Roy and Antonia

by Besprizornye

Roy and Antonia are two new pokémon trainers who have found themselves traveling through the Kanto region together. Roy is impulsive and excitable while Antonia prefers to do everything by the book. Their personalities and approaches to pokémon training often clash, but they will need to learn from each other if they want to beat their common rival, Roy's brother Jesse.

25. Chapter 25

After beating Sabrina and claiming the Marsh Badge from her, both Roy and Antonia found themselves walking with an additional spring in their steps. After they had left the gym with AJ, neither of the young trainers could stop smiling as they followed the older boy to the diner where he treated them to dinner. It felt like a weight had been lifted from both of their shoulders, and even the exhausted pokémon they let out of their poké balls were lifted by the happy mood of their trainers.

"That was so awesome, Toni!" Roy told Antonia after a long drink from his strawberry shake. The way that you and Bulbasaur took down Sabrina's kadabra, wow, that was so cool!"

"I know," Antonia said with a smile which nearly matched Roy's for size and brilliance, "I was there, remember?" Antonia's hand was scratching the top of her bulbasaur's head and she looked down to see the blue and green pokémon looking up at her proudly. "Part of me still can't believe that we did it!"

AJ piped up, "Well, you did! You both did! And those shiny new badges are all the proof that you need!" He laughed, but his joy still couldn't compare to Roy and Antonia's. "It's great to see you both so fired up! It's a pretty awesome feeling to get the win by the skin of your teeth. Looking at you two, it almost makes me want to go out there and challenge the gyms again myself!"

"Even though you don't have to?" Antonia asked. She tried to make herself and her question serious, but the happiness dancing in her brown eyes made that difficult.

"Yeah, even so," replied AJ.

It was hard for Roy and Antonia to sit still for long, and they were both eager to get moving once their food was gone, though to where neither of them was entirely sure.

"If I were you, Celadon City would be my next destination," AJ offered when Antonia asked him for his advice. "Lavender Town doesn't have anything to offer except for ghosts and memories, but if you want to keep moving towards the league, the pokémon gym in Celadon City is where you should head next."

"Okay! What are we waiting for?" Roy was halfway up the block before he had to come back to Antonia and AJ and ask again, "Well, what are we waiting for, Toni?"

For a moment it looked as though Antonia's excitement was going to overpower her innate caution, but even though she was bouncing on her heels, Antonia turned her eyes to AJ and asked the older trainer, "Is there anything that we should know about the how to get to Celadon City and the gym leader we'll challenge there?"

AJ scratched his chin and said, "If you wanted to head out to Celadon City right now, you could probably make it there by nightfall if you took one of the buses which go back and forth between that city and this one. But I think your pokémon might appreciate a long rest after their hard work battling today, so why not head out tomorrow morning instead?"

"First thing tomorrow morning!" Roy suggested brightly, and Antonia stopped nodding along with AJ's words to look skeptically at Roy. "I won't sleep in, Toni, I promise!"

"Well, whenever you head out, you should be able to catch a bus. The shuttles run pretty regularly, just ask for a schedule at the pokémon center's front desk," continued AJ, "and you don't have to take it all the way to Celadon City, either. You could get off a little earlier if you wanted to look for any wild pokémon or do any special training before challenging Erika."

Antonia asked, "Erika's the gym leader there, right?"

"That's right, Antonia. She specializes in grass-type pokémon, and uses a lot of techniques which can poison or paralyze your pokémon, even put them to sleep in the middle of a battle." Antonia's mouth turned downwards at the memory of her and Bulbasaur's battle with Greg and his paras outside of Pewter City, but AJ went on, "I think that she could help you and your bulbasaur work on your own strategies, but only if you ask nicely. Erika's, well, she puts a lot of emphasis on doing things the proper way. If you're polite and respectful, you shouldn't have any problems.

Both Antonia and AJ glanced over at Roy, only for him to ask, "What?"

After AJ had finished walking them through everything else he remembered about Erika and her pokémon gym, he bid Roy and Antonia farewell. "I'm sorry, but I've got to run. I want to make it home before it gets too dark, but I know that you two are going to have a great rest of the summer. Keep working hard and I'll see you both at the tournament, all right?" With that, AJ gave first Antonia and then Roy a pair of hearty handshakes.

"Next time we meet, Charmeleon and I are going to want a rematch," Roy said eagerly.

"You've got it, Roy." AJ gave the two younger trainers one last wave and then he started jogging up the street until he was lost in the sea of people who filled Saffron City's streets.

After they had lost sight of AJ, Roy and Antonia turned to one another. "Well, it looks like it's just us again, Toni," Roy said brightly. "Are you okay with going back to the pokémon center and giving them our pokémon to look at?"

Antonia agreed and the two of them found the same pokémon center which they had patronized the first time that they were in Saffron City. The nurse behind the front desk recognized Roy and Antonia and asked in a friendly enough manner, "Are you back to challenge Sabrina again?"

"Actually, we already defeated her and got the Marsh Badge, see?" Antonia said as she held the small yellow emblem out in her palm to show the nurse.

"Both of us!" Roy added with a grin.

"Well, that's very impressive!" the nurse said, the polite interest in her tone morphing into real respect. "Congratulations!"

Roy and Antonia both beamed, but Antonia's face fell first as she remembered to ask, "Would you please take care of our pokémon? They battled very hard to help us win our badges." The nurse smiled sweetly and took the poké balls which Antonia handed her followed by Roy's.

"We'll take a look at your pokémon and help them feel better," the nurse said. "They should be ready for you to pick them up by tomorrow morning after a nice, long rest."

"Thank you," Roy and Antonia chorused together and then the two of them found seats in the lobby and started to make their plans for the following day.

While pouring over a brochure detailing the schedule of the buses traveling to and from Celadon City which the nurse had brought the two trainers upon their request, Antonia remarked, "It would be nice if we could get some training in before we got to Celadon City and the gym. Sabrina was right about my gyarados. It still needs a lot of work before I can trust it in a battle. Maybe we can get off the bus somewhere that there won't be too many people or pokémon around."

Roy looked thoughtful. "On the other hand, Toni, maybe you do want to be around people in case Gyarados runs wild again. We were lucky that AJ was there with his machamp last time."

"I wish that I could talk to it," Antonia lamented with a sigh, "but it's so big and so ferocious now that I can't risk it. I don't even know if Gyarados recognizes me anymore. It hardly listened to me when it was trying to battle with Sabrina's kadabra."

Roy reached across the corner of the coffee table between them to put a hand on Antonia's shoulder. "You'll figure it out, Toni, you're a great trainer." He couldn't help but add with a grin, "You've got the badges to prove it now, too! It sounds like Sabrina and Surge are supposed to be two of the toughest gym leaders and you've beaten them both!"

"So did you, Roy," Antonia surprised herself by saying. "I wonder what Jesse will say when you tell him that."

The mention of Roy's brother made the blonde boy's face darken, but the storm passed without incident. Roy quickly brought up instead the subject of their pokémon teams. "You've got a pretty good mix of pokémon, Toni. Beedrill's pretty fast, Bulbasaur's tougher than he looks, and once your gyarados starts listening to you you'll have a real powerhouse on your team."

Antonia smiled softly and admitted, "That's what I was hoping for when I planned out which pokémon I was going to raise all the way back in Pallet Town, even before I got Bulbasaur."

"That's right! You had a plan right from the start! Not me though," Roy said wistfully, "and now I'm wondering if maybe I should think about adding another pokémon to my team. I mean, it took all three of your pokémon to beat Sabrina, right? I managed it with only two, but I would have felt a lot more confident with another pokémon by my side. What do you think?"

"Well, it would certainly put less pressure on your pokémon if you had more of them," Antonia answered diplomatically. "Plus, you still don't have a pokémon which is well-suited for defeating Misty when you need to challenge her again."

"Good point." Roy frowned. "Maybe something like Surge's voltorb would be good to have? Zach was pretty lucky to catch a pikachu, huh? What about you, Toni? Are there any kind of pokémon that you're looking to add to your team?"

Antonia glanced over at the nurse's station as her thoughts drifted to her pokémon and then she shook her head as she turned back to Roy. "I think that I have a good balance between the pokémon that I already have. Besides, with Gyarados still needing to be trained, I don't know how smart it would be to catch a new wild pokémon."

Roy shrugged and said simply, "That makes sense." The two of them continued to talk vaguely about their plans for getting to Celadon City and beating the gym leader there until Antonia finally excused herself to take a shower and go to sleep. With his pokémon still being taken care of by the pokémon center's staff, Roy was alone in the brightly lit lobby and he could only stand it for a few minutes before he followed Antonia's lead and got himself ready for bed.

The next day, Roy surprised himself by getting up with the rising sun. He didn't feel in the least bit tired, in fact, he felt completely awake. Maybe he was still full of energy from beating Sabrina, he thought to himself, and with that happy thought, Roy threw on a t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jean shorts from his bag and rushed off to the lobby to check on his pokémon. He had expected to find Antonia waiting for him there, and when he found that she wasn't among the few trainers and pokémon who had gotten up as early as he had, Roy asked the nurse for Antonia's pokémon as well.

"It'll be a nice little surprise for her," Roy explained to his charmeleon as he walked side-by-side with the his first pokémon. He had his purple nidoran curled up in the crook of one arm while his other hand held the three poké balls holding Antonia's pokémon. After walking down the hallway and reaching Antonia's room, Roy shifted his hold on Nidoran so that he could knock on the other trainer's door. "Good morning, Toni!" he called out. "It's time to get up! It's a beautiful day to be a pokémon trainer!"

Roy kept up a steady grin even when Antonia opened the door only a fraction of the way and peered her head out from around the thin door. "Oh, ah, good morning, Roy," Antonia said in a strained voice. "It's, um, nice to see you. Are those my pokémon?" Roy handed over Bulbasaur, Beedrill, and Gyarados's poké balls and Antonia said, "Thank you, Roy, I'll be out in just a minute, there's just a, ah, problem I have to take care of first."

"No problem, Toni, I'll be waiting for you right out here," Roy replied. "Don't take too long though, I'm feeling pretty hungry and I bet our pokémon are too!"

Antonia closed the door to her room and Roy leaned against the opposite wall and chatted with Charmeleon and Nidoran until Antonia's voice came through the door, "Um, actually, Roy, do you have, ah, an extra belt that I could borrow?"

"Yeah, what for?"

"Just please get it," Antonia pleaded.

Roy dutifully did as he was told and, after Antonia had seized his belt from him through the smallest possible gap between her door and its frame possible, he waited for her to join him. When Antonia finally emerged from her room, she was wearing a loose-fitting sweatshirt and a pair of cargo shorts secured by the brown belt which Roy had lent her. Antonia's face was almost as red as Charmeleon's scales and she walked briskly towards the pokémon center's cafeteria so that Roy had to hurry to keep up with her. "What was that all about?" he asked when Antonia finally had to stop to open the door to the dining area.

Antonia's cheeks some became an even brighter shade of pink and she pushed her glasses up her nose even though they weren't in any danger of slipping. "It's just that, well, my clothes don't really fit me anymore," she said so quietly that Roy had to strain to hear her. When Roy wisely didn't say anything, Antonia went on in the same hushed tone, "All of the walking and everything seems to have, I mean, it has made me lose some weight."

Now that she mentioned it, Roy could see that Antonia had shed a lot of her baby fat. While her face was still rounded, there was a definition in Antonia's arms and legs that hadn't been there at the start of the summer. When she noticed that Roy was looking at her, Antonia quickly pushed the door open and said, "Come on, let's just get something to eat."

It wasn't until she was sitting down with Roy and his pokémon that Antonia let her own pokémon out of their poké balls. Bulbasaur and Beedrill stretched and greeted the others while Gyarados's poké ball lingered in Antonia's hand briefly before she set it down on the table. "We'll, ah, let Gyarados out to eat later," she said.

"So, what are you going to do about your, uh, clothes?" Roy asked reluctantly. He filled his mouth with food as soon as the last word had left his mouth, as though eating would combat the awkwardness of his question.

"I'll just have to buy some new ones when we get to Celadon City," Antonia said, also failing to meet Roy's eyes. She offered, "Everyone always says that there are supposed to be a lot of stores there, so I should be able to find something that will fit me."

"We better get going soon," Roy said neutrally during a pause from tackling his plate of crêpes drizzled with chocolate sauce. "How are you going to pay for them though?"

Antonia busied herself with refilling Bulbasaur's bowl with kibble as she answered, "Well, my parents gave me some extra money and told me that I should only use it in case of emergencies, and I suppose that this is a bit of an emergency."

Roy was happy to let the subject drop and he even volunteered to help Antonia clean up after her pokémon so that they could get on the road sooner. "The faster we get going, the sooner we'll get there, right?" he said when Antonia thanked him.

They had gotten up before the first bus left for Celadon City and, after asking the nurse on-duty for directions, Roy and Antonia made it to the station in time to catch the second of the day's shuttles. Roy and Antonia explained to the driver that they were traveling trainers and then they found seats in the back of the bus. The bus was more comfortable than the one which they had ridden with AJ, though it was hard for Roy and Antonia to believe that it had only been yesterday that they had made the trek. Their successful battles with Sabrina had eclipsed so much of what had come before and left Roy and Antonia's recollections of even the recent past a little blurry around the edges. Their shared thoughts made Roy and Antonia's smiles rhyme, though not match.

"Do you think you'd ever like to live in Saffron City?" Roy asked as the bus lurched to life and joined the early morning traffic oozing through the busy city streets.

"Maybe," Antonia replied, "there certainly is a lot to do. But I would have to have a good reason for being here, I think. I wouldn't want all of the noise and the activity without something to show for it."

Roy laughed, "Who knows, maybe you can be the gym leader here after Sabrina retires!"

Antonia met Roy's joke with a polite smile. "I don't think that will be for a long time. She's still pretty young, after all. It'll be a while before she's as old as Surge, for example."

Roy agreed with that and then pressed, "But is being a gym leader something you'd be interested in, Toni? I mean, you're pretty good at battling, so I think you'd be able to give a lot of trainers a good challenge."

"Maybe, but I don't think I'm ready to think about that yet. I still want to enjoy this summer, and then I'll probably want to keep challenging myself to do better and better. I think I'd want to be as strong and as confident as AJ before I even thought about becoming a gym leader."

Despite his earlier excitement, the rocking of the bus eventually lulled Roy to sleep. He resolved to close his eyes only for a minute, but when he opened them again, the bus was pulling off of the highway onto the bumpier country road which led to its next stop. "How long was I asleep?" Roy asked Antonia only for the girl to shake her head groggily and wipe away a fleck of drool from the corner of her mouth.

"What? How long was I asleep?" Antonia rubbed her eyes and picked herself up from leaning against Roy's shoulder. "Are we at our stop yet?"

The two of them had decided earlier to get off at the stop just before the first pokémon center that the bus would pass in Celadon City. That would give Antonia a chance to check in with her gyarados and for both trainers and their pokémon to stretch their legs and get some exercise in before trying to explore the city. Roy double-checked with the well-dressed man sitting in front of him and Antonia and then signaled to the driver to stop.

The bus creaked to a halt next to a quaint little shelter at the top of a hill which overlooked some nearby farm fields, and Roy and Antonia stepped off into the humid summer day. "Ugh," Roy said as the heaviness of the air slapped him in the face, then he started coughing as the bus let out a cloud of exhaust and started driving off to its next destination.

After Roy had finished clearing his throat, Antonia said, "Well, are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," croaked Roy. "Let's find a good spot for you to let out your gyarados. We should have our other pokémon ready in case anything goes wrong."

"Good idea," Antonia said and then she led Roy down the hill to a small valley which was filled with tall grass interspersed with bright bursts of wildflowers. Next to a clump of purple flowers which she couldn't name, Antonia took out her three poké balls. First Bulbasaur and then Beedrill emerged in twin flashes of red light. "I'm going to let out Gyarados," Antonia told her two pokémon and was disheartened to see their good cheer evaporate. "I need you both to be ready to restrain it if it looks like Gyarados is going to do anything dangerous. Roy's pokémon will be able to help, too."

Bulbasaur and Beedrill exchanged worried glances before the latter pokémon took to the air, its wings beating rapidly in the cloying humidity. Roy finished giving his own pokémon the same instructions, and between Charmeleon's disdainful confidence and Nidoran's usual skittishness, Antonia counted that, on average, her pair of pokémon were as ready for Gyarados as Roy's were.

With a deep breath and a silent prayer, Antonia lifted Gyarados's poké ball and let out her final pokémon. The resulting explosion of light towered to the sky, but then quickly sank back down to the ground as Gyarados emerged from its poké ball curled up on the ground, a strangely mournful expression on the fierce features of its flat face. When it saw its trainer and the others, Gyarados huffed and pointedly looked away towards the nearest patch of wildflowers which its gigantic form had not flattened.

"Um, hello, Gyarados," Antonia said after looking nervously at Roy. "Ah, how are you feeling today?"

Gyarados's response was to let out a sigh which blew its hot breath across the valley hard enough to blow Antonia's hair back.

"Are you feeling sad about the battle yesterday?"

As foolish as she felt talking to her gigantic pokémon like it was a depressed house pet, Antonia still felt like she was making progress when Gyarados lifted its heavy head and bobbed it up and down twice before settling its jaw back on the ground again.

"You did a good job," Antonia said mechanically. She glanced over at Roy again and saw that he was gesturing for her to get closer to her pokémon. "Ah, is it okay if I, um, pat your head?" Antonia took a step towards her gyarados only to freeze when the pokémon's head started to advance towards her. Bulbasaur took a step forward in preparation for protecting his trainer, but the smaller pokémon lowered his vines when he saw Antonia gingerly put her hand on Gyarados's forehead and awkwardly pet the ferocious pokémon. "You did a good job," repeated Antonia, then she added, "It was a hard battle, we almost lost, but in the end Bulbasaur was able to beat Sabrina's kadabra." Gyarados snorted indignantly enough that Antonia hastened to reassure it, "You were a big help. And, ah, after we do some training, you can be an even bigger help, okay?"

Gyarados seemed to think over Antonia's words, but then its tail started to beat against the ground with greater and greater speed and the pokémon opened its toothy maw in what Antonia hoped was supposed to be a smile.

"Oh, good," Antonia said stiffly as she quickly pulled her hand back from her gyarados's open mouth. "I bet you're hungry, too."

That made Gyarados's tail beat even more violently against the ground, hard enough that Roy, Antonia, and the other pokémon could feel the ground shaking beneath them.

"Well, I brought some extra food from the pokémon center," Antonia began as she pulled her backpack off and started to open it. "It isn't very much, but maybe it will keep you going until we get to a pokémon center in Celadon City, is that okay?"

As soon as Antonia brought out the package of food which she had asked the pokémon center's nurses to prepare for her, Gyarados reared up to its full height and roared. As merry as the towering pokémon may have felt, its bellow still made the others quake and, out of the corner of his eye, Roy saw wild pokémon scattering across the meadow.

Some of them were oddish with tufts of green leaves which resembled hair or shambling bellsprout with their distinctive yellow bulb-like heads, but what caught Roy's attention was the flash of bright orange fur which looked especially luxurious against such a natural backdrop. "Hey, Nidoran!" Roy said to the quivering pokémon in his arms. "How about we go catch ourselves a new pokémon, huh?" When his nidoran proved unable to do much more than stare fearfully up at where Antonia was nervously feeding her gyarados, Roy asked his other pokémon, "Charmeleon? Do you see that orange pokémon over there? It's a vulpix! Do you think you could catch it?"

Charmeleon met his trainer's question with a contemptuous snort, but behind the resulting cloud of steam, Roy's first pokémon looked interested. Without waiting for further instructions, Charmeleon set off at a loping run towards the wild pokémon which Roy had indicated, dropping onto all four of his limbs to achieve the speed he needed to close the gap between himself and his target.

The wild vulpix glanced over its six curled tails once to see Charmeleon gaining on it, and then it nimbly shifted gears and continued its flight in a different direction, perpendicular to its original course. But Charmeleon's training with Nidoran had given him plenty of experience with catching a small and agile pokémon. When the vulpix shifted course, Charmeleon matched it with only slightly more difficulty.

"We should try to weaken it in order to make it easier to catch!" Roy hollered across the field of flowers, and a moment later Charmeleon had readied and launched a weak fireball at his quarry.

To both Roy and Charmeleon's surprise, the attack made the vulpix stop running at once, even though Charmeleon's fireball had soared harmlessly over its head. The wild pokémon turned to face Charmeleon as quickly as it had executed any of its earlier turns and its black eyes narrowed. Then, with a theatrical sweep of its neck, the vulpix released a spiral of fire which advanced on Charmeleon.

The vulpix made no move to escape, preferring to watch its vortex of flame crash into Charmeleon's charging body. Its admiration of its handiwork turned into surprise when Charmeleon crashed through the fiery spiral and tackled the wild vulpix to the ground. It struggled mightily against its larger opponent, but the vulpix's nips and scratches were ineffectual against Charmeleon's scales, and it was soon firmly in Charmeleon's clutches, with one of the larger pokémon's hands clamped over his prisoner's mouth to prevent it from unleashing any more attacks.

"Good work, Charmeleon!" Roy cheered. After he had finished stamping out the few small fires which the wild pokémon had started, Roy walked up to where the two pokémon were entangled and fished a poké ball from the bottom of his bag. The surface of the red and white sphere was marred by a few dents and some chipped paint from having been knocked about in Roy's backpack for the bulk of his pokémon journey, but it worked as well as any other when Roy depressed the button in its center. The wild vulpix was sucked inside of the poké ball in a flash of red light and did not break out, though the ball rattled vigorously in Roy's hand.

"Hey, Antonia! Check it out! I caught a new pokémon!"

The frown on Antonia's face, which was already pronounced from the effort of trying to feed her ravenous gyarados without losing any of her fingers, became tighter still and she said, "That's great, Roy," without much enthusiasm. "But don't you already have a fire pokémon?"

"What's your deal?" Roy asked. "You said that you didn't want to catch anything around here, didn't you?"

"Yeah," Antonia agreed reluctantly, "and, besides, I already have my hands full." Then she shuddered as Gyarados's pink tongue dragged over her palm in search of any last crumbs of the food which she had fed it. "Let's just get to that pokémon center as quickly as possible."