Chapter 26 "Cruising"

We finally reached Vermillion City, and just as expected, it's gorgeous. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that we wanted to get checked in to the ship, we would probably have wandered around for a little bit. I know John was curious about seeing Lt. Surge and the Thunder Gym.

But the ferry took us long enough, and the ship was due to depart this afternoon. Hustling to the waterfront, we managed to get checked in at noon. With our tickets, we had three separate rooms, in which we promptly let our pokemon explore. The rooms were interconnected, something about beginning trainer suite. Either way, it worked for us.

Of course, we had the unexpectedness of seasickness for the first couple hours. Andrew had it the worse, never having been on a ship before. I didn't know what to expect, but apparently some of my memories from a past life told my body how to get over it rather quickly. Not sure what I did in that life, but apparently it had something to do with ships.

Our trip to Olivine went about as we expected it to. John and Andrew took the doubles tournament, while I took the first singles tournament. Of course, we discovered the first little hiccup at that point. When we were talking about it before, we didn't really know the schedule and we just assumed there were going to be enough tournaments happening for all of us to participate.

Nope. They are weekly tournaments. Of course, with three weeks between Vermillion and Slateport we should be fine. But It means the first week doubles are John and Andrew, then I'll have to be in the doubles for the other two weeks.

On the plus side though, we did find out another tidbit that eases our money woes. As it is an official tournament, there is a minimum wager amount for every battle. The ship is even matching that amount at least in the beginner tournaments. Of course, the beginner tournaments are capped on how much you can wager between trainers.

Still, with every win we get, it eases our financial problems. And to be fair, for beginners we are a little overpowered.

I swept the singles tournament with Spheal. None of the other beginner trainers were prepared for an ice type. The one who stood the best chance was knocked out before he got to me, which I honestly thought was a shame. He had a Riolu, and from what I understand those guys are very picky about who they follow.

Anyway, with a combination that I've started calling "Ice Out" Spheal combined Rollout with Ice Ball. The Ice Ball provides enough protection that he doesn't care what moves are thrown at him, and Rollout just gets stronger and stronger. Of course, he's working on some other moves as well, that's just all he needed to win that tournament. His Powder Snow is at a point that it can almost be called an Icy Wind attack.

Another thing I'm having to reconcile with my memories now, the moves that pokemon can learn are so different. And there aren't any restrictions on how many moves they can learn. However moves evolve along paths as well. So Powder Snow can turn into Icy Wind, just like Bite turns into Crunch. Of course, it's not quite that simple, but it's about how it works.

That's so different from how it worked in the games, and even in the anime. I remember myself back then counting how many different moves different pokemon used, and it was always kept to 4. Of course, that also seems to be a norm here, but for a very different reason. Most trainers want their pokemon to get good at using at MOST, four moves. That means they'll have better control, and eventually better mastery of the move. And move mastery can make a large difference.

Anyway, with Spheal securing the first place in our tournament, somewhat anticlimactically, we at least had an additional five thousand Poke for our travel funds. Additionally, I had an extra eighteen hundred from the required compensation amount for Beginner battles.

That was something that actually made sense to me, and made me smile remembering the games from my old life. For any official pokemon battle, which meant at the very least some form of ref was watching the match, there was a required compensation. Each trainer was required to put up a minimum amount. For beginners, that was two hundred. The Ref claimed a hundred, and whoever won took the rest. From what I understand, intermediate trainers had to wager five hundred, and advanced had to wager a thousand.

But with the amounts that could be earned by those higher ranks, it did make sense. My winnings would look like chump change compared to those guys.

Anyway, with twelve matches to win first place I made eighteen hundred poke for myself, so I had a nice little bit set aside.

John and Andrew unfortunately didn't fare as well. John was using Poliwag, while Andrew was using Nidoran. They ran into a team using an Aron and a Pikachu, and that was all she wrote. The Pikachu got a good zap on Poliwag, and Aron used Metal Claw on Nidoran. They tried to coordinate to get them switched so that Poliwag could use Bubble on Aron, but the opposing Pikachu ended that.

Once Poliwag was down, Nidoran was down shortly after. Granted, he got a double kick in on the Aron, knocking it out, but repeated thundershocks was too much for Nidoran as well.

After getting them treated at the ship's Health station, which doubled as a Pokemon Center, we went ahead and celebrated a little. Sure John and Andrew didn't make it into the top three, but they still won seven rounds. With each of them paying in two hundred, and the ref being allowed to collect fifty from each trainer, that was still six hundred per match. Which means they together made thirty-eight hundred poke, or nineteen hundred each.

Of course, the prize for the doubles tournament is also ten thousand poke. But we still did fairly well. And the restaurant we chose was very nice, serving up Galarian and Unovan dishes. I particularly liked the Drednaw steak I ordered. It was very interesting, especially as I was expecting it to taste a bit more like seafood than it did. But I also remembered Mr. Johnson's advice on cooking larger pokemon.

"Even if it is aquatic, or some form of flyer, every pokemon must be approached with a fresh sense of taste and care. You might eat Snorlax meat, but no one wants to taste Garbador meat. And yet they both make steaks."

*****

It was shortly after dinner that we found out the bad news of course. Since we already participated in tournaments at the Beginner level, we weren't allowed to participate again unless it was at a higher level. At least, not on the same voyage. The League, which was sponsoring the tournaments, had put those rules into effect to prevent exactly what we were about to do… so obviously someone else had done it first and made a lot from doing it.

Regardless, we would be allowed to battle. However we only had a couple choices for that, and most were that we couldn't battle for money. Our only options for money were to choose another tournament we hadn't participated in, or wait for the next leg of the voyage. We asked about that and the League did consider every trip between stops as different voyages because passengers without fail changed.