Chapter 43: NewHype

Thank you to my new Patrons: Ben Walker, Ed Jones, VisionHorse, Nicholas Roberts, BeaR Nattapat Attachat, James Humphreys, I h

-/-

The morning after the gym battle, which Joey had lost, he sat on the bus to Saffron with a blank look on his face. He was resting his head on the cool glass of the window while lamenting his fate.

Yesterday, he had lost his first major battle. Sure, he'd lost before. He'd even lost a lot. However, he'd never lost when it mattered. Not gym battles.

It wasn't like he couldn't go back and rechallenge the gym at a later point in time either; he was just sulking, essentially.

It reminded him of his last life when he'd failed his Bachelor's Thesis because of a paragraph that had an overall citation error. It had ruined his mood for weeks and had made him very stressed when attempting it again, knowing that if he failed the Thesis a second time, he would have been barred from the program and thus would have wasted years of his life on a degree he didn't get in the end.

Losing the gym battle in Cerulean felt similar in a way. He'd have to repeat it, and that fact alone made him feel stressed. He didn't truly know why because it was different in the way that he could fail a gym battle as many times as he wanted. The only thing he would lose was time and a bit of money.

But despite that, it made him feel similarly bad. Was it maybe because he had more people relying on him in this world? Or maybe because he'd been much more successful overall and had thus set up too high expectations for himself.

It hadn't only been his loss but also the loss of Metapod, Diglett, and Rattata.

Even Ruth and Mia were disappointed, although they tried not to let it show. They'd probably expected more from him.

He should never have come to Cerulean. He'd known that he wasn't ready for the gym battle, although, in the end, it had been the Rockets who'd screwed him over.

Yesterday had been a complete cluster fuck. He still didn't quite know what he thought about it or what he could have done differently.

Should he have pushed Rattata to evolve back then? If he had been just a little bit stronger, he could have perhaps beaten Psyduck in the end. In a similar sense, if they hadn't gotten so unlucky with Metapod swallowing an Everstone all those months ago, they could have won as well with some air superiority and more powder moves.

King's words rang in his hand. He'd said that Metapod did not have enough coverage to truly participate in battles for four badges and up. He'd given him something to help with that, but unfortunately the only real solution was evolution, which currently wasn't on the table at least until next year. Diglett had fought valiantly, but it had been obvious during the fight that he still lacked the raw power and instinct of a trained Pokémon. That made sense, considering that Joey had only been training Diglett for three months now. Back in the beginning, it had taken him half of that to make Rattata barely win a first badge challenge. Taking a Pokémon from nothing to a four-badge challenge was much more difficult.

The only Pokémon that King had something good to say about was Rattata, as expected, considering he had still almost won. If he'd managed to hit the few Bites on the Psyduck, or a Hyper Fang or two, the results would have maybe changed. However, by that point, Rattata had been beaten down by the Wooper and also lacked some variability in his moves. Some ranged options and some relevant buffs, some ways other than Quick Attack and Dig to close the distance. It would have been nice.

King had said that, frankly, Joey had two three-badge Pokémon in his team, Metapod and Diglett. His Rattata meanwhile was damn well nearing fifth badge territory but was outnumbered by his teammates. What Joey needed most of all was time. To train up Diglett and evolve Metapod.

But time was the only thing he didn't have, other than parents, of course. The season was ending in a month, and the youngster tournament was in two weeks.

In the end, rather than blaming his Pokémon, which he hadn't been doing anyway, there was one decisive factor about this whole situation that Joey could have changed.

Joey could have simply never gone to Cerulean. It was the gym that he self-admittedly thought was the least suited for his team to defeat. He'd only gone because he'd gotten so used to the schedule of the Saffron youngsters, where they could take the bus and have their lodgings covered. His mistake had been due to greed and sloth, which had counteracted his philosophy of momentum.

He could have self-organised a trip to Pewter, a gym that Rattata and Diglett were very suited for and that Metapod wouldn't have suffered so much under. He could have self-organised a trip to Fuchsia, after all, Metapod had a great poison resistance, and so in that sense, she stood more of a chance. If he had really wanted to finish the year on four badges, he could have even self-organised the trip to some of the lesser gyms, which still contributed to raising the grade of the trainer and letting them participate in the Indigo Conference. Kanto had several lesser gyms, but his experience with the game and the anime had made him focus exclusively on the eight big gyms, to the detriment of everything else.

He'd been too unwilling to spend his money to organise transportation and accommodation, and too lazy to organise his own gym battles elsewhere.

In the end? It wasn't only he who'd suffered from his bad decisions. It was also his Pokémon who now had to deal with a loss that they hadn't even deserved. There had been several different gym challenges that they could have won at the fourth badge level, and he'd just been too stupid to do it.

He put his hands on his face and ran them down his youthful visage.

This whole trip had quite possibly been the biggest blunder of his youngster career, and while he knew that everyone was permitted to make mistakes, he didn't necessarily enjoy making them himself.

Sabrina had won her fourth badge battle, and from what Joey had heard, she had done so without any particular complications. Her Pokémon had learned some electric-type moves, and that was about it. Mia had also won her second badge because King had allowed Oddish to poison the water, and her Rattata had learned Thunder Shock, which it had used to great effect to barely eke out a victory and to make her a two-badge trainer.

Joey sighed one more time before rapidly shaking his head. A minor setback, which he now knew not to repeat, was not the end of the world. He would have to train for the youngster tournament, and as long as he won, he could recoup his losses.

After that, he could write an application to Professor Oak for a sponsorship involving the ranch and the Pokedex and then continue his way into the history books at a leisurely pace.

Losing once didn't change who he was or where he was going. It was just a blip on the radar, and it would take more than that to destroy his self-confidence.

-/-

Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Joey did not have a particularly long time before his next big event, which was to be the youngster tournament, so he started training immediately after arriving back in Saffron. 

None of his Pokémon had been particularly hurt, except for their pride, so there wasn't a need to impose any specific training restrictions on them.

They had trained more generally, not knowing what sort of gym challenge to expect, but now they could focus more. At least, focus as much as possible in 2 weeks. As for that focus, it would be on anything and everything that could disrupt, harm, or protect oneself from psychic Pokémon.

Even if Sabrina wasn't the only dangerous opponent Joey would face in the tournament, she sure as hell was the only threat that he knew about.

In terms of how important it was to start training as soon as possible, there was only one concession that Joey was willing to make. They arrived in Saffron at noon, but the youngster nevertheless first made the hour-long trek to Constance to train there with the Misdreavus. 

He had apologised to all of his Pokémon for having failed them with his training and with his planning. They had forgiven him easily enough, their bond too strong for a single loss to even dent it. But, there was one more Pokémon that had been negatively affected by his sloth, by his greed.

"I'm sorry, Misdreavus," Joey said gently as he entered the clearing where he'd battled Bruno all those months ago and where he'd been training the playful ghost recently. That very same ghost who was bopping her wispish dark green forehead against the Pokeballs at his belt, of which there were still only three. "We lost the gym battle, so that means I can't catch you quite yet."

It was only after he said those words and saw the sad look on the ghost's expressive face, that he realised how sad it made him that he couldn't catch her yet. He'd been planning on catching her and having more than half his team before he even started his journey. He'd been thinking about how he would use her against Sabrina and trounce her with a type advantage. 

Now, he couldn't.

"But I'll keep coming to Constance to train, to hang out. You're a part of this team, Misdreavus. Not being in a Pokeball doesn't change anything about that," Joey said encouragingly. 

"Mis! Misdreavus!" the Pokémon chimed happily at his encouragement, nuzzling his face with her cold cheek. 

Joey smiled and hugged the Pokémon close to his chest. It was times like these that made being a trainer worth it. It wasn't about the glory and the money. It was about bonding with these incredible creatures and enjoying the fruits of victory and defeat with a team of Pokémon that were more family than friends.

Without knowing it, a few tears dripped down his face and onto the ghost.

It must have been a weird scene from the outside, but some things, like joy, were worth crying over.

And, a niggling little thought at the back of Joey's mind said, there was still something that he could do to make everything work out anyway. It would just take a bit of finesse, a bit of skill and a bit of luck.

And if nothing else, going by the fact that he'd gotten a second chance at life, Joey sure was a lucky bastard.

-/-

It was after Joey was done with his apology to Misdreavus, who he had left with the task of further mastering her Shadow Ball, that he went over to Rattata to start his starter on his training regimen, heh.

The purple rat looked listless and more dispirited than ever before, lying on its back while gazing blankly at the clear, cool autumn sky.

"Come on, get up, you lazy lug," Joey joked as he stubbed the Pokémon with the tip of his toe. "We have work to do."

Rattata, perhaps feeling that some of the disappointment about the events of yesterday had left his trainer's voice scrambled up with an excited chitter. "Ratta!"

"You know we have a tournament coming up, and that you'll be front and centre," Joey reminded. "So I need you to work hard and be an example for others, alright? Can you do that?" he asked.

Upon being offered the heavy mantle of responsibility, Rattata regained the energy that Joey knew and loved by now, stood ramrod straight on his back paws and saluted seriously. "Rattata, tata!"

"At ease, soldier," Joey muttered as he started pacing in front of the rat. "You know you were only a few weeks, maybe a month or two of training away from knocking out that Psyduck yesterday. You're currently the strongest on the team, so what I was thinking was maybe that you take the largest load of battling in the tournament."

Rattata grew jittery in excitement at that prospect. He was the sort of perfect employee who wanted to take the jobs of three people for only a 5% pay raise.

"The thought behind it is that if I send you out first in every battle, then with your aggressive and fast attacks, you can knock out just about anyone. That way, nobody will see Metapod and Diglett in action and thus be able to prepare for them. They'll see them on my trainer page if they bother to check, but the gym battle yesterday wasn't recorded. The last time anyone saw Metapod in action was against Surge three months ago, and nobody has ever seen Diglett. Eyewitness reports are useless in comparison to video footage, so that means we have two unknowns on our team," Joey explained quickly, while Rattata nodded along at every full stop in the paragraph.

"For the effect of this sweep, you'll continue on your basics. Quick Attack, Dig, Detect, Hyper Fang, Rock Smash. The only thing I want to highlight in terms of the moves you've mostly mastered is Swift. I think we can still improve the homing ability and the damage. Put just a bit more energy in the move so we have at least one ranged threat." Joey paused. "That should be the priority about half of the time. The other half," he paused as Rattata suddenly interrupted him, pointing a paw at his jaw and making it crackle with dark-type energy. 

Joey nodded excitedly. "Yes, your Bite. We'll need it for Sabrina, whom we'll likely meet in the finals due to the seeding. You've recently become proficient at it, you can weave in between your other moves, and you can do some serious damage. But… We need to up the damage output. Against Sabrina's teleporting trio of Spoon-lickers, we might only get off one attack, and we'll have to make it count," he said seriously. "If we can increase the damage inflicted by Bite, the residual dark energy, by even 10% in the next two weeks, then that's already a big win. To that effect, use the move on trees, on rocks, or whatever you think progresses it. After today, we'll start a series of training battles against whomever we meet and only use Bite. You'll have to rely on your muscles to get close. Your reflexes to dodge. Your mastery of dark-type energy to end the fight. You up for it?"

There were many Pokémon who would have probably hesitated to ditch basically all of their arsenal for a move that was barely even their fourth-best in dealing damage.

Rattata however…

Well.

He was already mercilessly attacking a large grey rock on the further edges of the clearing with his powerful incisors. 

"I believe in you, Rattata. With your incisors, so used to destroying things with Hyper Fang, and your work ethic. I think you're a Pokémon that can maximise the effect of bite-based moves more than any other," he muttered to himself, before turning around and making his way to Diglett, who was cheerfully waiting his turn, having been positively affected by the energy that Joey and Rattata had been releasing.

-/-

It didn't take long to divide the tasks among Joey's team. After all, they'd trained together long enough that the process worked like a well-oiled machine.

An additional benefit was that in Joey's opinion, his Pokémon were strong enough to beat any youngster quite easily, which allowed him to specialise the current training towards prepping for a very special opponent.

He was sure more than ever before that he and Sabrina would meet in battle sometime during the tournament. The fact that his Pokémon were strong enough to beat other youngsters meant that he could train them specifically in the moves necessary to deal with Psychics. 

For Rattata that had been Bite, for Diglett that was Astonish. A ghost-typed frontal assault that startled the enemy Pokémon.

Diglett had already gotten a good start on the technique before they'd gone to Cerulean, and now it was a race to perfect it in time for the tournament. Thankfully, Diglett seemed as well-suited for ghost-type energy as Rattata was not for dark-type energy, and the progress was fast.

The ground-type Pokémon would undergo the same limiting battles as Rattata, fighting only with his one anti-psychic move for the next two weeks whenever they got involved in a battle.

"Dig!" A cute ghost-energy-infused shout emerged from the clearing as Diglett moved from one line that Joey had drawn in the grass to the next. For the entire training session, Diglett was only allowed to use the move Astonish to move.

Joey nodded in satisfaction before turning to the most afflicted member of his team.

In all honesty, Rattata had bossed the gym battle. Taking out Wooper in its element of a swamp, before giving it his all against Psyduck. It had been awe-inspiring. 

Diglett similarly had given as good as he'd gotten. He'd changed the field and knocked out an evolved Pokémon, mostly on his own. 

Metapod however, had been gimped hard by her matchup and the terrain. Considering that, in addition to this, she was on basically her sixth month of not being able to evolve, with no real end in sight anytime soon. They'd all be lucky if she could evolve by the start of the next season. And then, to top all of that off, there weren't that many moves she could work on. Sure, Iron Defence was new, but Metapod had mastered her other moves of String Shot, Bug Bite, Harden and the various variations involving her ability to produce poison to such a level that there was very little that could still be done.

Thankfully, despite his loss of the gym challenge and the gym battle, Joey had not walked out of Cerulean empty-handed.

Considering the rarity of what he'd received, one could even say that not getting the gym badge was worth it. Maybe...

After all, when he'd won his bet and gotten more money than a youngster reasonably needed to live for a year, he'd scoured every resource that he could to find this move, but it hadn't been available. It hadn't even existed.

If King hadn't called him to his office after the battle to give his rather blunt critique of Joey's team. If Joey hadn't saved the man's daughter from the Rockets. If King hadn't felt sorry that Joey had a Metapod that couldn't evolve.

If all of these events hadn't coalesced, then the man would have never given him the Technical Machine that he had gone to great lengths to acquire from Unova at what had probably been a ridiculous price, considering the region was far away, and not even open to regular trade. Hell, most people didn't even know it existed. After all, if one couldn't go there, one couldn't trade with it; what was the point?

But, well, King had managed to get his hands on the yellow disk Joey was now holding in his hand.

He usually listened to the general advice that one shouldn't give one's Pokémon technical machines too often, and Metapod had just learned Iron Defence not too long ago.

But, for Electro Web, he could make an exception.

-/-

AN: Yes, King in thanks for Joey helping Daisy, feeling sorry for Metapod, and not wanting a talented trainer to fail because of dumb shit like swallowing an everstone, has decided to give Joey a TM that he went to great lengths to acquire for one of his own Pokemon. Now, the question is, can Metapod get it down to a reasonable degree in two weeks?

Next up, the youngsters' tournament, if you want to already read the results and support me, there's always Patreon :P. Also as a free member there as some exclusive general updates and the ability to suggest POV interludes