Chapter 3: Beating up children, legally

Their training followed a similar pattern for the next few days. Rattata began mastering more and more manoeuvres with Joey's help, and they battled the angry Caterpie a few more times. The biggest achievement however had come in the synergy that the trainer and starter displayed in battle, as well as the latter's now-usable Quick Attack. They'd covered what Joey considered the basics of any battling endeavour, and now it was time to broaden the move pool and gain some battling experience.

Coincidentally this level of competency, or how Joey referred to it in his own head, mediocracy, came just as the four-day grace period that he'd managed to negotiate with the battle-hungry Rattata had run out. The victories against the Caterpie had been getting easier and easier, and at this point, Joey thought that his starter would likely challenge anything to a battle to show off its improvement, even if it happened to be a Charizard raised by Blaine, the current fire-type Elite Four member.

"Same as always? The guard asked once the two of them entered the square building dividing Saffron city territory from the wilds.

Joey shrugged his shoulders at the man who'd seen them go in and out of various states of disrepair four times now.

"Same Caterpie still challenges us to a fight whenever it sees us," he said, at which Barry, the guard, simply laughed.

"I can see by the string shot," he said and nodded at the white sticky string glued to Joey's pants, which he had to wash every day now because of the ferocious little bug. "You think it wants to be captured?"

Joey considered for a moment. The Caterpie was big for its species, it already knew bug-bite, which was a big win that early on, and it had the ferocious spirit to take on the world, which he admired.

However, pragmatically speaking Caterpie were quite horrible Pokemon to raise for a youngster. They were 0-tier Pokemon, like their first evolution, Metapod. However, a Butterfree was a 2-tier Pokemon, and since the number of badges, one had directly determined what tier one was allowed to train and how many Pokemon one was allowed to catch… Well, suffice it to say that getting to three badges with a Caterpie, or god forbid a Metapod, and Rattata would probably be quite tough.

Although, in a way, with the progress that he was seeing in his own starter, also considered a mostly useless Pokemon, Joey wasn't quite sure what the deal was. To him, it seemed that all Pokemon had the potential to absolutely wreck shit if trained properly. Perhaps his mind was being influenced more by the Pikachu which had gone around smashing legendaries with Iron Tail, rather than reality, but in a way, he also didn't care and thought he could make anything work.

For all his good qualities; when one considered the way that Joey had crushed all competition on his way to becoming a youngster due to his adult experience, he'd had the time to become quite a narcissist.

"Well, I only have a carry limit of one anyway, so it's not like I can do much," he eventually said to Barry.

"About time to challenge the gym leader then. You probably have the highest chances out of anybody considering you train day in and day out. Never even seen another youngster even leave the city," Barry said. "Kong will probably use a Machop, it can only attack physically so as long as you find a way to not get hit, you're fine."

Joey looked at his Rattata, who was running around excitedly at the mention of a gym leader and considered the advice. In a way it was true. Rattata's biggest strength was his speed and thus his mobility. In return, he was an incredibly fragile Pokemon. Being hit meant losing, while avoiding hits meant winning. There was no real way of working on a rattata's endurance unless one taught it endeavour, so Rattata could only really be developed in one general direction.

There was one move that was on the top of his list, but only after he covered his bases a bit more. Currently, Rattata needed to learn more moves than just those of the normal type variety. If he faced a rock or a steel-type Pokemon there would essentially be no chance of winning. Before working on evasion supplemented with moves, Rattata needed to either learn a fighting or a steel-type move. Which one would depend on Rattata, but either would cover the bases enough. Iron Tail or Rock Smash, then an evasion-type move, and then it would be time to work on ranged options. Quite frankly the work would be endless until the end of their career, but with those moves in the bag, Rattata would have a chance in most basic battles. Joey was hoping to have reached that point by the end of their first year so that he could set out as a trainer with an advantage in the bag. Because 0-tier Pokemon were usually more limited than those of the 1-tier, many youngsters were actually worse off despite a potential 1-year head start over their compatriots with a trainer's licence. Joey refused to be a part of that statistic.

"I guess there's not that much point in working on defensive tactics other than evasion," Joey mused and decided to recall his Rattata, who had worked himself up into a frenzy at the thought of fighting a gym leader. The little guy had way too much energy considering that he'd just finished one whole day of training and one battle.

Rolling his arms, which were sore from throwing all those stones at his starter-

Wait, that came out wrong.

Rolling his arms, which were sore from serving as a sparring partner for his starter-

Better.

Anyway, the point was that Joey was tired. He was ready to go to the general area which youngsters inhabited in Saffron and challenge some to a battle, but only after he slept, rested, and did some much-needed shopping. In other words. Tomorrow.

This was why he was not so enthused to find Michael waiting for him when he exited the gate building. The puffy-shirted youngster was just leaning against the fence that led back into the city and was throwing a Pokeball up and down in his hand. Joey wondered how long he'd been waiting here, but decided that he didn't care and just walked past him.

"Hey!" Michael said when he realised that Joey was going to ignore him.

Joey stopped with a sigh and turned to the other youngster. "What?" he asked, as he put his hands in his pockets.

"I recently lost against an ace trainer training at the north gate, and I need a win to feel better about myself. Wanna battle?" Michael asked unashamedly.

"I just came back from training myself, Rattata is too tired. The best I can do is a battle after we visit the Pokecentre," Joey said with a sigh as he started walking towards his destination. Michael fell in step with him as if they were friends, which was annoying.

"So what's this about an ace trainer?" he eventually asked as they got closer and closer to the centre of the city, which was a requisite travel point between the south gate and the Pokecentre.

Michael harrumphed. "I'm glad someone finally cleared out those Ekans, but the girl is an ass. She sent out a Tyrogue against Pidgey, completely unfair," he said, causing Joey to sweat-drop.

If the person Michael had faced was actually an ace trainer, sending out an unevolved Pokemon with a type disadvantage was likely the fairest thing that could have happened. Ace trainers weren't your run-of-the-mill idiots with a trainer's licence. To be considered an ace trainer, you basically needed to win a conference. Since there were only five regions currently available to travel to in the Pokemon world from Kanto, each with its own conference, there were only five new ace trainers every year. Considering trainers also tended to retire at some point, or advance to the level of an elite-trainer by beating a member of the elite four there were probably only 20 ace-trainers running around Kanto at any given moment.

In other words, Michael was a moron.

"Might be good training against Kong, he also likes to use a Tyrogue for his second-badge fights," Joey mused.

Michael frowned next to him. "He used a Machop against me, that beast just caught Pidgey mid-tackle and body-slammed him to the ground. It's completely unfair how difficult even the first gym battle is. I wrote a post on the poke-net about how the league needs to tell gym leaders to tone it down."

To be quite frank, Joey didn't even know what to say to that. Considering that one league season lasted 10 months, and one needed 8 badges to qualify… Well, that meant that a gym leader was battling with the assumption that the person challenging them had trained for at least three weeks to face them specifically. Of course Michael had lost, he'd challenged Kong on the second day of getting his Pokemon. Complaining about it on the poke-net wasn't going to change anything either. Fact was, while the forums did offer some useful information every now and again, generally in the threads specifically discussing how to train a certain type, real trainers were too busy training, travelling, handling sponsorships and doing actually important stuff to bother with it. It was mostly the retreat for beginning trainers to ask stupid questions and get stupid answers. Much more reliable was simply watching high-level battles with maybe a gym leader or an elite-four member to comment on the strategies used. They were often used as pundits for the conference. This, in addition to the library and his memories, was Joey's largest source of training advice.

Rather than saying any of that, Joey just shrugged. "I'm sure you'll get him next time, you have a flying type after all," he said, the sarcasm flying over the head of the twelve-year-old like a German bomber with no ammo over London during World War 2.

"Yeah, I'm sure I can beat him easily next time. I already booked a match for next week. I've been challenging all the other youngsters in Saffron, Kong doesn't stand a chance," Michael bragged.

Thankfully that's when they arrived at the Pokecentre, where Joey handed in his Rattata for a short refreshment with nurse Joey. The centre was starting to look alive since the season had officially started, but it was too early for non-Saffron trainers to have arrived quite yet so it was mostly filled with people who'd just gotten their licences, showing off their Pokemon.

"There's a girl named Sabrina who should have also challenged Kong on the day you did. Did you maybe see if she won or not?" Joey asked Michael, who seemed determined to stick by his side like glue until he got his battle.

"Oh, her," Michael said with a grimace. "I heard she lost as well, but that it was a close thing. Kong apparently got her with a sneaky payback."

"I guess that's the gimmick he uses to not just immediately lose to anyone with a psychic or with a ghost," Joey mused, just as he was called to the counter to pick up his Rattata. "You ready?" he reluctantly asked Michael, whom he did have to be grateful to, somewhat. He had promised Rattata a re-match after all, and this way he didn't have to look for the kid all over Saffron. It was a big city.

"Battlefield outside?" Joey asked, at which Michael grimaced and shrunk together.

"Maybe not," the boy whispered.

"It's close," Joey insisted and Michael reluctantly followed as they exited the building and made their way behind it. There they found a scene that was to be expected from a field for battle. A smug Mankey was standing in front of a beaten Rattata, mimicking its trainer in the way it crossed his arms and turned up its pig-like snout.

"That's Hitoshi, Kong's son," Michael muttered with a glare at the brown-haired boy swimming in his oversized white gi.

As if to exposition Joey on his character, or lack thereof, that was when Hitoshi decided to crow about his victory. "Ha, just goes to show that no youngster can beat a trainer. I'm hungry now so I'm going home. If you want another beating you can wait till tomorrow!" the boy said, recalling his Mankey, before leaving. The small crowd of youngsters who'd gathered to watch the battle muttered darkly amongst themselves but refused to meet Hitoshi's eyes as he left.

The young girl who was the trainer of the Rattata ran forward once the bully was gone, picking up her Pokemon and running into the Pokecentre with tears in her eyes, her yellow sundress trailing behind her from how fast she moved.

"So what, he just challenges youngsters to gloat?" Joey asked curiously as he made his way to one side of the field, nobody else seemingly interested in occupying it for the moment.

"I'll beat him one day, and his dad," Michael said darkly with clenched fists before extending one to point to Joey. "But first I'll beat you. Send out your rat!" he said. From the reaction that Michael was drawing from the people watching he didn't have a reputation much better than Hitoshi's, but Joey just decided to send out Rattata with a roll of his eyes.

"Here's your rematch. Just do what we trained with tackle. Quick attack after it's already down," Joey said encouragingly to the momentarily confused rat, who squared up immediately when it saw that it was back at the battlefield where he'd suffered his first defeat.

He chittered angrily. Michael sent out his Pidgey into the air and smirked arrogantly. "Sand attack, Pidgey!" he shouted, his bird quickly obeying. At least they'd gained some synergy since last time, Joey thought, but with the fact that Pidgey's speed hadn't increased at all since their last battle…

No chance.

"Get close, dodge and tackle," Joey ordered simply. Rattata didn't know that many moves yet, so there was no need for any complicated orders.

As the cream-coloured bird dived for a spot just in front of Rattata, the latter moved forward into the landing spot of the latter. Pidgey needed to hit the ground with a wing or a foot to use Sand Attack, and this caused it to reposition awkwardly to go through with its command. Once it flew close enough to the ground to extend a foot to stir up the sand, Rattata simply jumped to the side of the accuracy-lowering spray and tackled the bird in the side, causing it to crash-land into the ground.

Before the Pidgey had time to recover, Rattata backed off a bit and hit it with a Quick Attack. The Pidgey was struck by the entirety of the rat's body and energy and was hurtled across the ground, rolling to a stop at its trainer's feet with swirls in its eyes.

A clean knock-out. The entire battle hadn't even taken five seconds.

Joey recalled Rattata before the Pokemon had the time to start celebrating and left without looking back. This whole charade had been mostly to gain Rattata's trust. Youngsters weren't the trainers he was comparing himself to or trying to surpass. He agreed with Hitoshi in that regard. No twelve-year-old had Joey's capacity to turn a 0-tier into an effective fighter, other than maybe Sabrina. Fighting them was a waste of time. He looked at his Pokenav and saw that he'd gained a bit more money than he'd lost the first time.

It was good to have the money back, but now he had things to do.

There was an ace trainer with a fighting type in Saffron, one that seemed nice enough to send out one of their less experienced Pokemon rather than just rofl-stomping youngsters with a Charizard. Kong was bound to the city, but the ace-trainer would likely be gone soon.

Before that could happen, Joey was going to challenge them to a battle and see where he really stood in this world.

-/-

Joey leaned back in the beanbag chair in the TV room of the library, which he rented every now and again to look through old replays of battles he considered to be particularly instructive in the way that they developed. He'd just come back from making some purchases at the Pokemart and decided that celebrating his first victory was essential to keeping up morale.

Rattata was lying down next to him, curiously looking at the loading screen of the old television and at the stack of VHS tapes Joey had prepared.

"You know, seeing is believing, and this will probably be the first time you'll see battles of this level, even if they aren't as impressive on television as they are in real life," Joey explained as he opened his backpack and pulled out a box full of berries. One of each, actually. He laid them down in front of his starter, knowing that even after the VHS tape loaded, it would be another few minutes before the referee actually started the match. "Just don't get discouraged. We saw today what only four days of training can do, turning a coin-flip battle into an almost assured victory. People at the highest level have trained like that every day for several years and after reaching the top? They have to keep doing it, day in, and day out, just to stay ahead of the curve. Once you're the best, the second-places pile up, all building specific strategies to take the crown off of you," he explained as he laid down some berries in front of his curious starter, who showed impressive discipline by not just gobbling them up immediately. "Don't get discouraged by what you'll see. Aim for the top in the long run, but for now let's go for our first gym badge, one trainer at a time. If you don't enjoy the process and your goal is four years in the future, you'll never make it," he said, but saw that after he'd set out the berries the Pokemon hadn't listened to a word he'd said.

Joey sighed and looked at the vast array of colours, and pokedollars that the berries represented and snapped his fingers to get the Pokemon's attention.

"This is a feast to congratulate you on your first victory, but it's also to determine which berries you like the most. Take a bite out of each and then bring me your favourite, I'll start adding it to your meals. The basic pellets provide the protein you need to develop muscles and the eggshells help make your fangs stronger, but you need some vitamins too, and berries have rejuvenating properties."

Without much patience Rattata jumped on the berries and started nibbling away at one after the other, enjoying his reward. Joey watched with some amusement but kept an ear out for the commentator as he introduced the two trainers. Norman and Lance. This was the finale of a recent indigo conference. In which Lance Blackthorn had shown his talent by becoming the type of specialist that had beaten a conference the fastest since the start of his trainer's journey. A year, to be exact. Less impressive when one considered the vast clan resources standing behind the red-haired youth, but fascinating nonetheless. Both trainers had gone mostly incognito since the battle,

Lance likely because he knew that despite his victory, he wasn't ready to challenge the Elite Four yet, and Norman, a normal-type specialist, because he'd been embarrassed on international television.

The embarrassment would fade once Lance became the youngest champion in Indigo history, but Norman would nonetheless move his career to Hoenn and become a gym leader sometime in the future.

A wet snout touched his outstretched and relaxed hand, causing Joey to look down at the berry that his starter was presenting him with. It was the basic round and blue Oran berry. He glanced over to the boxing mitts he'd bought to better train with Rattata in the future. The little guy was quickly becoming stronger than Joey as he moved from a wild pokemon to an actually trained battler, and Joey didn't feel like breaking a rib just to train the lil bugger.

"The ol good and reliable oran, huh, I'll keep that in mind," he promised with a nod. "Go eat the rest and then focus on the battle," he said and continued when he noted a big purple ear was turned in his direction while its owner eagerly devoured the rest of the berries. "On one hand we have a dragon-type specialist, and on the other, we have a normal-type specialist. The former is going to crush the latter and will be the champion of Indigo soon, but it's the former we're more interested in emulating since you share a typing with his whole team. There is an Eevee I want you to pay special attention to, as it exhibits the closest thing to the battling style you will have in the future," Joey said, and the afternoon flew by as Rattata absorbed the fast-paced battles with wide-open eyes and a defiant posture.

"Look how the Charizard simply continues its flamethrower after the Wigglytuff uses Protect. The defensive move essentially roots you to the spot and if an opponent can throw out a continuous attack that burns less energy than the costly protect, you're toast," Joey explained occasionally when an important tactical error was made by one of the trainers. 

"Norman should have used dig. One of the few counter-plays to that are earth-breaking moves such as earthquake and magnitude, which a Charizard can't learn."

"See how his Snorlax pretended to rest to get the Dragonair to commit to a giga impact, only to knock it out with an ice punch? Lance had to go for a physical attack there to offset rest's healing because snorlax's thick fat reduces the damage from the ranged attacks it receives." Joey pointed out. "They planned that beforehand. It's something we will have to work on at some point as well. Most of your biggest damage dealers will be physical, so you'll need to make your opponents get close to you."

"Here's the Eevee, look at how it dodges the rapid thunderbolts, flame-throwers and ice beams. It never jumps, because it knows that it can't manoeuvre that well in mid-air, and it keeps using attract to try and make the Dragonair stop attacking. Unfortunately, Lance tricked Norman here, the Eevee is female and Lance sent out his only female Dragonair. He has three of the flying snakes, and if Norman knew how to distinguish their genders, he wouldn't have made this mistake." They both watched as the Eevee was unceremoniously knocked out by an ice beam after failing to attract its adversary and trading some ranged attacks with it. "You need to prioritise dodging, no matter what emotions you're feeling or what tactics you're trying. You can't win if you're knocked out. That was Eevee's mistake, she got frustrated and wanted to land some retributory shadow balls to make it seem like she was getting somewhere. If she'd just kept dodging then that Dragonair would have exhausted herself. It didn't seem to have any non-stamina-intensive ranged options," Joey explained with a sigh.

The battle concluded then, Lance winning 4-6. Joey went to take out the tape and glanced over his shoulder to see that Rattata was mulling over what he'd seen. He put in the next tape, the incredibly bad video quality being apparent in the static image.

"This is a very old battle, even higher level than the previous. The battle for the championship. Pay attention to the way that the Gengar aims its shadow balls at where it expects the Arcanine to dodge, but still close enough to strife it if it doesn't. There is no point in aiming where a fast opponent is. You'll be at this level as well someday, and then you'll have to create an intentionally erratic pattern to prevent prediction like this," Joey said as the two of them watched the shaky footage of an Arcanine blitzing around the battle-field avoiding a machine gun barrage of shadow-balls, while occasionally retaliating with an attempted fire-spin or flamethrower. The game of cat and mouse continued like that for a bit, until Arcanine stepped into a puddle of toxic that suddenly appeared from the ground, something that Gengar had set up during its repositioning. The pause that had occurred in the shadow-ball barrage had been minimal, less than a second. Joey had needed to rewatch this particular part five times to catch when exactly the toxic had been injected into the ground. He didn't bother pointing out what Oak had done wrong and what he could have done to avoid that trap. While he'd understood the tactical decision-making of Lance and Norman, this battle for the title was currently beyond his comprehension. Especially considering that Agatha and Oak were both once-in-a-century talents. Which was odd, since there were two of them.

The only tactical critique he could think of was that Arcanine should have used Sunny Day to uncover the shadows the Gengar used to dodge and to more clearly see if some ground had been tampered with, but that was it. It probably simply hadn't known the move. It had been harder back considering the lack of technical machines.

He and Rattata stayed in the library until closing time that day, watching old battles, sometimes with Joey's commentary, sometimes without. Rattata didn't seem discouraged by what he'd seen and Joey hoped that this was out of an understanding that they had time to reach that level, rather than just stupidity. "We'll go watch this year's conference in person," Joey said, "and then we'll compete in next year's."

His starter chittered excitedly as they made their way home.

"Yeah, they won't stand a chance," Joey muttered in sleepy agreement. It had been a long day, and tomorrow would be longer. They had an ace trainer to find and lose to. He didn't have any delusions of winning. He wasn't ready yet as a trainer, just like Rattata wasn't ready yet as a battler. But in the end, losses were always the best way to learn and they both had the willpower to lose their way to the top. For that sort of mentality, Rattata was the perfect Pokemon, in species and in individual character. A dragon would have been too proud, a grass type too easily discouraged and a poison type too bitter. Rattata, and youngsters for that matter, were so used to losing that they learned to sort out the negative emotional impact of doing so, and could just reap the rewards.

"We should check out the gym at some point, and watch a battle. Would be good to know what we're working towards currently," Joey muttered after they'd arrived home and went to bed, Rattata deciding to cuddle up next to him for the night. "Could challenge his son to get a free course on his fighting methodology," he mused, but soft snores informed him that he was speaking to himself.

It had been a long, but incredibly productive day. Joey went to sleep looking forward to the next.