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Chap. 73: Waterspout
"Woah," Megumi gasped as they spotted the entrance of the Water Gym, "It's… tiny."
"It's not," Robin replied, "I've seen pictures of the inside of the Gym, it's big. This must just be an entrance, like the Ice and Ground Gyms have. More beneath the surface."
"Makes more sense than the Ice Gym being under water, I guess," Elle laughed, "I mean, it looks amazing, like a sea urchin or anemone made of ice, but still."
Alex had to agree with all three. On first impression, the Water Gym, judging by the address they were given, was small. A three-story building, yes, and large enough to hold one of their own world's basketball courts, perhaps (still famous in Pacific and Atlantic, if less so in other Mega-Cities, though played the world over), but small for the size of battles they expected, or the sheer amount of devastation Snøgrav had shown himself capable of.
Inside, they found the central space even smaller than he had expected. There was a large chamber dominated by a circular waterfall that fell from the ceiling into a wide fountain. The majority of the space was filled with soft benches, cushions, and a stage in one corner covered in curtains. Nearly every other wall was dominated by screens twice as tall as he was, and twice as wide as tall. On all but one of them, beautiful women in a variety of skimpy, even scandalous, swimsuits cavorted, played, performed spectacular trick dives, posed artfully or explicitly… and in a few screens in one corner, below which were a multitude of individual, sound-proof, locking booths, were several of the same women with their bodies on even more display, the key details blurred out, engaged in… well, more. With their Pokémon, with men, with women, and on one screen, the three most common beauties all together with nary a dick in sight.
"Whoah," he gasped softly, "They're gorgeous."
Of course, he had to blush as his small noise was somehow caught by everyone in their group despite a general hubbub and din of two hundred or more people with their Pokémon milling about or lounging on the cushions and watching the screens, discussing strategies, and more.
"At least you have good taste," Elle giggled, "but you aren't wrong… I'd love to have a run with any of those ladies!"
"Careful," Robin warned them, "those three, the red-head, blonde, and blue-nette, are… let me see if I can remember which is which… Violet's the blue, Daisy is the blonde, I think, and Lily the red. They're the older daughters, triplets actually, of the Gym Leader. And those are the three you'll have to face if you go that route. So look, admire if you want, but I'd be careful about what exactly you say out loud."
"Damn," Elle cursed, "Shame. Though… I don't know, they're getting pretty friendly with a few of those other Trainers on the screens. Do they make movies and stuff, like Brigid Stirling?"
"Do they?" a bypassing young man in his low twenties laughed as he stopped and turned toward them, a Murkrow on his shoulder that flapped, annoyed at the sudden stop and turn. "The Sensational Waterflowers of Cerulean City have drawn huge crowds since they started filming at fifteen! Now that they're adults, they've started doing even more, heh… Brigid comes close to rivaling one of those three in sales for adult films. All three together? They blow the rest of the whole League out of the, well, water. Their last film with the three Sisters and an Octillery was… wow. Chef's kiss material, for sure."
"Wow," Elle repeated, "I looked up some of Stirling's sales records- are they really that popular?"
"Why wouldn't they be?" the man laughed, gesturing up at the screens all around them, "Just look at those three! Mind you, their mom's still somethin' else, too. Misty Waterflower… what a fuckin' babe, even at her age. Thirty-eight, and doesn't look a day over twenty-five. I can tell you, I had more than a few wet dreams about her when I was growing up… still do, in fact. Her youngest is a bit of an ugly duckling, but you can see where the rest of them get their looks from, for sure."
"What's she look like?" Robin asked, curious, "I don't remember much about her…"
"Eh, some say she's past her prime," the man replied, "but I think she's just hitting the peak. Yeah, you can start to see some age-lines and so on, but that Nordic dude, runs the Ice Gym, rumor has it they're dating, and he's been good for her. Keeps her young, she said, though she says they're just friends, too. Definitely a MILF, though, heh. That's her, there."
Robin, Elle, and Megumi all wolf-whistled. Alex could only stare, barely aware that there were others present for several seconds. The man's opinion was, he decided, entirely right: Misty Waterflower was gorgeous with a capital goddess. A curvy but lithe, toned figure, brilliant red hair a few shades more orange than Lily's, displayed exceptional amounts of cleavage in her tiny, brilliant yellow bikini, with bright green eyes and a mature, perfectly-proportioned face that was only accentuated by lines that denoted a life lived well and pleasantly.
"She's had four kids?" Megumi asked, astonished.
"Six, actually," the man chuckled, "but the boys- well, men, as they're all adults except the younger girl- aren't Trainers. At least, not active, League-member Trainers. I'm sure they have Pokémon, but they're mostly involved in the day-to-day running of things. Mrs. Misty's manager is supposedly their dad, but I don't know if I believe that, they don't look much like him. They're twins… but he's blonde, like Mr. Snøgrav, just a bit lighter, while her boys have black hair and brown eyes. Don't have his face either, I think. Anyway, one is the Sensational Sister's manager, and the other is the one who runs the Gym's financials, hiring, all that. The Director, I guess they call him. But really, it's Mrs. Misty that's in charge."
"Huh," Alex replied, "Family business, then?"
The man shrugged, "Honestly, most Gyms are these days. It wasn't that way early on, I think, after the League was founded, but… when you have the best Pokémon to breed from, the best money and the best training facilities, it makes sense that you'd be able to build stronger teams. Anyway, I gotta get going. Enjoy the show!"
He walked away with a wave, one of the first people Alex had noticed that didn't give even one of the three beauties traveling with him currently a second glance. "So," Robin asked him with an elbow to the ribs, "Gonna stick your dick in the Mom, or the Daughters?"
"None of them," he scowled, "They aren't my type."
"Then why're you sporting a stiffy?" she asked, looking down pointedly, though her tone was far too innocent.
"Wha- I'm not-"
But, he realized as she reached down to grab him around the shaft, he was. Very, in fact. "Don't worry," she laughed, "no one blames you. I'm wet, I'd bet money Elle is, and if Megu was into chicks she would be, too. Kinta's drooling, so…"
"I am not!"
He hurriedly wiped his mouth and chin, scarlet-faced, which made all the girls laugh. At least it took the heat off of me, Alex thought. Still, he felt it necessary to add, "I wouldn't fuck any of them. They're probably all just riddled with diseases."
"Not with this world's medical tech," Robin reminded him, "Not really such a thing. I mean, in the prostitutes there might be occasional things that crop up, but by and large they can treat anything, and permanently, in just a few days so there's not really any spread. Only real worry would be if you knocked one up. As much as those four are supposed to get around, though, I doubt you'd have to worry about it. I'll fuck one of them if I can. Any of them, really."
"More power to you, then," he muttered, as Robin tightened her grip a little, "Elle would be so disappointed if you get a chance for a four-or-moresome with those three, and you pass it up! Wouldn't you, Elle?"
"Sure as hell would," the blonde laughed, "Even Mommy… rowwwrr! She's not even my type, but damn, that woman's fine! Makes me wonder why this little sister's the ugly duckling, though. Anyway, we should go check out the listings over there, figure out how this works."
"Good point," Alex nodded, "I bet half of the reason for this display is to get people looking at their bodies, not thinking about their plans. Probably works, too."
"I know it does," Megumi giggled quietly, "Like Robin said, I'm not even into women, but I'm thinking about it."
What they found at the last screen was, mostly, a line. A queue in multiple senses of the word: Six harassed-yet-still-sexy-looking workers, two men and four women, wore skimpy swimsuits despite being inside, as they typed away at a bank of computers, each assisting one Trainer after another. Most had a belt full of Pokéballs, some had one or two or three, and a few even had smaller Pokémon out, keeping them company. Alex watched as the man they'd just been talking to got in the back of the long line, which was divided up by another swimsuit-clad docent who seemed to take people's looks and occasional 'accidental' fondling in stride with a tired, yet amused expression.
The screen above and behind them displayed, from what Alex could discern, real-time tracking of win-loss-draw ratios for a half-dozen Trainers, their known Pokémon and Moves for each, and then what Gym Leader team they were expected to face. Not just which of Misty's, but whether they would be challenging the older woman, or her triplets. Below that, a listing of the top-ten trending or highest-grossing videos starring either Misty or her daughters, and the estimated wait time for what looked like the next twenty people to be able to enter a booth. The bottom section, even busier, at a full half of the massive screen, was a rolling queue for battles.
"Holy crap," he muttered, "there's seven hundred people in the queue right now."
"Wow," Megumi groaned, "That's gonna take forever."
"Maybe," Elle shrugged, but pointed up anyway as they approached the end of the line, already fifteen or so people back from the man they'd just talked to, "but it looks like it's moving pretty quick. I mean, I saw that name a minute ago and it was three-twenty, now it's three-oh-seven."
"Hm. Okay… excuse me, ma'am?"
"No, you can't cut in front of me," the well-dressed woman in her thirties answered with a scowl, "Get in back of the line like everyone else. Besides, there's cameras everywhere, and if they see you cut they'll boot you for a month."
"We aren't trying to cut," Robin protested, "we just had a couple questions. What's the usual wait time? I noticed we're about seven hundred back."
"Which is normal on a weekend, yes. On slower weekday mornings it's usually only a couple hundred," the woman sighed, "so just get used to it. It might be… oh, twenty, thirty minutes before you get to the desk and choose your booth or get your Challenge number."
"Challenge number? That's the… lower part of the queue on the screen?" Elle asked.
The woman nodded, sighed again, "First time here, huh? Fine, fine… I tell people how to do the simplest tasks all day at work, but I guess I just have that face… here's the run-down. Yes, you get in line here first. The cutie up there in the pink 'kini directs you to the next available desk clerk. There, you choose whether to get a Booth, or join the Challenge queue. You choose then who you'll be facing too, lately, if you get past the first two Trainers, and which Arena you'll use. The one displayed up there for 'expected' is right sixty-six-point-six-repeating percent of the time, but the other third it's the other set, just to keep things interesting for the crowd. They don't switch it from the Challenger choice so far as I know.
"There's three Arenas: The Deep Sea, the Laketop, and the Grotto. Deep Sea's dark, a bubble in the middle of the Grand Lake, where all you can see is wild fish and Pokémon around you, with just a little exterior light from Snøgrav's Gym since that got remodeled a couple years ago. It's supposed to simulate a battle with a deep-sea Pokémon in their natural habitat, like Mantine, Wailmer, or even Lugia. Pray you don't fight Misty's Lugia… but if you don't have eleven Badges, that's not gonna happen, so you're fine. Uh… Laketop is shallow-water, in a barge that has a false bottom. Looks like it goes down, but it's reinforced glass, too. Trainers swim or are on a platform beneath the surface if they can't swim, and it's between three and twenty feet deep, with moss, algae, plants, coral, that sorta thing… and wild fish too. Even sharks, sometimes, 'cause half the time it's fresh-water and half salt-water. No idea how they switch it, but they do. At least it's only daily, so if you catch one bout you'll know what to expect later in the day. And the Grotto is, well, underneath the Rainbow Cataract, in the grotto behind it. It's where the original Gym was, centuries ago, and why we have the Cascade Badge now. Not the same Gym, of course, that got washed out a long time back, but it's supposed to be close to the original: you Battle under the torrent, or near to it. With me so far?"
Alex and his friends nodded eagerly, the woman seemed to be a wellspring of information, even if she pretended reluctance to share it.
"Alright, then, good: I hate repeating myself. So, regardless of which Arena you choose, there'll be two- three if you have eight or more Badges- Gym Trainers to fight first. It's sequential, no breaks, and you're allowed just one item each while the Gym Trainers can't use any. Both sides have unlimited substitutions, but they are limited in team size to your own, and have roughly the same Battle Rank. It can vary as little as one for a no-Badge team, but as many as twenty plus or minus for eleven Badges. If you get through those consecutive fights with no rest, you get access to a doctor or nurse to help heal your team for sixty minutes… whatever progress is made in that time. If you're fully topped-off, great. If your team got hammered and they're just starting to recover, you might want to withdraw. Neither Misty nor her sexy-ass daughters are… merciful. Not like Snøgrav, the lug, but their whole philosophy, especially Misty, is an all-out-offense is the best defense. The girls use teamwork, too, even if their teams are weaker than hers and you have three Pokémon at a time, too. Ah… there was something else…
"Oh, yeah. Beat them, either Gym Leader Misty, or the Sensational Waterflower Sisters in a three-on-three with a team of six battle, and you get the Cascade Badge. Simple as that, really. Not that it's easy, of course. The Gym Trainers are basically equivalent to a Badge down from where you are. Beating two or three of them in a row and then fighting the Leader's teams isn't easy. I know a lot of people who've tried dozens and dozens of times, and never brought down even one of the Leader's Pokémon after getting hammered again and again in the prelims."
"I… see," Alex said after a moment, "One question, though. The two of us, and those two, have one Badge each, from the Steel and Flying Gyms. But she doesn't have any. If it's 'Badges-minus-one' for the Gym Trainers, is she going to be fighting the same people we are?"
"Ah… maybe? No, I don't think so," the woman said with a shrug, "I mean, they say that's how it works, but… if I had to give my honest opinion, then no. You guys can probably expect to fight someone at about her level, someone who's ready to get a Badge, but doesn't have one yet. She'll be fighting people who aren't quite there yet."
"Even if my BR is just about where theirs is?" Robin asked, "I mean, technically they are, I just have a smaller team."
"Yep, so far as I can tell, anyway," the woman nodded, then stepped forward a bit as the queue was slowly moving, "but that's just what I've noticed. The docents can probably tell you more specifically how it really works, but they're paid to use the League line, so… grains of salt."
"How many times have you Challenged?" Elle asked.
"Me? Hah! I've got two Pokémon, and never got more than one Badge. I'm here for the Booths, kid, like every week. Helps me unwind on my day off."
"Unwind?" Megumi asked, confused.
"How do they helped do that?"
Kinta's question was answered not by the woman, but by Robin, who gasped, "Oooooh! That's what… that's a really good idea, actually. How much do they charge?"
"Wait, what?" Elle asked, looking around the group.
The woman sighed, then turned around to face them and dropped her voice several decibels, "They're for personal time. There's a hole, some videos, and your request from the list on the other side when you get there. I like… well, bigger things. My late husband liked Bellsprout before he died. You request something, human or Pokémon, and a video, and they'll play it for you. Volume controls and play/stop buttons are in there… and there's no mess, usually. At least, not on our side, I've heard the other side of the wall is… regularly sprayed down. And has a floor-length drain. Pay the fee, wait in line, stress-free relief of, well, stress. No strings, no worry, nothing but feeling good for a few hours."
"Sounds… pretty nice, actually," Megumi chuckled a bit nervously. "We can all use a bit of, uh, relief, now- now and then."
"Yeah, well," Alex murmured, blushing as deeply as she was. Elle grinned once more as she looked between them, "Hah, if I hadn't already known you two finally fucked, I would now. You're both so obvious! So how much does it cost?"
The woman shrugged, "Enough I can afford it regularly, but I have to budget a bit. I'm close to retiring, so I'm trying to save up, but still. Of course, I have somewhat more expensive tastes. Cheaper things, like my husband liked, were only about… oh, fifteen for the half-hour? I usually book an hour, and for something bigger, it can run as much as three hundred. Worth it, though, for sure. I'm always doing great for several hours afterward, and have a nice, easy weekend."
"I'm getting one," Robin grinned, "No question."
"Work first," Alex reminded her.
She pouted, but nodded. Her voice was definitely more than a little sad, fake or not, when she muttered, "Work first…"
"So," he asked, "Last question, at least for me, and thanks so much for answering our noob questions. Where do you go to spectate?"
"Spectate? You don't, here. Well, I mean you can get some scenes and highlights if you keep a careful eye on the screens on the walls, but there's no audience for these. At least, not outside of the League officials and Gym Staff."
Alex frowned, "How're we supposed to develop a strategy, then?"
"You've really only got three options," the woman replied, stepping forward again, "Pick your Arena and whether you're going up against Misty or her pretty daughters, and then your overall strategy: Offense, Defense, or Status. Mixing just leaves you vulnerable to their offense. You can beat them at the offense game, using enough Type Advantage. Grass, Electric, or the Sub-Type weaknesses of whatever they're using. But that second one usually requires a very mixed team, and some luck on top of that. You can guarantee that all of the Waterflower's Pokémon will be Water-Type, because it's so common and they're very known for them, but Sub-Typing is anyone's guess, and their stables are huge because there are so many Water-Types. Can't really plan for it. The good news is, most of the time, their picks seem to be pretty random. Stable's so big they can't really do favorites all the time, or their Pokémon would get rusty.
"Alternatively, you're really stuck with outlasting them, which… well, Water's easy enough to counter with the right Types, but there's Sub-Types to consider again. Locking them down with Status moves is most reliable, but you've gotta be fast, and that still takes luck, from what I know. I'm not in the League, and I've never really been one for formal Battles, but I watch them occasionally."
"Well… crap. I guess our scouting's basically done, then," Alex grumbled.
The three women shared a look… then, as one, cheered. "Yay, glory-holes!"
