Chương 292: Chapter 248

"Sorry again that you can't use your Tangrowth to walk here," Alex apologized with an awkward smile.

"He's way too big." Alex was almost done showing me around now. The building was mostly full of empty offices because no one had been called in due to the UPAN's current inactivity. Since the place was old, there was no elevator and I hadn't gone up the stairs, so I technically hadn't seen most of the place, but according to Alex, it would just be more of the same.

In a way, it was kind of underwhelming, and not at all what I'd pictured when I first heard about this organization, but Alex swore that it was temporary. It was easy to tell that he didn't want to let me go.

"No worries. I'll deal," I answered with a tired huff. I followed him down a hall, although it was clear he was slowing himself down so I wouldn't fall behind.

"Ms. Webb seemed really excited to have you here," he continued. Clearly, he was trying not to let this fall into awkward silence, and I was happy to bite." That's her excited self?" I asked.

"I thought she was going to yell at me."

"Yup. She doesn't smile very often. The last time I saw her do that was her birthday two months ago, but even that didn't last very long. Blink, and you'd miss it," Alex said.

"It's probably because you're a big deal." I nodded absent-mindedly.

"So you're a trainer?"

"Technically. I don't battle, though. Not because I oppose it or anything!" He quickly stammered.

"It's just not for me. I tried it out when I was fifteen for a few months, but it never went anywhere. I… well, at least it made me come here. Been in the UPAN ever since. I volunteered at first, but now I work here." He opened a door and gestured at me to go inside. The door looked more like a living room than anything else. Bookshelves hugged the walls, but they had very few books and a lot of decorations like artwork, ceramic vases, unlit candles, and plants. It did smell really good in here, though.

Everywhere else else smelled of wood and freshly printed paper.

"This is a meeting room. Sit down so you can rest, you look pale. I wanted to show you one last thing first, but it can wait." I'd put on a brave face the entire time, and that didn't change, but I did feel grateful he had noticed I was tired. I hadn't wanted to say anything because not being able to walk for long pissed me off, but a relieved sigh escaped from my mouth as soon as I collapsed on the couch. I let my crutches fall to the ground and splayed out on the sofa like a slob.

"Damn. I guess I pushed you, my bad," he said, scratching his head.

"Do you want anything? I'm sure we have something in one of our medicine cabinets upstairs… maybe water?" Arceus, I'm pathetic, I bit my lip to contain a groan.

"I'm okay," I sighed.

"Thanks for asking. So you said that your time as a trainer made you join the UPAN?" Alex looked startled for an instant as if he hadn't expected me to ask a question while I'd been hurting. Unfortunately, I needed a distraction from my throbbing ankle. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

"Yeah. I'm actually from Sunyshore. I traveled with two other people originally, and they were… well, they were pretty awful to their Pokemon." My breath trembled. He kept going.

"They'd treat them fine almost all of the time. More than fine, really. But when they lost in a battle? They'd put all the blame on their Pokemon and spew the vilest words at them. Worthless, trash, useless… and worse insults that I don't really feel like repeating. We all got stuck at the second badge, and needless to say, after a while I just separated myself from them. I couldn't — I can't be friends with people like that," he paused and frowned.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I breathed.

"Yeah, I am."

"So then, I tried for another month or so until I got tired of the Circuit, and I looked into Pokemon abuse. That got me involved in Pokemon Rights as a whole. I still specialize in abuse today, though. It's a sizeable problem with weaker trainers. zero and one-badgers, mostly. Physical abuse is a lot rarer than psychological, thank Arceus."

"There's no way you'd be able to be a good trainer without treating your team correctly," I muttered as my heart stirred.

"You blame your Pokemon for battles, and you'll never improve yourself." My mind flashed back to the trainers we'd seen during our second crossing of Mount Coronet, with their Pokemon so wounded that they could barely walk straight, and yet they hadn't been brought back in their Pokeballs despite them being near the entrance. There had been a few incidents close to Sunyshore I had to stop as well.

Of course, there were always one or two exceptions, but even Saturn seemed to care for his Pokemon with the way Sunshine had spoken about him, and Mars seemed to care for her Dusknoir too in some messed up way. Not that that made me hate them even a fragment less. I still wanted them to die by my hands.

"People don't want their egos hurt," he said.

"They think they're going to be the next Cynthia their entire lives, and then it turns out, they aren't, and they feel the ground sink under them when they realize they'll probably have to quit for one reason or another. Not everyone can afford to try for years."

"You can't justify the way they think!" I scoffed.

"I'm not justifying, I'm just telling you that's how they think." I bit my lip.

"Right. Sorry."

"I can tell you're passionate about this, at least. That's a good thing, but it's important to get in the heads of the people you're trying to change."

"Some people are beyond saving," I said.

"There comes a point where you've done too much to be forgiven."

"I have faith in people and humanity as a whole," he shrugged.

"There's a lot of things you can do beyond punishment. Education is important. What if every trainer had to take a class on how to treat Pokemon before they left off? Yeah, that wouldn't fix everything, but it would help. You've got to chip away at the issue. Hell, I'd make wild-traveling classes mandatory too instead of optional, but that's an entire other problem." I nodded.

"That's a great idea! But I didn't see it on your platform."

"Oh, that would rock the boat way too much to actually be on our official program," he laughed.

"They're just a few pet projects of mine I try to push whenever Ms. Webb gives me the time of day and is willing to entertain me."

"I looked at your program, and I also looked at the PFA." Alex's mouth flattened, and his back straightened.

"The PFA's kind of a taboo around here. They just say anything to get in the headlines and get attention instead of making tangible progress."

"They have some good ideas, don't they?"

"Well, I won't deny that they have some," he reluctantly said.

"But there's a difference between good ideas and ideas that are actually achievable. The world isn't a vacuum. You can't just do whatever you want."

"What about the psychic idea? Putting some in every Center?" Alex hummed.

"Good in theory. Tough in practice. First, you'd have to breed thousands of psychics, and that's expensive, especially now that the Hunters aren't in the picture. They also can't just be set up to punish bad trainers. That's a narrative waiting to blow up, with how little trust there's in the government right now. And even then, the PFA is suggesting to make them therapists too, and to be honest, I agree. Trainers get free therapists, so why not Pokemon?

The problem is that we just don't have money for all of that, and we didn't even before the sanctions."

"Right," I realized.

"There's always going to be a fear of control, though. Pokemon Centers are government-run, and that's a slippery slope a lot of people wouldn't be okay with."

"Okay, I kind of get it," I said. Trusting the League was something even I couldn't do.

"I mean, I do think we also have to figure out a way to stop trainers from catching Pokemon against their will too, and I thought psychics would help with that, but I get that it's a lot more complicated than I thought. What else is there?"

"Well, why don't you try to guess?" He smiled coyly.

"A quiz, huh?" I leaned on my palm and pondered his questions for a few seconds.

"Would it make trainers that abuse their teams less likely to take their Pokemon to the Center?" His eyes widened slightly.

"That wasn't what I had in mind, but I… I guess it's true? You see the same thing with parents that abuse their kids. They don't take them to the hospital for bruises they give them and things like that. I never really thought about that."

"What is it, then?"

"The vast majority of Pokemon abuse doesn't come from trainers," he said.

"It comes from people who would never have a reason to bring their Pokemon to the Pokemon Center in the first place. People who find loopholes in laws to still use Pokemon as labor, people that hunt rare Pokemon and only keep them to sell to breeders, things like the Game Corner— when there's money involved the chances of abuse skyrocket."

"That… makes a lot of sense."

"See what I'm saying?" He said.

"The PFA is focusing on things that aren't really a priority. To be honest, the UPAN is just ignoring most of what I just said because they don't want to be written off as extremists, so all of this is just me rambling. The only hardline stance the UPAN has is the banning of breeding Pokemon for food."" That's considered hardline?" I scoffed, raising my tone.

"Fucking awful." Alex sighed.

"Yeah." After a pause, he perked up.

"You know, I think we're going to get along. And to be honest, this whole breeding thing needs a revamp too…" — I'd taken a fifteen-minute break for my ankle, during which Alex had told me about all of his ambitions for his future. Ideally, he would like to become the head of one of the divisions of the UPAN to lead their operations in a city, and from there he would hope to actually have real influence on policy. For now, though, he was content to work under Ms. Webb.

According to Alex, she was considered a 'centrist' in the organization. Not too 'extreme' like him and I would be considered, but not one to want to pass only minimal, almost meaningless change like the head of Veilstone was.

Now, he was bringing me to the last spot he wanted to show— a small yard at the back of the building, and he still hadn't told me what was in it Alex was also astonished by my lack of knowledge in politics and sometimes didn't even believe I didn't know the answer to the questions I was asking him.

"You thought we could just implement this without running it through the City Council?" He asked with widened eyes. The dark-skinned teen brought his hand up to his mouth and stared at me like I was stupid— which I guessed I was— and like he wondered how I'd even survived up until now.

"Holy shit. So what, did you think we could just talk to the League and get it done?" He snapped a finger.

"Just like that?" My crutches raked against the floor and I irritatingly groaned.

"I thought that you'd send a petition to them or something. They handle the Pokemon stuff, so I thought it'd be fine."

"Holy shit," he repeated.

"You desperately need to take a civics class to refresh your memory! We can't just talk to the League. First, we'd have to lobby the City Council and convince the mayor to test out a policy locally. Then after a few years, if it worked and was popular enough, the Directorate could maybe consider implementing it federally, but even then, the Champion would have to sign the bill. We'd have to work with both wings of the government."

"Oh. I guess that's why nothing substantial ever gets done," I said as I committed his words to memory. I didn't want to be ignorant forever. These were things I had to learn if I wanted to make a difference.

"Yeah, you can't rock the boat too hard, which is why moderate demands are unfortunately the only thing that has a chance of ever passing," he explained.

"Here we are." The doors to the yard were already open, and Alex helped me down the steps. It wasn't large— smaller than the building itself. It was then that I realized that the yard was actually at the center of the building and surrounded by its four walls. A courtyard, then, I thought. There was a singular tree along with a small pond, but what caught my eye were the Pokemon there. There were only a few. A Sewaddle, Wurmple, Cacnea, a Luvdisc in the pond, a Cherubi and a Buizel.

They immediately swarmed Alex, although Luvdisc could only look on in the water. He crouched, greeting each Pokemon individually. Surprisingly though, he didn't release his two Pokemon. He hadn't even told me about them this entire time, granted we'd been too engrossed in political talk (essentially him teaching me how things work) for me to ask. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"They're Pokemon that were abandoned, but are too weak or emotionally scarred to be released back into the wild here," he said as he approached Luvdisc to greet her.

"Ideally, we try to give them a home to stay at, either with a trainer or a civilian. Buizel and Cacnea are here temporarily, but the others have decided to stay and have been here for years."

"You're doing a great thing," I smiled, holding out a hand toward Luvdisc. She sprayed it with a gentle stream of water, which I assumed was her greeting.

"Thank you for giving them a home." Wurmple screeched and crawled up on my back. His ten legs felt very ticklish, and I picked him up in my arms instead.

"Can I release my Tangrowth here?" I asked.

"Is he friendly? He's kind of scary when he battles."

"Oh, yeah," I laughed.

"He loves things like this. I didn't know you still kept up with the scene."

"Eh, it's just nice to have something on from time to time," he shrugged. I released the grass type, who blinked with his large eyes as he observed his surroundings. Sewaddle's leaf shivered, and she stayed completely still, flattening herself against the grass until Angel introduced himself and she realized he was a friend. In the wild, that was probably how Sewaddle avoided predators. She'd been operating on instinct.

"This is Angel," I said with a bright smile.

"He loves meeting new people! Feel free to hang out with him, I promise he won't hurt you." Buizel was the bravest of the group and decided to approach with a confident step. The others soon followed, and I placed Wurmple back on the ground so he could join in. The bug type tried to crawl up Angel's body while Cacnea curiously poked at his vines. Sewaddle was content to let herself be pet, and Luvdisc started to shoot at stray vines with more jets of water to play. Cherubi, meanwhile, opted to stay near Alex's leg.

She was quite a shy little thing compared to her other companions.

"Ms. Webb will want to speak with you at some point. I think she looked fired up back there," Alex said.

"She might be thinking that we can finally get some sort of progress going again. Everything's been stalling."

"So let me guess," I raised a finger.

"She's going to contact the City Council… and ask them to do something? Try to sell her policy?"

"Well, at the moment they would say no. Too scared to rock the boat when Cynthia's breathing down their necks," he said, whispering the last part of his sentence.

"And dealing with us instead of doing anything against the poachers would probably start a wave of protests like there was earlier in the year here."

"Hm. I don't think I—" I paused. I was close to Cynthia and the League. The world knew it, and my interview with Goalducc and Archive proved that they had questions about it.

"Is she hoping to utilize me to get the City Council to budge?" I asked. Alex was genuinely taken aback.

"You learn fast. Utilize might be too harsh of a term, but that's what makes the most sense to me, so I think that is what is going on. You just happen to be a big deal, for some reason." I raised an eyebrow.

"Fishing for info?"

"Who wouldn't?" He nonchalantly shrugged.

"You're a sixteen-year-old that routinely speaks to the Champion, and some of your pals do too. You were also seen talking to ACE Trainers in Veilstone. Anyone would get curious." Cynthia did owe me for undercutting my contract without a warning, I thought. But I really doubted that she would care about things like Pokemon rights, at the moment. As much as the issue compelled me, I was under no impression that they did the Champion, and she had more to worry about at the moment. But maybe that didn't matter.

An idea sparked in my head, and I smiled.

"Well, I'll try my best, I guess. I'm very green at politics, though." He snorted.

"I can tell. You're in luck, though. Local politics are usually annoying and full of drama, but Cynthia runs a pretty tight ship. It shouldn't be… well, it'll be hard, even with you, but at least it'll be more doable."

"What is Ms. Webb trying to push, at the moment?"

"Last time we were active, food regulation, but that's mostly on the federal level. Locally, we were trying to put some checks on the Safari Zone. This year's seen a big influx of new trainers, and everyone wants to go there to catch some rare Paldean or Alolan Pokemon. The quotas already in place for their species aren't equipped to deal with things like this, and we're scared that some species will struggle to recover."

"I was planning on going there at some point to check it out," I said as I observed Angel have the time of his life.

"The PFA wants to shut it down, right?"

"Yeah," he chuckled.

"But I disagree. The Great Marsh is a nice place for them. Pastoria's always been good to their wildlife, at least relative to the nation. The reason the PFA wants to shut it down is because of some nonsense about systemic oppression and it being a zoo." Alex paused, the smile on his face vanishing.

"It was at first. The reason Alolan and Paldean Pokemon live there was because the city government bought them decades ago to boost trainer tourism. When trainers pass through a city, they spend, which is good for the economy. I won't lie to you, the Safari Zone used to be a terrible place, but it's improved a lot."

"Well, I'll see for myself," I said.

"But I want to believe you."

"You're going with that ankle?"

"Angel and Princess— my Togekiss— will carry me, and my friends will be there. How dangerous is it?"

"It's no route 212 or Eterna Forest, but it's got its fair share of dangers in some areas. They'll explicitly warn you before you go in, though, so they're pretty easy to avoid." Considering ignoring dangers had come back to bite me yesterday, I wasn't about to think I was invincible again and go into the Pyroar's den when it wasn't needed.

"Could you tell me which species are endangered and which ones are cool to catch?" I asked.

"For my friends. I think a bunch of them will be trying to catch something there, at least." Louis, Maeve and Justin would probably arrive at some point tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and the others would follow soon enough. Louis and Maeve still lacked a sixth Pokemon, as did Pauline and Cecilia. Chase had talked about catching a seventh too.

"Sure thing. Wimpod are fine to catch, then there's…" I stayed with Alex in the courtyard for another hour before I left, mostly because I needed to return to training. I only had two days— or a day and a half left, and I was planning on making use of all of my time. He asked for my number to call me when Ms. Webb would need to call on me again, and I did tell him I would most likely not be available until my battle with Barry was over.

If I wanted to join for real, I'd have to pay them a monthly fee, but it was small enough for it not to matter much to me. During training, most of our short-term improvements would come from Princess' skill in the air and Angel's Solar Blade, but anything to push our team to the limit was appreciated. While we were training, I called Denzel for help setting up a stream, and he screamed so loud through the phone it was like he'd been sitting next to me.

"You're. going. to. battle. Barry?!"

"You can do it too when you arrive here— actually, probably not. He'll be saying you're too slow, if I had to guess," I said, observing the setting sun in the distance.

"But yeah, we met by pure chance."

"Okay, okay, you're going to listen to me very carefully. First, you want to…" Denzel went step by step on how to set up a stream, and after thirty minutes or so, I believed I'd gotten the hang of it. He also advised me to go buy a tripod, since Louis, Maeve and Justin might not be here to hold my phone. Of course, he said he'd make full use of the signal on route 213 to watch the stream, and he handed me his, Emilia's, Pauline's and Lopunny's usernames so I could make them chat moderators.

He also had me mod a bunch of strangers who were apparently mods on his stream, so in the end I ended up with twenty-two of them in total. A lot more than the two we had during our battle.

"So," I hesitantly said.

"How's Sylvi doing?"

"He's doing… well, okay, I guess," he said in a slightly defeated tone.

"Better than before. Progress is slow, but he only glares at Pauline half the time now instead of all the time. She says she doesn't think he'll ever like her, and I don't know if she's right or wrong."

"Well, tolerance comes before liking," I said.

"If he can reach that point, then anything is possible. I hope you're spending more time with him too."

"I am! Like I promised," he said.

"I hired a manager that runs all of my sponsorship stuff and an editor to edit down my streams into videos, so I have a lot more free time. Y'know it's nice to press down on the break pedal for once."

"Right?" I smiled.

"Yeah. You do something for months, and you think that you can't stop, or you'll lose all of your motivation to work. I thought the routine was the only thing that kept me in it. That if I took a break, I'd disappoint everyone who looked up to me. I thought that stopping would make me burn out, when it was really the opposite. I think I was burning out."

"Oh…" I trailed off.

"And now, what do you think?"

"Well, that was all bullshit," he laughed.

"This is so much better."

"I always thought you worked way too much," I said.

"I'm sorry, I should have said something sooner. I didn't want to get involved, since it seemed like you knew what you were doing."

"No worries, Grace. At least I fixed it before irreparable damage could be done," he paused for a few seconds.

"Is that training I hear in the background?"

"Oh, yeah! My team's hard at work— though Honey and Sunshine are at the Center, as you know." Arceus, he was going to freak out when he saw Electivire.

"Hope your leg's doing okay," he said.

"It's not, but I can take another painkiller in—" I took my phone away from my ear to check the time.

"—two hours and forty-seven minutes."

"Damn. It's so bad you're tracking it down to the minute, huh?"

"Well, when I talk to people or I focus on something else, it doesn't hurt that badly."

"I'll help, then. What are you working on?" I let out a taunting hum.

"I guess I can let you on a few secreeeets." Denzel groaned—"Don't roll your eyes at me," I said.

"Damn it, how did you know?!" He chuckled.

"Seriously though, I'll tell you a bit of what I'm working on. For Princess, I…" — I arrived in my Pokemon Center room late at night, and despite my best attempts, falling asleep was impossible. I had taken another painkiller during training and I wasn't allowed to use any more today. I lay still in my bed for hours until I cracked and decided to call Cecilia. It was three in the morning, so I was almost certain she would be asleep, but she actually answered the phone after a little while.

The sound of her voice alone soothed my pain. Or not, it was definitely just a placebo effect and me being way too happy to hear her after one day apart. We told each other about our days and everything was going well (despite her relentlessly worrying about me) until Cecilia said that she had something important to talk to me about.

"Um, say, Grace. I have something to tell you about Abel. I told this to the others already, but… I'm feeling conflicted about him." I paused.

"Conflicted how?" Cecilia went on to explain that despite everything Abel had done to her, she wanted him to be freed from his chains in Sinnoh so that he could go to Unova. She justified herself in numerous ways, mostly by saying that she wanted her father to burn — a sentiment I understood very well. What I couldn't understand, however, was the fact that she wanted someone else to do the burning for her. A criminal that had caused her so much pain and suffering— that had almost pushed her to commit suicide!

A scumbag that was worse than trash and that justified all of the horrible deeds he did by saying it was just a job.

"Cece," I muttered. The words almost died in my throat.

"Why?" My girlfriend stayed quiet for a few seconds.

"I told you why." I frowned.

"I don't understand. I mean, I do, but I guess I don't understand how your mind prioritizes things."

"The short term isn't everything, Grace," she told me with a firm voice.

"You have to look beyond what's on the horizon, or at least try to."

"I…" I sighed. I didn't want to argue or debate. Not tonight.

"Fine. I'll try, but don't expect me to just let him escape." I had to stop myself from scoffing at my own words. Me? Abel would run circles around me for a lifetime if he needed to, but the words had just come out before I could think. It was the same thing whenever I thought about Mars and Saturn.

"Sorry," I said.

"I just feel like him getting off scot-free for what he did would be really hard for me to accept."

"He went after me, not you," she said, raising her tone slightly.

"So let me decide. When we inevitably have to follow Chase to stop him from getting himself killed, we don't even know what will happen. Mira suggested we give Abel no quarters because if he can't escape here, then he wouldn't be able to put even the smallest of dents in Unova. Plus, we don't even know if he's truly involved. I am hoping he isn't, to be honest with you." But then, that meant Leafeon would never get back to Carnivine, I thought to myself.

"And you shouldn't even be involved with your broken ankle in the first place!" She yelled.

"Do you want to get hurt again? Abel doesn't kill unless he's paid or absolutely forced to, but he can still leave you in the hospital for weeks or months! And even then, the poachers could be paying him to do so, and I am sure they will have no mercy either. I know we'll have the ACE Trainers, but they aren't infallible, as you know now." Buddy, who hovered closely above me, nodded as his eyes dimmed. I ignored the bad taste in my mouth along with the surge of pain in my ankle at its mention and sighed.

"Yeah. I guess that would be the best choice, logically speaking. But I don't see myself sitting in a Center while you're all out there." She exhaled.

"Let's just change topics. I don't like fighting. We can all hash this out when we meet."

"Fine. But I am telling you that if you decide to go into route 212, I will come. I don't care how much you all push back against my decision, I will be there."

"I'm not even the one wanting to do this. Chase is. He wants Denzel and Lauren involved too, but he won't force them to come if they don't want to."

"Denzel and Lauren don't have ACE Trainers," My stomach dropped, and I shifted in my bed, ignoring the pain in my ankle.

"They shouldn't get involved. The ACE Trainers won't be able to cover for all of them and protect us adequately." Denzel was too good of a friend not to come, and hiding it from him would basically be impossible. Lauren, I was less sure of her commitment. It dawned on me.

"Cece, this is a really stupid idea."

"Like staring at two trains about to collide," she affirmed.

"We could convince Chase not to do this, maybe?" I rubbed my forehead and thought for a few seconds.

"We can try. What I'd really like is to talk to the ACE Trainers and tell some of them to do something, but I'm not naive enough to think they'd do it. We'll have to talk to them about it anyway, though." The conversation died down for a little bit, and I decided to change the subject. I didn't want to talk about dark things for the entire hour.

"So. What are you thinking to beat Crasher Wake?" I asked. — The next day passed in a flash, and I spent almost its entirety training. I finally picked up Honey and Sunshine from the Center, and they were surprisingly excited to get in a tough fight so soon. The fact that Sunshine had struggled against a plant— and yes, he had called Carnivine a plant — had him thirsting for a good fight where he could get his revenge.

Personally, I didn't know how the hell his revenge made any sense when we wouldn't be fighting Carnivine, but I just attributed that to him being his usual self. Honey was just eager to get a better feel for his new form, and for that, he needed to fight more battles. The electric type had spent his day of training learning to better control himself. He was almost no longer super-charged (and he had probably given the Nurses a lot of trouble), but he still had a lot more power than he'd ever been used to.

Now, another day had passed, and we were ready for Barry, although none of my friends had made it to Pastoria quite yet. The closest ones would make it this evening, and the rest would make it tomorrow. I showed up at the address he had given me on Angel's head and saw him already waiting there. He waved at me with so much gusto that I thought his arm must have been hurting. His Empoleon stood tall beside him.

The water type was slightly bigger than Louis', but just from one look at him I could tell he was nowhere as serious. His resting face was a smile, just like Barry's.

"You're late!" He exclaimed. I grabbed my phone and checked the time.

"It's 12: 55. I'm literally five minutes early."

"Cutting it real close, though," he waggled a finger at me.

"My mother taught me to always be twenty minutes early everywhere you go."

"Uh, I think that's just a you thing," I said. I leaned toward the door and saw that the place was packed, but that should have been obvious from the number of people already outside. Looks like my and Denzel's advertisement on Chatter helped.

"Should we go in?" The blond trainer pumped a fist, and Empoleon mimicked him, which ended up looking extremely awkward.

"Sure thing! We're all excited to fight." We stepped into the arena, and I took a deep breath. This was going to be tough.