Buying the pokegear took out a large chunk of change from our already significantly diminished account, but it was definitely worth it to keep in touch with Marina. Getting it set up was fairly easy for trainers, all we really needed to do was tie it to our Trainer ID and then an available number would be assigned. We'd call Daisy to test it out when we got to Blackthorn. Judging by the distances we'd traveled so far it was likely to take us about two to three hours to get there at our best speed.

We definitely needed to find some form of entertainment, as great as flying was, hour after hour of blurry scenery kind of got old. Hopefully podcasts existed already. Probably not well established yet, since smart devices weren't really a thing. Hm. Idea. Needed to make sure we stopped the Rockets at Silph Co. so we could snack on some of their scientists and then use their knowledge, my memories, and our phenomenal cosmic powers to make the first smart device.

We reached Blackthorn a little after noon, and got a room at the Pokemon Center there after getting our team looked over by the attending Nurse Joy. Now, to wreck the dragon Gym now or wait for tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. It not like there was much to do in the city if you weren't interested in the Dragon Den. Yeah, Gym time. We found it fairly quickly and an aide took us to the battle arena, where we found some random trainer walking out looking like he just got owned. Poor dude, but, well, get good scrub. We really should try to not be such huge cunts, but it was hard.

"Another challenger already? My, what a busy day. Alright then, this shall be a four pokemon match. My aide will register your ID." The woman who'd guided us her took my pokedex and scanned it with that nifty wireless device we'd seen a couple times before.

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Clair for the Rising Badge, choose your pokemon."

We were distracted. She looked a lot like Marina. Like an older version. Was this what she'd look like when she was older? She looked great. We'd never been big fans of rompers as clothing, but hers was better than most we'd seen. The skintight look definitely made it better. The half-cape was kind of dorky though, seriously, a cape?

"Go, Gyarados!"

Still, dorky outfit aside, she was pretty and we found ourselves wanting to call Marina already but we couldn't because it'd only been a few hours and it'd be weird and-

"Are you going to choose a pokemon, trainer?"

Wait, what? Oh, right. Battle.

"Oh, yes, uh, Yue!"

Our perfect and beautiful ice fox came out of her ball and nothing was amiss. Well, that's what everyone saw. What actually happened was she opened with a minor illusion that made it seem like she sprinted away from her landing to a spot two meters to her right, and in actuality moved to the left.

"An Alolan Ninetales, interesting. You chose your typing well, but it won't be enough to win. Gyarados will beat it and then your ace in the hole will be for nothing."

"Sure." Run your mouth more, you're just letting Yue set up more and more illusion bullshit.

"Fine. Gyarados, Fire Blast."

The water serpent spat out a very adequate fireball, but really, after Blaine's Gym it was kind of a let down in comparison. Also, and this was important, it aimed at the illusion. It detonated with a nice shockwave and heat wave, and then the Gyarados was surrounded by dozens of ice foxes. Which then all fired Confuse Rays.

"Aqua Tail through all the illusions!" The Gyarados proceeded to knock out a wall with its tail. It also went through a few of the illusory clones, but we had this feeling Not-Marina wasn't pleased regardless. "Again!"

This time it actually succeeded, but Yue jumped over the tail and answered with Freeze-Dry. Suffice to say getting hit with a double type advantage move doesn't end well for anything. It was fascinating to look at in a pokemon as big as a Gyarados though. You could actually see the skin drying out and then freezing over. Every single movement it made had the skin cracking horribly and only a few seconds of trying had rivers of blood running down all of its body. It was pretty fucking hardcore, but Not-Marina seemed to know when to recall, because she pulled it back before Yue could attack again.

"Go, Dragonair, Flamethrower!"

We could feel she was already resigned. She may not have known what to expect from us at first, but illusory ice kitsune bullshit was a hard to counter without effective access to area of effect attacks, and well, fairies were fully immune to attacks with a dragon typing. The Flamethrower was still nicely performed though, and showcased her training skills because the Dragonair spread it over most of the arena very thoroughly. Not nearly enough though, and Yue's return Blizzard hit full on and froze it solid.

"Return. Go, Kingdra. Hydro Pump!" Her water dragon spat out a wide torrent of water in a circle that actually managed to nail Yue and smacked her into a wall, and followed it with another Hydro Pump, this time aimed directly at her. She dodged, barely, and countered with a Freeze-Dry, to similar effect as the Gyarados. "Return. I forfeit the match. There's clearly nothing that my last Dragonair could do to beat your Ninetales, and then you'd still have three more."

She walked up to us and gave us a Rising Badge.

"I would be interested in a rematch at some point, although, perhaps without the Ninetales. I'd like to see what other pokemon you have."

Yeah. It really didn't get better for her even without Yue. Thinking on it, us fighting this Gym was even more unfair than us fighting Janine's. At least with Janine it was only a type advantage and not the full immunity to the main typing of this one. We took one last look at Not-Marina, trying to commit her to memory. We'd decided. We would call Marina from Ecruteak City tomorrow morning.

"One day, though for now we must go. Thank you for the fight."

We got back to the Pokemon Center and to our room. It was time for Lucky-tchii to do her thing. We let her out of her ball, and she was all over me in no time. Then she was marching us back out of our room and to the cafeteria. Right. Food. Nausea. Pill time I guess. I grabbed one, downed it dry, and then Lucky-tchii planted us at a table before she went out to grab us food. Guess she didn't trust us to eat well on our own. Twenty minutes later I was trying my best to eat everything the pink blob of love had told me to eat. It wasn't going well. It took another half hour to stuff it all down.

Well, time to call Daisy. We found her number and called her. We really shouldn't have been so excited to use a cell phone, especially when it wasn't much better better than a flip phone from my past life.

"Hello?"

"Hi Daisy."

"Azula? You got a pokegear?"

"Yup! And I'm keeping my word, obviously. Here's Lucky-tchii to give you updates."

Then Chansey babbled out a rapid fire string of "Chansey!"

"Well, that's good. How's it going Azula, where are you now?"

"Blackthorn City, we just got our Rising Badge."

"How the hell did you get to Johto so quickly?!"

"Fuck you, that's how."

"Azula."

"Sorry."

"Whatever. So, how are you doing?"

"We met this girl in New Bark Town, she was starting out as a trainer. Professor Elm gave her a Totodile, and we got a chance to fight with our new Torchic. Marina, that's her name, she was amazing, she's going to be a great trainer, I just know it. She managed to force a draw against me in her first battle! She's so pretty too! She has blue hair, and the Gym Leader here, Clair, she looks like an older Marina-"

"Alright, I get it, you have a crush on this girl. Okay. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Whaaaat?! No! No. She's just nice and amazing and-"

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Oh Arceus, I can't believe this is happening. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay 'Zula?"

And she hung up on me. The fuck just happened?! Us, a crush? Ridiculous. Marina was just that amazing. Ugh. Daisy was being crazy, and that was saying something when it was us speaking. Whatever. We had delicious feelings to enjoy before I could never have them ever again. Let's hope we never get seriously injured enough to need painkillers again. Or that there are painkillers of sufficient strength that aren't opiates. Pain sucked. We spent a few hours in bed just feeling before we drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow we would defeat Morty, as we now knew the leader of the Ecruteak Gym was called, and then we would be ready for the Conference. Then the hard stuff would start. By which we meant detoxing, not the fighting at the Conference. That would likely be a walk in the park.

And no, future, we were not going to pay attention to you, so fuck off and leave us alone already, you are extremely irritating. Unfortunately, we were unsurprised to see that the future ignored us and continued to be a fucking cunt.