- Fifth Badge -
The Gym arena was a lot harder to deal with when there was a crowd along with her to watch William's match. As Alexa had predicted it wasn't as easy to lean on the railing and not get in the way. The best she could say was she wasn't alone in blocking the view a bit, although so far there was only a purple haired woman right behind them who had at least not complained yet.
"You know, I can't remember the last time I watched a Gym match in person," Ash Ketchum said to Alexa from where he was also partly blocking that woman's sight. The Lugia simply could not fit in the seats, mostly because of his large size and long tail. "Actually, it might have been a couple of years."
"At least three years," Pikachu said with an uneasy glance to the empty seats behind them. "I think we're lucky there isn't much of a crowd, or we probably would be moved to the back."
Alexa couldn't actually turn enough to see what the back of the stands looked like without getting down again. "I'm not sure how I'm going to handle being able to move around easily again," she grumbled. "Any idea if this will cause big changes?"
"I asked after the last one we did of these," Ash replied while Morty went over the current match's rules. "The League is probably going to have really big changes next year."
"We were asked to try out different translators later on too. So we can see what is cheap enough the League can give them out, but still actually works," Pikachu complained. "And I mean 'we', to get it done in time the whole team is going to have to try them out."
"Do I have to be worried about that question too?" Alexa asked with a sigh.
"No, you aren't someone they can have spend entire days on the project," Pikachu sighed himself. "We are stuck with being Legendary for the next while, and Lugia always says that it is a lot more boring than it seems."
"It means we will also get stuck in the meetings about- Oh, they're starting," Ash interrupted himself and turned their attention back to the arena.
Shanker was out first, and unlike the other Gym Leaders so far Morty seemed to recognize the Dark/Flying type given the slightly uneasy look she got. It was a quick fight against a Dusclops, Shanker had a solid skill advantage and seemed to enjoy being able to use the Dark evolution.
Then it was a complicated moment where this match's rules for separate one on one battles caused an issue for William as a Shedinja emerged on the other side. Shanker could have easily dealt with that too otherwise, and it was clear that he wanted to save Flaaffy for a possible tougher opponent, but the Electric/Fire type was also his weakest that could deal with this foe at all so the lava sheep was forced to quickly take out the Bug/Ghost.
After that was a surprise as Wooper used Thunder of all things on a Drifblim. Followed by a quick fight against a Ghost type Alexa didn't recognize that Goodra simply dealt with with a strong breath of purple flames. Then it finished with Golurk ending up against another Golurk for a fight that was a bit confusing because it seemed that Morty's was intentionally using an illusion of some kind to look like William's. That one ended with a draw, but that was apparently enough for the Badge.
"It is weird seeing it from here," Pikachu commented as the arena was being cleaned up. Alexa had a break before her own match, one where another trainer had apparently come in for a walk in match. "I know I don't actually use a pokeball, but I also ended up doing something else while Ash watched anyone else a lot."
"Or not paying attention," Ash commented, but he sounded a bit embarrassed. "Although that can be better than too much attention. It takes a bit to stop trying to help the pokemon."
"Really?" Alexa had to ask. "I've seen quite a few, and I never really think of doing... Oh, right, you have a lot of pokemon."
"How many others do you have?" Pikachu questioned with confusion.
"Others? I only have the five on my team right now," Alexa replied.
"I thought you made it to the League tournament before?" Ash asked uneasily. Alexa only nodded, easily visible due to the length of her face, because she was a bit worried about the question. "You went to the Pokemon League Tournament without a full team?"
"I didn't get very far," Alexa admitted. "I don't know how I could find another pokemon, and I don't think I'm going to register to fight myself."
"... Ash can fight himself now," Pikachu said a bit faintly, while the Lugia looked thoughtful.
"Ah, I probably should get ready for my match," Alexa declared to get out of that conversation.
"I'm getting tired of doors," she grumbled later when she found that not being able to just have pokemon out before the Gym battle meant she didn't have anyone to open them for her either. She probably could justify one of her pokemon for this, but not everyone would have partners that could even open doors themselves.
"We will definitely need some automatic ones," an expert trainer sighed as she opened the door for Alexa. "This is just for a project to see that sort of thing, right?"
"Well, I do like the form too, but I'm probably going to be more humanoid next time," Alexa admitted.
"'The form'?" the trainer questioned uneasily, but Alexa had a match to get to so she left her on the other side of the door.
The arena was plain, and Alexa could hear the small crowd's confusion as she made her way to the challenger's spot. With a bit of now familiar effort she stood up and got ready to send out her first pokemon. "Right, we have a five on five match, no switching allowed," Morty declared out loud. "Items are allowed and the challenge will continue until all matches complete." Alexa cringed a bit at that detail, it meant that she was being judged on how her team handled the whole fight instead of just to see if she could win the majority.
While it wasn't usual to be denied a Badge despite a win on any of the first four Gyms in a League, it was far more likely in the second half. Especially if you had an undersized team, although making you have to deal with more pokemon than you had was another thing that happened too. "Ready," Alexa agreed aloud, and was thankful that Leader Morty sent out his pokemon first.
A metal and glass lamp appeared on the other side of the field, and then sized her up with a bit of confusion. "Um, Morty, where is the trainer?" the Lampent questioned.
Alexa sighed heavily at that question. "Charizard, come on out," she decided to handle the Ghost/Fire type. Her Starter emerged in a wet clatter of silverware. It was a bit of a risk to start with her strongest, but if she was going to have to use all five at some point it seemed safe enough to start strong.
"If you're a Charizard, then aren't you supposed to also be Fire typed?" Lampent asked with far more concern.
"I happen to strongly dislike Ghost type flames," Charizard said, and Alexa had half a mind to recall him. The translator jewel was put away, but that was possibly an issue against that kind of pokemon.
"You can control the life force part with a bit of practice. Do you see me just randomly drawing on everyone here?" Lampent complained. "You don't need to go as far as finding a way to be Water typed."
"Okay, first, I actually do just like the Water type so this isn't that unusual for me in particular," Charizard declared strongly. "Second, Alexa, new project to work on later."
William was almost late to Alexa's match as a result of a bit of a paperwork snag. An issue with confirming that he was not actually a battle pokemon himself, which ran into the problem that the local Gym was once much more visited than they were now. As a result they had been using a massive set of pre-printed paperwork from years back, which did not handle pokemon-trainers the way the more modern stuff did. In the end they needed to print out a new set and work out how to file it properly without looking like an error to anyone checking the files later.
"What did I miss?" he had to ask Champion Ketchum when he finally made it back to the arena.
"Charizard learning that you can turn off the whole flame issue without turning off your flames," Pikachu replied. "The problem with both trainers understanding their pokemon for these seems to be that orders don't interrupt before battle banter."
"I didn't interrupt any of your conversations," Ash grumbled. "I was patient for that."
"You were doing it with the humans at the same time," Pikachu corrected.
"Huh, I'm probably just too used to keeping my pokemon on task for battles so they don't distract me," William admitted and quickly looked at the battle in progress.
Charizard was in the process of showing off just how well Alexa's team was doing with Acid Armor. The mass of water and silverware wasn't quite good enough to fully dodge the Ghost typed attacks being used to minimize the poor type matchup, but Charizard was also getting that same water to splash notably against the lamp pokemon trying to win quickly with a shared weakness.
"Alexa's Charizard is about to win already," Ash noted thoughtfully. "I didn't realize he was this good with the Water type."
"He's solid with Fire and Flying too, so be careful about taking that too far," William warned the other trainer, and then blinked at doing so to a famous Champion.
"Better or worse than his Water?" Pikachu asked seriously as the Lampent clattered to the ground defeated.
"About the same," he added since he was asked. "But there is a reason he didn't use Ghost stuff."
A Trevenant emerged, which was an interesting thing for Morty to try. William knew it wasn't a given that this pokemon would try to change the type of their foe, but he also knew how badly trying that worked out in Alexa's first Gym for this League.
Although that turned out to not be a concern because Rhydon emerged on Alexa's side. "I thought she just said 'Rhydon', you're already Grass typed!" the gnarled tree complained loudly. Which mostly told William that Rhydon had decided on the Poison type because the pokemon didn't usually look like a Grass type when he went for Steel instead.
"So, is he a Rhydon, or is that just his name?" Pikachu questioned as the fight started. "Or was he a Rhydon and now he is something else?" It was harder to argue that the topiary pokemon was a Rhydon while they watched the type-changing bush successfully use Acid Armor as well.
"He is a Rhydon," William said, and tried not to cringe as the arena erupted into vines, toxins, and wispy Ghost typed energy without barely any dirt or rock at all. "He's just Alexa's Rhydon. Like Charizard is her Charizard."
Pikachu gave him a look. "So, some Legendary that calls himself a Rhydon," the Electric type grumbled.
"I think you should be a bit more careful about saying that," Ash pointed out unhappily. "We aren't doing great for becoming Legendaries right now."
"Please don't say that," William requested and then flinched as Trevenant hit the wall with a loud thump from a move he missed. "I'm traveling with them." The tree pokemon wasn't out of the fight yet, but it was clear they had misunderstood Acid Armor. Goodra loved showing off how it was not an indication that the user was physically weak, and Rhydon had apparently taken those lessons well.
"Huh, is Rhydon something besides Ghost typed?" Ash asked, clearly to change topic.
"He didn't want to use any of the other options," William explained as he noticed that it was basically over. Rhydon had taken some hits, but Trevenant was slowing in a way that clearly said the tree had been poisoned early in the fight. "The rest of the team is going to be Ghost typed now, unless Bellossom changed her mind again." He had last seen the pokemon debating on lizard or radio form.
Kingler was next, still made out of clockwork and against a pokemon William had not seen before in person, although he had seen the evolved and pre-evolved forms of a Drakloak. This one still had a little Dreepy on their head, a small arrow shaped Dragon/Ghost, but its own head was larger and more wing shaped and the pokemon's body more bulky and notably fish like.
"Oh, good. I wasn't doing well with Ghost moves," Kingler declared, and unleashed a burst of Dragon typed fire on her foe.
"Another Ghost Dragon? Morty, stop sending me against those!" Drakloak complained. "I'm starting to think someone cursed me, because they keep getting weirder! This one honestly looks like they're a Kingler."
"So, that pokemon's probably cursed," William complained as well, because that sounded like the kind of complication that probably should stop the match. "Because the only other Ghost and Dragon typed line I know about is a Legendary that I know hasn't been on a League."
"Yeah, Giratina wouldn't have been here yet," Ash agreed. "Although I think there might be some others, and it could be more Dragons changed to the Ghost type, right?"
"Okay, now that she brought it up this is actually the sixth time this happened so I'm going to call this one now until I get Drakloak checked for that possible curse," Morty added to the complaints. "The sixth for someone to have a Dragon type using a Spectral Memento specifically, which is a bit too much coincidence."
There was a bit of a grumble from those watching, but William had heard worse for smaller issues. One time he had seen a Gym pokemon end up falling asleep at the start of a battle because it had been up too late the night before, which had caused a short delay as the Leader went for a replacement to handle the low Badge match. The audience back then had taken it badly, and William had been glad it wasn't his match that time. Here and now the grumble barely lasted long enough for the next of Morty's pokemon to emerge.
A Haunter was the new opponent, and given Alexa didn't leave any out yet that probably meant they were using a similar rule for fights to his own match. "No switching?" William had to ask since he missed that part.
"All battles required," Ash specified, which was about the same as what William had done. "Although it doesn't look like Kingler is getting a replacement fight, so Alexa might need to do without her Dragon type."
Herman came out after a moment of consideration on Alexa's part. The clockwork bat pokemon took to the air with a bit of a frown. Fighting type moves were already poor choices against Ghosts, and not great against Poison types either if Herman could bypass the immunity here. In fact given Alexa's team there were options available for replacing the Ghost type temporarily, but it would probably not impact the Poison type.
This was a worse showing than before for Alexa. Herman clearly had worked on Ghost typed moves in theory, but a few days of work on making the moves at all wasn't quite the same as work fighting using them. Haunter was able to dodge the ranged options, and the Ghost type attacks they had worked out didn't include the more specialized close combat options.
Haunter clearly knew how to face off against other Ghosts in close combat, and that made for an uncomfortable few minutes of battle where Haunter proceeded to demonstrate that 'close' could mean quite a distance for a pokemon that didn't have arms to connect their fists to their body.
The Gym Leader's pokemon didn't win, Herman's hits were still harder and the bat pokemon could take the blows better than Haunter expected, but in the end it was clear that the outcome was close. Alexa had a large reptilian frown as she returned the named pokemon, but at least Morty looked thoughtful instead of unhappy.
A familiar pumpkin pokemon emerged on Morty's side next, which meant that if Bellossom wasn't Ghost typed she might still end up that way. Something that became relevant when a Grass/Electric lizard emerged onto the battlefield. Which quickly changed as Bellossom removed her Chlorophyll Jade with a cackle and tossed it to Alexa, who barely caught the item, and turned into a Fire type that clearly concerned the Gourgeist more than flowers had.
This resulted in a repeat of sorts for Charizard's fight where the Gym pokemon was concerned with a type weakness they had not expected. With the sudden type advantage being a major threat Gourgeist panicked and, notably unordered, attempted Trick-Or-Treat on the lava slinging reptile. That quickly resulted in a rare self-return from the Gym pokemon when Bellossom used a slow to build rough ball of Ghost typed power after the type changing attack 'succeeded'.
"A solid victory," Morty declared while the audience laughed a bit at the display. "I can see where I need to work on my team more."
"It is a bit scary to face," William admitted to Ash as the arena shuffled in and out some people. There were a couple more walk in matches, and Alexa had asked him to stay and watch with her to see more about how the Gym handled her current form. Hopefully the last use of it for a while.
"That was more than a bit scary," Pikachu countered with a shudder.
"She just used a Ghost typed attack as soon as she was changed. That isn't normal for Trick-Or-Treat," Ash added seriously. "Or stuff like Soak. Usually a new type isn't something you can just use."
"I meant the first one actually," Pikachu clarified. "Going from Grass to Fire like that. She controlled that change and was using it before Alexa caught whatever that was."
"... I've been with her so long now I've forgotten that's not normal," William admitted slowly as he considered that. "The entire team is trying to work out how to use that sort of thing in a battle. Although it is tricky because most of the move versions don't quite do what they want there."
"So, everyone needs to worry about when they learn to change type whenever they want," Pikachu sighed.
"Wait," William then said as he realized that Alexa would probably run into the same paperwork problem he did.
"Apparently my paperwork is waiting for Morty to get done," Alexa interrupted him as she shuffled up to the railing. "Also they said that you should come back too, William." William groaned at having even more to do with that.
"That was quite the match," Ash congratulated her. "Your team handled the Ghost type pretty well."
"Honestly, Bellossom is the only one who has really worked on Ghost type moves enough for that one," Alexa admitted. "I don't think we've tried to use a new type this close to the Gym match before, and she is the only one who really tried Ghost before we got the Mementos."
"It didn't look as bad during practice," William admitted and turned to the next match in progress. This was apparently a four Badge match, and likely a trainer on their first League from how it was going. The pokemon on the challenger side was clearly confused by the Ghost type they were against simply ignoring mundane attacks, and the trainer didn't seem to know how to help.
"That's because we kind of spent just as much time on backup strategies if anyone wasn't up for Ghost type moves," Alexa admitted. "Herman wasn't expecting to need anything more advanced, but I didn't expect that Haunter to be a close up fighter. Then there is whatever happened with that Dragon type, I didn't actually know she was one until Kingler decided to use Dragonbreath. That was the kind of typing issue where Kingler really needed to use more familiar moves. Rhydon and Bellossom both didn't have good Ghost type forms for this, and for Charizard I wanted to start strong because of the match conditions."
"Uh huh, and I guess scaring two Gym pokemon so much they surrender is supposed to be a bad match?" Pikachu questioned.
"You have fun saying things humans don't understand," Ash grumbled at his pokemon, and William fully understood that grumble. Trained pokemon would speak their minds a lot more when they were only around humans that couldn't tell what they actually said.
"Okay, first I think that Dragon/Ghost is actually cursed," Alexa firmly declared as the trainer in the arena below had to switch to another pokemon. "She needed, and still needs, to get that checked out." Alexa paused for breath, and was momentarily interrupted as the new challenger pokemon unleashed a strong Fire typed attack that made the audience barriers flash and probably lost the trainer some points. It wasn't a great look to use moves that uncontrolled. "And I don't know why the Gourgeist was so spooked by Bellossom trying that Ghost typed move. I've never seen a pokemon return themselves like that in person before, let alone a Gym pokemon."
"It doesn't happen often, but I think the Fire type was scaring them more," Ash pointed out. "Gourgeist was already worried and that was just too much."
"It freaked me out, so I can't imagine what they thought," Pikachu added. "This is a Ghost Gym, just look down there." The trainer was clearly sweating, and their Fire type had just been taken out. After a moment of no new pokemon it became clear that the match was over with a failure. "I'm pretty sure they still have pokemon, but they didn't know how to handle getting their pokemon spooked, and now they're just giving up."
"I don't think that is 'just' giving up," William pointed out, deliberately not able to be understood by humans. "They're down three pokemon, and that Fire move probably already cost them the Badge."
"The worst part is that we need to work out how to handle moves like what Bellossom did at the end there more," Alexa sighed and changed the topic back to her team's performance. "We've been trying to get moves for every type we change into, but that's taking too much time. It is basically making us start over every Gym, and we already struggled with that here. We need some other way to actually use the changes, and we want to handle quick changes instead of just planned stuff for the League so we don't end up figured out too quickly."
[Author's Note]
... this is the first chapter written mostly after Cassette Beasts came out.
A game where a common and easy to implement capability is to change the types of yourself and/or your enemies.
So I've now had some experience with what this premise can look like in practice, and it looks like a whole lot of moves that change with the pokemon to let them adapt offensive ability more easily.
Honestly, that seems like something I should have realized long before this point in the fic. Learning a pile of moves just to do the same things in different types isn't great, but admittedly that isn't how pokemon works most of the time... although the other big name type changers all have a signature that does it, so I probably should have just let them make some before now. However, that is just a signature move, not just about everything.