Chapter 51.3- Oak

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“Metagross needs to focus more on his steel typing, same with Gallade and his fighting type. Xatu aren’t well known for being strong flyers but we still need to get as far as we can with that. Slowbro will have to do something about his inability to deal with tough conditions. I’ve never seen a water type get dehydrated so quickly. . You have a team of strong psychics right now, yes, but that is all they are.” I summarised after I tested her and her team. Igneel and Kenpachi needed the opportunity to stretch their tails so it had been a win-win. Kenpachi’s dark typing allowed him to run roughshod over half of Sabrina’s team and Igneel’s raw power allowed him to deal with the remaining half. With the exception of Alakazam, of course, He and Ino were working with Sabrina’s last pokemon, Hypno.

Most of her team were recent captures after I advised that a team of three pokemon would be inadequate for nearly everything and she’d put out a bounty for rare psychic pokemon in Viridian. I wasn’t sure that using League resources to have other trainers search for pokemon for your own team was the most ethical thing to do but it was effective and I couldn’t really deny the results. Viridian was becoming more and more the ideal psychic type gym.

Sabrina nodded at me, a bit sad at the results but still enthusiastic. Don’t worry, I didn’t become a psychic that could interpret her moods over night. She just decided to share her emotions with me the same way I shared mine with her. The difference being that I merely gave her access, but she had to actively broadcast her thoughts and feelings into my mind before I could understand them. It was another advancement in the intimacy of our relationship, but thoughts like that had their own place and time. Neither of which was now in the Viridian City training hall.

“Okay, let’s do something else now. Metagross come here” The psychic received a nod from Sabrina before teleporting over to me. “Your species are the most powerful psychics in the world, by a fair margin, but that’s only on average. Ino and Alakazam can wipe the floor with you as a psychic at any time they want. Sabrina assures me that the only thing that can be done for your development is give you time to grow and advance on your own. Since that part of you is a dead end for now, we have to work on your steel typing. What do you think the essence of being a steel type is?” I asked at the end of my long speech to the powerful psychic.

The pokemon thought for a bit and sent a stream of images into my head and I nodded. “Steel is the most defensive of all the pokemon types. Completely immune to poison types, and weak to fire. That’s the typing we need you to work on for now. First of all, we’ll start with flash canon.” The pokemon interrupted me with a series of memories of it using the move and I nodded.

“Yes, I know you can use it, but not very well clearly. You take too long to charge it and its power is nowhere near where it should be considering your power as a pokemon. So we’ll use the move on repeat till its second nature and you have no difficulties calling up the steel type energy.”

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“So the Islands are gone” I noted to myself nonchalantly. I’d suspected it since Mewtwo had made no mention of them and the pokemon hadn’t seemed like one that would make an oversight like that. Lorelei was literally the last of her people, and had retreated to the Plateau in mourning. No one had been able to contact her all month.

Speaking of elite trainers, I turned my eyes to the screen and started paying renewed attention to the news. Mewtwo had released information on the tournament to the public the day after kidnapping all of us, and the public had not been pleased. There was talk of Lance going to hunt down the psychic but the moment the images of what remained of the Islands had been circulated, even the most patriotic and aggressive citizens of Kanto had given up on that route. Mewtwo could toss around the kind of power that legendary pokemon had been known to, and he had little to no restraint when it came to using it. From there, the news had turned to theories on what trainers would be representing Kanto in the tournament. Oak had been the first choice, of course, and literally no one had contested him essentially appointing himself as the head of the tournament team. He’d asked all interested trainers with a minimum of eight badges to submit their names to him and he’d organise a tournament to determine those that would be chosen to represent Kanto in the tournament. Literally hundreds of trainers had submitted their names, and considering it to be a waste of time to entertain so many applicants, he’d disqualified everyone with more than a single badge from a minor gym from the contest. That was the first bit of controversy in the selection process. His reasoning was clear, but the fact that he’d disqualified hundreds of trainers from even getting the opportunity to represent their region hadn’t gone over well with anyone. Things had gotten so bad that the president of the League, a native of Cerulean City had stepped in and overruled him. That had caused a massive argument, but at the end of the day, the proud Oak had bent his will and instead opened the tournament to all of them again. The first stage was going to be a series of One-on-One battles, with everyone bringing their strongest pokemon and competing in at least ten battles. A win was worth 10 points, a draw was worth five, and a loss was worth negative 5 (-5). To qualify for the next stage, a participant needed at least 80 points. So that meant that anyone with more than two losses had no chance of making it and anyone with too many draws also had no chance. The only real way to make it was to win.

Another bit of controversy had arisen when he’d asked even elite trainers like Bruno and Agatha to submit themselves to the tournament. The ghost mistress had been especially scathing in her criticism of the decision. The public had been divided on the matter, and once again the President had been forced to step in. This time, however, he was on Oak’s side and his reasoning was simple. If the elite four are so good, then they would surely have no objections to proving themselves worthy of the slots. No one except for Samuel Oak who had ruled the entire Indigo League as Champion would have a guaranteed slot on the chosen four.

How has the tournament affected my life? Not very much. I had to spend some time journeying with Sabrina to get her last two badges but that had just been a massive holiday. One of the Johto gym leaders had been a bit more brutal than necessary and had tried to land a few killing shots on Sabrina’s Alakazam with his ghost type pokemon but he’d been easily rebuffed. I couldn’t even bring myself to be angry. Robbing another region of powerful pokemon was a viable strategy when what laid on the line was survival. Sabrina was obviously a powerful trainer and me moving around with her had probably caused some worry in the minds of the Johto citizens. I’d beaten who was arguably their second strongest citizen, after all.

Once Sabrina got the badges, she’d entered into the tournament, and now we sat in one of the League stadiums chosen for the qualifying rounds. It was being held in several places at once with each trainer being randomly assigned to their own testing area. It was supposedly random, but the fact that both Sabrina and I had been assigned here made me a bit suspicious. Oak was a massive gossip underneath the asshole exterior and seemed to be shipping our relationship with fangirl levels of obsession.

My first match was against a trainer with bright blue hair and blue eyes. Literally everything about him had been average with the exception of those features. The look on his face when I was announced as his first matchup almost made me laugh, but I wouldn’t be that cruel. Oak’s rules making a loss the most devastating outcome of any battle added stakes that wouldn’t have been present in a regular tournament like this. Normally, one would just take the loss when paired up against an obviously stronger opponent, but a loss was death to any chances of qualification.

He sent out a particularly aggressive Aggron. The steel type started off roaring at me and brandishing its horns aggressively. I just gave its trainer a look and the boy blushed in embarrassment. I just smiled and debated sending out Kenpachi. My Pseudo-legendary had a bit of a grudge with the species and would teach this one the lesson of its life, but could I be that cruel? Our eyes met again, and I decided that no, I couldn’t. The trainer across from me wasn’t an asshole, so I’d resist the urge to be one. Gai took to the field with a flourish and I saw the man across from me breathe a sigh of relief. I guess Igneel would have been a worst case scenario for him. Broly must have been the best case scenario but Gai had to be the middle ground. Of course, that only made sense if you still thought in terms of type effectiveness, and at the higher levels, things like that started to matter less and less.

The board flashed and all the battles started in sync. The Aggron charged straight for Gai, but my dragon didn’t even bother moving out of the way. He stood his ground and caught the charging steel type in his grip before tossing it over his shoulder. The feat of strength had the small audience we had gasping in shock. Gai waited for his opponent to get to its feet, and this time, he went on the attack. Moving too quickly for the Aggron to react, he lashed out with a punch straight to its skull that dented its thick armour and knocked out the armoured pokemon instantly. I returned him with a smile and made my way back to the bench. The difference between our respective strength levels meant there was virtually no chance of that battle lasting longer than a minute. Well, unless I ended up choosing Kenpachi. The ordinarily calm pokemon had begun to show a vicious streak as we tapped into his dark typing and would have been especially cruel to that Aggron. He still remembered the fate his mother had suffered, after all.

I was given a wide berth as I found my seat next to Sabrina. I didn’t get to enjoy her company for very long as she was called for her own battle. Her opponent’s choice of a Golbat to match up against her Hypno proved to be especially foolish when the psychic pokemon put its adversary to sleep in under a second. The battle started and the Golbat just fell to the floor, asleep. Sabrina’s team was scary in their efficiency.

A/N; That’s a chapter done. I’ll combine everything by tomorrow when I release the first bit of Chapter 52.