Teams:

Pierce Lawson:

- Narcissa, Beedrill

- Orion, Onix

- Cygnus, Abra

Lillian Dale:

- Root, Bulbasaur

- Talon, Spearow

- Gem, Geodude

- Star, Cleffa

Cerulean City XI

"Move," Pierce commanded, watching Narcissa start flying around the krabby they were fighting against. He'd finished the job he'd decided to take pretty quickly, since it'd only involved some talking and some berries to convince a meowth to leave a property. So, with the rest of his morning suddenly free, Pierce had decided to hit the battlegrounds. It had been a bit since he'd battled with his team, so he felt like it'd be great instead of just having them train and relax.

His team probably thought they were relaxing anyway, the battlemaniacs.

Besides, considering their progress and the comments from their tutors, they were more or less done anyway. They'd just had to spend the day polishing things up and that'd be that. Well, Orion would need some more work, probably, but he wasn't likely to participate in the Gym challenge anyway and the move he was working on wasn't for that either. So, Pierce thought it was a good idea to get them to put some work on just regular fighting after their time training moves specifically.

"Giga Drain," he called, making the trainer across from them panic and call for a Bubblebeam to try and shoot down Narcissa. The beedrill didn't have the grass type move completely battle ready just yet, but it was good enough for this fight. The poor krabby had range with his water type move, but it wasn't fast enough to hit Pierce's first pokemon.

Narcissa was just too fast for the poor bastard.

'I'm really out of this league,' he thought to himself, feeling a little bad once the battle was over and the bet money was exchanged. 'Well, hopefully I'll get a badge and move up in the world by tomorrow,' he thought, turning to give a smile to Narcissa when she latched onto his back.

"Good job, girl," he commented, making the beedrill squeeze his neck a little with her stingers. "We've got this. Tomorrow we get our first badge," he said with confidence. He didn't think it was arrogant of him, honestly.

Narcissa was strong, not only because of the fact that she was a last stage evolution, but also because she worked like mad. Cygnus might not be the best pokemon in the world for a fight, but he had teleport very well practiced and now would have a super effective move against Cerulean Gym's water types. If the two of them weren't enough to get a first badge, then it definitely involved some messing around somewhere.

Not to brag or anything, but his team was strong enough, he was sure of that.

Now, if the Sisters decided to mess with him, that was something entirely possible. He'd seen a thing or two about Gym Leaders giving some people a harder or easier time. The former usually when it came to people that had a lot of hype behind them, rising prodigies and such. The latter was a little rarer still, but it could happen. Sometimes someone would drop by with a specialty that was weak against a gym and the Leader would adapt their challenge a little. Pierce didn't quite agree with people calling that making things easier, but he understood how that could be considered the case.

"You think I should give Orion another battle?" he asked idly as he walked through the battleground facilities looking for wherever Lily was having her own fight at the moment. "He got a little banged up by that nidoran before it went down," he added, perking up a little as he caught sight of his friend a few fields to the side.

Narcissa clicked something in response that made him hum.

"I guess I can give him another try and see how it goes," he commented, rubbing his face tiredly. "He won't get to fight in the challenge, so that would make sense," he added. To that, Narcissa nodded over his shoulder.

He just didn't want to push his pokemon too much, especially since Orion was young, even if he was big. However, that'd be coddling them, considering he'd been at a battle ready age before he even picked him up. It was only the fact that he had been very injured that should have stopped and that had been solved long ago by that point. Pierce just had a hard time accepting that a pokemon as young as his onix was ready to push himself as much as any other, he supposed.

He liked to think he was getting better in that regard, at least.

With a sigh, he reached the field in which Lily was fighting, watching as Gem fought a drowzee. It seemed a pretty even battle, by the looks of things. However, as Pierce watched, he saw the other trainer turn things around with a fighting type attack that seemed to surprise his traveling companion. Evidently, that hadn't been used before.

'Shame,' he thought, watching the poor geodude start losing the fight as Lily tried to get things under control. However, it wasn't to be. It was how things went, you won some, you lost some. Even Lily, talented as she was, had to experience a loss or two from time to time.

"Well, that could have gone better," she mumbled after noticing him and walking up to him when she dealt with the post-battle business. "It might motivate Gem to train harder with her tutor this afternoon though, but it still sucks."

"Yeah, I get that," Pierce replied as they walked together back to the area where people went to look for people to battle. They had time for a few more battles, he supposed. He'd see if Orion could do those or if Narcissa would get a chance or two more to shine. "Still, better here than a tournament or a challenge, right?"

"You are not wrong about that," she sighed. "Still though," she added with a groan.

"Sore loser."

"Oh, shut up."

[}-o-{]

"Check," Pierce said, setting down his chess piece and looking across the board to his opponent. Crawdaunt let out a few very angry clicks with his pincers – he was fairly sure those were a curse equivalent for the pokemon but he didn't ask – and glared at him. Pierce just gave him a smile and waited for the next move to be made.

Beside the Crawdaunt, Vaporeon and Golduck narrowed their eyes at the board. On the pool to the side, Tentacruel hummed to the magikarp school and Sharpedo as he relayed to them how things were looking. The pokemon were kind of struggling, but that was to be expected, really. He'd learned that pokemon tended to be pretty direct with their approaches, even those that were smarter than most, like psychics.

Pierce guessed that was one of the reasons trainers were accepted so easily by the creatures. They gave some more lateral thinking than they usually managed to pull off. They had ideas for training and tactics for battle that the pokemon might overlook for a simpler strategy.

All that translated into pokemon not being very good at chess, he'd found out. He was playing one against a bunch of them at the moment, and the group of water types wasn't having a good time. They were into it though, because damn hadn't Sharpedo and Crawdaunt seemed like they might tear his head off when he suggested doing something else. Although, maybe all those theories didn't really hold too much importance and it was just that the pokemon weren't experts in chess.

It could very well just be that, Pierce supposed. Even if he hadn't played in many years, he had learned how to do so sort of well. Not enough to be considered good by those that knew what they were talking about, not even close, but there was quite the jump from absolute newbies to having an idea of how things went. He knew some strategies and tricks that new people just didn't.

Pierce amused himself by comparing the situation to bug types like beedrill. He was good compared to new people, but he fell apart pretty quickly against those who were supposed to be on the same level as him. Ultimately, it didn't really matter, he supposed. The pokemon were entertained and he was having a good time, so all was well.

Especially in regards to the new addition to their little group, Crawdaunt. The water type had an anger problem about as obvious as Narcissa's love for battle. It had taken some talking and poffins but Pierce had managed to help him calm and sit down. He considered it a great accomplishment that he even managed to make the pokemon play chess of all things.

However, Crawdaunt's competitiveness seemed to be at least on par with his anger.

So, Pierce watched, projecting as much calm as he could, how the water types deliberated between themselves and eventually settled on a move. Then, as things had gone so far during the game, Crawdaunt reached for the piece to move and very carefully picked it up with his pincer. It was an exercise of control, Pierce supposed, since it had looked like the pokemon had some troubles controlling his strength.

At least for how hesitant Crawdaunt had been through the whole game when having to make moves.

"Interesting," he commented as he looked at what the pokemon had done. Vaporeon looked too smug for this to be a move that someone else had come up with. "What about this though?" he asked, taking his queen and moving it all the way towards a rook that had been left wide open. All the water types that could see the board blinked and then widened their eyes. "Didn't see that one, did you?" he asked with a smile on his face.

There was more pincer cursing from Crawdaunt then, joined this time by Vaporeon and Golduch. Even the pretty calm Tentacruel wasn't very pleased himself, if he was reading the burning annoyance in his gaze right. Once things started getting explained to the magikarp and Sharpedo, those didn't react much better to it.

"This is nice," he commented then, earning himself glares from every single pokemon around. In response to those thoughts, he just smiled innocently. Until Vaporeon hit him with a Water Gun to the face, that is. "That wasn't nice," he said then, wiping the water off his face and giving the eeveelution a flat look. He wasn't very successful at keeping his expression like that though, especially since all the pokemon around seemed to think it was hilarious.

And happy pokemon meant a happy Pierce, of course.

"You still need to make a move though," he pointed out, making them groan. They did get back to it though, but they were fighting against a pretty sizable disadvantage already. Pierce had a rook, a knight and a few pawns on them and it was getting worse dramatically fast. "In the meantime," he commented, turning to let his feet into the water and petting Magikarp, the original one in his group, which is to say the shiny.

That didn't seem to sit well with the rest of the water types, probably because it made light of the chess match, but that only seemed to motivate them. All of them glared at the board like it'd give them the answers to beat him while he played with Magikarp. The shiny pokemon didn't seem to care as much as the others anyway, and she was positively adorable too, so Pierce didn't think it was a great loss even if it took time away from strategizing.

"Uh, are you Pierce Lawson?" a voice asked, making him turn to the side. As he did, he paused and blinked. 'Well, that's the last of the sisters to meet, I guess,' Pierce thought, taking in the sight of the youngest Waterflower sister, Misty. She looked… different from the anime, that was for sure. Closer to what the game's design was, if he recalled correctly, which he might not. It wasn't a huge difference, since it was mostly just the outfit, he was pretty sure. And she appeared in several outfits throughout the series, so…

'Doesn't really matter in the end, I suppose,' he decided.

"Yeah, that's me. Do you need something?" he asked. The girl seemed to have distracted herself looking at the group of water types around him though. If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought she was scared or something. Silly, really, considering the Waterflowers were great at dealing with the pokemon, even those that were more dangerous and uncontrolled.

"I… My sisters are rehearsing," Misty started, turning back towards him. "They said if we had trouble controlling a pokemon, we could try calling you," she added, looking sort of unsure of how effective he would be. "I can leave you be though if you are… busy," she added, and Pierce raised an eyebrow at the sort of obvious dismissive attitude there at the end as she looked at him and then at the chess set.

Immediately afterwards, she stiffened when the water types glared at her.

"Sure thing," Pierce replied, petting Magikarp before setting her back in the water. "Be careful not to mess up the board, yeah? And behave yourselves," he told the water type gathering around him, to which he received a varied response. "I'll be back in a bit."

"Ah, thanks," Misty said, looking between him and the pokemon he'd been spending time with.

"Where to?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the girl.

"Oh, right, follow me," she answered, jumping a little and then starting to walk. Apparently, they needed to go to another pool. Not surprising. If it were in the same one as he was, Pierce was sure he'd have noticed a commotion.

"Maybe it's better not to dismiss things that offer them some calm," he commented, making the girl jump a little again. Either she was a little shaken from whatever was going on or she hadn't expected him to talk at all. Pierce was leaning towards the former, but it could also be both. "They get angry easily, especially Crawdaunt, so I'd just let them be, even if it's weird for them to play chess of all things."

"I wasn't- I mean-"

"It's fine," he interrupted with a smile. "I know it's a little out there, but these are far from normal conditions. I just found something that they can engage in and let them latch onto it."

"... I'm sorry," she mumbled and if they weren't walking, Pierce imagined she'd have been looking down and poking at the floor with her foot or something. She had that kind of expression on her. "I just… I'm a bit on edge. It's a gyarados, by the way, the one that's causing trouble. They scare me more than most and… Some water specialist I am, huh?" Misty told him then, although towards the end she sounded like she was talking more to herself than anything else.

"I mean, gyarados can be scary, yeah," he replied with a shrug. It wasn't difficult to see how someone could be terrified of the gigantic sea serpents, really. Water specialist or not. "Personally, I have never seen one, but I'm a fan of them."

"A lot of people are, but few care enough to get a magikarp and training an already evolved one is even more of a nightmare," Misty said, almost as if she were repeating a rehearsed dialogue. Maybe she made that observation a lot. Then she grimaced. "Water specialists like them a lot, obviously. I just… I had a bad experience with my parents' gyarados and it kind of stuck with me."

"I'm not judging," he reassured her, because it sounded like she was trying to justify herself to him. Which was silly, considering that he was just a random guy to her. "So, what's going on with this gyarados?"

"We still have to give him treatment and it was doable before. Now that he has recovered it's… more unruly, you could say," Misty answered, rubbing the back of her neck. "It's refusing to stay still and it got dangerous a few times. The plan is to just let him be until at least one of my sisters can check on him. They told me to check with you if any pokemon caused trouble before they were back though so… Yeah. No pressure though."

Pierce got the feeling that she didn't believe he could do much in regards to this situation she was facing at the moment. That was fine. He had his doubts too, being honest. Sure, he was confident in his ability to talk to pokemon and generally reason with them, but that didn't mean he could do magic. He couldn't force pokemon to do things they didn't want to, nor could he "enchant" them in any way. He just… talked to them, and had a little more luck than most in getting them to listen.

An angry gyarados might just be what it would take for him to fail, he supposed.

"Guess we'll see how this goes," he mumbled, more to himself than to Misty when they entered a separate zone. Sure enough, there was a big pool with a gyarados and a few people around with other pokemon. There were more gyarados on the other end of the thing too, but those seemed to mostly keeping to themselves. 'This is one fucking dangerous room though,' Pierce realized.

Walking next to Misty towards the problem gyarados, he considered how to do this. They needed to treat the pokemon, but it didn't want to allow that. 'Why though?' he wondered, his mind starting to go over that question.

First thing that came to mind was that the gyarados just didn't want to, which was fair enough. He was a beast of a creature, bowing down to tiny humans so that they could treat wounds that he probably hated didn't sound like something he'd like.

The second option was that the wounds were painful, so much so that he couldn't stop himself from jerking around. Possible too, Pierce was sure. Maybe it had recovered enough for that to actually matter now instead.

Third option was that something else unrelated to the wounds had happened. Maybe one of the handlers wasn't so good. Pierce didn't like considering that, but if he'd learned anything in his stay at Cerulean, it was that humans sucked.

Fourth option was that the public was bothering the gyarados. Pierce imagined a gyarados hated feeling and looking weak at any point, but especially so in front of other strong pokemon, other gyarados. This one had to deal with that and he was probably hating it.

'Could also be something else entirely or a combination,' Pierce thought to himself as he stopped walking some distance away from the pool. Misty had stayed a little further back at some point and the other handlers were pretty close, with a gathering of other pokemon ready to step in. Reassuring, for sure, but it would also make things more difficult. 'Nothing I can do about that,' he decided, pursing his lips.

It wasn't like he could force the staff to leave them alone. Neither did he want to, really, even if it'd make things easier for him. Easier, but more dangerous, and Pierce was rather fond of living. Especially after having died once already, or at least come close to it.

"Hey there," he greeted calmly, staying where he was. His response was a roar so loud that he was pretty sure it was heard at least halfway across the entire Gym building. To the sides, the pokemon and staff members stiffened. "You are angry, huh, big guy?" he asked, his heart beating fast but his voice remaining calm. If the gyarados was truly going to attack, it'd probably have shown some signs of move usage, he was sure.

His only answer was another roar.

"Do you mind if I come closer?" After yet another sonic attack, Pierce was starting to wonder if his ears would be fine or if he'd have to get them checked afterwards. "I won't touch you," he added, and this time all he got was a growl. Either he was making progress or the gyarados had gotten tired of roaring. "I won't do anything. I just want to get closer and talk. Is that fine?"

The water type gave him a glare that had him taking a deep breath in to keep his calm. He was actually surprised there wasn't some shine of energy denoting a move there, honestly. Ultimately, the gyarados gave a slight motion down with his head, as if nodding, but not quite.

"Thank you," Pierce said, walking to the edge of the pool and taking a seat there. The sea serpent was still some distance away, but the gyarados didn't look like all he wanted was for him to go away or drop dead anymore. "So, you don't want them to treat you, is what we gather," he commented, getting a growl. "I get that. I don't like going to the doctor much myself and I've never gotten as injured as you probably are right now."

'At least not besides right before being dropped here,' he added to himself.

"So, that's fine. You probably can recover by yourself, right?" That question got a different response. A grunt wasn't great progress, admittedly, but it was progress all the same. He considered what to say then, how to go about confirming or disprove his theories. Outright asking didn't sound like a good idea though, so he tried to get a read on him.

The gyarados wasn't looking at the gathering behind him, so maybe that wasn't it. He wasn't big enough to be leader of a school, if gyarados even formed groups like that. He wasn't small enough to be a runt or something either. So, he was pretty sure he could discard that.

It wasn't looking at any of the handlers around either, so maybe that was out too. Pierce rather doubted all of them could be the problem. He wanted to have a little more faith than that, at least.

It wasn't twitching or showing signs of too much pain either, as far as he could see. So, Pierce was coming to the conclusion that it was mostly just a matter of feeling weak himself. Admitting that he needed help from others, especially weak humans and such. Maybe not quite with those words or anything, but something along those lines.

'How to get him to allow treatment then?' Pierce wondered idly, noticing that as he kept his silence, the gyarados started looking at him curiously. Evidently, he'd managed to confuse the water type a little.

"Say, can you swim fine?" he asked then, making the creature tilt his head before his expression turned back into a glare and a long low growl escaped the creature's throat. "Right, silly me," Pierce said with a chuckle. "But still, can you swim without, you know, feeling pain? I imagine it must suck if you can't," he added, giving the gyarados pause even if he didn't let up the glare.

Another growl followed, although this time it almost sounded like something was said instead of just being a warning sound.

"You know, we have a game with the water types in one of the other pools," Pierce commented, managing to surprise the gyarados out of his anger, if because of how random that was. "What we do is swim and jump out of the water, every time trying to reach a little further up. When someone breaks their own record, they get a poffin as a reward. Do you like those?"

He saw a hit of interest there and he grasped at it with both of his metaphorical hands.

"Wait here for a bit," he said, pulling himself out of the pool and moving to the side, looking for supplies. "I need stuff to make poffins," he added, this time to the staff members around. To their credit, none of them so much as showed confusion with the weird request, simply pointing him in the direction of the things he needed.

Misty, he noticed, simply stood away and watched him do his thing.

"Ok, this is a poffin. You wanna try it?" he asked, offering the confection. Pierce really hoped that gyarados liked things along the same lines as magikarp did, otherwise he might be in some trouble. After the first bit disappeared in the sea serpent's mouth, he almost sighed in relief when the gyarados let out a pleased sound. "You like that, huh? We give those as rewards to the winners of the game," he continued explaining.

He almost grinned when he saw the interest in the pokemon's eyes.

"So, how would you like to participate?" he asked with an inviting smile and a tilt of his head. "Granted, you'd have better luck if you were at your best," he added casually.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to contain a smile, especially when he all but saw the gears turning in the gyarados' head.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How's it going?

Is there a pokemon in this world that can't be befriended by offerings of food? Because Pierce seems determined to find out, from the looks of things. Guess that's the true journey of this story. Good to know.

I hope you liked the chapter.

As always, if you can't wait until next week for next chapter, or if you just feel like supporting my writing, there's up to three new chapters in my Pa tre on:

P a treon . com (slash) AdrianKing

Discord Link: discord .gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: Which do you like more, design-wise, Regular Gyarados or Shiny Gyarados? I honestly like both equally. Only reason the shiny one stands a little ahead is because it's shiny, thus rarer.

See you.