Shadow
The story of a timid Dratini, caught as a Game Corner prize, who finds the perfect human trainer and, to his great distress, falls in love with her.

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Thumbnail art by kenket, used with permission
Audio DOES NOT COMPLETELY MATCH the text (something like a 1-2% difference) as it represents the fifth draft or so, whereas the final text is the sixth or seventh. Probably won't be a problem after Chapter 5 ...


___ Level 25 [continued] ___

Manda Pondelore—that was the name on every screen now, the championship match arrived. Lance the Dragon Master said he would retire if he lost, step aside for the new generation. And he was not very old—only fifty-five, still an auspicious age for a human—and his Dragonite, the number one in the world (according to the rankings) was only young, had more than two centuries of life before him. What would he do when Lance was gone? What, he thought, did any Pokémon do when their human left them? (But he shouldn’t think about it; and Runa was very young and healthy.)

At any rate Lance’s legacy was certain: even without his later resurgence he would have remained a champion emeritus, occupied some wing in Indigo Plateau where he would find a role presumably, teach students until he was very wise, an immortal part in the history of battling and championships. Yes, certainly he had that … but today Manda was the word on everyone’s lips, the rising star. Now that he paid especially close attention, she looked taller than Runa; had shorter, straighter hair; didn’t look to her Pokémon when she talked, her Charizard standing very sternly behind, one of the top percent.

—You’d like him. (Runa couldn’t keep from smiling.) The screen doesn’t do him justice.

They used to play in Hoenn, she said. Runa had a whole history she hardly talked about, all these other Pokémon she knew who saw her growing up. Compared to those, even Tanwen hardly knew her.

The reports said Manda was a hard and disciplined trainer: the perfect pondelorian. What a terrible use for a name! he thought, to end up meaning hard and lacking sympathy. Runa hated it, of course, one of the barriers between her and her family; and possibly, he thought, for such enormous things had to have causes, possibly that was the start of her philosophy, as if she said to her family, If you were only warmer to Pokemon, this wouldn’t be necessary—but as you aren’t, watch this. That was why, even though it made Tanwen furious, even though it may weaken the team, in the opposite to pondelorian efficiency Runa insisted she’d keep training him just the same, even after Dyna volunteered.

—We’ll train as if you were going to fight, even though you aren’t. After all, what’s the point of a gym if it only gets in the way of growing?

Selfish as it was, wretched and full of sickness as it showed him, he took everything she offered. So they each had six hours daily, three at a time with Tanwen and Gaia piling on extra, but not so much as Runa, who spent ten hours a day guiding them. But add to that her extra burdens, fetching meals and medicines and so on, things Manda had crews to worry over, and wasn’t her entire waking life spent on them? And they only worked six! Tanwen said that real battlers trained twice that, Manda’s Pokémon doing upwards of twelve every day. —Why can’t we train without her? Tanwen said. Isn’t that the point, that we act independent? So she drilled on the beach, ran back and forth and performed all sorts of exercises to assert herself, look the hardest in front of everyone.

As for him, he would be nowhere without Runa: she developed a special plan for him that, Dyna said, looked more like play than a regimen, full of swimming and stretches, some strength training but, with so many breaks (it didn’t have to be a chore, Runa said, it being not the end that mattered but the process), it was hardly more active than a cave Dratini’s regular day, in some underground lake, or Gaia’s sort of daily fare, climbing up some river for . For two weeks he did everything Runa set and again more on the beaches, following Tanwen’s example, shed more skin than he could look at, more sweat than ever—and if he was ever going to become a good Dratini, he thought, a slim and proportionate one like Gaia, it would be after that; yet he only lost a fraction of a pound. What sort of biology created a thing like that, a body and mind so joined to sickness? One fit to lie on a couch in some Hoenn estate, and be a pillow for a true battling Pokémon, one of Manda’s. And, he knew it would be only temporary, like those humans who brawled with Machoke to prepare for a competition but swelled up again in the off season. Yet Runa said he improved wonderfully; looked thinner and darker, not so cave-pale; was faster, by the clocks. Speed was his strength, she said (the only benefit of his timidity): he was always quick for his length, faster than Gaia would have been, if she hadn’t much more experience. So Gaia told him; Dyna looked on dubiously.

—So are you like getting fit?

—I … Runa says I beat my lap record.

—Good, good. So if I got the Pokérus or something and ended up in the Poké Centre, we’re okay, right?

Dyna regretted her decision; hadn’t figured, she said, that the Steelix was immune to everything she had. Did she want him to step in and replace her? She never said. At any rate Tanwen and Gaia had a strong chance to win it without her; Tanwen worked on her Flame Wheel, and Gaia mastered the drawing of groundwater through fissures in rock, as every water-type Pokémon did, so that the resident Diglett and Graveler had to rebuild the floor daily. And though after all their effort no one had evolved, still between them was defeated every irregular trainer in the gym, and all that remained was Forsyth, the old leader Jasmine’s son and successor.

Now Runa (he looked up at her) was beginning to get attention. It wasn’t just that her sister won the final and, if she won the title match in just a few hours, would become the champion of all Johto and Kanto—that was a part of it, of course, but now that they seriously applied to recorded training, Runa was gaining interest for her own abilities. Her style of letting them act independently astonished other humans in a way he never saw on the screens. The few times they battled other trainers on the routes no one really minded, rather were curious and asked about it; here, in the gym, multiple trainers objected to a loss, said she broke the rules or some made-up nonsense. But there was no rule, Runa said, against a Pokémon acting without command from a trainer. There was a flinch statistic, something on Runa’s record, which after a few battles some referred-to authority decided to set as ones and not zeroes for each non-volitional command, they called it, or it would be all zeroes forever. Some accused her, said that having them all out of balls was irresponsible—not locking up her Pokémon!—for suppose a rock or surf fell over them? Runa only said it broke the rules to harm a trainer, and wasn’t she also standing behind? What about a poison, carrying on after a swap? But there were salves for that, she said, to hold a condition without ending it. And what was this about not liking her giving them medicine, as if they couldn’t afford it? That everyone called patronising. But it was for their Pokémon, not them, so they weren’t left faint for however long because their humans were stingy or talking. No, as Tanwen said,

—They’re just sore we show them up as wanting.

For most Pokémon couldn’t act without an order, only seized up and looked at their trainer; whereas Runa taught them not to think of her at all. It was critical, she said, they trusted their own judgement, as that was key to growth. So they studied type advantages and tactics; when to strike; when to build reserves; when, for the sake of another on the team, to retreat, and when in the hardest circumstance (absolutely the last case, she said) to go all-out in a blaze to save the others. And the last should never happen; it was her failure if it did, she said; it would be better to forfeit the match and she suffer the penalty than compound a pain to Pokémon. It was difficult to follow her method, yes; but for trainers, he saw, it was terrifying. Without a need to wait on her they could outpace a technically faster Pokémon, or launch a surprise attack at the last moment, impossible to deflect. (Then perhaps she was a genius, he thought, looking up.) For even Rita had to admit her quality, that Runa invented a whole new style, a new thing to call pondelorian: in all the years of batting it hadn’t been done, and it all followed from her saying that Pokémon were people. And her family favoured Manda!

—I know they support us too. (She was careful what she said about them after the café, as if the minders may report.) They’re just following tradition.

Whatever they thought, a gym leader knew better. It was a leader’s job to guide trainers, not to run after titles; to them Runa’s method was surely a sign of things to come. So the leader Forsyth, rather the same height as Runa, not in fact much older but, presumably, raised to share in his mother’s experience, invited Runa to the gym even before knowing they meant to battle. He’d heard she was in the city, he said. He liked that her Pokémon were not in balls. (And did Runa still have them? Were they technically hers, in human law, or would anything trap them? There was a little parcel he saw once at the bottom of her bag, bound in black tape, which seemed somehow terrifying—as if dropping that he would vanish.) It’s an honour, said Forsyth, any time a trainer’s first badge is won at Olivine; especially one likely to go as far as her, he said.

So here they were: Olivine City Gym; and from his place behind Runa, he was on the verge, he felt, of being sick. Why didn’t he volunteer? he said. Not that Runa thought he didn’t care, but he might have shown it, demonstrated, and she’d feel it, he knew, very warmly. He could have been a part in winning Runa’s first badge … and too yet he had a hundred chances to recant since, offer to replace Dyna, and he did not. So the Flaaffy said a Steelix was nothing serious but, he knew, was terrified. Yet with him the battle was as good as lost, the powers escaping him, unable in the sea to produce more than a ripple, and who was he to spoil Runa’s history?

The floodlights went up over the boulders and stone arena, and now, at the cusp of all the others going into battle, Runa put her hand behind her for him to touch. For that was Runa, he thought: if he really did battle, and fainted and lost it for them, she would only pick him up and say it didn’t matter; and that was intolerable.

“Good luck, Tanwen!” Runa said. The siren went: the battle began: Tanwen leaped forward.

Forsyth said, “Magnemite, go!”

In a forced disadvantage—so Runa told them to beware—if a trainer favouring a certain type faced a Pokémon strong against it, the more calculating ones often responded by sacrificing one to cripple her with some debilitating condition. Tanwen sprinted on all fours—just one hit, he thought, a flame wheel or—oh! a Thunder Wave, Forsyth commanded. The Magnemite’s one eye closed and its whole body glowed with energy. And Tanwen was ruined if it landed, the whole strategy sunk! It was to speed alone, whoever landed first. And speed was never Tanwen’s strength, nor Gaia; and was it possible she missed, and both were paralysed, all gone at once?

But now a trail of flame followed Tanwen’s feet, and she jumped and, spinning in the air, a lick of flame shot out toward the Magnemite. And there it landed: with a blast of smoke and a screech, it pinged off the ground, and landed again, its one eye spinning in a spiral, out of the battle at once.

Runa said, “Good job, Tanwen!” though she wasn’t, he saw, looking at the Magnemite.

This was the sort of thing (and Tanwen would call him pathetic, a waste of effort) that ruined battling for him: whatever joy it was to win a battle, wasn’t the other’s pain, both to faint and to lose, much greater? What did the others say to the poor Magnemite, clearly new to the team, probably desperate to prove itself and now, knocked out at once? No one ever thought about the fainted Pokémon, beaten unconscious in their balls; yet they never quit praising the spirit of one who raged out of control, frenzied to the point of confusion. But he must, he thought, be happy for Runa. Tanwen had avoided the paralysis and put them one ahead at once, when he would have only flung himself at it and missed repeatedly, some horrible protracted thing that made Runa look like a child.

Forsyth said something to the Magnemite’s ball, that he was sorry, perhaps, before taking the next. His manner changed in battle; he wasn’t at all smiling now. He held the next ball ready and said, “Your Quilava’s powerful. Let’s see how she does against a different kind of steel!”

[scene continues in next part]