Chapter 4: Snuffing Out the Flame
"Okay, Heat, use Tackle!" Risa shouted, her voice not carrying quite the same way she hoped it would.
Her Cyndaquil, Heat, flexed his stubby black legs for a moment before charging the Weedle. It was the first Pokemon they'd found that day that hadn't run away when it saw them (or, in the case of the Poliwag, that they ran away from), and Heat was determined to beat it.
The Weedle, looking a bit tired from having been woken up by the ambushing Cyndaquil, squeaked as its opponent slammed into him. The bug sailed through the air, landing in a heap against a tree.
"HAH! Take that, you little worm!" Heat cheered as he saw the Weedle's eyes turn a little disoriented. This disorientation and increased distance allowed Heat to sidestep the Poison Sting that shot forward from the caterpillar, leaving him at the end of the turn with no damage.
Risa, however, almost fell flat on her face trying to avoid the Poison Sting herself. If Heat got poisoned it was no big deal, as she had plenty of antidotes and a few poison-cure berries with her, but Pokemon poison was much more toxic to humans. She did not need to deal with being rushed to the emergency room back in Cherrygrove on her first day out of the city.
"Tackle it again!" Risa ordered, although she figured Heat would probably do it all on his own.
Heat dashed forward, almost losing control as he crashed into the Weedle. He kicked the Pokemon before jumping away again, as he wasn't stupid enough to be in close range in case the caterpillar used Poison Sting again.
It didn't – it keeled over, twitched a bit, and then was still.
Heat stared at it.
Risa stared at it, then looked at her Pokemon.
Heat turned to look at her.
They both stared at each other.
"Um," Risa finally said, breaking the silence. "We just won."
The Cyndaquil thought for a moment, then sneezed.
A huge black cloud of smoke billowed out of his mouth and rear fire glands, covering the now-unconscious Weedle and the surrounding patch of grass in a layer of soot.
"W-what was that?" Risa asked, pulling out her Pokedex to try and figure out if Heat was sick or if he just learned a new attack. As she scrolled over to the information on her own Pokemon (noting that she now had a partial entry on Weedle, as the Pokedex detected the unconscious Pokemon and registered it as "seen"), Heat started laughing and blowing smoke everywhere. Some of it blew into Risa's face, getting in her lungs and eyes. "Aaagh!" She coughed and wiped her stinging eyes. "Heat, cut it out!"
"NEVER! Ahahahah! This is AWESOME!" Heat shouted, obviously having too much fun. "This must be some incredibly powerful attack that I will use to defeat the Johto champion when I'm a Typhlosion!"
Risa checked her Pokedex through squinted, still-in-pain grey eyes. "Um…actually, this is just…just Smokescreen. I-it just lowers, y-your opponent's accuracy…"
"WHAT?" Heat exclaimed, suddenly stopping his joyous outbreaks of smoke clouds. Apparently, they lost their charm. "What sort of attack is THAT? It doesn't do any damage!"
The girl shrugged, cowering a little. "It c-can be good to have attacks that do stuff like that. You know, f-for strategy. S-so you don't get hit."
"Feh," Heat mumbled, crossing his front legs as he sat on his hind ones. "I don't need attacks like that. I can do just fine with just doing attacks. Beat 'em up. And then we'll win."
Risa sighed, then looked up. To her horror, the Weedle was gone, leaving only a trail of soot showing its path into some thick bushes. "Heat! The Weedle's gone!"
The Cyndaquil glanced over at the bushes, bored. "So?"
"'So'? Heat, I thought we could catch it!" Risa explained in a whiny voice that sounded much younger and more immature than her twelve years. "It was the first Pokemon we defeated…"
"Exactly. It's a Weedle. We beat a Weedle." Heat stated as if Risa was a baby. "They're really weak. Even when they evolve all the way into Beedril, they're still really bad Pokemon. We don't need one on our future championship team, and why waste time training one now if you're just gonna ditch it later? Just catch something better later; I don't want a bug on my championship team."
Risa crossed her arms and pouted; if she were four years old, she would have frowned more pronouncedly and stomped her foot. "But when I was in Cherrygrove City, I bought Pokeballs! Five of them! Shouldn't we at least get someone else?" Obviously, in the heat of the moment, Risa forgot about her previous promise to herself to do the completely opposite; now she wanted someone else to balance out her feisty Cyndaquil.
Her Pokemon just shrugged. "Deal with it. I'm all you're ever going to need, anyway, unless you get something good. Which you're not, you know, around here. I'm too good for this – we need something more champion-like."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. That's your job. You're the trainer, you figure out what you're gonna with the championship with," he retorted before waddling ahead along the footpath to Violet City.
It didn't take them long to realize that there were more Weedle in the bushes and grasses of Route 30 than they could ever hope to find in a lifetime.
It also didn't take them long to realize the debilitating effects of a well-aimed Poison Sting, as the fourth Weedle Heat went up against was, in fact, at a much higher level than the first three.
That fourth battle did not end at all well. Heat started out a little tired from three consecutive prior Weedle battles, the second and third being literally thirty-seven seconds removed from one another, and the Weedle he challenged came in at full strength, health, and rest.
Heat got the first attack in, sure, and it was a Tackle. Due to having a little too much fun along the way (and during the second and third Weedle battles), he managed to use up all the smoke in his system, and was unable to use the strategic Smokescreen when it really would have counted.
The opposing Weedle managed to tie Heat's neck down with a well-placed String Shot, though, and that prevented Heat from running forward and to attack the Weedle during the next turn; he spent most of his time trying to wriggle out or burn off the sticky string (while Risa urged him to try and do it faster, to which he just yelled at her for being an idiot).
Then the Weedle jabbed his poisonous barb into Heat's head, doing twice the amount of damage it should have. To top it all off, Heat suddenly couldn't stand up quite straight, lost quite a bit of energy, and felt nauseous.
Just as Risa realized that he contracted a battle poison condition, the Weedle managed to get in another critical-hit Poison Sting, and Heat slumped over, defeated and unconscious.
The Weedle gave Risa a sort of caterpillar-esque smirk before inching himself away into a nearby tree, where Risa swore she saw a dull glow emanate from the trees.
As if to add insult to injury, the Weedle was actually evolving into his second stage, Kakuna, from his victory against Heat.
And that was how Risa found herself sitting next to an unconscious Heat, trying to get him to down the powdered revive while wondering if she should take him to the emergency room in case the poison was worse than normal.
That was also how Risa found herself returning a slowly-waking, very perturbed Heat to his Pokeball after being slowly ambushed (if there even was such a concept) by a pack of five more Weedle, and flat-out running away from the area where the poisonous caterpillars swarmed.
Risa managed to find a clearing with no tall grass, no bushes, and no overhanging tree branches in which to sit down and focus on healing Heat back up to his full battling health. They were nowhere near the end of Route 30, let alone the adjacent (albeit sorter) Route 31, and both the Cherrygrove and Violet City Pokemon Centers were well removed from their current location.
"Hey, Heat," Risa began weakly as Heat began to become consciously aware of his surroundings once more. "You, um, you feeling okay?"
Heat just glared at her through his squinty eyes. "How do you think I feel, idiot? I just got owned by a Weedle!"
"Y-you beat the other three…"
"Yeah, but still! I lost to a Weedle! A weak, scrawny, slimy little Weedle!" Heat growled, crossing his front legs while sitting on his bottom. Surprisingly enough, his tail didn't ignite – Risa wondered if it was because of the dry dirt he was sitting on. "You'd better never catch any bugs for our team. They're stupid. Ugh. Idiots. I hate them!"
Risa also noted that his current arguments presented a certain feeling of déjà vu, especially when compared to the little chat they had after they beat the first Weedle and Risa wanted to catch it. Only this time, it was from the opposite end of the battlefield – Heat and Risa were the losers, not the Weedle they had just fought.
It was quite odd to hear Heat using the same arguments, though.
She ignored the comment, though, and instead held out a fistful of poison-cure berries. "Y-you should, um, eat. These things. They're gonna help you feel better. A-at least, I think, th-they will."
He glared at her, mumbled something about idiots and caterpillars and marmalade (though Risa was sure she only imagined the marmalade part), and snatched the berries out of her hand, squishing them slightly in the process. His little black paws jammed the now-smashed berries into his greedy little mouth, and he chewed angrily. "They taste funny," he noted, his mouth still full.
"Do you feel better?" Risa asked hopefully after he swallowed.
She received another fiery glare. "What do you think? I just ate them. C'mon, think a little." He groaned, then looked down at the ground. "This is a horrible beginning to a championship journey. Oh well. At least it'll get better in the fall and stuff. I heard Professor What's-His-Face sayin' that the best trainers said their best training came during October or something like that. Or maybe it was February or whatever." A grumbling sound emanated from his little throat. "I shoulda listened harder…"
Risa gulped and turned away, though Heat didn't notice, and kept chattering about training months. She knew Heat and she didn't exactly see eye-to-eye, and she knew that their relationship was getting off to a very rocky start, but she also knew that it would only degrade further if she kept that very important secret from him any longer.
Especially with him now talking about how the summer was just a warm-up run, and that they were going to do their serious training in the fall and winter. (Obviously, he didn't know anything about northern Johto winters. Or perhaps it was because he was a fire-type, and that meant the cold didn't affect him quite so much. Risa wasn't exactly sure.)
"H-heat, um," Risa began, her voice catching. She had to look away; her grey eyes glanced up at the sky. To her surprise and disdain, she found the color up above equally grey. "Th-there's something I n-need to t-tell you."
This caught his attention, bringing him away from his rant about various computer viruses the New Bark Town laboratory had to deal with recently. Once again, he glared at her. "What?" he hissed, obviously suspicious of her intentions.
She looked down at him, then looked away when his steely gaze met her unsteady one. "I…I'm not…"
"Spit it out, you molasses-mouthed idiot."
Ignoring the insult, she closed her eyes and squeaked out a fast, "I'mquittingtrainingaftertwomonths."
"…What?"
Risa looked at him. He hadn't caught what she said. Taking a deep breath, she said, more slowly and in a much steadier voice, "I'm going to stop training after two months. O-or after the Hive Badge…whichever…y-you know…comes first."
A few moments passed in silence.
Risa wondered if Heat was going to take it better than she thought he would or if he was still just in shock.
It turned out to be, do Risa's dismay, the latter.
"YOU'RE GOING TO DO WHAT NOW?"
And then, to make matters even worse, it started to rain.
Twenty-nine days left…
Disclaimer: Pokemon does not belong to me. It belongs to Satoshi Tajiri, Gamefreak, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and any other respective legal owners. All the characters in Summer Heat are a product of my imagination, and they belong to me.
Author's Note: I'm still trying to adjust to the fact that when I started writing this two years ago, I had a very different writing style than I do now. For this chapter, I tried to stay consistent with how I was writing it before, but I think I might switch over to a more current style in future chapters. I'm still debating this, however, since I haven't actually started writing chapter five.
Also, I couldn't think of a good chapter title for this chapter. I apologize for that.
Also also, I read up on some of Farla's comments on clichés and unoriginality, and I am painfully aware that a lot of what goes on in Summer Heat is somewhat-or-fully clichéd and/or unoriginal. But since I'm writing this mostly because I find it fun, I hope it doesn't take much away from your enjoyment (?) of reading it.
Also also also, one of my friends (Digital Skitty of ReiShine/Dark Knight "fame", if you will) and I decided to embark on "second semester senior Sinnoh adventures" starting in February, which sort of clashes a bit with continuing with this. I really want to continue with Summer Heat, though, and since I've put at least all my other fanfics on hold, hopefully I'll be able to juggle a Johto story and a Sinnoh story at once. I'll try to make the Sinnoh one with a different plot, though, I swear. (And I apologize for the insanely long author's note. It won't happen again.)