12 (I'm) Stranded

On the first day of the Silver Conference Delilah's eyes cracked open painfully when her roommate sneezed extremely loudly. All the entrants were housed in a large, multistory pokémon center at Mt Silver, in eastern Johto. It was the day of the pre-screening, when they would all participate in a series of one-on-one matches to determine who would advance to the semi-finals. Her roommate just happened to be one of her favorite people in the world, Art Christiansen.

"Excuse me," he said after he sneezed.

It was too early to talk, so she just rolled over. Besides, if she reacted at all it would only encourage him. He had sneezed like that before, in the Goldenrod Gym, and everyone had laughed, and he had gotten that weird self-conscious attitude of a little kid who was showing off by doing things that weren't actually impressive.

She heard him get up and go into the bathroom and turn on the shower, so she had nothing to do until he finished except get dressed and then sit on her bed staring at the painting of a rapidash and waiting for him to come out.

Eventually he opened the door so she could come in and use the sink. There were two sinks in a counter, so she wasn't sure why the building designers had not further accommodated communal living by partitioning the bathtub or toilet. He was wearing one of his race t-shirts.

"Are you ready for today?" he asked her as she was putting in her contact lenses and he was shaving.

She shrugged, still too dazed and confused to articulate anything too complicated.

"I wonder how tough it's going to be," he mused, obviously at a higher plane of consciousness than she was.

"Who knows," she said, venturing bravely into the world of the speaking.

"I'm just going to go for type advantages," he said.

She laughed, because she thought he was joking.

"You should, too," he said. "It's really the only way to do it."

She stopped mid-cosmetics, and looked at him sideways. "Wait, are you serious?"

"What do you mean, am I serious?" he said. "I always go for type advantages against gym leaders, it's the best way."

She stared at him for a minute, still unable to tell if he was kidding or not.

"Don't you like having a type advantage?" he said.

"Well—I mean, they're nice, sure, but that can't be the extent of your strategy? It's only going to get you so far."

"But it's the best way," he said again. "Just switch in a pokémon that's got a type advantage."

"But if everybody did that, you'd never have a match. You'd just have two people switching out their pokémon, in a continuous loop."

"You mean you don't switch out your pokémon when you're at a type disadvantage?"

"No, I think that's stupid," she said. "It's a cliché. I think it's too literal."

"Too literal? What does that mean?"

"It's way too obvious, it's so completely...middlebrow."

She thought this was quite an insult, but he didn't get it anyway. "Middlebrow?" he echoed, and laughed.

"I just think it's stupid," she said, too tired and too irritated for anything but bluntness as she went back to her eye make-up. "I think it's ignorant."

"But it works," he said. "Delilah, this is pokémon. That's what it's about."

"Pokémon isn't about anything, Art," she said. "It's nothing. Pokémon doesn't mean anything, it's pointless. None of it matters."

He laughed in skeptical confusion. "What? How can you even say that?" he said. "You won eight badges on your first damn try."

"So why should I listen to you?"

He shrugged blandly at her groggy bitchery and went back to the mirror.

There were lots of vendors set up around the courts, for the trainers and the spectators; Delilah wandered around them while trainers were called to courts over the PA system for the screening matches. Because of the number of entrants, it was a while before Delilah was called to a court; when she got there, the previous match was still running, and she leaned against the fence eating a burrito until her opponent came up, who was an older man. He put out his hand and said, "Nice to meet you!"

"You, too," she said, shaking his hand. Delilah was never sure how long to shake somebody's hand, or how long to look at them, or smile. Somehow this problem worked itself out and at some point they were no longer shaking hands.

"So how old are you?" he asked.

"I'm eighteen."

"Really! You're very young. Have you entered before? Are you in school?"

"No, this is my first time entering. I graduated high school last year."

"Of course, Red was hardly in long pants when he won," he said.

"Sure, but...he was really great. I mean, he's certainly not the average..."

"Oh, sure, he was really something special," he agreed. "You heard all kinds of nasty rumors about him after he got so far, but even if some of them were partly true, I think he really was a special boy..."

"How about you?" asked Delilah, taking the initiative to make small talk. "How long have you been training pokémon?"

"Longer than you have, let's put it that way!" He laughed, his eyes crinkling up pleasantly.

Before the match they had to run their pokémon through a few basic obedience tasks, which was a subtlety of pokémon training often overlooked: besides battling, animals were trained for practical purposes, and it was important that they could be trained to lie still in case they ever needed medical attention; for example, if an animal needed a shot or a check-up, it had to be able to obey a command to lie still long enough to be attended. Similarly, a pokémon had to be trained to realize when it no longer wished to battle, and to communicate such to its trainer (or a judge, or the opponent). As in any sport, serious injuries were caused by accidents, mistakes, or sloppiness, and were never the intention or the norm.

Many people maintained that the reason people (and especially women) liked to have pets was to have an outlet for parental instincts. Perhaps this was true for some, but Delilah was quite sure that she had no maternal instincts to speak of. Delilah was not interested in forging emotional bonds with animals or with humans, and she felt no desire to care for something helpless, which perhaps spoke poorly of her self-confidence.

Relationships with other humans were almost uniformly disappointing to Delilah; they made her anxious because of the possibility of misinterpretation. The vast majority of people Delilah had met in her life had trouble following her train of thought, and she was quite more comfortable with pokémon because she never had to explain. Also they were cuter.

Delilah just thought everyone was really boring, and she wasn't sure why. She never wanted to go to parties or clubs or anything because she always just got bored. Why was that? Why was she so arrogant? Why did she look down on practically everybody she ever met? Why didn't she think it was fun to ingest down-market ethanol while men huffed poppers and girls yanked up the tops of their strapless imitation Herve Leger to a soundtrack of Mason vs Princess Superstar vs sweet, sweet desperation? Why did she only enjoy normal people and their company ironically?

Later that afternoon she stood in the atrium of the pokémon center with Gabrielle Varnham, watching the screen above the front desk to see if they got in.

"Well, the moment of truth," said Gabrielle. "I don't think I made it; I only won one of them..."

Delilah suddenly felt like kind of a total bitch for winning all of her matches, so she didn't say anything.

"Winning one out of three is like getting a thirty-three percent, that's like an F, isn't it?" asked Gabrielle as photos and names started to blip onto the screen.

"Well, they don't just judge you on whether you win or lose," said Delilah. "They're only one-on-one matches, and that wouldn't be fair if you got a type disadvantage. They look at your technique and your conditioning too."

"Yeah, well," she said, scanning the screen as names appeared. "Oh, Delilah! Look! You're in the semi-finals!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, look!" she said, pointing to the photo from Delilah's training license that now showed up on the screen. "It's in alphabetical order. There it is, Peerenboom. I'm pretty sure you're the only one of those."

"Oh. That's cool," said Delilah, not sure what else to say.

"That's cool?" Gabrielle repeated, laughing. "That's all you're going to say? It's okay to be excited!"

"You're hurting my feelings, Gabrielle. I'm sorry my behavior is so inappropriate. Your opinion means a lot to me."

She laughed. "Yeah, I can tell."

"Well, there's you, right?" asked Delilah, pointing to Gabrielle's name and photo on the screen. "Varnham, Gabrielle. You did so get in."

"Phew!" she said, pretending to wipe sweat from her forehead.

"You've entered before, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I did, I entered last year."

"Did you place?"

"No. I didn't make it past the screening last year."

"Oh." Delilah wasn't sure what to say; she hoped it didn't sound like she was being snobby or condescending.

"I figured," said Gabrielle, "that if I didn't get past the screening this year, I'd have to reevaluate what I'm doing..."

"What, like, give up pokémon?"

"Well, no, but if I'm not getting better, you know, maybe it's not what I should be doing."

"Oh."

"I might do that anyway, though. I always thought it would be neat to study veterinary medicine."

"Yeah? That sounds cool. Being a pokémon trainer would probably even help you with that."

"Yeah, that's what I figure. I thought I could work in a pokémon center."

Delilah felt sort of inadequate in this conversation; what was she going to do after the tournament was over? Was she going to keep training pokémon? She supposed so; what else could she do? Get a real job? Go to school? But she was good at training, so why shouldn't she keep doing it?

She didn't have anything better to do.

Maybe Irwin was on to something, she thought as she lay in bed that night under the rapidash painting. Maybe she should be more like Adam. She could be aggressive and domineering and take whatever she wanted, and damn the consequences! She could be a pirate! Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat! That sounded pretty great, to go for it and get whatever she wanted.

But what did she want?

That was the problem. Theoretically it sounded good, but it only made sense if she had an actual goal. But Delilah had no real desires, in either the short- or long-term. If her only ambition was to be ambitious, well that just presented all kinds of problems. It was like time travel or an impossible figure. It just didn't work that way.

Did she want to win the tournament? Well, not particularly...of course she wanted to do well—after all, it was a reflection of her abilities as a trainer—but winning wasn't the reason she was there. It would have been foolish besides: this was the first time she had ever entered. Many people entered several years in a row and probably never even got past the screening, like on the American Idol auditions, so it would have been silly of her to expect to win. Yes, she was very good at pokémon training, but everybody else there was, too: everybody there had defeated at least eight gym leaders. Just like she had. It was a pretty even footing.

She won anyway.

"Hello everyone, we're now back from the intermission; if you're just tuning in, this is the Pokémon League California State Championship Tournament. As it stands, Delilah Peerenboom, on green, and Aidan Eld, on red, have both defeated three of each other's pokémon."

"Delilah, an early favorite in the competition, comes to us as Johto County Champion. She's good with pokémon and not bad without them, either..."

"Aidan is the Champion of San Luis Obispo County, apparently named after St Aidan of Lindisfarne."

"Really? What was he the saint of?"

"Firefighters, if I'm not mistaken."

"Well, that's an interesting note, now as we see Aidan with his flygon, still fresh after battling Delilah's delcatty before the break; so how is Delilah going to counter that...?"

"Well, Tim, since you asked me, it looks like she's sending out a furret."

"You know what, Dave, I think you're right."

"It shows off a little—very good-looking animal there."

"So, there's a Sand-Attack from the flygon, followed by Supersonic, yikes."

"You know, Tim, I have to say I think I have a pathological fear of flygons—wow!"

"Quite a hit there. You know, Dave, this is your first pathological fear I can really get behind."

"You're a jerk, Tim. Ooh! That's frustrating."

"Screech—not nice. But there's a lucky Slam."

"There's a neat maneuver on the part of the flygon. Delilah gets in a Sucker Punch, that's clever too."

"Very clever. Could Delilah be pulling up the lead?"

"Well, Tim, I have no idea. There's a nice hit with Quick Attack..."

"And Aidan takes advantage of the situation with DragonBreath. Apparently, Aidan's flygon is named Lucky, because after his mother laid the eggs, his broke a little bit early."

"Lucky's mother or Aidan's mother?"

"Oh, shut up. And Delilah's furret is named Snoops. Cute name."

"Right you are, Tim. Back to the matter at hand, Delilah decides to go for another Slam..."

"She seems confident that she can withstand whatever Aidan throws at her in the meanwhile. Furrets certainly are cute, aren't they?"

"Right again, Tim. Very cute, but they sure are mean."

"They're very intelligent, though. Supposedly they can understand how locks work. I've heard they're probably as smart as infernapes."

"Oh, really? I didn't know that. So there's that same Sucker Punch again; and in quick succession we have Fury Swipes as Aidan tries unsuccessfully to—oh! Is it—is it out?"

"It's out. Aidan deliberates on his next choice. What's it going to be?"

"I couldn't tell you, Tim."

"And it's...a...rhydon! Coming in right away with Fury Attack."

"Solid attack. Delilah tries a Defense Curl."

"Ouch!"

"Ouch? Nothing happened..."

"No, I—I hit my hand on the..."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Tim! First you're asking me what are they going to do next, as if I know, and then you're a jerk to me about my completely justified fear of giant insects, and now you're ruining the sound equipment. I could really do without this, you know."

"Well, Dave, you know, you're not paid to talk about me and you."

"Is this where I say I'm hardly paid at all?"

"Meager or no, Dave, our stipends come in because of our battle commentary skills."

"Meager or no, right?"

"Meager skills in my case, no skills in yours."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"So there's Rock Blast from the rhydon...nice..."

"You know, Tim."

"...Yes, Dave?"

"Sometimes I wonder if anybody even listens to us."

"At this point, I sincerely hope not."

"I mean, how necessary are we? Seriously?"

"You could have been somebody, Dave. You could have gone to New York City and you could have been somebody."

"I could have."

"But instead you're slaving as a pokémon battle commentator. There are worse ways to put bread on the table, Dave."

"Thanks, Tim, I feel better. Thanks for guiding me through this tough time."

"It's all I'm here for, apparently."

"Oh, Tim. I didn't mean to suggest that nobody listens to you."

"Yes, well, I don't appreciate the implication."

"You're my life coach, Tim."

"Well, anyway..."

"Yeah, anyway."

"Throughout that Delilah has brought in her togekiss, but the rock moves are super effective now."

"She shrugs it off...and there's a beautiful Extrasensory..."

It wasn't even like she tried that hard. She thought she probably didn't deserve the State Champion title; she didn't work herself to the bone, she hadn't even particularly wanted to win. Her pokémon were in admittedly high form, but it wasn't like she was a slave driver. She just took care of them; she didn't do anything special, so why did everyone think it was such a big deal?