Ash watched Leaf's training out of the corner of his eye while he completed his.
In terms of his own team training was fairly straightforward—Triton, given that he wanted to fight in the ocean so badly, was placed in the middle of the group, while Tyche, Bacchus, Boreas, Sparta, and Zeus all did their best to wear him down. Occasionally he would make a sign behind Zeus's head, telling his other Pokemon to attack him. If the Luxio accidentally released electricity, he'd have to sit out five minutes (something Zeus, ever concerned with getting tougher, hated), but if he purposefully released an attack or didn't do anything he'd be allowed to stay in. Ash figured that if Zeus got used to being surprised first, they could teach him the correct reactions later.
The only one of his Pokemon not taking part in the melee was Eacus. In the weeks following his initial capture, the Houndour had had a rapid physical recovery, helped along by both Pokemon Center medical treatments and plenty of exercise. His strength, speed, and endurance had shot up too, to the point that Ash was fairly sure Eacus was now outdoing the average Houndour of his power level.
All that was left was improving Eacus's power, which was easier said than done.
Power levels—the official measuring stick by which a Pokemon's chance of winning, evolution, and even ability to learn moves…? They weren't nearly as clear as they were made out to be by school or the media. While it was ostensibly the amount of power a Pokemon was capable of exuding, but that was too hard to measure, so instead trainers used different references to understand their Pokemon's level. Most of it was guesswork, honestly—how the Pokemon's features were changing, what moves they knew, how well they did in battles… basically, in order to determine a Pokemon's power level so that you knew how good they were at battling or how close they were to evolving, you already had to know how good they were at battling and how close they were to evolving.
Nonetheless, it was a fairly good reference to use when comparing one Pokemon to another, and based on what Ash knew of Pokemon levels he felt fairly safe in saying that Tyche, Bacchus, Boreas, and Triton were all around the mid-30s, with Sparta right behind them and Zeus likely in the high 20s.
Eacus, on the other hand, was level 18 at most, and that was being incredibly generous. He was nowhere near evolving—his skull plate hadn't even begun to break apart to form a Houndoom's horns, and he still only had two outer ribs on his back. Given that the pokedex placed a Houndour's evolution at level 24, it wasn't even a matter of getting him to evolve. Any slight power increase would do wonders for Eacus's ability to last in battle, and Ash really wanted him to start professionally battling by the grass gym.
So Ash had set up a bit of an… ambitious obstacle course for Eacus to run. Using a combination of fallen trees at the end of the forest, the rocky beach, and even a few of the closer Slowpoke (all of whom could take any of Eacus's attacks without trying), he had Eacus run, jump, and crawl in a wide circle around the melee fight, firing off one attack after the other as he passed certain checkpoints in the course.
All in all, Ash figured, it was a fairly good training setup. Unfortunately, it looked like a cakewalk compared to Leaf's. If he had to guess, Ash would put her Sunkern, Raticate, Bibarel, and Crobat at very, very high 30s, with her newly caught Dunsparce barely lower. Out of her last two, Ash judged her Tranquil to be about the level of Zeus, and Shimmer, given that she was newly evolved, would almost definitely be ranked at level 20.
So her team was already notably better than his.
Her training, however, brought that to another level.
She had her Pokemon spar with disadvantages—no flying, with eyes closed, no using super effective moves… At the same time, Leaf would order all of her Pokemon to do odd things, a sort of twisted Simon Says—"jump up and down! Now everyone face the ocean! Now your nose has to touch the ground!" On top of that, whenever any of her Pokemon showed signs of tiring, she'd pull them out of their battle and heal them up a bit with potions, before making them run an obstacle course of her own—with the additional caveat that this course was to be taken backwards.
It was a strangely organized chaos, and it was beautiful to watch.
Both of them decided to stop at around eight, and after a brief, late dinner Ash decided to sit down and plan out a couple strategies for tomorrow's gym battle. Leaf, on the other hand, decided to go for a walk.
About an hour later, when it was becoming too dark for Ash to keep on scribbling in his notebook, the teen finally decided to figure out what, exactly, Leaf was doing.
She was, as it turned out, directly in front of him, talking to one of the researchers.
After packing away what little he still had out, Ash left his backpack in his tent and made his way across the cliff, trying to avoid stepping on any of the Slowpoke that seemed glued to various rocks.
Leaf and the researcher—a different one than the one they'd talked to earlier—this one was a middle aged woman who looked notably more put together. As he got closer Ash began to make out their conversation.
"—no, no, no—see, you'd think that, wouldn't you? But we're fairly sure the specimens here are actually larger than average." The researcher was saying.
"Really? Why do you think that is?" Leaf asked.
"Well—oh, hello."
"Oh, this is my friend, Ash." Leaf said. "Ash, this is Dr. Pearson. She's one of the lead Slowpoke-line researchers."
"It's nice to meet you." Ash said.
"Likewise." Said Dr. Pearson. "As I was explaining to Leaf, while our main goal here is to understand Slowpoke's unusual evolution, we are also trying to consolidate more information on Slowpoke, Slowbro, and Slowking as a whole. Currently we're focused on the sizes of Slowpoke."
Ash and Leaf nodded in understanding.
"Pokemon size is determined by three main factors: in order of effect, they are genetics, age, and power. As you can see, the Slowpoke here are about the size of a soda cushion. The pokedex puts their 'height' as slightly higher, but as you know the initial heights and weights given in the pokedex are slightly inaccurate, to keep trainers from relying on them. However, we have come across evidence that the average Slowpoke is actually closer to the size of a pillow—up until recently, we'd assumed that ocean-based Slowpoke were more common, but our increased observation of this population has shown repeated evidence that despite their ocean-based way of evolving, these Slowpoke seemed to have immigrated from fresh water as they got stronger, which would make the smaller Johto freshwater Slowpoke the ones the average size should be based on."
"Um, the pokedex is wrong?" Ash asked. It was the first he'd heard of that, at least.
"You hadn't noticed anything off about it? For Mew's sake, it puts Ghastly's size as over four feet!" Leaf said.
"What you have to understand about the pokedex," Dr. Pearson interjected, "is that there are generally three ways information originally got placed in there: first, the original pokedex trainers often simply put the estimated height and weight of the first Pokemon of every species they saw. Second, if they could not find the Pokemon, they relied heavily on mythology and tall tales they heard at various towns. Third, and in particular this was true for their own Pokemon, it was found that many of them would intentionally input that species' size as smaller, so as to make their Pokemon seem in some way 'better' to the other users of the pokedex. In recent years, of course, we have been trying to switch out the more or less random heights and weights with scientifically accurate average ones, but even deciding that what counts as average is often extremely difficult."
"So you decided to go by…?"
"Well, until now our plan was to go with the Pokemon we found most common in nature, but given our new understanding of Slowpoke, and how and why their sizes vary over distance, we are starting to push Professors Oak and Westwood, as well as Dex Co., the producers of the pokedex, to have the pokedex scan a Pokemon's height and weight every time it is used, so that trainers have a better idea of both the average height and weight, as well as how that changes by area."
"That's… actually really cool." Ash said. The pokedex was pretty good with movesets, general nutrition information, and lore, but in terms of what he knew about how his Pokemon were supposed to behave he had mostly based his assumptions based off of what he had learned in school and watching battles on TV.
"Yeah," Leaf said, "I would definitely like more accurate information. But are you really going through it one Pokemon at a time?"
"So you see why we are pushing to use the pokedex scans so much." Dr. Pearson said. She gestured to the Slowpoke surrounding them. "We are getting plenty of information about their sizes, of course, but we're not going to move on to a new Pokemon until we feel we have sufficient information about their dietary and mating habits, evolutionary process, and genetic variation, which will likely take many decades—honestly, Pokemon scientists usually end up dedicating their lives to only one Pokemon line unless they're absolutely fantastic like Professor Oak, and there simply aren't enough scientists for even an eighth of the Pokemon families to be studied at a time, especially considering that generally a minimum of 50 researchers are needed to study a Pokemon at a time."
Ash, Leaf, and Dr. Pearson kept on talking for a while, with the latter two dominating the conversation—Leaf was heavily considering becoming a Pokemon researcher following her Indigo League run, but didn't know if she was okay with restricting herself to a single Pokemon to study. That said, by eleven both teens had returned to their campsite—they had a gym battle tomorrow, after all.
The next morning, after each teen had teleported back to the Pokemon center with the help of Tyche for one last medical check, Leaf and Ash finally entered the gym's doors.
Given that Leaf had gone first last time, it was Ash's turn.
"Fourth badge, here I come." He mumbled.
Unlike the previous Aspiring Gym, this one didn't even have an approximation of Gym Assistants. Instead you just went straight in.
The main arena was large—larger than Ash expected. It was half under water—the floor sloped somewhat, but the right wall seemed to end at the same floor height as the left wall, with the remaining space open to the ocean water. Ash could just make out the edge of metal bars at the bottom of the right wall—probably to keep any other Pokemon out.
The side where he entered, as well as the opposite wall, had a raised platform several feet above the rest of the floor. The other platform was completely empty with the exception of a door at one end and a simple folding chair, which was placed in the middle. On his side another folding chair leaned on the wall beside the door. Ash fingered Sparta's ball as he waited, but thankfully he didn't have to wait long—only a few seconds after he entered, the other door opened.
Out stepped two people: a man in stereotypical referee garb, and a woman.
The Gym Leader, Mia, looked as tall as Lorelei, and shared many of her facial features, but her hair was a notably lighter red. She nodded at Ash.
"You're trying for your fourth gym, and all of your other badges are from official gyms, so I'll assume you know the standard rules. At my gym, however, things are run a bit differently. I'll release my Cloyster and you'll release up to eight—you can even release them at the same time, which I highly recommend, given that you're only on your fourth gym. I'd recommend three or four, actually, but it's up to you. The battle will end only if I return my Cloyster, eight of your Pokemon feint, or you forfeit. You can begin whenever you're ready."
With that she released her monster of a Cloyster. It looked about five feet tall, and laughed the second it was released. Its shell had clear scrapes from past battles. The very first thing it did was to begin spitting out spikes all over the arena. Some were forebodingly hissing—almost definitely toxic spikes.
Ash grimaced, but he knew he had to act fast, before the Cloyster had any longer to set up. Thankfully, Ash had already planned out Sparta's starting moves. With the click of a button, Ash released his Hitmonlee.
Sparta didn't take more than a second to assess the situation before bursting into action. He darted forward, avoiding as many of the spikes as possible, before smacking the Cloyster in its face—Fake Out. Without hesitating he darted back, quickly performing Bulk Up and Focus Energy before unleashing his first move: High Jump Kick. It hit, and the Cloyster flew into the wall. But before Ash had time to call out his first non-prepared order, the Cloyster jumped into action. First a dark surge slammed into Sparta—Torment, Ash thought, a TM—before flashing around the arena as quickly as possible—Double Team—and following it up quickly with a rumbling burst that forced a large ominous cloud to form over the arena—Hail. Across the room Mia leaned back in her chair—she seemed to be ordering her Cloyster through a series of whistles.
"Bulk Up again, Sparta," Ash whispered, "then double kick." While he'd loved the damage from High Jump Kick, the additional risk of injury was too high for him to risk it, especially given how much damage Sparta was taking by just being in the arena. After the failure of the last gym, he really wanted to see if he could win with only one Pokemon.
The Cloyster just laughed, closing its eyes.
"Damn it—rest!" Ash muttered. He'd guarantee that the Cloyster also had a Chesto berry—you were allowed to bring no more than one berry into battle, and many Pokemon could be trained to keep one in their mouth and not eat them unless under certain circumstances—like sleep, for instance.
There was nothing for it; if he wanted to be sure of victory, he'd have to put another Pokemon in.
Without a moment's pause he released Triton, shouting "rain dance!" to Sparta at the same time. The second his Seadra coalesced on the field, he followed it up by shouting "Combo!"—he wasn't particularly worried about Mia knowing he was getting rid of the hail and providing a benefit to his Seadra, and there was no way she'd know what Triton's combo is.
By the time Sparta had gotten the rain dance off, however, the Cloyster had woken up, and as Triton sprung into action, flinging first a Twister then a Smokescreen at its opponent, the opponent fired back: a Hydro Pump, aimed directly at Sparta.
"Dodge!" Ash shouted, but it was too late. His Hitmonlee was down. Quickly returning the fighting type, Ash focused on Triton, who was finishing his combo with a quick Focus Energy, followed immediately by a Brine. It did almost nothing.
Ash grit his teeth and assessed the situation—He had already had one Pokemon feint, and was on his second. If Triton began to have too much trouble he'd bring in Tyche, but so far the Seadra wasn't doing too badly—he was especially helped by having the ability Poison Point, which, while it didn't prevent him from being poisoned, did make it more difficult.
In the arena Triton unleashed his combo again while simultaneously dodging the Cloyster's own counter attack—Spike Cannon.
Ash drummed his fingers as he tried to figure out what to do. He had no doubt that the Cloyster would attempt to Hail again soon, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, but right now Triton's combo was taking too—
Below him Triton was hit head on by one spike, then two, then three.
But only three.
"Shit—Shell Armor." Ash muttered. It was that or Overcoat, but Shell Armor was much more common—almost as common as Skill Link, in fact. And while Skill Link was, according to the battles Ash had watched, considered the superior ability, given that it allowed its possessor to fire off multiple-attack moves with more speed and accuracy, for him Shell Armor was the more dangerous ability: Triton's combo, after all, relied heavily on critical hits.
"Stop Focusing, Triton." Ash whispered. "Twister, Smokescreen, then Brine. Speed is key."
Triton squealed in acknowledgement, before darting back into the smoke. By now over 60% of the Arena was at the very least foggy, and while the remnants of his own energy that continued to lace the smoke kept Triton aware of his surroundings, the same could not be said for Cloyster. Across the room Mia whistled sharply. There was a rumble, and hail overtook the arena once more.
At this point it was a battle of accuracy vs set-ups. The only reason that Triton hadn't been taken out yet was because of the sheer number of Smokescreens that he'd put up, as well as Sparta getting rid of the Cloyster's Chesto Berry, but at the end of the day the Ice/Water type was probably around its mid-50s in level, and that was dangerously high for Ash to compete with.
Mia whistled again.
Another round of Spike Cannons missed.
But that didn't mean that Triton could rest easy. The Spike Cannons which had hit placed him at what Ash guessed was about half of what he could take before feinting, and while he'd already figured out where the spikes, both toxic and normal, were, it was too late for him to not take some damage and end up mildly poisoned. Ash had to end this soon.
Mia's whistle pierced the air again—a different one than last time—but Ash had an idea.
"Underwater," Ash whispered, "then Brine and dodge. That's it."
The smoke had begun to spread, and by now both side's Pokemon were lost in the grey fog. Ash looked across the room instead of down, and frowned. Mia was sitting in the folding chair, tilted back so that only two of the legs were on the floor, and she looked half-awake if anything. Ash understood that she was probably taking it easy on him—no matter how you sliced it, a level 55ish Pokemon could do some real damage to a Pokemon more than 10 levels weaker than it—but her blasé nature still irked him.
Flashes could occasionally be seen in the fog below, but both Pokemon were otherwise very quiet, not wanting to notify the other of their location. Likewise, both trainers kept quiet—their strategies had already been put into place, and now it was simply a waiting game.
Ash made a mental note to start training his team how to use berries in battle—he'd be feeling much more confident right now if he knew Triton had a Sitrus berry on him.
The flashes stopped.
Mia stood up, walking a couple steps forward and leaning over the edge like Ash had.
The hail dissipated.
And slowly, the smoke did too—being carefully drawn in through a very much conscious Seadra's snout.
"And the winner is the challenger Ash Ketchum! With only two Pokemon!"
As she returned her Pokemon, Mia called across the arena.
"Not bad. Give me 15 minutes to recover my Cloyster, and then you can send your friend in. Your badge will be ready in about half an hour—my gym guide will give it to you."
Ash nodded in understanding, returning Triton himself, before walking out. All told, the entire battle had taken about 20 minutes, but he wanted to get Sparta—and Triton—healed up as soon as possible.
But there was a problem.
When he walked into the waiting room, Leaf wasn't there.
"Hi have you—I'm looking for—her name is Leaf—" Ash darted across the rocky beach, questioning every researcher he'd come across, but most didn't even look up, and those who did had no idea who he was talking about. Where had she gone?
It was only when he arrived back at the campsite that he got his first clue—a shouted order from the woods for a Pokemon to use protect, just in range of his hearing.
Ash grabbed Tyche's ball and dashed into the forest.
"—Damn it!"
"Leaf?"
Leaf looked up at him from her position in the middle of the path, facing about 15 Psyduck waddling furiously away.
"Oh, hi Ash."
"What's wrong?"
"Wrong? Nothings—oh, you mean—" Leaf sighed and picked up a Pokeball from the ground. "I decided to get in some last-last minute training, you know, given that your battle was taking so long, and I went into the woods, you know, for a change of pace, and I ran into some Psyduck who were beginning to gather. And I figured if I acted fast enough I could stop them from actually, you know, blocking the path, but while I was battling them one of them stuck behind me, and I guess now I have a Psyduck."
"…don't you want a Psyduck? I mean, it kind of fits your MO, right?"
"Well, sure, but… I don't actually, you know, like Psyduck." Leaf said, turning back to the Westwood Research Institute.
"…then release it." Ash said.
"I can't! I'd feel… guilty. And it's not like I hate them, or anything, I just… I dunno. I don't like them. But that's not particularly fair, is it? After all, I'm trying to prove that all Pokemon deserve respect, and treating this Psyduck unfairly just because of its species does go against my 'MO', as you put it."
Ash shifted uneasily. Honestly, if the same thing had happened to him, he'd have released it in a heartbeat—you were allowed to release any caught Pokemon within the first month without penalty, so long as it was near where you captured them, because it was believed that they hadn't been domesticated yet, and honestly Ash had no desire whatsoever to train a Pokemon whose most well-known quality was literally constant crippling headaches, but to each their own he guessed.
"Oh, I'm so sorry—did you win?" Leaf asked, finally looking up from her newly in-use ball.
Ash grinned. "Yeah. I was pretty hard, but I managed to only use two Pokemon. She said she'd be ready in fifteen minutes, so I bet by the time we get back you can head straight in—none of your Pokemon are too damaged, right?"
"Nope. Skylar took care of most of the Psyduck, and because she's part flying type, I wasn't going to use her anyway—she's a great Crobat and everything, but even she wouldn't be able to fully overcome a powerful ice type. How strong is her Cloyster, anyway?"
"Oh, I'd easily put it in it's mid-50s, power level wise. I'm not going to tell you its move set, though—that you get to figure out all on your own." Ash said. Leaf laughed.
After seeing her inside, Ash quickly teleported back to the Pokemon center, where he deposited Triton and Sparta. After a light lunch and picking up his Pokemon again, he got Tyche to bring him back to the beach to pick up his badge—a simple circle with the number two in the middle.
Finally, Ash returned to the campsite, turned on the radio, and released his team. It was time for a celebration.
A couple minutes later the pseudo-party was in full swing—Tyche was twirling around in a blur of white and green, Bacchus was leaping up disturbingly high heights, Boreas was having fun doing acrobatic tricks around the hopping Breloom, and Triton was bouncing up and down beside a wrestling Zeus and Eacus. But Ash couldn't help but focus on Sparta, who sat awkwardly to one side of the campsite.
The Hitmonlee, it suddenly dawned on Ash, thought he'd done a bad job.
"Hey Sparta," Ash said. He rubbed the top of the Hitmonlee's head, which the pokedex said was very comfortable for the entire hitmon line. "You know you did a good job, right?"
Sparta grunted.
"You did. Two high jump kicks would've knocked it out, but even you can't do anything about increased inaccuracy, and you know missing that move can hurt you a lot—I wasn't willing to take that risk. That said, because of you the Cloyster's Chesto berry was used, and you even managed to temporarily get rid of the hail. Trust me, given how close Triton was to losing, your actions were wholly necessary for me to get this badge."
The Hitmonlee shifted uncertainly, but finally grunted in acknowledgement. He stared at Ash for a few seconds, before slamming his hands together—a sign of appreciation, from what Ash understood. He nodded and smiled, mimicking the gesture himself.
Less than two minutes later a greenish blur came barreling across the rocks—
"I won! I won!" Leaf shouted. "It took three Pokemon—Nibbles, Chuck, and Shimmer—but I did it!"
"Great!" Ash said. "Now I'm still a badge behind!"
Leaf laughed. "Looks like you'll still be playing catch up! But I have some even better news! I asked the gym guide, and he said he'd gotten a radio call that the Seagallop Ferry will be departing from Porta Vista tomorrow!"
"Oh, thank Arceus!" Ash said, only a little dramatically—he was so ready to be back on the mainland.