Chapter 23

Sam eyed the Victreebel before him. It balanced precariously on the bottom of its pear-shaped body which opened at the top in a large, vicious, fanged mouth. From the sides of the bottom of its torso, the color of which reminded Sam of an aging banana, two large, sturdy leaves propped themselves against the ground to stabilize its bellish body. It swayed as the breeze blew around them, but the deceptively powerful leaves kept the pokemon upright. A third leaf, even larger than the two the plant creature used to brace itself and maple-shaped, hung over its top in an attempt to obscure it’s gaping mouth and lure in insect prey.

Miah Vandeberbelt had always been a student of pokemon history, and in his youth he would go on-and-on to Sam about the World Pokemon League of a bygone generation. He would talk of a time before the sponsors and the television contracts and the multi-billion dollar business of it all, when the league was much smaller, and one of the intricacies was that each large city would be home to a specialized trainer who would master one type of pokemon. They would dole out collectible baubles to passer-by trainers who were able to best them and their single type friends in battle. Miah found this all to be very nostalgic and comforting even when Sam was asking how a specialized trainer could possibly defeat a challenger who might be able to counter anything that was thrown at him. Miah would shrug and say “They were really good to get where they were, and they managed to bring out the best in their partners”, as if that really explained away how someone who decided to dedicate her life to training only psychic-type friends could defeat a trainer with a dark-type or two. But Sam would shrug; the whole notion was very romantic to his classmate.

The Victreebel positioned between Sam and Miah reminded the former of the latter’s undying devotion to grass-type pokemon. He caught, raised, bred, and trained grass-types almost exclusively, perhaps in the hopes that he would be united one day with the era of training for which he had such passion. It was, Sam thought, actually very admirable and sincere. Sam also thought it was not particularly wise in that instance given which pokemon he had befriended.

With a squeeze of his Dusk Ball, Vlam emerged between Sam and the Victreebel. With a fluffing of her luxurious tails, she caught sight of the large plant-type between them and crouched low in an attacking posture.

“Hey, don’t get her hurt!”

Sam’s head turned to find his brother sitting on the trunk of the limousine and taking in the start of the battle. The car had pulled over just south of Jubilife City, and Sandgem Town was imminent. Knowing their cross-Sinnoh journey was coming to a close, the trio decided they needed to get the blood flowing in their legs for the home-stretch. While Tommy had been absorbed in the flock of Wingulls overhead that signified the beach was near—Tommy had always been much more enamored of the water than Sam—Miah had reminded Sam of how long it had been since they last had a match. The rest-stop off Highway 202 fortuitously had an unused court for battles, and that was all the prompting Sam needed. Tommy seemed to care little about the battle since he was deciding to sit on the car and squawk at the ‘gulls, but the use of Vlam must have gotten his attention.

Sam stammered and huffed air when he couldn’t initially find the words to respond to his brother. “I know what I’m doing. I’m kinda good at this,” he finally shot back.

“Not with choices like that.”

“Like what? I haven’t even—“

“Solarbeam, Victreebel!”

Sam’s attention was pulled back to the battle at Miah’s command, and he found a large blast of luminous energy shooting from the Victreebel’s mouth. Vlam was caught in the attack and yelped as its force bowled her over. Sam called out to her when the attack dissipated, and she bound back to her feet, seemingly only slightly the worse for wear. She shook her head quickly and let out a huff.

“See? Bad choices,” Sam heard Tommy call out to him.

Miah smiled with just one side of his mouth as he apparently saw an opening to teach Sam something. “Certain Ninetales, like Vlam, radiate an inherent solar energy at all times. It perpetually powers her up and keeps her energized, yeah, but grass-types like it, too.” The smugness in his voice turned Sam’s stomach.

“’Grass-types like it, too’,” Sam mocked in a dopey voice under his breath while bobbing his head slightly back-and-forth. “Okay, great. You got your shot in. Vlam’s still upright. Will your Victreebel be able to say the same? Vlam, use your overheat attack!”

The fox pokemon spread her legs wide to the ground to brace herself and lowered her head. Sam could see her body, most notably in her neck and tails, quiver in tension as she built up the most intense attack of heated energy she could muster. Across the field, Sam grinned to see Victrebel frantically wobble side-to-side. Like the Spiritomb he had battled several days ago, dodging was not its strong suit considering it had no appendages to carry it; unlike the former foe, it had no rock in which to hide from such attacks.

Vlam’s body began releasing steam as she became surrounded by a flamey aura of blue-and-orange. She motioned her head upwards with a jerk and let out a howl as her body erupted with energy channeled forward, directly at Miah’s plant-type. Victreebel jiggled more desperately, almost knocking itself completely over, but its effort was futile. The pokemon let out an eerie, high-pitched shriek in agony that Sam found to be both surprising and disconcerting as the burst engulfed it. The attack seemed to last an eternity as Sam, Tommy, and Miah watched Vlam’s most potent, concentrated attack burn through the Victreebel, which could only cry out in response. When the flames finally subsided, the Vicreebel was no longer upright, as its sturdy leaves had easily given way. The overripe yellow bulb of the plant had charred from the assault, and the battle was clearly over. Miah withdrew his friend to the healing stasis of the pokeball with a scowl.

“Who says vegetarianism is cruelty free?” Sam said.

“That joke’s bad! Don’t use bad jokes in battle! More poor choices.”

Sam mentally cursed Tommy.

The smarminess had apparently been incinerated out of Miah, and he wordlessly summoned his second pokemon from a blue pokeball with a yellow x-pattern. A matted mess of blue vines appeared on the battlefield, and Sam recognized it right away as Miah’s Tangrowth. Unlike the Victreebel, Tangrowth did have legs, but they were tiny little stubs hidden at the bottom of the knot of thick strands that made up his body; he was only slightly more mobile than Miah’s previous friend had been. Sam had always been somewhat curious about the Tangrowth; did he have a body under those vines? From deep within them, there were two bright, bulbous eyes peering out, but Sam genuinely had no idea if they were even attached to anything. The slithering of Tangrowth’s tendrils constantly repositioning reminded Sam of a thousand insidious snakes crawling over a dead meal. It turned his stomach as he recalled Vlam to her Dusk Ball. 

“You got this, Bree,” Sam whispered as he embraced her Nest Ball. The butterfly pokemon came forth with a chipper hum. “Hey, you remember this thing, right?” Sam called to her as her attention was drawn to the Tangrowth. “We used to kick this thing’s butt for fun. You got this.”

“Liukua!” Miah shouted so loudly that it caused both Bree and the Tangrowth to flinch. Sam had long since forgotten the Tangrowth’s name, but hearing it then emboldened him. It harkened to a more innocent time. “Vine whip!”

From Liukua’s right side, three intertwined vines separated from the rest and shot forth. With the whipping motion they made in the air, it was easy to mistake them for an arm. Sam remained nonplussed; he had grown used to, and bored by, Tangrowth’s tactics.

“Fly up, Bree!” He did not even need to say it, as his friend was already climbing several feet in the air; she was clearly used to this from their school days. Liukua’s vines snapped taut as they came short of their target. 

“Oh no your Butterfree is in the air whatever shall I oh wait,” Miah said, the first several words in a monotone, bored voice before the last two erupted with much more force. “Ancient power, Liukua.”

The Tangrowth settled into a calm as it closed its sunken eyes, and the tendrils ceased their perpetual shifting. Bree turned her head to Sam in awaiting his next suggestion; Liukua had never tried anything like this in their previous battles. It had usually been all-but settled once Bree established herself as out of his range. He knew he had to press their advantage. 

“Use your stun spores, Bree.”

“Nope,” Tommy said bluntly in response to Sam’s move. Sam began to ask back what was wrong with that play, but he was drawn back to the battle by a shifting beneath his feet. Cracks were forming in the dirt ground on which they were battling, and even as Bree began shedding the scales from her wings, soccerball-sized rocks were shooting upwards from the ground. The stones varied in color; most were dark gray or black, but some were quite colorful in greens and yellows. He had no time to marvel at them, though, as they blistered past Bree. She had been mostly stationary in the air as she fluttered just enough to stay afloat while she shook the spores free, so when the rocks began charging her, she did not have the momentum needed to swoop away from them. One of the black ones caught her flush in the belly, and she began dropping from the sky. With little control over herself, several other stones battered her on their way up as she fell. A final, small, greenish rock smacked her left wing as the parade of attacks ended, and her gentle, purple body hit the ground hard with a thud. 

Sam bit the inside of his mouth in disgust that he had allowed Bree to take such an assault. She whimpered on the ground and struggled to get back to her tiny feet. Her red, spherical eyes still showed signs of life. Even if she still had any fight in her, the damage had been done to her wings, so staying out of Liukua’s range was no longer an option. Sam mouthed an apology as he recalled her to the pokeball. He pressed her ball to his head and hoped she could hear his thoughts; he’d seen many of his friends defeated in battles over the year, but seeing Bree hurt always hit him the hardest. He thought over and over that he was sorry, hoping to send her a mental apology for each rock that slammed her.

“Do you think you have a tie-breaker left in you?” Sam looked up to acknowledge Miah’s question only to see him palming a third ball in his hand. This one was blue with two red arches looping around the top—a Great Ball—and Sam immediately knew what was coming. He remembered how he had just minutes ago thought of Miah as “almost exclusively” a trainer of grass-type pokemon. This ball was where the “almost” kicked in.

Sam pulled the third pokeball from his pocket and made an unspoken wish for luck. “Let’s go, Chispa.”

Chispa emerged from her ball, proceeded to walk in a circle several times, and then settled down and closed her eyes. Sam heard a noise that he could only classify as a chortle come from Tommy’s direction, followed by the static buzz of Miah’s friend coming out of its Great Ball. 

The pokemon across from Chispa was plump in shape with short, thick arms and legs, but Sam knew that to be deceptive; he was actually one of the faster and nimbler pokemon Sam had ever battled. The creature was a deep, oily purple, so dark Sam wouldn’t blame someone from just considering it to be black. Its face—nefarious red eyes and a huge, plastered-on grin—seemed to take up the pokemon’s whole body. Skadelig, the ghost-type Gengar that was caught years ago near Ecruteak City, was Miah’s non-grass-type friend of choice.

Chispa must have sensed Skadelig’s presence, because momentarily she was pushing herself up from the ground. She seemed more lethargic than Sam had seen her act since he caught her, but it appeared to be just a brief state; when she was on all fours, she shook herself back to normal, causing angry sparks to fly off her coat. She yipped furiously at the Gengar as both trainers seemed to wait on the other. Sam figured Miah must have been playing it cautiously—he’d never seen Chispa in action and could not yet be aware of what she could do. That gave Sam the opening he needed to take the Gengar unaware.

“Chispa, tackle that ghost pokemon!”

Chispa yipped in response and drove forward. When she was almost upon Skadelig, she lunged forward, paws first, into his torso. His body dissipated like smoke as she passed harmlessly through him. Chispa landed on her feet as the Gengar’s body began reforming behind her.

“Damn ghost-types, right?” Miah smirked. “They’re just so hard to pin-down with those kinds of full-on attacks.”

“Yeah, funny that,” Sam said, tapping his temple with his good hand. “She and I just played this game a few weeks back and the same thing happened. Got me to thinking how I’d do it next time.”

As Miah’s face crinkled in confusion, Sam’s electric-type cub pokemon snapped around and opened her mouth. A stream of concentrated electrical energy shot forth, ripping through the Gengar. Chispa’s charge beam attack discorporated Skadelig again, but this time, not of its own choice. The ghost-type shrieked in its tenor as its body ripped apart into tufts of smoke. Its red eyes and Cheshire grin hung in the air for a moment sans body, but then they vanished as well.

Miah frowned. “All right, so you had a plan for one good attack. And it worked, too, so even better. But you know it will take more than that to do much to Skadelig.”

Sam nodded; that was true. Miah did not have a slouch friend in his group, and Skadelig was certainly no exception. Even as Chispa was alertly waiting for her foe to reappear, Sam realized he was taking an inordinate length of time to do so. Miah and his Gengar were preparing something…

“Shadow punch!”

Skadelig was immediately behind Chispa, with no sign he’d been there previously. His short arm jutted out and slammed Chispa in her ribs. She was knocked over by the quick punch and rolled back from it, and by the time she righted herself, she was breathing hard. Sam rushed forward to get closer to her.

“Are you okay, Chis? I’m going to go ahead and end it, all right? I don’t want you getting hurt.” 

His friend turned to him, still panting hard, but staring up at him with her large, yellow pupils. She yipped at him, with as much heart as she could muster through the pain that must have been affecting her ribs, and then she reverted to energy and vanished into her ball to Sam’s surprise.

“I wasn’t sure that was going to be the end of it,” Miah stated across the field, “but that was a great battle, Sam. I—“

Sam glanced up at him. “I didn’t withdraw her. She returned to her ball on her own.”

“What? She returned on—oh, come on. I can’t just have one nice thing!”

Sam wanted to rebut that Miah actually had almost all of the nice things, but his attention was drawn to the side of the battle area. Tommy pushed himself off the trunk of the limo and let out joyous shout. “Nice! I got here just in time to see everything good!” He took several steps closer to the battle field while Miah moved himself back and motioned to Skadelig with his hand. 

“We’re not done yet, buddy. Steel yourself.”

Sam pointed his Friend Ball forward and squeezed it once more. “Come on out, Chispa.”

As always, red energy splashed forth from the conduit on the ball. And, as always, it concentrated on the ground in front of Sam. This time was different, however, as the friend that appeared before him was not the tiny, big-eyed Shinx he’d been caring for; she was similar, yet altogether different. Mostly, she was larger, a good two feet taller on all-fours than she had been previously. The blue, short fur that enveloped her head previously was now restricted to her face, and the rest of her head was covered in a bushier, tufty black mane. Hey sulfur eyes were still large, but more narrowed now at her brow, giving her a somewhat more menacing glare. She had evolved to her next form, a Luxio.

If Miah was impressed, he was not showing it. He ignored the transformation and ordered Skadelig to attempt another shadow punch. Seeing the powerful Gengar charging Chispa, Sam called out his own instruction, telling Chispa to use a biting attack.

Skadelig swung its arm, but Chispa pulled herself out of the way with more agility than she had previously displayed. She snarled as she sunk her face into the Gengar’s ephemeral body. As before, he was unaffected by her physical strike, and merely warped himself around her bite.

“Still a ghost-type, Sam,” Miah noted.

Sam could barely contain his growing smile. This was exactly as he’d planned. “Still an electric-type, Miah. Chispa, discharge your electricity!”

Chispa and Skadelig were lost in the flash of energy as the former’s body gushed lightning. Stray bolts zapped all around them, causing Miah and Sam to both dive to the ground to avoid getting shocked. Almost as quickly as the attack started, however, it was over; Chispa stood tall in her new body. Skadelig lay next to her, ambiguous smoke rising from it that Sam could fully discern neither as electrical burns or its losing control over its physical form. Before he could investigate it further, Miah had withdrawn Skadelig into his ball.

“Not the first time you’ve gotten lucky against me, Stark.”

“I’m sure it won’t be the last.” With that, Sam turned his attention to Chispa. “Hey, we’re going to work on that last attack, okay? You almost beat Skadelig, Miah, and me.” Chispa mewed happily, either not understanding Sam’s words or just not caring, and then pounced up to her hind legs and pressed her paws on his shoulders. She rubbed her cheek forcefully against Sam’s head. “I take it being a Luxio isn’t uncomfortable or anything?” Her only response was to rub her cheek faster against him. 

Tommy, away from the safe confines of the car, knelt down to pet Chispa with his brother. “Sometimes the best strategy is luck, huh?”

“I take what I can get.”

“Did you know she was about to evolve?”

“Chispa?” Sam almost laughed at the notion. “God, no. I really just thought she was going to stay a cub forever. I mean, she’d been getting a lot of exercise with a Monferno before the whole prison thing, but…”

“’Prison thing’. I like that. Like it was a minor inconvenience along the lines of a small headache or a shelf falling down from the wall. You had your prison thing; I had my coma thing. Negligible stuff like that.”

“Yeah, coma thing. That’s really all gone, right?”

“Are you asking me if I’m in a coma right now? Because I think a small amount of investigating will lead you to find that I am, in fact, quite conscious and talking to you.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “but you’re not feeling… relapsey or anything, are you?”
“I don’t feel re—I don’t feel that, no. But I don’t remember feeling particularly lapsey in the first place.”

Sam pulled himself from looking at his brother’s face and put his head down. “I remember that day… there were signs…”

“So are there signs now?”

Sam genuinely thought about it for a moment. His brother’s speech sounded fine. He didn’t appear to be having any problems or shakes in his movement. “I don’t see any.”

“Then I would imagine I am fairly relapse-resistant.”

Sam agreed, but he did not know what else to say. The seconds turned into minutes as they knelt there and continued rewarding Chispa for her hard work. Without Sam’s even noticing, she had plopped herself on the ground for both brothers to rub her chest and belly. She enjoyed both of their full attentions in full bliss as neither seemed to have the words to say anything else to each other. Sam’s mind had begun to wander before he heard Miah’s voice pull him back to the moment.

“Yes, I’m sure she’s just the very best girl that ever was. Can we get back on the road now, please?”

Tommy raised his eyebrows at Sam and stood up first while the latter brother recalled his friend. “Of course we can, sorry about that, Miah. May I say that you sound like you are handling that defeat with aplomb.”

Miah winced and moved his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess I don’t…” His hand moved from his hair to scratch the side of his ear. “I don’t thoroughly enjoy losing, in battles, business, or life. And it happens so infrequently that I don’t get to practice my grace as much as I could.”

Tommy slapped Miah’s shoulder. “Well, at least you’re humble.”

Miah lowered his head and nodded and laughed as if he knew he deserved that. When Sam pulled himself to his feet, he found Miah extending his hand.

“Good match, Stark.”

Sam gripped his palm. “All this time in Sinnoh, I was starting to forget that most battles are for fun and involve, you know, sportsmanship. Good match, Vanderbelt.”

The match had been good, and he meant that more than in a competitive sense; it had allowed the world around Sam to melt away into something more simple. For a few moments, he forgot about having to see Rowan again so soon. He forgot about his injured arm and the aching in his skull and his time in jail. He forgot about Henrique Alonzo and the Phoenix Corporation. For a few minutes on the side of the road in Sinnoh, it was just Sammy trying to beat Miah with Tommy there to watch over him. For a few minutes on the side of the road in Sinnoh, everything was normal again.

And then they loaded themselves into the rent limousine and continued to Sandgem.