Chương 26: Chapter 21

True to his word, Drake picked me up in the morning, arriving atop Cruiser's back much like he had the day before. It was early, but not early enough to catch my parents before they were gone, both off to work. Drake himself looked surprisingly tired, but I forbade comment. I probably didn't seem all that awake myself. My knights' anxiety wasn't completely resolved, apparently, since I woke up with four of the six of them atop my bed.

Well, mostly atop me, actually, which explained why I felt like I had spent most of the night breathing through a tube. At least I'd gotten them to take that bath last evening. Mana looked well-rested, at least, apparently finding her new habitat comfortable. True to what I'd learned from Chansey's interview with my new partner, the full strips of kelp I could buy from the Pokémon supply store served her well as both bed and breakfast.

During the night, she nudged the aquatic plants into a comfy nest that she then spent most of the morning nibbling away at, eventually consuming each of the fronds wholesale, and then floating contentedly in her emptied tank. Neither were out now. Cruiser's saddle wasn't the greatest place for them at the best of times, and our current flight was surprisingly turbulent. We were traveling much further than we had yesterday, but over land, instead of out to sea.

Before I'd lost sight of the ground, I'd noticed us heading east, but we were above the clouds, now, and I couldn't track our progress any longer. The flight was quiet. Well, quiet between Drake and I. The air whipping by us was actually super loud at the speeds we were going, which would have stifled any attempts at conversation anyway. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever get bored of flying of all things, but once the initial rush was over, things felt surprisingly mundane. Even boring.

So when the huge Salamence finally started slowing down, adjusting speed to arrive safely at our apparent destination, I felt relief bubbling in my chest, intercut with a layer of tension that hadn't gone away since yesterday. I hadn't noticed us descending, so my curiosity was piqued, and the sight meeting my eyes didn't disappoint.

Instead of going down, Cruiser was actually gaining altitude, climbing further up the side of an imposing mountain, and after a few moments, we crested a massive platform shorn from the craggy peak. The outer ring of the structure was bare stone, carved and rent from the mountain itself, and inset within the middle was a metal structure resembling an arena. It too was clearly man, or Pokémon, made, covered with intricate details and carvings cast by an expert hand.

I saw the dancing forms of dragons of all kinds, prancing across the plate in relief, somehow mostly intact in spite of their apparent age. Layers of paint flecked off the engravings, and it had clearly been some time since someone had last attended the structure with a brush, but what pigments remained were vibrant and expressive, evidence of a skilled hand working with impassioned fervor.

Contrary to my expectation, instead of landing on the platform, Cruiser let loose an imperious roar, the volume of which saw me desperately clutching my hands over my ears. The titanic sound echoed out across the mountain below us, and out into nearby peaks as well, barely visible through the persistent clouds. All was silent for a few moments, before a returning roar called back from somewhere indeterminate.

The noises were too big, too loud for me to grasp any intent, but Cruiser seemed satisfied with the answer, pumping his wings and finally descending to land on the mountaintop platform. Drake leapt from his partner's back, and I followed more slowly, dropping uncertainty to the metallic ground with an uneven clang.

"What is this place?" I asked Drake, trying to keep the trepidation out of my tone. Before he could answer, Cruiser ripped out another deafening roar, and then pumped his wings. Drake had just a second to rip a saddlebag free from the intimidating Salamence before the Dragon-type used his immense limbs to leap up into the air. A crimson blur peeled away from the mountainside, quickly leaving my field of view. Apparently, Cruiser was intent on taking care of some business all his own.

When my ears stopped ringing, the first sound I heard was Drake chuckling.

"Welcome to the Dragon's Nest," the former champion told me with a grin.

"The Dragon's Nest?" I said, uncertainly.

"I've never heard of this place." My mentor shrugged.

"Most people haven't. I think a few dojos have deals with the dragon populations here, and high-ups in the league definitely know about it, but this isn't exactly a public place." I had the worrying feeling that I was about to be caught in another one of Drake's 'good' ideas.

"So why do you know about it," I asked the foreign sailor, "and are we allowed to be here?"

"I sought this place out when I was looking for a way to stick things to those damn Draconids back home. The locals were more than willing to help me out, and they told me to come back whenever."

"Locals?" I looked out over the intimidating vista of mountainous peaks rising up out of the clouds like unearthly titans, "Who lives up here?" My question was promptly answered, by a panoply of echoing roars, tearing through the air around the small range, far outstripping the single calls made by Cruiser and whatever had answered him earlier. Drake grinned, and answered, quite unnecessarily, "Dragons, of course." - I had some consolation, that my knights and Mana seemed equally disquieted by this strange place.

Cruiser and the rest of Drake's partners obviously didn't share our reticence, scattering throughout the peaks on eager wings, leaving just his enormous Kingdra and diminutive Axew with us, though even the latter was busy exploring the outer edges of our current platform.

"Marin, you're gonna help the little fish here with their water manipulation." Drake indicated poor little Mana, who was quivering in my arms.

"Cutter, listen to the Falinks here while they run you through their warmups. It should give you a good idea what sort of training you're gonna be getting pretty soon." The little Axew puffed up, and trundled over to my knights, who led him over to one side of the arena so they could get started on their normal routine.

To Mana, I whispered gentle encouragements until I saw her swell up with determination, after which I surrendered my piscine partner to Marin's expert care, inserting the diminutive fish into a ball of water conjured by the imperious Dragon-type. They too floated off to one corner of the arena, my new partner's face scrunched up in concentration as she tried to manipulate the water surrounding her at Marin's direction. That just left Drake and I.

The old sailor stared at me for a few moments, his coat fluttering in stiff winds whipping around the peak, before finally speaking.

"Alright, I told you I wouldn't give you any answers, but I will ask questions. First up, how do Pokémon battle?" That question was broad. Extremely broad. I thought about it, and then a bit more. And the more I thought, the broader it seemed. I peeked at Drake, but the old sailor didn't seem like he was in any hurry, so I snagged a notebook and pen out of my bag and wrote my way through a few different answers.

My activity got a raised eyebrow from Drake, but nothing more, so I worked and reworked what I had written, eventually synthesizing the words into something I felt comfortable presenting.

"Pokémon battle by depleting their opponents syn, or aura, until the other combatant is incapacitated, unconscious, or unwilling to fight any longer. They exhaust their opponent using a combination of techniques called moves and abilities inherent to their species," I read the answer verbatim from what I'd written in my notebook, reciting it out, and then peering up, checking Drake's expression. His mein was stony, showing neither approval nor derision.

"Interesting. How about we test your answer out?" - Twenty minutes later, my knights and I were finished warming up, and Drake had returned, accompanied by a Pokémon I'd never seen before. It inched along the ground, leaving a slimy trail in its wake, and its green eyes cast all about our little platform with innocent curiosity. The Pokémon's purple body looked supple and flexible, and it had two adorable little antennae atop its head that swiveled to track the various goings-ons around us.

"Who's your new friend?" I called out to my mentor, as he took his place across from my knights and I.

"This is Sliggoo, and she's agreed to help us with some training." The strange dragon (I presumed) oozed her way in front of Drake, settling down in front of him with a squelch.

"This will be a one on one training battle between Falinks and Sliggoo," my mentor announced, "are you ready?" I nodded, and my knights cheered from their corner of the battlefield.

"Cutter, count us off," Drake directed. The little dragon seemed a bit put-out that he wasn't battling, but he followed Drake's orders faithfully all the same, holding up his little three-clawed hands, and putting them down one at at time, until he hit zero with an accompanying roar. Drake and I sprung into action at the same time, directing our partners.

"Bulk Up!"

"Rain Dance!" My knights began gathering energy, fortifying themselves in both attack and defense, while the strange purple Dragon-type gyrated in a faintly nauseating pirouette. A small stormcloud formed over the battlefield, and fat, thick droplets began washing over the metal ground of the arena.

I didn't know a ton about weather moves, they didn't get used often in Ferrum Battles since small arena sizes largely mitigated their effects, but I did at least know that Rain Dance would power up Water-type moves and weaken Fire attacks. Obviously.

"Headbutt! Stick close!" I called, and my knights faithfully charged forwards. We couldn't let Drake and Sliggoo just bombard us from range, or we were completely screwed.

"Acid Armor," Drake retorted calmly from across the field. The Sliggoo looked back at him, apparently a bit confused, but one peek at his expression had the wild Pokémon complying, glowing with purple energy as she shored up her defenses. My knights crashed into the squishy Dragon-type, one after another in a train of good hits, but they didn't seem to do much damage, bouncing off of her springy form.

"Keep up the pressure!" I shouted, "Rock Smash!" My knights surrounded her, ramming their shields into her in an overwhelming stampede, but Drake didn't order anything, content to let the wild Pokémon continue shoring up her defenses with continued uses of Acid Armor.

"What's your game?" I whispered to myself, watching the ensuing battle. Sliggoo was obviously growing weary of the continued hits, and my knights were still at full strength. What was Drake's plan here? I got my answer a moment later.

"Water Pulse, right below you!" Drake shouted. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Protect!" I ordered, before I really heard him finish the order. Instead of firing off a bulb of water at my encircling knights, like I expected, the Sliggoo instead directed the cascade of fluid down into the arena, causing the accumulated water from Rain Dance to rush outwards in a swelling wave.

I hadn't noticed it, but the ongoing weather move had slowly flooded the metal arena, adding maybe ten centimeters of water that were just starting to spill over the edges of where the plate was set into the stony ground. In spite of their Protect, my knights were buffeted back by the onrushing water, all of them split and shoved to the edges of the arena.

"Regroup!" I directed the little Fighting-types unnecessarily, they were already wading through the water to try to get to each other, but the fluid was up past their legs by now, and they could barely trek through the flooded battlefield. With a sinking heart, I watched as each of them was picked off, one after the other, by pinpoint Water Guns.

We fought back as best we could, with Protects and desperate charges and even with one clever moment where Lance hurled Percy at the Sliggoo, sending him careening across the flooded arena. The wily Dragon-type shot down the airborne Falinks just as easily as the rest of his grounded brothers, however, leaving us without recourse to win the fight. My poor knights were knocked out, one after another, without really getting a chance to fight back. -"So, has your answer changed?"

Drake and I were standing in the center of the freshly cleared battlefield, which was now gleaming underneath the midday sun after its impromptu bath. A dismissive flick of Marin's snout had seen the enormous sum of water promptly scattered, allowing us to see the carving beneath once more. The casual display of power had caused stars to form in Sliggoo's eyes, and she was now listening along with Mana to the more experienced Dragon-type's lecture on the finer points of water manipulation.

My knights were recovering, treated with a revive and now nursing their bruised ego as we all listened to Drake. They looked fine, if a bit unhappy. I was unhappy too. The battle hadn't felt… fair, for lack of a better word. But I suppose that was the lesson here. Because it was fair, it was just conducted along an axis I had never encountered before.

I read through my new answer in my notebook one more time, before finally offering, "Pokémon battle by rendering their opponents incapable or unwilling to fight any longer. This can be accomplished through moves, abilities, use of the surrounding environment, or other means," I looked up, and this time, Drake's face contained something maybe approaching approval.

"Better," he intoned, "if a little unspecific, but two Pokémon going head to head is the simplest form a battle can take. Now tell me, how do trainers battle?" That was also a broad question. Potentially broader than his previous, if I was understanding the implications right. Once again, I took my time, considering all corners of the question, and working and reworking my response a few times in my notebook.

Eventually, I had something that felt like a starting point, but I didn't have any illusions about how satisfactory my response would be.

"Trainers battle by directing their Pokémon partners, coordinating their moves and positioning to outmaneuver their opponents." The dragon master's eyes were evaluating.

"Alright. So, as a trainer, what do you do when your Pokémon encounters an opponent they can't beat?" The question short-circuited my brain for a moment. I wanted to say that you could beat any foe if you fought hard and smart enough, but my mind flashed back to yesterday, to the infinite grasping tendrils of the Dhelmise.

"You run away," I replied, resolutely. Drake snorted, but before my hackles could rise, he held up a hand.

"That's a good answer, my fault for not clarifying the parameters. What do you do when you're battling another trainer, and they release a Pokémon that puts your partner in an unfavorable matchup?" I settled back and thought through a few responses. Tell your partner to fight defensively? No, that would just make you lose slowly. Tell them to go all out? But if it's an unfavorable matchup, you'll just lose anyway. Outplay your foe? There's no way to guarantee that.

"Washi, wash!" Excited cheering broke me out of my reverie, and I turned to look as my new partner excitedly raised a little ball of water up into the air, painstakingly moving it back and forth under Marin's steely gaze. Her whole body twisted with the effort, but the progress still had her alight. My eyes widened with realization. My new partner. I had multiple Pokémon now. Janine had told me that in other regions, people kept teams of up to six. I turned back to Drake.

"You switch in a Pokémon that has a favorable matchup against your opponent's partner?" That answer finally earned me a grin.

"Right you are. Most places, that's the most basic of the basics, but switching isn't easy. Especially depending on the type of battle you're in."

"What do you mean?" I asked him to clarify.

"It seems straightforward. If you're in a bad position, you switch out your Pokémon."

"Right," Drake nodded,"which then puts your opponent in a position where they have to switch Pokémon." Realization dawned.

"So both sides would just keep switching until they both think they have the advantage.

"I felt my brow furrow.

"But wait, if both sides just keep switching, how does a battle ever end?"

"Like I said, it depends," my mentor held up a pair of fingers.

"There are two ways most regions handle switches. The first is called bounded switching. Most regions nowadays use these rules, where each trainer is afforded a set number of switches at the beginning of the battle. After that, to switch out is to retire your current Pokémon. When you want to change partners, you call for a switch, and the battle effectively goes on hold while you recover and release your partners.

Your opponent can do some minor repositioning, but no moves are allowed until both Pokémon are fully formed on the field and the match resumes. You've got a certain amount of time to conduct your switch, which varies by region. It's five seconds in Hoenn, but I know in Unova it's fifteen, as an example." I nodded raptly, taking quick, Torchic-scratch notes as the dragon master spoke.

I could go back and put the information down in a neater hand later, but for now I had to keep up with the speed of Drake's instruction. The dragon master ticked down one finger, and then continued.

"The second method is both more and less complicated, and you probably won't run into it much. It's called boundless switching, where there's no limit on the number of times you can switch Pokémon in a match. Boundless switching matches are… hard. There's no restrictions on when you can use moves, nor any limits on how long you can go between recovery and release, other than the judge's discretion.

There's also no pause, so you have to target and recover your partner in the middle of pitched battle, and then try to find somewhere safe to release whoever you're switching in. Frankly, it's difficult. It puts a lot of stress on the trainer's reflexes and hand-eye coordination. If you're not talented in both of those characteristics, you're going to struggle in a match with boundless switching." It sounded complex, but like Drake said, it probably wasn't something I would need to worry about.

"So we're going to focus on bounded switching then?"

"We're not really going to focus on either," Drake replied with a quirked eyebrow.

"You've only got two partners. Not exactly a ton of strategic decisions you can make under those constraints."

"Oh," now it made sense why Drake was deigning to explain this instead of using a match as an example. It didn't feel great, but it made sense.

"Ok, got it."

"That said, there is something you can do," I looked up, surprised by the development, to see Drake grinning at me.

"It won't be easy, though."

"I'll do it," I told him, as resolutely as I could.

"Whatever it is."

"Good answer." He nodded, before rooting around in the saddlebag he'd saved from Cruiser's hasty departure. He came back up with a thick sheaf of papers, stuffed into a bursting cardstock folder.

"I got Wisteria to compile these for me. It's a set of switching questions from the Ace Trainer exam. Consider it homework, for when we're done for the day." He handed the stack over to me, which I took reverently.

"Get it back to me on the day before I leave, and we'll go over it, yeah?" I nodded eagerly, already thumbing through the pages to skim some of the questions.

"Don't get too excited," I heard Drake snort, "we've still got plenty to do here. Tuck that away and get your head back in the game."

"Right, sorry," I secreted the folder away into my satchel.

"So now what?"

"Now, we talk about the three pillars."

"The what?" I asked, confused.

"The three pillars. The three things that are key to a battle. Anything and everything you have your partners do should be bent towards one of them." I nodded, eager for this pearl of wisdom from my mentor.

"So what are they?" I asked with baited breath.

"Good question," Drake's smug response. I waited a few moments, before realizing with a rush of irritation that I wasn't going to get anything else. Right, no answers, only questions. So, what were the key points to a battle? The first seemed obvious.

"Your opponent's Pokémon?" I guessed. After all, rendering them incapable of battling was how you won.

"That's the first," Drake confirmed with a nod.

"Though in most cases, you would say your opponent's team. As in, all of their Pokémon."

"Ok," I accepted the wisdom with a nod.

"The next would be your own team then, right?" Your partners were a key part of the battle for sure, and strengthening them could be just as important as weakening your opponent.

"That's two," he agreed. I had two, and the third was equally clear after just a moment of thinking. Really, it was a retread of what he'd worked to teach me before.

"The third would be the environment, since you can adjust it to advantage your own partners or weaken your opponents'."

"Good, things don't just go in one ear and out the other." Drake nodded.

"As you've surmised, the three pillars are your partners, your opponent's, and the battlefield. Like I said, every action you take should meaningfully contribute to one of those ends. Strengthening your team, weakening your opponent's, or changing the environment to better suit your needs." I scribbled more notes, even as I nodded along.

"It sounds obvious in theory, but in the heat of battle, nothing is simple. The impetus will be to fall back on habits and training, and to some extent, you need that. Having the basics down lowers the cognitive load you're under while battling, and frees you up to focus not on the tactics of the fight, but rather on the strategy you plan to use to win." The old sailor held up a warning hand.

"But, you still have to think. You can't rely on habits and training alone to see you through your battles because every one of them will be different." It took me a few more moments after Drake finished to get the rest of my notes put to page, but my mentor wasn't finished yet, and I hurried to keep up with the deluge of information.

"Crafting a strategy is of course the hardest part, and something you'll need to work out for yourself. Some people try to plot things out far in advance, accounting for as many variables as they can and limiting how much improvisation they need to do. Others build their plans on the fly, adjusting to the emergent situation in each individual battle. And of course, those are two ends of a spectrum. Most battlers work somewhere in between the extremes."

Drake paused long enough to let me finish penning in my notes, before finishing up.

"Alright, now put those away. That's enough theory for one day. Let's do some practical exercises." - Turns out, none of Drake's advice was as simple as it sounded. We spent the next six hours going between exercises, general training, and more focused practice battles, where the former champion set up situations where I needed to find what he called 'win conditions.' Holes in his strategy that I needed to exploit. The combatants changed.

I commanded my knights, Cutter, and even some wild Pokémon that Drake recruited. No Mana though, who was still in intensive training with Marin. The panoply of Dragon-types that lived amongst the peaks was sort of staggering, and as the day wore on, many of them showed up, at least for a bit. I wasn't sure why at first, but a surprisingly conversational Noivern got the gist across to me when we had all broken for lunch. Something about the old sailor and his team was, in a way, magnetic for these Pokémon.

Their strength and skill called to the wild dragons, like a beacon. Sure enough, whenever one of Drake's larger partners would return for a brief stint, they'd be breathing hard with exertion, even as their eyes were alight with exaltation. Apparently, they were busy fending off challengers, fighting a gauntlet of powerful Dragon-types that were, in turn, leaving our little training session alone. In the end, if you counted the first match with Sliggoo, we fought eight 'mock' battles throughout the day.

I only ended up actually winning one of them, when I commanded a wild Swablu against Cutter, but in our post mortems, I was usually able to work out the strategy Drake had been nudging me towards. Like my mentor had warned, crafting strategies was hard, and the difficulty was exacerbated when you didn't know the capabilities of the combatants involved.

Knowledge was power in any battle, Ferrum included, but I was starting to see just how much more of a difference it made in standard fights, where each participant could have up to six partners, and an uncountable number of moves available to them. I was going to need to do a lot of research. I was excited for that, and for getting through some of the practice problems he'd given me.

According to the old sailor, we'd be spending most of the rest of the week at the Dragon's nest, conducting similar exercises, which meant I could start to familiarize myself with the denizens we'd met, and their particular skill sets. It was as good a place to start as any, after all. Unfortunately, all my plans for an evening spent studying were thrown into disarray by the first thing I heard from the battle news channel after turning on the television for some background noise.

'Prominent Rookie injured in Junior League Tournament. Madaka scion in intensive care.' Madaka. Alyssa. I called Mom.