Following Antonia's signal for them to start, Jackie made the first move in her battle with Roy. "Come out, Eevee!" With that, the black-haired girl threw a red and white poké ball so polished that it glistened in the sun toward the ground between her and Roy. The pokémon which took shape from the burst of red light was a furry four-legged pokémon with a luxurious coat of fur colored brown and cream. It twitched its large ears and looked around with eyes the shade of rich dark chocolate. When the eevee saw Roy, it made a show of yawning and licking the back of its paw to start grooming itself.

Roy didn't pay any attention to the small pokémon's rude display. Instead, he tossed his own poké ball with a call of, "Let's go, Charmeleon!" The ball spun through the air before erupting into a flash of light that produced Roy's newly-evolved pokémon. Charmeleon erupted from his poké ball looking ready to fight. He roared fiercely at Jackie's eevee and struck a fighting pose with his sharp claws outstretched and ready to tear and slash at his foe. The display did nothing to deter Eevee's nonchalant attitude, so Roy ordered, "Teach them a lesson with your fire breath, Charmeleon!"

Charmeleon grunted his disapproval, but he still obeyed Roy's command. The red-scaled pokémon opened his mouth and fired off a series of red-hot embers at Jackie's disinterested eevee. Before the last projectile had left Charmeleon's maw, Jackie said simply, "Up and over, Eevee."

With surprising speed, Eevee went from lounging on the ground to jumping high enough to clear Charmeleon's incoming attack. Jackie's pokémon landed with a flourish while the embers harmlessly battered the ground behind it, and then, before Roy or Charmeleon had finished processing what had happened, it counterattacked. Eevee turned around and kicked up a cloud of dirt and sand into Charmeleon's face, adding a wag of its bushy tail to give the attack an additional insulting touch.

Roy's charmeleon spat out the dirt from his mouth while his claws clumsily tried to wipe any debris from his eyes. The furious pokémon's annoyance was forgotten, however, when Roy yelled, "We tried doing things my way, but now it's your turn, Charmeleon! Let's see what those new claws of yours can do!"

"It's sweet that you want to let me win," laughed Jackie unkindly, "but you don't have to tell me everything that your pokémon is going to do!"

Sure enough, the girl's eevee was more than ready for Charmeleon when the larger pokémon came barreling across the battlefield towards it. Eevee moved with a dancer's grace to sidestep the heavy overhead blows that Charmeleon tried to rain down on its body. Charmeleon's claws left impressive-looking grooves in the ground with each failed attack, but not a single blow connected with his twirling foe. Unfortunately for Eevee, it wasn't only Charmeleon's claws that it had to worry about. As Eevee ducked under another of Charmeleon's lunges, it didn't have time to react to a swing of his powerful tail coming.

Charmeleon's flame-tipped tail struck Eevee's midsection with enough force to knock the small pokémon off of its feet. It recovered quickly, but not before Charmeleon landed a glancing blow with his claws on Eevee's back. The smaller pokémon darted back to its trainer's side, breathing heavily. Jackie's eevee looked up at its trainer for guidance and the furry pokémon's face fell when it saw Jackie reaching for its poké ball. "Come on back, Eevee," Jackie said calmly before recalling her injured pokémon to its poké ball with a burst of red light. "Not bad, Roy," admitted the girl with a lopsided smile, "but we're not out of the fight just yet. Your turn, Meowth!"

With that shout, Jackie threw a different poké ball, differentiated from Eevee's capsule only by a stylized "M" written on its polished surface. The pokémon which took shape on the battlefield was a feline with clean off-white fur and a prominent gold coin affixed to its forehead. The meowth mewed curiously and sat on its haunches while it studied the fiery opponent towering over it. No one moved until Jackie looked over at Antonia and asked with a patronizing smile, "Well, are we good to go, Antonia?"

Antonia's face flushed and she replied brusquely, "Yes, the battle can resume."

Jackie snapped her fingers and yelled, "Meowth! 'Growl and maul'! Get going!" Before Roy could issue a command of his own to his pokémon, Jackie's meowth started up an ear-splitting yowl. When Charmeleon staggered back and clutched his claws at the sides of his head, Meowth leapt into action. The smaller pokémon was just as fast as Eevee, if not faster, and its sleeker body gave it an easier time twisting and turning around Charmeleon's legs than its teammate would have as it dragged its gleaming claws across different parts of the red-scaled pokémon's body.

Charmeleon roared his frustration and tried to turn himself around to catch Meowth while wheeling his heavy upper limbs around. Unfortunately for him and Roy, Charmeleon's movements were too slow and clumsy to catch Meowth's scurrying form as it expertly wove through Charmeleon's stumbling feet. All the while, Meowth kept up a steady stream of scratches which drew down Charmeleon's strength even as the harried pokémon's frustration mounted. Finally, it looked to Roy that his pokémon might have a chance to catch Meowth and he shouted, "Now, Charmeleon!" just as his pokémon lunged for Meowth with his whole upper body.

Unfortunately, Charmeleon's body was still twisted around and his attempted attack threw him off balance. Charmeleon stumbled over his own tail on his way to grapple Meowth and he fell to the ground with the embarrassing sound of the air being knocked out of his lungs. Jackie had the courtesy to hide her laugh behind her hand while her pokémon danced merrily around its fallen foe. When Meowth got too close, Charmeleon batted at it with one of his heavy arms, but the smaller pokémon easily jumped over the half-hearted attack and retreated a safe distance away.

Roy shouted encouragement as he watched his pokémon slowly drag his body up and off of the ground. But aside from a glare thrown backwards over his shoulder, Charmeleon didn't show any sign of wanting to resume the battle. Instead, Charmeleon slouched over to Roy's side and then sat heavily on the ground next to his trainer, stewing while a cloud of black smoke flowed from his nostrils to gather over his head.

"Um, Roy?" asked Antonia, and when her friend wasn't able to get Charmeleon to stand back up again, she announced, "Charmeleon is, uh, unwilling to battle? So, Meowth is the winner! Roy, do you want to send out your next pokémon?"

Since another nudge from his trainer didn't get Charmeleon to get up again, Roy shrugged and returned his pokémon to the poké ball in his hand. Then, he produced Nidoran's poké ball and announced, "We're not done yet!" He sent out the small horned pokémon and was relieved that Nidoran didn't run and hide behind his legs at the sight of Jackie's meowth.

"A little guy, huh?" remarked Jackie. "Well, I hope this one actually wants to fight."

"Yeah, me too," murmured Roy before he ordered brightly, "Let's get in there with your horn, Nidoran! Charge!" The pink-skinned pokémon hesitated for a moment, but when he reminded himself that Meowth was only a little bigger than he was, Nidoran decided to obey his trainer's command. Lowering his head, Nidoran dashed at Jackie's meowth quickly enough that the other pokémon let out a caterwaul of surprise as it jumped out of the way.

Nidoran's little feet scrambled on the ground as it executed a tight turn and took another run at Meowth. This time, the feline pokémon was struck in the back by Nidoran's horn and voiced its displeasure loud enough to set the teeth of all three trainers on edge. "Fight back, Meowth!" Jackie called to her pokémon. "Don't let a little poison stop you from getting the win!"

"Poison?" Roy wondered, and then he saw that there was a trace of purple venom glistening on the tip of Nidoran's horn. "Hey, all right, good work, Nidoran!" The little pokémon looked pleased with himself and chattered his large teeth excitedly before his large ears twitched at Meowth's approach. Jackie's pokémon wasn't moving as quickly as before, but it still flashed its claws menacingly as it closed the distance between itself and Nidoran. Roy smiled and said, "You just have to keep your distance, Nidoran! Run away for long enough, and the poison will do the job for you!"

"Don't let it get away!" Jackie shouted. "You've got this!"

Jackie's encouragement proved misplaced. Nidoran used every trick that he had learned living between in the wild and playing tag with Roy and kept a comfortable distance between himself and Meowth, even though Jackie's pokémon was hardly slow. After a few minutes of watching the fruitless chase, Jackie set her mouth in a thin, frustrated line and said, "Come back, Meowth, this isn't going anywhere." Her pokémon looked back at her trainer with a weary expression which matched its shallow, wheezing breaths. To their match's referee, Jackie said, "You can call it, Antonia. Give Roy the win."

Antonia nodded and raised her hand above her head before announcing, "Meowth is unable to battle, Nidoran is the winner! Right?" When Jackie nodded, Antonia lowered her arm and watched as the other girl recalled her poisoned pokémon.

"I've still got my eevee, Roy. Are you ready for the last round?"

"You know it!" answered Roy at once. "Good work, Nidoran! You can do this!"

A flick of Jackie's wrist and her eevee's poké ball went spinning through the air to release the furry pokémon again. Even though the pokémon that faced it was smaller than Charmeleon, Eevee didn't perform the same show of disinterested grooming that she had used to insult Roy's other pokémon. Instead, Eevee growled at Roy's nidoran and bent low ready to attack. "It's fast," warned Jackie, "and its horn is poisoned. But one or two good hits should finish this."

"That's what you think!" Roy yelled to the other trainer. To his pokémon, he said, "You've got this! Use your speed and look for an opening for your horn!"

Now that they had obtained guidance from their trainers, Nidoran and Eevee were ready to begin. Nidoran surprised his opponent, and Roy as well, by charging Eevee in hopes of landing a blow as successful as the hit which had poisoned Jackie's meowth before. The attack was unsubtle and with plenty of advance notice, Eevee leapt easily out of the way. The furry pokémon took a chance to stick out its small pink tongue at Roy's pokémon, only for the blonde trainer to tell his pokémon, "Water gun, Nidoran!"

"Water gun?" Jackie asked and her Eevee looked just as confused as a jet of water sprayed from Nidoran's tiny mouth to drench his surprised foe.

Roy chuckled at the surprise attack, and he only laughed louder as Jackie's eevee sputtered and shook its body vigorously to try and get dry. The resulting sight of the once-elegant pokémon suffering from a coat of fur sticking out at all ends was even enough to make Jackie smile in amusement. "Cute trick, Roy," she said to her opponent. "I can't say that I say that kind of attack coming. But we won't give you the time to try anything else. Eevee! Finish this with a ramming attack!"

Nidoran's happiness at his successful water gun attack turned to fear as he saw Jackie's eevee running at him. Fueled by a thirst for revenge after Nidoran messed up its carefully groomed appearance, Eevee moved quickly across the improvised arena and not even Nidoran's impressive speed could get him out of the way in time. Eevee's lowered head slammed into Nidoran's side so hard that the smaller pokémon's feet were lifted off of the ground as he flew through the air to land in a heap on the ground a few feet away. Nidoran started to struggle to get back on his feet, but his efforts were cut short when he was summoned back by the poké ball Roy held in his outstretched hand.

"Nidoran is unable to battle," Antonia said without much emotion, "the winner is Eevee. Jackie wins the match."

Jackie smiled and returned her eevee back to its poké ball before walking over to Roy and shaking his hand. "Not bad, Roy. You surprised me."

"That's good, I guess," Roy said. "Thank you for the battle!"

"You have an interesting style of battling, Jackie," interjected Antonia from where she was standing off to the side of the two other trainers. "Your pokémon are very fast, it was interesting to watch them and how you commanded them."

"I'm happy to give you and your pokémon some pointers, Antonia," said Jackie with an indulgent tone that verged on mocking. Turning her attention back to Roy, Jackie brushed a loose strand of her black hair back under her baseball cap and said, "Your charmeleon just evolved, didn't it, Roy? I could tell from how it moved that it still isn't used to its new body. You might benefit from a few lessons from me, too."

Antonia cleared her throat and tapped Roy on the shoulder. "Actually, we should probably keep going on our way to Vermillion City. It was nice meeting you, Jackie."

Before Antonia could lead Roy more than a few steps away, Jackie was at their side again, easily keeping pace with the pair. "I'll go with you, too," insisted Jackie. "After all, we're all going the same way and with the same goal in mind, right?"

"Yeah," agreed Roy at once. To soothe Antonia's unspoken irritation, he only had an apologetic shrug to offer. "What? She's right, you know?"

"I suppose," conceded Antonia reluctantly. "It would be a little silly to act like we weren't all headed to Vermillion City and walk on opposite sides of the road."

Jackie grinned and said, "Then it's settled! Vermillion City or bust!"

As they walked Jackie did most of the talking. The girl didn't only relay how her travels had been going thus far, but she also had an opinion on everything that she was more than willing to share with Roy and Antonia. "I get why you would get your pokémon from Pallet Town, if you were close by, I mean. Professor Oak's been the classic choice for trainers for decades, but I thought that I wanted something new," Jackie explained at one point. "That's why I went to Celadon City to get my first pokémon. They had a better variety to pick from and, besides, my oldest sister wanted to go shopping at the big shopping center there, so she took me up for the day." With a pat of the pocket in her jean jacket which held her poké balls, Jackie said haughtily, "That's where I got my eevee. I think I made the right choice, don't you?"

When there was finally a break between Jackie's observations, Antonia hazarded to ask Roy, "Why did you lose so easily?" When Roy looked confused and Jackie laughed out of second-hand embarrassment, Antonia quickly added, "I mean, your pokémon still could battle when you let them stop fighting. Not only did you stop Nidoran before he was done, but when Charmeleon decided that he just didn't want to battle, you let him give up without even really trying to stop him."

"Hey, you better not be saying that our battle wasn't on the up-and-up," Jackie jumped in. "Because you were the referee, Antonia. If you had a problem with how we were battling, you should have said something sooner."

"I'm not talking about your battle being fair or not," Antonia snapped at the other girl. To Roy, she said firmly, "I'm saying that I'm worried you're giving up too soon, Roy. Is it because you keep losing against gym leaders?"

"Whoa, wait, which gym leaders have you battled, Roy?" asked Jackie, but neither Roy nor Antonia acted as if they heard her question.

Roy's face had started to turn red and he forced out, "I'm not the one who has a problem with losing, Toni," through gritted teeth. Then, the boy broke into a light jog so that there was a healthy distance between himself and the girls.

Jackie watched Roy with an eyebrow arched in curiosity, and then she turned to Antonia and said, "Well, looks like you two have got some issues to work out."

"Please don't talk to me," said Antonia quietly, and she was grateful that Jackie didn't push matters further, at least for a while.

Fifteen minutes of walking in a cloud of awkward silence proved to be too much for Jackie to endure, however, and she gingerly asked Antonia, "So, what pokémon do you have, Antonia? Is it okay for me to ask that?"

Antonia sighed and said softly, "It's fine. I have a beedrill, a magikarp, and a bulbasaur. Are Eevee and Meowth your only pokémon?"

"Yeah, at least for now," Jackie replied. "I've got an idea for a pokémon I can catch for my team when I go back to Fuchsia City, but I want to get at least one badge under my belt before I show up at home." The taller girl crossed her arms behind her head and looked up at the blue sky as she said, "I'd feel like kind of a failure if I saw everyone without something to show for it." A smile brightened her face as she added, "And what I've got planned ought to impress them plenty."

"They should be impressed by your pokémon, though. They seem plenty strong to me."

Jackie scoffed and shook her head. "No, my folks are old-school, Antonia. A successful pokémon journey is marked by collecting eight badges and competing in the League tournament at the end of the summer. Anything less than that and you might as well not have even bothered."

"Wow," said Antonia, and the trainers walked in silence for a while before she asked, "During your battle, you told Roy something about not telling your opponent what your pokémon are going to do. How do you do that and still have your pokémon do what you want them to do?"

The question first made the other girl frown, but soon enough she smiled again and said, "You know, Antonia, that's actually a good question. At first, I thought about making you figure it out on your own, but since I already offered to teach you, and since you and Roy have been so nice," at the sound of his name, Roy glanced back at the girls only to grunt in annoyance and turn away a second later, "I'll tell you."

Jackie held up her fingers as she explained, "First, you need to decide on a few basic combinations. You won't be able to prepare for everything, but if there are some opening moves or ideas that you find yourself using again and again, it's worth it to come up with a codename or a phrase for it that you and your pokémon know." With her other hand, Jackie reached into her jacket and pulled out one of her poké balls before telling Antonia, "Take my meowth, for example. That 'growl and maul' that we used on Roy's big charmeleon was something that we practiced before. If you're my opponent you can figure out what it means pretty easily, but that's a few more seconds that'll go by before you can give your pokémon the right command to counteract what me and Meowth are up to."

Antonia nodded, her expression as careful and focused as during lectures at school back in Pallet Town. "Okay, but how do you decide what to have prepared?"

"Well, you can't prepare everything," Jackie answered her eager student, but when she saw that Antonia looked about to contradict her, Jackie tried another tack. "It starts with knowing what your pokémon is good at." Her second finger came up. "You need to know what your pokémon's strengths and weaknesses are. Not just type match-ups, but whether its fast or slow, whether it likes to fight close up or from a distance, that kind of thing. A few codes are must-haves, like, your opening moves, your strongest attacks, and maybe one trick."

"I worked on something like that with my beedrill for our battle with Misty," interjected Antonia when Jackie finally stopped talking to take a breath. "I trained it to come out of its poké ball already attacking while I did the aiming for it!"

Jackie's blue eyes widened and she admitted, "That's actually really cool, Antonia. I'll have to see if I can find a way to use that idea with my pokémon. Now, where was I?" Jackie ticked off her fingers again and then said, "Oh, yeah, the other thing is to see if there is something that you can do to shore up your pokémon's weaknesses. Like, Roy could come up with something his charmeleon could do with its tail when fighting a smaller, faster pokémon like my eevee, since that worked better than anything else he tried."

"Was there anything else?" Antonia asked with a nod at the two fingers Jackie was still holding up.

"Yeah! I guess, the third thing is to practice so that your combinations come as naturally as your other commands." Jackie kept walking but turned her body so that more of her attention was on Antonia than on the path they were walking. "What combinations do you think would workyou're your pokémon, Antonia? You mentioned a beedrill, what else did you have on your team again?"

"Um, a bulbasaur and a magikarp," Antonia supplied again.

Jackie's eyes lit up and she exclaimed, "Oh, I bet that bulbasaur was your first pokémon then, right? Can I see it? No offense, but living by the sea in Fuchsia City I've seen enough magikarp to last me a lifetime."

Antonia laughed along with Jackie and felt her hand move towards bulbasaur's poké ball in her bag, but she stopped herself just as her fingers grazed its cool metallic surface. "Maybe another time," Antonia said carefully. Seeking to change the subject, she asked with more curiosity in her voice than she felt, "So, why are you going to Vermillion City to get your first gym badge? I mean, Celadon City has its own gym leader, and so does Saffron City and your hometown of Fuchsia City, too. Why this one?"

"You're actually not the first person to ask me that, Antonia," said Jackie impishly. "See, it's like this: I've got two older sisters and they both made a name for themselves traveling and battling when they were my age. Everyone at home thought I should do things the same way that they did, but I thought that I'd do the opposite. I don't want to raise the same pokémon as my sisters, or follow the same course that they did. I want to make my own decisions, and not be bound by theirs. That's why I'm going to take down Lieutenant Surge first. He's the gym leader who gave my sisters the most trouble, even though they each had seven badges when they went up against him. When I get my first badge from him, it'll show them!"

While Jackie had been talking, Roy had slowed his pace to listen and was walking alongside the other trainers when Antonia remarked, "But if you're just doing everything the opposite of what your older sisters did, then aren't you just letting them decide how your pokémon journey is going in a different way?"

Jackie opened her mouth and closed it again. For once, she was lost for words, at least until she saw that they had reached a sign marking the furthest outskirts of Vermillion City. "Hey, here we are! First stop's the pokémon center, right?"

Roy and Antonia exchanged a meaningful look in response to Jackie's cheer. Their smiles at her enthusiasm were both genuine, but for each other they remained small and wary, and Roy said, "Yeah, I think that's where we're all going. Right, Toni?"

"Yeah," answered Antonia with a similar distance in her voice. She was silent for a minute as she tried to catch up with Roy who was himself trying to match Jackie's pace and energy, then she called after the other trainers, "Wait up!"

Roy and Jackie waited for Antonia at the summit of a hill and when she caught up with them, words failed her again. Spread out before the three of them like a bejeweled tapestry was a body of water so blue that it looked like it had sprung to live from a book of fairy tales.

What Antonia was thinking, Roy said aloud when he whistled and remarked, "Wow, so that's the ocean, huh? It's so big!"

"You two think the ocean's so great? Try having it in your backyard," Jackie said shortly. "Antonia! Roy! Let's get going. You can gawk at the big blue all you want after I get my pokémon checked in at the pokémon center. Come on!" With that, Jackie led the way down to the bustling port city below them as the wind coming off the coast whipped at their hair and thrilled their senses with the salty sea air it carried.