Chapter 23: The Calm Before the Trial
(A/N: Hey everyone, I finally finished moving back home and setting up my new computer. Got a new case, the RTX 3080 FE, and some nice RGB lightings LED fittings. Anyway, because I had to move and get a lot of stuff set up there was a longer hiatus than I expected for this chapter. Sorry about that delay, with LoL World Championships going on, I'll try to find time to get back to a regular schedule but it's also contingent on the inspiration I have at the time. With the boring logistical stuff aside, hope y'all enjoy the chapter).
General
The next morning, Red woke to the sound of White's boisterous voice.
"Up and at 'em Red! Everyone is already downstairs waiting for you!"
With that, Red heard the light sounds of footsteps as they went pitter patter down the stairs.
Red tried to collect himself and get up, but was unable to and as he was about to succumb to sleep again, Pika dutifully woke him up with a light jolt to his hand.
"Ow" … "thanks Pika, I don't wanna make the rest of the team wait for me for too long." Red muttered to himself.
He headed down to where everyone was and noticed that a lot more eyes than usual were fixated on him.
"What's up everyone?" Red asked questioningly.
"O-oh err nothing Red, don't worry about it." Mei said while averting her gaze.
"Yea… nothing suspicious is going on at all haha…" Yellow tried to laugh it off but she looked suspiciously redder than usual.
The story seemed to be the same for most of the other team members in attendance.
What happened was that in Red's rush to get downstairs, he hadn't had time to do the bare minimum preparation and he still had a mild case of bedhead.
The general disheveled state that Red was in was surprisingly attractive to the girls there who had never seen this side of him.
Thus, it created a brief moment where some of them who weren't used to seeing this side of him, were at a loss for words as they took in the moment (Yellow reacted because it had been a while since she last saw Red like this, and he was even more attractive now than he was when they were younger).
White broke the stalemate by clearing her throat and saying "Ahem, I brought everyone together today because now that we've gotten to know each other better, I think it's about time we start training together as well. While we don't know what the trial will entail, I assume if it's a mega evolution trial it will involve pokemon battling."
Red thought about this and then asked, "does anyone else have ideas about how we can prepare for the trial?"
Sapphire lit up as if on cue and offered her knowledge, "One thing that will help to know is that not all pokemon can mega evolve. As far as I know, you need a matching mega stone with a pokemon that is capable of mega evolving. With that being said, I can send you a list of pokemon that are known to have mega evolutions so we can start deciding who to bring on the trial. While I don't know what this trial will be like, I want everyone to know that the bond with your pokemon will matter the most when it comes to successfully mega evolving"
After a few minutes of searching, Sapphire wrote down a list of pokemon that were known to have mega forms.
The results were a bit middling for Red's team.
"Aw… so that means there's no chance for the debut of Mega Pika?" Red seemed mildly disappointed, and he wasn't the only one.
Of the trainers on the team, only Red (Venusaur/Gyarados), Sapphire Blaziken), Blue (Blastoise), Serena (Absol), and Platina (Lopunny), had pokemon that could mega evolve.
After taking this into consideration, Red concluded that everyone who had wanted to participate in the trial should still come as there was a chance that they would pick up a pokemon who was capable of mega evolving.
Red then decided "Alright, let's all train with our mega evolution capable pokemon or the pokemon your closest with, we want to make sure that we're ready for whatever trials that could come up."
There was consensus on this idea as well but Blue interrupted with the problem that just came to mind, "Wait, how are we going to get the mega stones for our pokemon?"
Sapphire hadn't realized that this would be a problem as she had already earned hers a long time ago.
Surprisingly, Red seemed to already have an answer to this problem.
"Actually, I can just call up Korrina tomorrow and we can figure this problem out together!" Red seemed to be pretty proud about his resourcefulness.
And… then he noticed that the room temperature seemed to have dropped a few degrees.
Platina had a straight face as she turned to ask Red (but if one looked closely, she was subtly holding back a grimace as her eyebrows were twitching slightly) "Why do you have Korrina's number?"
Red hadn't sensed the danger he had brought upon himself and cheerfully said "She asked me to trade numbers sometime after my gym challenge and I thought it'd be nice to be able to contact her if we needed to."
"Is that so…? Well I'm really glad that you find it nice to have Korrina's number." Platina maintained her ominous tone and expression while oozing sarcasm in her voice.
Red couldn't pinpoint what her sassy response was for and felt it was sort of out of place for the usually serious and proper Platina. But because he couldn't fathom the reason behind it, he decided to just shelf this dilemma away in his mind.
"Alright, while I'm also curious about Red having Korrina's number, let's focus on how we're going to do our practice today. I think we should all take turns training with each other, especially with Sapphire." Blue cut in to break the ice
Red took that opportunity to get out of the pickle he found himself in "Yeah let's go do that, Sapphire do you want to go over some movesets that Saur can have?"
With that, everyone split up into little groups and started some practice.
Red decided that discussing powerful movesets with Sapphire would be the best way to prepare for a potential mega evolution.
"Haha looks like you're already assuming you'll pass the trial Red." Sapphire said teasingly.
"No no it's not that I promise, I just wasn't sure what would happen to Saur so I wanted to make sure he would have the right moves when he mega evolves.
"Good point, luckily I do know what Venusaur's mega evolution is like, But before we even talk about that, do you think you'd use Gyara?"Sapphire added.
"Hmm, I feel like when it comes to team utility, I want to keep Gyara's intimidate as an option, and I assume that Mega Gyarados doesn't keep intimidate." Red reasoned his thought process in real life.
Sapphire nodded in agreement and then proceeded to describe how Mega Venusaur was an incredible tank that was able to dish out respectable damage and even could overcome ice and fire moves with its new thick fat ability halving those types of moves.
Red's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he heard that.
"Dang, if I knew I could mega evolve Saur all this time, just imagine how much easier my early gym battles and run ins with Team Rocket would have gone…" Red said half-jokingly as he briefly daydreamed what he could do with his new potential trump card.
"Hold your horses Red, while it's true Mega Venusaur would have made a lot of those old battles go easier, it's also a result of all of those previous experiences that we can even consider Saur as a candidate with mega evolution. What I was taught, in Hoenn at least, was that mega evolution was not easy to achieve. So realistically speaking, you probably would have already been at the elite four before you were even feasibly ready for mega evolution." Sapphire said wisely.
Red noted quietly that Sapphire was much more astute when it came to anything pokemon battling related, of course even he was aware enough to not mention this observation aloud.
He nodded slightly in agreement with Sapphire's assessment and then proceeded to start their theorycrafting session.
After going back and forth on multiple sets, Red eventually settled on having Saur's new form fulfill the tank role on his team. This meant equipping Saur with a stall based set of moves like Leech Seed, Toxic, Synthesis, and Frenzy Plant.
Thanks to the advent of TMs becoming infinitely reusable, he would be able to swap out these moves for more aggressive moves like Giga Drain depending on the scenario (and whether or not there would be sun for Synthesis).
After they had discussed moves for a bit, Red swapped with Blue (who was partnering with Crys) and he began to discuss strategies for catching pokemon in case the trial happened to be catching a particularly troublesome pokemon.
Crys helpfully shared a tip about how he could use toxic to help his chances of catching a pokemon, and then pair it with a quick heal bell from Togekiss in case the enemy pokemon got too close to fainting.
Red took that to heart as he usually used Toge in an offensive role and hadn't even considered the idea of teaching more supportive moves.
They proceeded to discuss whether a dusk ball would work inside the Tower of Mastery (they decided it wouldn't), and caught up a bit on stories about catching pokemon from their travels since the last time they had met up.
This cycle of sharing tips and brushing up on general pokemon knowledge repeated for Red with most of the girls there and at the end of the day everyone had leveled up considerably.
The largest knowledge gains were definitely from the sessions with Sapphire where they leveled up their knowledge of their future mega evolutions, or what potential pokemon they would want to try to get for the sake of mega evolving.
All and all, it was another good day of team building and leveling up in preparation for the trial, and the team seemed to be gelling even better than ever …
That is, until Red received a call from Korrina and the mood in the room dropped immediately.
(A/N: It has definitely been a while since I've had the chance and time to sit down and write stuff for this story. I've been a bit busy with the move and new job stuff as well as a new season of anime and Genshin Impact taking up my time. I hope the new anime I'm watching will help give some inspiration and that the end result will be something that my constant readers enjoy. Thanks for reading as always.)