Asher's Team:

Lago - Rhydon
Crust - Golem
Sebastian - Nidoking
Selena - Nidoqueen
Seraph - Clefable
Barret - Dugtrio
Sonic - Sandslash
Death - Marowak
Colossus - Steelix

"Oh come on! He was acting like a total prick! It did him some good to have his ego popped!" I yelled at the top of my lungs in order for my ears to reach my positively humongous Steelix's ears, his response was a mere roll of his eyes.

Ever since I've known him Colossus has always been the kind of pokemon that only likes to battle with pokemon that are about his power level, that Gyarados was a complete joke next to my twenty meter tall beast and all it took was a single Hyper Beam to put him down so right now he's annoyed that I brought him out just to, from his perspective, swat away a fly like that.

Right now me and my team are all eating our lunch with Selena and Sebastian being the power couple they are, with my Nidoking stoically eating his lunch silently and my Nidoqueen doing her best to crack a smile out of him by making an assortment of silly tricks with her food, she even froze it with her use of Ice-type techniques and ended up hurting her teeth when she bit down on her pokechow, and try as he might Sebastian never fails to comfort her when she hurts herself trying to make him smile. She even succeeded once or twice, though he'd never admit it.

Next was Sonic and Death who were caught in a lock between blades where the winner would get the others food, my Sandslash was faster but my Marowak was the better swordsman and possessed superior physical strength so when caught in a lock he expertly pushed him off and parried his best friend with a quick whack on the neck. Death was the more stoic of the pair and even when he won he'd always give Sonic his share, it's a wonder to me that they get on so well with how opposite they are personality wise with Sonic hopping around most of the time like he's had a nose full of coke.

Then of course we have Crust and Barret just chilling out and eating their food like normal pokemon, with my Dugtrio being the mellow one in my group and my Golem being a 'go with the flow' kinda guy.

We have Seraph, my Clefable, and the only non Ground-type out of my nine pokemon who was trying to challenge Colossus to a battle with my giant Steelix simply wanting to be left alone to eat his equally giant amount of pokemon food. Seriously he eats than the entire rest of the teams food combined, and it's not like a few of them aren't big for their species either. But I love him, even if he puts more than just a dent in my bank account.

And finally we have Lago, my starter who was sitting besides me, having already finished his food and was sitting next to me and basking in the sun.

We were just eating our lunch outside of the Indigo Plateau stadium and were preparing for our second match, which was occurring at six o'clock sharp, in which I'd be using three pokemon just like before, Crust has done plenty of battling and I think the others are itching for a battle; though to be fair that was less a battle and more a one sided beatdown.

"Alright guys-" I successfully drew my teams undivided attention as I spoke out loudly so that they all could hear me."- I know that you're all eager to battle, but only three of us are gonna be in the next match, the same with the one after that."

I made sure to look every single one of them in the eye." Remember that who I'm picking here has nothing to do with your strength, every single one of you is a beast, I'm just gonna make sure that you all get some battling done."

Most of them nod in understanding, except Death and Sebastian but they know, I can feel it.

"Alright the for the next battle I'm gonna use, Sonic, Death and Sebastian." At my verdict Sonic hopped up and down like he just took a handful of ecstasy with his pupils essentially turning into smiles, I blame anime logic, whilst Seraph sulked at not being chosen for the next match.

Seeing that Seraph wasn't exactly the most pleased with my decision I kneeled down and whispered into his ear." It's fine, I'm just thinning out the weakling for you so that you can fight some real opponents, there's no fun in an easy fight, right?"

Some would say that it's wrong to trick your own friends like that but pokemon are a bit different to people, they have pride in their strength so if you make them feel like they don't matter they might not obey you, doing something like stroking their ego a little can be beneficial.

Hearing my words Seraph's demeanour immediately did a complete turn around with him smirking in victory at my words.

Okay maybe I could have handled that better.

'Ring, Ring, Ring'

I looked down at my zipped up tracks when I suddenly heard and felt a ring in my pocket. When I unzipped my pocket and reached in my hand found the yellow pokegear that was constantly vibrating, the sign that someone was calling me.

I ignored the strange look that all my pokemon gave me whenever I brought out my pokemon equivalent of a flip phone and answered the call before turning away from my pokemon and answering whoever was there.

"Hello?"

In response to my greeting on the other end of the line I heard a very familiar voice, one of my sadly few friends." Hey Asher, it's me, Bethany, I saw your match, did you really have to go so hard on that Gyarados."

Bethany is a pokemon nurse, more specifically a Nurse Joy, what? Did you think that all those identical women are just call Nurse Joy from birth? That they're just given identification numbers to identify themselves with since dozens of other people look exactly like them? Well the answer is, obviously a big old no, she does have her own name and personality for your information, hell she didn't even need to become a nurse if she didn't want to. As for why, completely coincidentally, every single Nurse Joy decided to just become a pokemon nurse well... I honestly don't fucking know why, maybe one day they all just though it'd be kinda funny if everyone from the same family would just become a nurse? But then why do they all look the sa- you know what I'm barking up the wrong tree, this world makes no fucking sense to begin with, question it and you go insane.

Ignoring all of my thoughts about the sheer lack of common sense that this weird world provides I just answered the question my friend provided politely like the gentlemen that I am." The cocky little shit had it coming, he started yelling at his pokemon so I had to send out Colossus to bash his shit in, hell I was tempted to just throw my fists at him myself."

At my words Bethany was clearly very unimpressed." So your genius solution to thinking he's mistreating his pokemon is to send out your biggest pokemon and have him one shot your opponents final pokemon in a completely unnecessary Hyper Beam."

I looked away from the phone slightly." Well... when you say it like that I sound like a petty bastard." I actually heard Colossus make what might be considered a chuckle behind me at my words, well it's hard to tell when all a pokemon can do is grunt their name out, I turned and gave him a betrayed look that he completely ignored. That traitor!

The pink haired girl on the other line changed into a genuine one." Though congratulations on making it to the top 32, even if you lost the next match you'd still be considered a prodigy for making it to the pokemon league and training up such a strong team in under a year." Ah yes prodigy the word everyone seems to be calling me and maybe they're right but in all honesty training my team up to the point they are right now didn't take a genius, but next to most of the trainers here I guess I am pretty amazing.

The thing about this world's way of doing pokemon compared to the anime was a little weird, everything that doesn't make much sense in the anime is properly explained. For example the reason that they let ten year olds train magical creatures is because most pokemon are really friendly to people, heck even when they do attack they never really kill anyone for no reason, say you pissed off a Gyarados, they wouldn't eat you they'd just Dragon Rage in your general direction and most people are smart enough to back off after that. I call the whole thing out though, they should be a lot more violent than they actually are yet 'scientists' in this world have the nerve to go on about 'interlinked relationships' and 'connections between humans and pokemon' and 'pokemon and human hearts being linked' or something else bullshitty that makes zero logical sense.

I just scoffed at her words." Oh please, any half decent chump with some pokemon trivia could absolutely own this conference, your just used to watching a bunch of scrubs fight."

Despite my crass words Bethany wasn't at all disturbed." Always nice to hear such modesty from someone. Anyways I just called to wish you good luck and let you know I'm rooting for you, but don't get arrogant there are still lots of good trainers in this compe-" I clicked the hang up button and pocketed my phone whilst lamenting how few good trainers there are in this competition. Despite all my swagger I'm not blind, there are a handful of trainers here who are gonna make me work for it but that's fine, it would honestly be disappointing if I just completely dominated this whole competition.

The way that they teach people about pokemon in schools is more than a little questionable, I've seen a scary amount of complete idiots walking around here, I've literally met people who don't even know the type charts that collected a few badges. Fucking disgraceful, it's an insult that just anyone can be handed a trainer's license.

Seriously though there's no power structure in this world, people just decided 'hey fuck it I'm just gonna build a town over there' they moved over there and it just kind of developed into the way it is now. Maybe if I set up a proper education system for trainers the skill levels of these losers would increase.

Despite the weird way people seem to think in this world there is a weird sense of order despite the fact that there aren't actually any political leaders per say, it's more like the people just leading themselves, there are mayors of towns and shit but other than that the people run themselves and it all just kind of... works. It almost makes me wonder how the hell my old world didn't turn out this way when this place basically runs perfectly, there was a war between Kanto and Johto that ended like a decade ago but when compared to the fact that in my old world there was no day without a war anywhere since the 60's this place is more or less paradise.

Also this world is perfect for a guy like me I was basically nobody important, but here? In Kanto? I was a goddamned winner with a capital W. I just decided to become a Ground-type specialist since that's basically the chadiest type, you've got all my favourite mons in there with those guys, Rhyperior, Steelix, Flygon, Swampert, fuckin Garchomp yes please happy time- oh wait there isn't a Sinnoh yet.

Sad times.

Oh yeah everything past generation 3 is kind of well... undiscovered. How the fuck entire regions can remain under the radar when actual boats exist is beyond me but whatever anime logic is the answer! Don't look at me like that I'm as confused as you I've just learned to stop questioning these things.

At any rate that means that any cross generation evolution for Kanto and Johto are also undiscovered, so no Electivire, no Magmortar, no Tangrowth just a big fat no to it all. Though I do have a few theories on how I might be able to evolve Lago but they can be answered later once I've won this fuckin thing.

My next opponent is a guy named Larry and he actually seems pretty decent from what I've seen from his last few battles, he's one of Professor Oak's lab trainers and he even has a motherfucking Charizard, the dude already has good points in my book purely because he picked the best starter pokemon out of the trio. If a Charizard obeys you then you've practically made it in life, there's a reason that Leon was the most overpowered Champion in anime history, it's cos he had ya boy Lizardon as his ace in the hole. Anyway besides the Charizard he's shown that he owns a Tentacruel and a Jolteon, perfectly solid team that could give me some problems all things considered.

As much as I have confidence that I can beat him I'm not arrogant enough to assume that I will without trouble, even if my pokemon are stronger than his that doesn't mean that I won't screw up or miscalculate what he's gonna do. At the end of the day they could very well lose because of human error, because I screwed up, they've shed blood, sweat and tears with me, if I dragged them down then-

I tightened my fist, fact which Lago noticed as he opened one of his eyes and shifted from his relaxing position to walk over to my side and place one of his arms on my shoulder. I looked up to him and he had a look in his eyes that told me he was about to say something really meaningful. Something that would fill me with renewed confidence and determination that would allow me to power through this competition with my team by my-

"Rhydon."

... okay I was asking for that. I can't help but view these guys as just people though, they laugh, they have intelligence and Lago has been with me through thick and thin, he's basically my best friend. He's always been a very smart pokemon, even as a Rhyhorn it was obvious at a glance that he had a bit of a higher IQ than the others of his species, I've made sure to help train that mind of his as well as his strength just like the rest of my team, I made sure that he had the capacity to fight extremely effectively and intelligently even without my orders, I made sure that he'd know the weaknesses of specific pokemon that would either be a hard counter to him or just generally the strongest pokemon that I could think of, because if they expect him to be nothing but a musclehead then they're dead wrong.

Not that he lacks in that department though, he's much larger than his species is meant to be because of the special training we go through, he's the strongest pokemon I have when it comes to just straight up brawling, I'd even place him above Colossus just for the fact that he isn't so large that he fills up a whole arena plus he has the speed and grace to get up close and personal without wrecking everything around him.

I just looked up at him and nod." Your gonna be my answer for the finals, my secret weapon if you will, so I'm hoping that I keep you hidden until then, sorry that you won't really be battling." He just seemed to nod in understanding and go back to chilling out.

Rhydon has always been a pokemon that I liked but after having Lago as my starter I've gone from liking them to loving them, I really struck gold with getting him, I did with everyone really, I couldn't ask for a better team as a Ground specialist, well that's not true I could ask for more pokemon but not better ones than I already have.

Most of my team are in fact not rare pokemon, besides Seraph and Colossus they're all pretty common but the thing is that you don't need a team of rare powerhouses to be an amazing trainer, if your the best then any pokemon under your training will be a powerhouse in their own right.

I mean just look at Crust I trained him right and he's considered a powerhouse because he wiped the floor with all those scrubs in the previous rounds, I don't need a Garchomp, even if I want one, just give me a fucking Geodude and I'll rule the world.

In this tournament I'll prove the strength of my entire team by bringing home first place with my carefully cultivated team of absolute units, because they were all under my training and any pokemon under my training will make it big.

It's time to show this world who Asher Blight really is.

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