What is this? A chapter that didn't take a month to come out? Oh my. Although, exams start next week, so there's a chance the next one might be a little late. Compensation, maybe?
There are some characters in this story that I really like. I feel bad, because sometimes I have to use them as information-givers to advance the plot. (Still, said characters are probably the reason why this chapter was written so fast)
On the other hand, we're getting close to the seventh gym, and you know what that means for a story line of pokémon.
"Why do I have to be the target for battle practise?"
"Well… you're a big tough dragon!" And Char didn't want to practice against Smith. "You can handle a little Mienfoo, right?" Ryan forced as big a smile as he could manage at Axle's complaint.
The dragon let out a semi-contempt huff. "Fine."
A day had passed since the gym battle. Since Twist Mountain was blocked off, Ryan and his team travelled back through Chargestone Cave instead; they'd met Sparky again on the way through, but Ernie had already left, off on his travels around the region like he'd always described to Ryan when he was younger. Maybe the Emboar's tales were one of the reasons he had wanted to go on a journey so much.
For now, they'd stopped for a break on Route 6. While some of his team were resting around the edges of the clearing – namely Mariana and Smith, and Sigilyph perched on a nearby tree branch – Jay sniffed around the bushes, looking for berries no doubt, and Charlotte wanted to try out the new move she'd learnt via a Technical Machine.
"Looks like someone fell off the wrong side of the sofa this morning," she tutted in response to the dragon's attitude.
Axle drew his lips back in a snarl, tilting his head slightly so that his tusks gleamed in the sunlight. "Did you want to try this move, or would you rather I use you as a battle target instead?"
Not seeming fazed at all by his threats as usual, Char simply held up one paw. "The first option does in fact seem more desirable, good sir, but I do require a command first." She tossed a meaningful glance at Ryan.
"Oh—right." He couldn't tell whether she was being sarcastic or not, but at least she was playing fair. "Char, acrobatics!"
"Now that's more like it!" she cheered, jumping into the air. She wasn't able to fly like Skyla's Swoobat could, but she was small and nimble enough to hop around the clearing to find a good angle to attack from. "I'm so fast." She hopped to his other side. "Bet'cha can't keep up!" Moved again. "Feel the fear!"
"Are you actually going to attack me?" Axle taunted, a scoff in his voice. "I don't feel anything but the wind."
"Right from where you never expect it!" Char shouted, lunging for him at last from his left side.
He ducked, and she flew right over his head.
"Oof!" She didn't hit the ground too hard, but it was enough to draw a grunt out of her. As she jumped back to her paws, brushing the dust from her fur, she made an accusatory point in his direction. "I call a foul." The Mienfoo looked up at Ryan as if he were a football referee. "He moved."
"Sorry to break it to you, princess, but your enemy ain't gonna stand there and let you hit 'em. As if a fighting-type like you could ever perfect the skills of the air!"
Ryan's expression soon turned to one of confusion – and he realised he wasn't the only one. That wasn't Axle; even the dragon looked puzzled. It was an unfamiliar voice, and it almost sounded like it was coming from above them…
"Oi! You talking to me, birdy?" Charlotte snapped. Following her gaze, Ryan finally saw who it was that had spoken to them, standing on one of the lower tree branches nearby. A Braviary.
"Oh, goodness—Char, please do not pick a fight with that thing," Ryan pleaded, quietly but urgently. Braviary were some of the toughest flying-types in the region. She wouldn't stand a chance.
"No, you go ahead, do whatever you want," Axle muttered. He was joking. Probably.
"Yes, I'm talking to you, yellow Rattata." the bird sniffed indignantly, puffing out his blue chest feathers.
"Wow. How rude," Char huffed. She cast a glance at her trainer, voice quieter now. Clearly she did in fact know better than to pick a fight with a flying-type who was likely much stronger than her. "Who d'you reckon this guy thinks he is?"
Ryan didn't answer her, too intent on watching the bird. Did he know that Braviary? There was one he'd met before, so maybe… "Are you Baldwin?" Although, on second thoughts, Alder's Pokémon hadn't seemed to have such an attitude, so maybe this was a different Braviary.
The bird didn't seem to take too kindly to his mistake, however. His eyes snapped to the boy, narrowing dangerously. His feathers raised. "What did you just call me?"
"I, um…" Oh dear. Perhaps he shouldn't have said anything.
Claws scraped the earth as the Braviary jumped down from the tree, wings only spreading slightly to break its fall. "You compare me to that old corpse of a bird?" Its voice raised to an angered shriek. "How dare you!"
Up close, he could see this was definitely a different Braviary. It did look slightly younger, but was covered in battle scars, a particularly noticeable one across its right eye.
Scarred or not, that didn't make it any less dangerous. It looked like it was ready to lunge at him with claws bared any moment.
"Hey, hey, hey!" The familiar voice was almost a relief, even if Ryan didn't put two and two together right off the bat. He definitely hadn't expected Nate to appear, pushing his way in front of the angry bird. Wasn't that dangerous!? "Calm your feathers, Chief! Don't go pecking the poor kid's eyes out."
Was the Braviary one of his Pokémon? That would certainly be believable, watching as the bird backed away from the boy, something akin to a growl rumbling in his throat as he turned his head away in a huff.
"Aw, come on, don't you dare go sulking on me. Geez – what on earth did you say to him?" Nate cast a glance back at Ryan, but despite the fact that he expected the man to look angry, he just seemed vaguely amused.
"Uh— I just asked him if his name was Baldwin," Ryan shrugged.
"Wow. Someone sure is grouchy today. Don't worry, Chief, I'm sure your feathers will not start greying for another—oh, five days at the very least." He patted the bird's neck, the laugh evident in his voice showing that he was joking. Chief seemed to know he was, but he didn't appreciate his trainer's humour too much, stalking away to fly back to the trees. "Ah, don't mind him." Nate waved a hand. "He's just very – er, defiant. You get used to it."
"I see…" Ryan looked past him at the branches above; Chief was turned away from them now, looking out over the route instead. He turned his gaze to the champion instead. "What are you doing here?"
Nate raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean? Nobody told me I needed an invitation to pass through this route. Don't arrest me, officer, I was just trying to stop my bird from attacking the innocent…"
"No, no, I didn't mean it like—" Ryan slapped one hand to his forehead. Maybe that'd been a poor choice of words.
To his relief, the champion just laughed, sliding his hands into his pockets as he sat down on a nearby rock. "I get it, I get it. What's a person like me doing wandering around in the middle of nowhere? Even we powerful trainers like to just go for a walk now and then."
Ryan didn't really know how to respond. Mostly he just had a lot of questions, but the vast majority of them seemed too prying for him to ask. He didn't know what exactly he'd been expecting of Unova's champion before meeting him, but it was probably something along the lines of a celebrity, someone who lived a life of luxury because their position easily granted it to them. And yet Nate didn't seem to fit that image at all – a scruffy trainer who barely seemed to have a care in the world for anything but his friends and Pokémon.
Maybe his first impressions didn't tell the whole story. Was he really like that, or was it just the circumstances that had made him appear that way?
"It's the coat guy! Coat guy!"
Ryan couldn't tell whether Jay understood the concept of league champions or whether he just found the word too difficult to say, but as usual he was excited over everything. The Umbreon raced over to them, putting his front paws up against Nate's leg as if he were about to try and jump into his lap. He'd often done that to Ryan or his parents back when he was an Eevee.
"Jay, don't—" Ryan warned, but it was unneeded.
"Oh, shush, he's fine." Nate didn't seem to mind in the slightest, gently scratching under the Umbreon's chin. Jay let out a happy squeak, rubbing his cheek against the man's hand for attention. "Usually I have a three-hundred-pound dog trying to climb on me. He's a Butterfree compared to Champ."
That was enough for Ryan to feel a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. No matter what he thought of the champion, it was clear he did care a lot about Pokémon, and that automatically made him a good person.
And, well, Jay liked anyone who would pet or feed him.
"So, Ry, you still working your way through the gym challenges?" Nate asked, though it seemed little more than friendly conversation. Jay had actually settled on his legs now, enjoying his ears and fur being petted.
Silently, Ryan hoped that the Umbreon wouldn't fall asleep. "Yeah! We won against Skyla yesterday."
"The Mistralton Gym, huh? I bet the wind tunnel was fun. Back when I was collecting the badges, it was certainly a lot more… dangerous." He grimaced, like it was a painful memory. "I think some trainers complained, though. Skyla's been trying to keep up with the demands of health and safety ever since. But hey, if you didn't pick up any bruises on your way to the gym leader, I'd say she's doing a good job!"
Now the lecture he'd received from the gym guide made a lot more sense – and the outfit, too. A gym leader's job was more complicated than it first sounded. "Bruise free. I don't know where the next gym is, though."
"Well, that would depend on which badges you've got already," Nate said matter-of-factly.
"Every gym badge from Aspertia to Mistralton. Oh, and one from Greenway City."
"So that's… hang on. Math." He stared at the ground for a moment, his gaze thoughtful, counting in his head. "Five. Wait—six. Six, right?"
Ryan nodded.
"Okay, so there's three other gyms in the region." Nate held up one hand, showing the same number of fingers. "Since you have an outside badge, you don't need to challenge all three of them, but every trainer is required to have the Legend Badge before they can gain access to Victory Road. You get that from defeating Iris in Opelucid." He put one finger down, counting that off the list. "I'd recommend saving her for last, though, unless you've got some serious guts. Other than that, there's Ruth's gym in Lacunosa, or Marlon in Humilau – it's a little out of the way, mind, and you'd need to cross the sea on Route 21 to get there since the Marine Tube is closed for maintenance."
"I think Lacunosa sounds better," Ryan admitted, trying his best to force a smile. Maybe it'd seem like he just wanted to take the shorter route between the gyms, if the one in Humilau was 'out of the way', as he'd said.
Throughout the conversation, Ryan hadn't been paying much attention to his Pokémon, so when he felt Mariana's shell brush against his hand it almost made him jump. The Samurott glanced up at him, eyes a mixture of nerves and awe. If there was one thing Ryan had realised by now, it was that Mariana had a lot of admiration for the champion and his Pokémon.
"Hey, I see your Dewott evolved!" Nate held out one hand to her, unable to move without throwing Jay off by accident while the Umbreon was curled up on his lap. Mariana waddled over to nudge her muzzle into his palm, and he laughed, brushing a thumb over her whiskers. "Marth gets fussy if anyone touches his fur – I guess he's just too worried about his appearance."
No matter what he'd expected from a champion, at least he was friendly. Unova could've had someone who was stuck-up and thought too much of their title, but instead they got Nate; someone willing to help out the trainers who weren't nearly as powerful. Perhaps one of the reasons why he hadn't been defeated yet was that people didn't have the heart to do so.
On the other hand, the man they'd met out on Route 7 – Benga? – had said he was rarely ever at the league. Considering the amount of times they'd met him out on Unova's routes, Ryan could certainly believe that… so was the reason he'd been the champion for so long because nobody could find him in the first place to be able to defeat him?
"Oh!" He'd been asked to pass on a message from that guy, hadn't he? "There was a person we saw not long ago, he said if I saw you to say that he was trying to find you – I think his name was Benga."
"Ah, Benga." Nate smiled once more, though this time it looked a little more forced. "Yeah, he usually is. He'll probably track me down eventually. Always does." Giving Jay one final pat on the head, he carefully lifted the Umbreon off him, setting the creature on the ground before he stood up. "Cheren called me at a ridiculous hour this morning saying Bianca and the professor had been examining some kind of small robotic creature – there seem to be more of them around, so keep an eye out, okay?"
Something told Ryan that he'd just tried to find a way of changing the subject, but it wasn't really any of his business to pry. If Benga had a problem with the champion, that was nothing to do with Ryan. "Yeah. We've seen a few of them already."
Nate actually looked rather surprised by this information. "Really? Heck, this might be a bigger problem than I thought…" His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to decide what to do about this. "Are they as strong as the one in the forest?"
Ryan shook his head. "I think if they get hit by a strong enough attack, they stop working. Or… if they fall in the water? I don't know much about robotics, so there could be other ways too." Anything he might know about how those things worked was from science lessons, and he had the feeling a fully functioning robot was a lot more complicated than a simple circuit.
"Robotics, huh. Well, I'm not sure I could tell you much about that." He gave a candid shrug. "I know someone who might, though, if you feel like going on a slight detour on the way to your next gym."
"You do?" Ryan's eyes lit up hopefully. He wasn't sure whether his Pokémon were strong enough to stand up to those things, so if there was another way to defeat them, he might as well learn, right? Besides, this would give them the chance to train before the next gym as well.
"Mmhmm. There's a place in the far south of the region called the P2 Laboratory. The building's been locked down for a long while now, but there's a boat ported there, and the guy who lives on it knows a lot about… science." The last word was said with a small wave of his hands, as if it were some kind of foreign concept. "Just be careful. The guy can talk your ears off if you let him."
"And you think he might know how to deal with the robots?"
"Ha!" The champion let out a single laugh. "Oh man. That's a sentence I never would have expected to hear with completely reasonable context." Shaking his head, not in response to the question but more to his own sense of humour, he rummaged through his pockets for something. "He might do, but if not, I'm sure whatever nonsense he spouts will be thought-provoking, at the very least." Finding something which looked like a disc in a case, he examined the front of it for a moment to check it was in fact what he was looking for, and then held it out to Ryan. "You'll need this to get to the P2 lab. HM03, surf."
Ryan carefully took the item from him; the awe that he was actually receiving something from Unova's champion caused his words to sink in a little more slowly. "Wait—surf?" This was a Hidden Machine, titled such to let people know it was a move that could be used easily outside of battle in certain situations for the trainer's benefit. He didn't know all of them, but 'surf' definitely sounded like it was somehow connected to water.
"It's okay, the Pokémon does the surfing; you don't have to be good at riding waves, or anything like that. Just hang on and don't fall into the water."
He'd half expected that to be another of Nate's sarcastic jokes, but he actually looked serious. Suddenly Ryan wondered whether agreeing to this had been such a good idea after all.
Jay ran a paw over his ear before staring at the pad for a few seconds, as if he expected something to be there. Seeing nothing different, he looked up at Mariana and tilted his head, as if trying to get a better look at the whiskers on the side of her face. "Do you think we have special powers now?"
The Samurott looked confused at his enquiry, but soon the very Jay-like question set in, and she smiled. "I don't think that's how it works, Jay."
Even if he hadn't gained any new ones, it was definitely believable that Jay did have a super power when it came to food. The poor old lillipup who was able to witness such a thing quietly nudged her own bowl closer to her, as if she were worried he might start on hers next. "If you eat too fast, you're going to make yourself sick."
"Bu' 's yummy!" the Umbreon said, still crunching on a mouthful as he looked up at her. Poppy grimaced, the slight loss of appetite evident on her face.
"Oh my," Mrs. White chuckled, watching the Pokémon as she set a platter on the table. "Jay sure seems to like this Pokémon food, doesn't he? I swear that bowl was full only ten seconds ago."
"His hidden talent," Ryan joked, picking up one of the sandwiches from his plate. They looked really nice, but he didn't intend on trying to copy Jay's food-vanishing act.
It had taken a couple of days to walk back to Route 1; Ryan had been trying to pay close attention to his Pokémon to make sure he wasn't tiring them out, between all the travelling and the battles along the way. To get to their destination, they needed to pass through Route 17 nearby, so they'd stopped off at Nuvema Town to see his grandmother again. Ryan wasn't sure whether she'd appreciate him releasing all his Pokémon in the house, especially given Touko's strict rules about it, so for now Jay was the only one out. He'd have to remember to give the rest of his team some extra food later.
"You must have travelled quite a way since I saw you last; what brings you back to little old Nuvema?" Mrs. White asked with a smile, selecting a few jam sandwiches to put on her plate. She'd definitely made too many for just the two of them, but she hadn't seemed to mind, already knowing how to deal with the problem; 'Maybe I'll take some of them over to Aurea. She and Bianca have been busy lately, and knowing them they've probably forgotten to have lunch.'
Ryan waited until he'd finished his mouthful before replying; at the very least, he had better manners than Jay. "We were passing through," he shrugged.
The woman's eyebrows rose. "We're a long way from Castelia – are you going through Route 17?"
"Yeah. There's a place out there called the P2 laboratory, and we're heading out there to meet someone." Nan doesn't need to know any more than that. She probably didn't have any clue about the odd creatures in the region, and if that was the case, Ryan didn't want to be the one to tell her. If she knew the professor well, there was a chance she could find out from her, anyway.
His grandmother looked like she'd been about to take a bite out of a sandwich, but when he told her where they were going, she froze. "The P2 laboratory? Are you sure that's a good idea? Do you know the person you're going to see?"
Ryan couldn't help his surprised look at the sudden caution. Was there something bad about that place? "Not exactly, but the champion knows him, I think. He's the one who said we should go see him, to ask him about something."
If Mrs. White had looked shocked before, it was nothing compared to her expression now. "The champion sent you? You mean Nate?" When Ryan nodded, she looked a little less worried – but only a little. "People haven't really heard much from him lately. I met him once or twice, and he definitely seems like a trustworthy person… but you be careful anyway, alright?"
"Yes, Nan." Perhaps she was just worried about stranger danger. He wasn't a little kid; he knew to be cautious around people he didn't know.
There were a few minutes of silence while they ate. Jay sniffed around the table, having long finished his lunch and now searching for any crumbs which might come his way. Ryan was too lost in thought to pay much attention to him. Perhaps this was as good a time as any to see if he could find something out.
"Hey, Nan?" he asked eventually, having finished his first sandwich. "Do you know what happened to the champion? Like, you said nobody has heard much from him lately."
"I don't, I'm sorry," she said with a half-hearted smile. "He used to be… well, around more, I guess that's one way of saying it. He'd compete in tournaments and take part in whatever was going on at the time, and I'd see him on the television a lot too. A few years ago he just seemed to vanish. If anything happened to him, I wouldn't know. Since nothing was on the news, if there was anything wrong, it must have been something personal."
"Oh." Well, that would make a lot of sense. He didn't know enough to be able to guess what might have happened, and to be honest, he'd probably be prying too much in trying to find out.
Still, that couldn't stop him from wondering. What would cause someone as easy-going as Nate to completely change?