A/N: FINALLY, A BATTLE! Right? I mean, maybe you guys weren't waiting to read this as long as I was waiting to write it, but what the hell... Anyway, this is a much more realistic take on what Pokemon battles actually ARE. And I have to say it made me feel ridiculously bad because it reminds me so much of dog-fighting and I'm a super huge mega-watt enormously giant animal lover, so I'm reeeeeeeally really against animal cruelty and... well... I don't really know how to justify battles in Pokemon yet. YET.

But maybe that's the point.

-Fallon


Variation #1: "Fall Apart"

49. Stripes

That was all she could see when she looked at her Blackthorn City gym badge.

Stripes. Endless, blurring, blood red stripes that shone like claws freshly dug into the bark of a tree.

You should be proud! She told herself. You defeated Clair when no one else could! You've earned this.

But at what cost?

Her dragons had been merciless. Clair had been just the same. They dug into Arcanine with a fervor only the hunt could grant, and it scared her.

This was not a battle.

This was a fight for survival.

But as she cradled Arcanine's enormous, limp head in her lap, she let him lick the badge that gleamed so seamlessly in the fluorescent lights of the gym, his eyes full of pride and his heart full of hope. She tried not to stare at his sides, at his fur that was so streaked with blood, tried not to remember the black and orange stripes that blurred across the floor with every fall of her opponent, tried not to smell the rust of Arcanine's scars or feel the warmth of her fingers, so soaked in his blood.

She would make it to the Pokémon Center later that day, and Arcanine would live to tell the tale.

His body would be razed with scars that traced his own markings with eerie precision, his eye near blind and his ear half-deaf on the side that which he'd braced Gyarados's Hyper Beam with a will to endure she had never seen before.

He would battle as he always had, with grace and agility and cutting determination, but for the blindside he'd have at the behest of Gyarados's heavy thrashing.

And he would beam at her with those regal jaws and shining fangs and feel for her a trust that had never been misplaced.

But she would look back at him and falter.

She would look back at him and see her failure.