Ange's defeated Gansley! Now that the king of the Pyrite Town underworld has been dethroned, what remains for Ange after this? Will she be able to find her way down into the Under with Gansley's help? Or will she finish what she started and really make him suffer?

KedharS: That would be nice for sure.

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: I think Grumpig are great. I had one in Sapphire for a little while.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 878

Gansley was at a loss. He'd been defeated. By a little girl.

He was the strongest trainer in Pyrite Town (in his own humble opinion) and he fought with only the strongest pokemon.

At least, that was what he had thought. But this girl… she hadn't just defeated every trainer in his group, but she'd wiped the floor with him, as well. He'd barely put up a fight! It was a pathetic showing, being defeated in front of practically every trainer in town.

And using his own special rules as well! He'd attached a collar to her neck as a shackle to weaken her when her pokemon took damage. But she'd withstood it and came out on top, which made the entire thing backfire on him because now she looked even more admirable in the eyes of the citizens, compared to him who had disabled his own collar.

He'd cheated, and she'd STILL been able to beat him. Everyone could see Gansley for the loser he was now.

Weakness was a sin. That was something embedded in the mind of every citizen of Pyrite Town. Losing was unforgivable, and weakness was a sin. The only ones who deserved to be on top were the strong. They were the ones who got to look down on the rest of the world!

Gansley wasn't strong. He was weak. And now everybody knew it.

He could already feel the loathing looks in their eyes. But none of them could compare to the contempt he felt from Ange, staring coldly down at him.

Stalking towards him, Ange smoothly unlatched the collar around her throat and dropped it at his feet, discarding it like the garbage it was. It was only then that he realized he was kneeling in front of her, having lost his footing amidst the shock of losing the pokemon battle.

"You lost," Ange's icy voice pierced the cold night air like a dagger jammed into his ear. She leaned over him. "You lost the battle."

"I-I did," Gansley stuttered, nodding shakily. He couldn't deny it. He was seething with rage right now. He hated this girl, but it was impotent. He wanted nothing more than to wring her scrawny little neck, but he couldn't. As much as he hated her, she terrified him. He hadn't forgotten that primal fear he felt when confronted by that Zoroark of hers, the way it seemed to chill him right down to the core, like he'd never felt before.

All he could do was avert his eyes and lower his head. He had nothing he could say in his defense. He had nothing left.

"Per our agreement, you'll arrange passage for me into the Under," Ange calmly replied, startling Gansley enough to get him to look up in surprise.

With everything she'd said, and the amount of contempt she so obviously held for him, he'd expected her to tear him to ribbons after their battle. But… she was just asking him to keep his end of the bargain? Seriously?

"Y-Yes, of course!" Gansley couldn't help her out fast enough. He dug around in his coat and presented her with a card. "This… this is an Under Pass! If you show this to someone who knows their way around this city, then they'll take you to the Under immediately! I swear!"

Ange narrowed her eyes. That wasn't the answer she'd wanted to hear. Gansley froze, not knowing what he'd done wrong.

"Th-That is… I mean… it'll definitely work! I promise!" He cried. "You can go into the Under with that, it's not a forgery, I swear!"

"Who is this 'someone'?" Ange snarled, jamming the heel of her shoe into his knee. "You said I would have to show this pass to 'someone' who knows their way around the city, so who is this 'someone'? This isn't what we agreed on."

"It-It could be lots of people!" Gansley sputtered.

"Who?!"

Gansley lowered his head in resignation. The truth was, he had countless contacts that could smuggle this girl into the Under. But that had been before his brutal defeat at her hands. It may not have been official, but in the eyes of Pyrite Town he had been ousted from his position as ruler of the underworld; all those contacts? They would probably never speak to him again.

"I… I knew people," Gansley muttered. "Some people here, in fact," he added, waving his hand lazily at the amassed crowd of onlookers, who were just as tense as he was. "But I don't think any of them would do any favors for me now. Weakness is a sin, after all, and I lost to you… that's all there is to it. I'm back to being a nobody."

Ange wasn't moved. "Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?" She scoffed. "You're a criminal scumbag who's used your position of power to make the lives of everyone around you miserable. You prey on the weak because you think it makes you look strong, and you take pride in that. You're filthy scum who deserves to be seen as the garbage you are."

Ange's words stung. Gansley didn't think he had pride in those things that she was condemning him for, but it appeared that even meager pride in his status was capable of being wounded. She was so sure of herself, so confident, that he couldn't find it in himself to refute her words.

And how could he? She was completely right, after all. He couldn't deny the scum that he was before those eyes, brimming with malicious, honest contempt.

When he first laid eyes on her, he thought she was just a beautiful girl. She was strong and fierce, but what had stood out most about her was her angelic beauty. Young as she was, he couldn't help his infatuation. A girl like that didn't belong in a place like this. She was like a ghostly flower that bloomed in a bright field, unfit for the slums of Pyrite Town.

Sitting before her now, cowed by her power, he realized that. That had been why he'd made such a lascivious bargain in the first place, because she was such an anomalous figure. Something that never should have entered his world of scum and villainy. He'd wanted to claim her for his own, to drag something so pure and clean down to his level.

She was still lovely. But now he knew the sort of angel she was. Not a pure cherubic beauty blind to the cruelties of the world, but an avenging archangel. She would never set foot in his presence because of how much people like him disgusted her. Like a soldier smiting evil, she was the sort of pure that would be toxic to men like him.

If he had seen that earlier, then would he have been smart enough not to take her bargain? Somehow, he still doubted that.

For the first time in his miserable life, Gansley began to feel shame. This girl who couldn't have been older than 18 had defeated him not only in a pokemon battle, but also as a human being. He couldn't stand to be in her presence any longer.

Ange, on the other hand, cared little for the newfound admiration he felt for her, she didn't even notice it. Scum like him wasn't worthy of any further consideration. She finished outlining how much of a wretch he was, then turned her attention to the rest of the plaza. Wherever her eyes landed, people flinched and looked away.

"And the rest of you? You're silent now, I see," she scoffed, her piercing glare seeming to hit all of them at once. She had the look of a disappointed mother, an effective tool against these cretins, so many of which had never experienced their own mother's warmth.

"Your eyes speak volumes though," she continued, walking around Gansley and lifting her foot, driving it down on his neck. She pushed his face into the tiles of the plaza as she addressed the crowd. "I know what you're all thinking. Looking down on scum like this, viewing him as less of a man because he lost against a little girl like me. Hell, forget the 'little girl' part, because he lost a battle at all, isn't that right?" She asked.

Nobody answered.

"Isn't that right?" She asked again, more insistently.

There were nods this time.

"Weakness is a sin, that's how it goes in Pyrite Town. Hell, all of the Orre Region. Pathetic. You think that the only reason to look down on trash like this is because he lost a pokemon battle? You should be looking down on him because he's a waste of a human existence!" She barked. Then she shook her head. There was no point. "Not that any of you can say better, of course."

She reached to her belt, and sent out Luci. The Zoroark threw back her head and roared, sending a wave of chilling wind through the air.

"You were content to look down on me and mock me, hiding in the shadow of your boss. And then when he lost, you throw him aside now, is that it? Pretend that you were always better than him, even though nothing has changed between then and now? Ridiculous and pathetic," she muttered, shaking her head in disgust. "I don't know which is worse, this piece of trash, or the lot of you. At least he was man enough to face me."

She scanned the crowd again, seeing nothing but shame and fear. A few people moved to leave, but one look from her froze them in their tracks.

"Well?" She asked again, holding her arms out. "Anybody? Anybody? Anybody at ALL think you can handle me in a pokemon battle?"

"ZOROARK!" Luci roared, and half the people in the plaza nearly fell over in fright.

Ange rolled her eyes. "I guess not. You lot like to tout out this line of 'weakness is a sin' as a way to look down on those who try and fail. But if you ask me, people who don't have the courage to stand up and fight me aren't any stronger than the one who did and lost. Fighting is a struggle. And in my world, when you lose, you die. Compared to that, a place like this? Pathetic. Weak places breed weak people, and there's nothing worse than weaklings who crowd together and look down on others so that they can feel better about themselves."

Nobody in the crowd could say anything in their defense. Maybe it was the giant savage pokemon glaring at them with angry red eyes, or maybe it was the fact that Ange's words were ringing a little truer than they would like to admit. But nobody could object.

Ange waited a few more seconds to see if anyone braver than Gansley would stand up to defend the region's motto of "weakness is a sin" before giving up. Nobody here was actually strong enough to live by that motto. It was just something they used to justify their shitty abuses of others. What a thoroughly expected disappointment.

"That's what I thought," Ange muttered, feeling nothing but contempt for people as pathetic as this. She held up the card that Gansley had given her for all to see. "Now then! This here's a ticket that will get me pass into the under! Gansley here tells me he doesn't think anyone would be willing to help him right now, after having lost so brutally! But I say he's wrong!"

She smirked the smirk of a predator in a heard of Mareep.

"I think someone's willing to help me get there, so how about it?" She asked.

"I-I can…"

Ange turned to see the bartender from before, the one who had worked with Gansley to set her up. His face showed none of the glee from before, and he couldn't even look at Gansley now. He was staring right at Ange with a hollow look in his eye, shaking so frightfully he looked like he might fall over. It was everything he could do not to piss himself.

"Oh?" Ange asked, raising his eyebrow. "You're the bartender, right? Yeah, I remember you. Frankie, I think your name was? Whatever. I don't care. You say you can get me passage into the Under, is that right?"

"B-Behind my bar," he stuttered. "In the b-basement… there's a secret tunnel that can lead you down into the Under, just… just p-please…"

"Please what?" Ange growled, getting real sick and tired of cowards sniveling at her feet.

"P-Please don't hurt me… I-I didn't mean to… to set you up like that, it's just... G-Gansley, he told me to, and I just…" He could even look at her he was so afraid. His eyes were swimming in his skull as he wrung his hands together.

Ange looked at him like the piece of trash he was.

"So to be clear," she clarified, "you worked with him to set me up, and now you're selling him out, saying it wasn't your idea?"

Gansley, of course, had nothing to say on the matter, already willing to face whatever punishment Ange deemed necessary. He didn't have the strength to oppose her anymore, or even stand up for himself. He was a thoroughly broken man.

"I-I just… it-it wasn't…"

"Oh, I believe it wasn't your fault," Ange said, letting Gansley go and stalking towards the bartender, Luci swaying menacingly behind her. "But you're your own man. You could have said no. You could have done a lot of things. But you were still enjoying my torment."

"Th-That's…"

"Relaaaaax," Ange said, her fingers ghosting across the man's shoulder. She didn't even want to touch him directly. "I don't care about that. Just take me to the Under. NOW!"

She barked the order so loudly she actually knocked the man over.

"Y-Yes!" He wailed, scrambling to his feet and rushing back to the bar. "J-Just follow me!"

"Good. And for the rest of you…" Ange turned and looked out at the sea of petrified faces.

"GET LOST." Her words were punctuated by the ferocious howl of her Zoroark, and a wave of bitter malice sprayed through the night sky. The plaza emptied so fast it made Pyrite Town look like a real ghost town. Only Gansley remained, having nowhere left to go.

Disgusted, Ange didn't give him another look. She recalled Luci to her pokeball and followed the bartender inside.

He led her to a back room behind the counter, and to a book shelf. He pulled it aside to reveal an old ladder.

"J-Just go down there… there's a tunnel system you can follow, the path to the Under is marked," he promised her. "I-I'm really sorry about all this…"

He tried to slither away, but Ange caught him by the collar. "Oh, don't even think about it," she hissed. "I'm not letting you go that easily. You can scurry on back to whatever rock you crawled out of once I'm in the Under."

"Y-Yes ma'am!" He whimpered.

The trip down into the Under took longer than Ange had expected. And a LOT longer than she would have liked. The bartender was being honest about the path down, he had in fact marked it. But that didn't make it a short journey. The tunnels weren't even lit.

When she stepped out into the Under, it was… underwhelming, for lack of a better word. Ange found a note of ironic amusement in that pun of a description.

The Under was just so… empty and vacant. She knew that it wasn't, of course, she had heard the stories. Even after the underground city had been boarded up years ago, and the citizens evacuated, a few unsavory elements had remained, continuing to do their dealings in the shadows.

But there was no trace of them to be seen.

The lights and lamps that had once lit up this underground city were all out, the private generators were down. Everything was bathed in shadow. Ange had gotten used to the darkness on her trip down, but even this was pushing it. She scanned her flashlight across the massive place, and saw nothing but abandonment and disrepair.

Old buildings covered in rubble and filled with holes, fences that had crumbled away and broken apart so much that they served no practical purpose. And a massive structure that had, at one point, served as a grand coliseum, but was now just a dusty dome of darkness.

Ange took a deep breath of the stale air. A smile crossed her face.

Normally, she would have despised a place such as this. It was yet another monument to human greed, destroying the homes of wild pokemon in order to benefit themselves. The Under represented everything she despised about the Orre Region, and human progress as a whole.

But at the same time, this state of disrepair had turned the Under from a monument to a memorial. It was like being in an ancient ruin. Humans had lived here once, and now the life that had walked these concrete streets was a specter of the past.

Ange hated human progress. But even she couldn't help but admire such craftsmanship. Were there any wild pokemon still left in the Orre Region, she had no doubt they would make a place like this their home. She could imagine the Zubats and Geodudes right now, the Whismurs shuffling through the streets and the Gastly floating in the abandoned buildings.

In a thousand years, the Under might be looked upon the same way the Ruins of Alph were today, and that thought almost made it all seem worth it.

"W-Well, here we are…" The bartender stuttered out. Ange couldn't see his face in the darkness but she could imagine the frightened look he was wearing. "I-I brought you here, just like I said I would… so um… can I…"

"Get lost," Ange muttered, she didn't want anything to do with him anymore. There were more important things to occupy her now.

The bartender didn't need to be told twice. He couldn't run back up to his bar fast enough, leaving Ange alone in the abandoned catacombs.

Ange took another breath of that musty air. She couldn't get a good enough feeling for how large this place really was. And those were just the human settlements. She'd been in enough ruins before to know that there was more to this place than what was on the surface. She could feel a draft, faint as it was, which meant more tunnels.

Ah yes. The Under had tunnels. Ange could easily imagine an entire maze of them.

Needless to say, she wouldn't be able to explore the entire place in one night. Even if she did forego sleep, she could spend a lifetime down here, trying to uncover the Under's secrets.

It was at a time like this that Ange wished she'd buckled down and bought another cell phone to replace her old one. Or even a watch for that matter. It would be a lot more convenient to tell the time that way, after all.

But ever since the… incident with her phone last time, she hadn't wanted to get close to another one. Which meant she was kind of stuck.

A sigh escaped her lips. It was pretty late when she'd set out already, and who knows how many hours had passed? It would easily take another half-hour to make it back up to the surface and back to the hotel as well…

What a disappointment. Levi would never be able to fool them for long, so she would have to get back to the group.

Ange set out down the abandoned streets. She didn't have a lot of time to explore the Under, and she was going to make the most of it.

So Ange's finally made it down to the Under! But what secrets lie in wait for her beneath the streets of Pyrite Town?