."

"So it'll take over a full day to finally make it back to civilization?" Ash muttered.

"I don't know about that. Porta Vista counts as civilization any way you look at it—it's a major tourist destination, it's basically taken over all of Three Island, and it's the largest city on the non-contiguous part of Kanto. It's actually inhabited by about 1% of… What?"

"Since when did you become Ben?"

"That's mean!" Leaf whined. Ben was really well known in Pallet Basic Education for being an endless font of information, and while he was never really bullied by anyone other than Gary, 'pulling a Ben' meant providing way too much information when asked a simple question. Thankfully, Ben had figured out how to tone it down after accidently spending a half-hour talking about the origins of the lawn, which itself was a non-sequitur from his initial non-sequitur of grass (though no one understood how he'd gotten onto that subject either.)

"No it's not! All I was doing was… well, okay, I was being mean. But that doesn't mean I wanted a lecture on the demography of Porta Vista."

Leaf laughed, then suddenly sobered. "Hey… I didn't hear you making it past my floor."

Ash shifted uncomfortably, not exactly happy with the change of topic. "Um… no. Alberto got me—I completely messed up in choosing what Pokemon to use."

Leaf frowned. "He was tough—used a Lanturn and a Weepinbell, of all things, against me and if I hadn't been training up my Raticate as much I would've been sunk. I have a giant Electric type weakness on my team as-is."

Ash grimaced. "It was his Mamoswine that got me—I really wasn't expecting a ground type, or even an Ice type given that he'd already shown his pure water type Feraligatr."

"Ooh. He had a Feraligatr?" Leaf said, leaning forward.

"I thought you liked stereotypically weak Pokemon!" Ash said, laughing at her eagerness.

"Well, yes, but it's not exactly like there are many Feraligatr trainers anymore. They get so vicious… I wish I could talk to him about his training techniques. You didn't happen to see him get on the ship, did you?"

"Nope." Ash said. "But to be fair, I think only about ten people left. The rest probably wanted to try and see if they could win with less competitors."

"Yeah, probably." Leaf sighed, staring back at Seven Island.

As lost as he usually was when trying to understand Leaf's interests, Ash redirected the subject. "You won, though, right? I can't imagine you losing."

"Oh, um. Yes." Leaf said. She suddenly jolted, then turned to her backpack. "Actually, I have something for you, given that you didn't…um, win." She pulled something out of the front pocket and held it out to Ash. "The Dragonite of the gym leader's father, Jim, had just died, and so they were giving away his scales to anyone who won."

It was a Dragon Scale, luminous in the sunlight, with its natural coloring drained by the death of the Dragon-type.

"I can't take that!" Ash yelped. Dragon Scales were notoriously difficult to come by. Pokemon hunting was, of course, illegal in the modern era, and Dragon-types had such naturally long lives that once they passed away there was a huge demand for their scales. While they were particularly useful to Seadra owners, being necessary to evolve them, they also clearly boosted the power of living dragon types when attached to their living scales, so any Dragon owner would vie as much as they could for as many as they could—while scientists argued over whether the benefit of the scales was cumulative, at the very least owning multiples meant that your opponents couldn't have any of the ones you did, and that was enough for many Dragon trainers to buy them the second they came onto the market, regardless of how many they already owned.

"Of course you can. I don't own a Seadra, and considering how I'm structuring my team, it's unlikely that I'm ever going to get a Dragon type. You, on the other hand, can use it immediately."

"I can't just take if from you!" Ash said. "How about this. You hold onto it, and I'll try to find something to trade it for. If I haven't found anything by… Christmas, then you can give it to me."

Leaf considered this. It was currently the afternoon of September 29th, so there were less than three months until Christmas. "Fine." She nodded. "But I'd give it to you now if you could just get over your pride. It's not exactly like we haven't been through enough shit already that I can't trust you to pay me back eventually if you can."

"Still, I can't get over my pride, so this'll make me feel better. Thanks."

Leaf harrumphed, but didn't bother arguing further. This may have been largely because of the giant orange Charizard that suddenly loomed over them.

"Oh." Leaf said in a small voice as the faux-fire breathing Pokemon roared. "I think we've arrived at the Themepark."

"Oh." Ash said in an equally small voice as a monstrous mechanical Gyarados leapt out of the water, acting out a fake attack on the Charizard.

While it was no doubt very cool when you expected them, when you weren't, and you, say, had recently been attacked by a giant orange Pokemon with wings, then it got a bit more terrifying.

Ash made a mental note to look up phobias and how to treat them when he got to a computer. While he really doubted that he had developed an actual phobia, he'd prefer not to freeze if his Pokemon were sent up against a Dragonite at any time in the future.