(Is the title of this chapter inspired by All My Friends by Madeon? Hell yeah it is)
Hey what is UP party people just a quick explanation of what's about to happen this month (November 2020):
I'll be participating in NaNoWriMo this year (for the first time aahhh), so I'll be focusing on writing a full-on novel that has nothing to do with Chance. BUT I've prepared a queue of chapters to release weekly, so you'll still be getting content woah!
(Never mind the month and a half I spent preparing for this one whoops)
I've also been working on a big Chance project recently, which I'm hoping will see the light of day before next year? I'm pretty excited for it y'all~
Aight enjoy the tournament.
Cheery music embraced us as we wove between tourists, trainers, and stalls, fully immersing us in the festival. We passed by food stalls selling garlic fries, egg puffs, elotes, dorayaki, hot chocolate, and all manner of fried foods and foreign foods I couldn't recognize. They weren't organized according to any specific food category, so their scents mixed into a wild cacophony in the air, vaguely savory but with individual flavors poking out. Boutiques and carnival games lined the paths between the four arenas, advertising tournament merch and chimchar ladder climb and a gift basket raffle and piplup bubble burst.
"I don't understand how the booths are organized," Thomas said.
"They're not," I replied.
There was a fenced-off lawn devoted to a day care for small children and baby pokemon. Someone had set it up for capture the flag, but the tiny players were neglecting the flags and lines in favor of something like tag. At the edge of the enclosure, a shaded area housed a crafts table, where kids strung beaded bracelets and glued together foam crowns with plastic jewels. A jigglypuff and toddler sitting across from each other were each drawing a picture of the other in crayon.
In the center of the festival was a massive round stage raised above the path. Huge balls of water hovered overhead, held up by several psychic pokemon. Water pokemon swam through the levitating orbs, diving in and out of them to the ambient carnival music. A vaporeon traced aquajet spirals around the spheres, which a gardevoir caught and held in the air like ribbons. For the finale, the water coalesced around a gyarados, who whipped the water into a twister. The other pokemon disappeared from the stage as the twister spun faster and faster, suddenly bursting into a fine mist that settled gently over the crowd, the gyarados nowhere to be seen. The audience applauded and then dispersed.
Thomas and I spent about an hour and a half exploring – and also trying some of the carnival games, which I was generally better at – before we headed to the Diamond Arena for Lucas's battle.
Lucas's round one was against a guy named Akhil Sathe, whose sudowoodo used harden about eight thousand times and basically turned immortal. The obvious answer was special attacks, but Lucas couldn't switch out his houndoom, whose attacks were all either physical or fire.
"We should get going," Thomas whispered around the eighteen minute mark.
"We have time," I muttered back, refusing to look away from the battlefield. Dawn's battle started in two minutes, but I didn't want to leave Lucas's. But I also didn't want Dawn to think I cared less about her. Would either of them even notice?
Lucas's houndoom fell around nineteen and a half minutes. He promptly sent out his torterra, who took out the sudowoodo with a single razor leaf.
"Evelyn, we've gotta go now if we're gonna make it to Dawn's battle."
"Okay," I whispered, watching Lucas's torterra fight a magcargo. He had the grass disadvantage, but a double ground advantage, so he'd be fine, right? But they each had one pokemon left after this, and that could go either way…
I kept turning back to check on the battle as Thomas and I crept out of the stadium. When Lucas was finally out of sight, I turned forward and we ran.
We darted between festivalgoers. I nearly tripped over a party of small children and fluffy pokemon running at breakneck speed through the festival. Upon reaching the Pearl Arena, I let Def out for a second, to memorize the location for teleportation.
"Just in case. I'll try to snag the other arenas later."
Thomas arrived after me, breathing much harder than I was, and we flashed our trainer passes at the man at the front entrance. He waved us in.
Dawn's battle had begun. I checked my poketch – we were about three minutes into her battle. Her scizor was up against a golbat, which currently meant their aerial battle was taking place over the audience's heads.
"They can do that?" Thomas wondered, still sounding winded.
"As long as they don't land outside the arena, it's all fair game."
Dawn's scizor (Eric, I think?) slashed with X-scissor, sending the golbat spinning in the air. He flew over, took the golbat in his claws, and hurled him at the stands. The golbat crashed into an empty seat.
"Golbat is out of bounds and thus disqualified, which means Dawn Berlitz of Twinleaf Town wins the match!"
My jaw dropped.
"That's… that's it?" Thomas stammered.
"Sudden death match, I guess." We hadn't even taken a seat yet. Maybe we could still make it back for Lucas's battle?
Dawn spotted us and waved, climbing the bleacher stairs instead of exiting to the green room. "Hey! Glad you could make it," she said, grinning widely.
"Congrats on the win," I said.
"Thanks! Did Lucas win too?"
"Uhh…"
"Yep," I heard behind me. I turned and saw a boy and a kadabra.
"We did it!" Dawn threw her arms up in celebration.
"It's just round one," Lucas said, seeming pleased nonetheless. As much as I didn't understand him anymore, I could still read the warmth in his eyes.
I casually pressed my arm against my stomach, pushing against a wave of nausea.
Thomas and I were exploring the food stalls when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"Tommyyy! How's it going, man?"
Thomas turned, and his face lit up. "Hey! You made it!"
They hugged. The guy gestured at me. "Who's your friend?"
"This is Evelyn. Evelyn, this is my cousin Naveed."
"Nice to meet you," I said.
Naveed raised his eyebrows at Thomas. "It's not like that," Thomas said. "Wrong kind of friend."
Oh, yeah, cool, I thought. Go ahead and shoot it down like that. That's definitely fine and necessary.
"Whatever you say, Tomás. Hey, my fam was just gonna get lunch, wanna join?"
Thomas looked at me. "Don't let me stop you," I said, physically backing up. "Go for it."
"You sure? You could join us."
"I'm sure," I said. There was a splatter of bitterness in my stomach driving me away from him. "Go hang out with your cousins. I'll see you later."
"Okay then."
"Nice meeting you," Naveed said cheerfully, walking away with a friend I shouldn't have been mad at because he was right, we weren't that kind of friends. Ugh. Whatever. I'd just hang out with all of my many other friends.
The crowd around me was suddenly a churning sea of loneliness.
I floated where I was, then drifted toward a stall advertising tacos. While I was waiting for my order to be ready, someone beside me spoke.
"Oh, hey! Evelyn, right?"
I recognized him. "Yeah… Sean, right?" I'd battled him in the Celestic Tournament.
"Yeah! How've you been?"
"Pretty good, you?"
"Doing great! Made it through the first round, gonna eat some nachos, we're having a blast."
Our orders were ready around the same time. After retrieving them, he looked at his cardboard box, then at me.
"Do you wanna find a place to sit?"
"Sure," I said, even though I'd meant to wander around with my burrito. No point in complaining; I'd found another boat.
We couldn't find a bench or picnic table with space, so in the end we sat on the ground next to the daycare fence. "So how'd your round 1 go?" he asked, opening his box of nachos.
"Went pretty well," I said. "It was a two-on-two, so it was quick. How was yours?"
"It was good! Had a four-on-four double battle, which worked well with my team setup."
"How so?"
He listed a few double battle combos within his team (something like earthquake/flying types/discharge/ground types I'm not sure exactly it was a lot more than that).
"Damn, that's well thought-out." I had no idea how I'd tackle a double battle.
We continued to talk as we ate lunch. My impression of him as a high-energy guy turned translucent through our conversation, revealing an underlying layer that was a lot more relaxed and thoughtful. Kindness, in addition to energy. He asked how my eevee was doing and I brought Coeur out and he was thrilled.
Afterwards, we explored the festival a little more. Sean was much better at carnival games than Thomas, even when he claimed he wasn't good at a particular game. He won a stuffed oshawott by throwing frisbees into buckets (I sank 0/3 frisbees). There was also a pokemon trivia booth where two-person teams could compete for prizes; Sean and I lost to a pair of ten-year-olds who knew some obscure pokemon facts we'd never heard before (did you know sudowoodo's name comes from pseudo-woodo aka FAKE WOOD BECAUSE WE DIDN'T AND IT BLEW OUR FUCKING MINDS).
"We let that happen, right?" I whispered as we left.
"Oh, for sure. Otherwise those kids would have had their butts handed to them," Sean said with pretend shock.
"Yeah, you're right. Any self-respecting trainer would have let those literal children win."
"Definitely, yeah."
Along the way, we ran into trainers we knew – he introduced me to Axel Tokuyama and Angelica Flores, whom I'd seen or battled before but never really spoken to. We also found AJ Kaur, Kyle Nguyen, and Tejal Vaidya, and while I didn't know them super well, I figured I knew them enough to introduce them to Sean, and we had a great five minute chat (in which I cried laughing) before parting ways.
Snippets of muted round one battles occupied the concourse screens when we made it back to the main arena. It felt weirdly quiet, after being out in a musical environment for so long, but it made it easier to talk. Some other trainers joined us as we waited for 2:30 to hit – I'd met Ashley de Leon but not Michelle Wolfe or Emily Wu. We talked about, I don't know, trainer things, like whether flying or teleporting was better transportation (teleporting was the obvious answer to me, but some of them were more into the thrill of flying) and the fact that no one seemed able to beat Volkner anymore.
"I got him out of the way early, before I had to face a harder team," Michelle said. "Definitely would recommend."
Ashley nodded. "My friend Kyle did that. I've been putting Sunyshore off as a big finale to my badge run, cause like, coming full circle in my hometown, but now I'm just endlessly stuck at seven badges."
"I hear he's upped the minimum badge count to seven, to challenge him," Emily said.
"You're joking."
"Nope."
"I went to Sunyshore second, back in September," said Sean. "I trained for weeks before challenging him. After I lost three times, I went to Pastoria – boom, two badges. And then I got to Veilstone the next day – boom, three. All without training past what I did in Sunyshore."
"What is this man playing at?" Ashley fumed. "If a trainer deserves the badge, you're supposed to let them have it, even if that means throwing the match. It's just Gym Leadering 101. And special requirements for specific gyms aren't sanctioned by the Sinnoh League. If he doesn't want to give any badges at all, he shouldn't be a gym leader."
"He ought to challenge the Elite Four," Emily suggested. "He could easily edge out Aaron for sure. I'm less sure about Bertha because of the ground-electric matchup, but honestly? Volkner could probably do it."
"Yeah, but then he'd have to fight his boyfriend Flint," Michelle pointed out.
"They're finally dating?" Ashley said, interested.
"No, but come on. Everyone sees the sexual tension between those two. And what gay person hasn't fallen for their best friend, I mean come on, we've all done that."
My stomach clenched. Was that really a thing?
"Oh, hold up, it's starting," Sean said, looking at the concourse screens.
The screens didn't attract attention this time because they were still muted (whoops), but the giggles that danced around the crowd of trainers drew people's attention eventually. Marian finished whatever she was saying and animated playing cards flipped their way around the screen in a series of disembodied sleight-of-hand motions (a few trainers oohed and aahed melodramatically). When the cards settled, they'd paired up in even second round matches. No more byes in the tournament.
I found myself paired against Etana Bing in a 7 pm battle, Platinum Arena. In looking at the other pairings, I found more faces I recognized than the usual Thomas-Lucas-Dawn: Emily Wu was facing AJ Kaur, Sean Obi was paired with Axel Tokuyama, and I found Michelle and Ashley and Kyle as well. Dawn and Lucas were facing trainers I didn't recognize, but Thomas–
I winced. He was up against Kaitlyn Cabot, who beat him in the Celestic Tournament semifinals before winning overall. And they'd be fighting in the main arena, which meant they were the top-ranked battle of the time slot and would be televised.
"Hey," Thomas said, suddenly by me. I jumped.
"Ahh, hey."
"How was lunch?"
"It was good! I met a bunch of people, hung out with–"
As I was gesturing toward the trainers I'd spent the last few hours with, I realized Ashley and Emily were missing. The whole crowd was thinner, actually.
"Ah, shit, I timeskipped again." And I'd been doing so well. I bet they'd tried to say bye and I just ignored them and stared at the screens. "Um, how was your lunch?"
"Pretty good. Got to see family. Ready for round two?"
"Yeah. You?"
"You bet," he said cheerfully. "After the first round bye, my pokemon are ready to go."
Does he not remember Kaitlyn?
Should I tell him?
In the end, I let it slide, because he was in such a good mood that I didn't want to worry him. Maybe this was just confidence.
I said goodbye to Sean and Michelle and walked back out to rejoin the festival with Thomas.
Wow look at all these friend cameos! (ft. Akhil who quietly keeps up with Chance, Naveed and Kaitlyn who are helping me with the project I mentioned, Emily who's been reading a chapter a day and at that rate will see this in about a month, and Michelle who's helping w the project but might also be reading? I gave her the link.) Sean's been bugging me about a bigger cameo for a while, and he might've been joking, but let's be real he deserved a bigger cameo anyways.
Aight see y'all next week!