Chapter 50.2- Oak

Ignoring my infuriated psychic, I decided to get up to some other mischief on the internet. Oh look, a chess tournament, I thought to myself as I opened one of my favourite discord servers. It had quite a few of the more powerful trainers in the region, with Bruno being the main attraction. Of course, it was invite only and I still had no idea why I’d been sent one. It’s not like I contributed very much, or even that much happened on the server either way. For a man widely recognised as a sage fighting master, he was oddly active on discord. He moved in and out of different forums on the pokeweb addition, and made his opinion on all sorts of topics widely known. He was the member of the elite four most reached out to for comment by the press simply because he was the most accessible at all times. I saw that he was participating in the tournament and decided to snag one of the empty slots. I’d played quite a bit of chess in my past life, and from what I’d seen in this world, the game was nowhere near as developed.

Concepts like positional chess are still relatively unheard of and all my favourite openings didn’t even exist. That gave me both an advantage and a disadvantage. After all, if no one knew the tactics, then no one could prepare for them, and on the other hand, since no one knew the openings, to talk less of the main lines, I was so much more likely to find myself in novel positions. School chess champion or not, I didn’t think myself good enough to adapt to such positions on the fly but let’s see how it goes. My first opponent was Karen. I could recognise her by the username; ‘Dark Empress Karen’ and the profile picture of an Umbreon. There was also the fact that she consistently bothered me about Kenpachi. She sought a Tyranitar of her own and seemed ready to do anything to get one, as long as it fell within the bounds of the law. She started with pawn to E4, and from there we ended up playing what looked to be the Vienna Gambit. The scariest part about playing her was that she seemed to be able to find the critical mainline moves by sheer intuition and expertise. I’d spent hours memorising this shit, and she just intuited it out from skill. This world was bullshit.

Fortunately, she made a mistake by the 31st move as the time crunch started and I was able to eke out a win. I breathed out a sigh of relief at that and turned to Ino with a bright smile on my face. She gave me a mental high five, and I moved on to the next game. I found myself against someone I could not recognise for the life of me. The fact that this was a discord server made entirely of elite trainers made that impressive. Donnell had been a massive pokemon nerd. He knew all the best trainers. He started the game simply, moving the white pieces in a strange setup I’d also never seen before. I guess he was determined to be a lot of firsts for me. He made it through the mid game and somehow managed to only be down two pawns. He resigned at the fortieth move, probably realizing that he had no way to make it back up after losing a rook for a knight and falling another two points of material down. My next opponent, was the most famous on the server. Bruno had his profile picture as himself meditating on a mountain. Fun fact; that was, apparently, the most well used profile picture on the website. His username was literally ‘fight me’ and he had a small blue tick next to his name to show it was the real him. I got to start with the white pieces, and justifiably cautious, I went with the opening I knew best. I could recite the main line, and every sideline of The London from memory. Twenty moves in, and I was proven right. This was my opening, but he was slowly beginning to eke out a positional advantage. I was down on king safety, but up on central control and we were dead even on material. Normally, this meant things would be equal, but the net he was weaving around my king was as obvious as it was unavoidable. Luckily, for me, he suddenly disconnected on the sixty-third move as we entered into an equal endgame. I felt happy for the win, but somehow robbed of the chance to win with my own effort. Suddenly, my phone was taken over by a text from Oak; ‘Return home with Gary now!’ Was all the text said, but knowing Oak, it had to be incredibly important. I stood up from the bench and made my way to the principal’s office. Oak’s text had included some expectation of urgency, but I didn’t want to prove the tabloids right by rushing straight into the school and essentially kidnapping my nephew. It would take absolutely no time for the news to be filled with a headline that told the story with completely unsuitable levels of drama. The principal’s office was much as I remembered from my years in this very institution and the secretary waved me straight in with a strained smile that I tried returning, but when her smile became even more fragile at my attempt, I gave it up as a lost cause.

“Donnell. What brings you here? I hope no one has bothered you” He said, trying to sound casual, having clearly downed some liquid courage if the smell in the office was any indication.

“Nothing of the sort. My father has asked me to return to the lab with Gary” I said simply. At least, he was no longer stammering.

“Of course. Of course. I’ll have someone fetch him immediately. Would you like some tea? It’s freshly brewed”

I acquiesced, before smiling at him and taking a seat on his desk. I put the cup to my mouth and took a long drag of the delicious jasmine tea. For a region modelled after Japan, good tea was surprisingly hard to find in Kanto. Of course, that’s when things started to go wrong. Ino screamed in my mind that something was going on with Gary. He’d slumped into unconsciousness. As my facial expression changed, I could see a glint in the Principal’s eyes. He knew. I ordered Ino to restrain him as I stood up from my chair but found myself slumping to the floor immediately. What the fuck?

When I finally regained consciousness, it was to the principal’s bloody head lying on the floor a few feet away from me. He’d been cleanly decapitated. Fuck. Broly.

“Indeed, my lord.” Ino said in my mind. I asked her what happened as I finally started to regain cognizance of more of my surroundings.

“The principal was an agent of an organisation that sought to kidnap young Gary to use as assurance against your father. He poisoned the tea he gave you. Once I extracted that particular fact, Broly had been unstoppable.” As she spoke, my vision cleared up and I noticed Broly sulking in the corner. Ino had probably given him one hell of a dressing down. “And how did you fix the poison situation” I asked out loud, mind not yet clear enough to engage in a fully mental conversation.

“He had an antidote in his pocket” I nodded, not surprised that she’d been able to find something like that. I suspected she’d gotten even more from his mind than she’d let on. “And Gary?” I asked, moving on to the priority now that the immediate was taken care of.

“I blocked off teleportation. Your nephew and his assailants are waiting in an unused classroom for external extraction. I suspect that they do not wish to leave on foot and risk being caught by your father or any of your brothers.” I nodded at her words, not even bothering to ask why she hadn’t dealt with them already. We’d gone through the same tactics trainiing with Oak. If they weren’t causing any immediate harm then it would be preferable to wait for their reinforcements to secure more arrests. As it stood, I probably had the time to teleport to the lab and get help, but these fuckers had posioned me. Pardon my french but I’m going to fucking kill all of them.

“Ino, get rid of the body and clean up the scene. Our official story is that he poisoned me and escaped via teleportation while you tended to me. Explaining his death will be much more difficult than explaining his absence.” Ino nodded, understanding my thinking and made her way off with the body. I walked towards Broly then. He had his head bowed but I connected my aura with his, sending him feelings of pride and assurance. His head came up instantly, realizing that he wasn’t being scolded. “If anyone had poisoned you, nothing would have stopped me from drawing the breath from their lungs. I can not criticize you for doing the same.” I said, realizing that now was not the time to turn this into a teachable moment. Ino had done more than enough of that.
My job, now, was to reassure my friend and as he swept me up into a hug, I realized it was the only job I actually wanted. Ino returned and told me that she sensed multiple people with hostile intentions on their way into the school on a heicopter. Lovely. We moved straight to the classroom the three idiots had kept Gary in. We met them just as they were about to escape, and the look in their eyes as they came face to face with me was one for the records. I’d never seen such concentrated fear in my life.

I nodded at Ino, and they all slumped into unconsciousness before she teleported Gary off to the lab. Broly and I made our way outside to their escorts. Ino would join us in a few minutes. I released Kisame from her pokeball as we walked, and she drew water from all the water dispensers in the school as we made our way out. When we finally got to the school’s entrance, she had barely enough to use as a platform, but it would have to be enough for a fight like this.

Of course, knowing my luck, those words just had to jinx everything. I came face to face with a man I’d honestly never expected to see in a place like this. Standing right there at the entrance, wearing a freshly pressed Rocket uniform and a smirk that made my blood boil was the poacher. We recognised each other at the same time and all the others with him were promptly disregarded. Broly swept forwards, about to cleave his head from his body, only to be intercepted by a Lucario who had moved in similar speed. His next pokemon out was that same Dragonite, and where before it had threatened my entire team with its power, now, Kisame swept right for it almost instantly. She’d grown by leaps and bounds and as he sent out a Charizard, I mentally asked Kisame to hang back. It would be two-on-one until Ino returned. Not catastrophic odds by any means, but enough to make us cautious. A single mistake would mean death, but isn’t that what I missed the most about living in the wild.

Since that day at Cinnabar, I’d never met anyone on equal footing in a battle were whoever lost would be dead beneath the ground. I had no doubts that if I lost here, he’d tear my skin from my bones, and when I stomped his team into the ground, his head would soon follow.

The Charizard started things out, aggressive as any member of the species. A hydropump from Kisame forced it to veer off its planned fight and she almost clipped it with a barrage of ice beams as it dodged the first attack.

The Dragonite had moved in its compatriots shadow and was upon Kisame before she had time to do anything long range. It mattered little though, she had more than enough experience fighting fast opponents, and extreme speed or no, both Broly and Gai were faster. She used her control over he platform to bring her lower to the ground, allowing his swiping attack to pass right over her and slamming into his chest with a powerful dragon tail that didn’t budge him. The Charizard came back around, and she retreated from the both of them lest they manage to encircle her. From that first exchange, I could already tell that this wouldn’t be a walkover by any means.