Tommy felt a chill run down his back.

How could that be possible?

“That’s not possible,” Aubrey immediately echoed Tommy’s exact line of thinking. “I’m sure that the other girl was able to get in at least one move right?”

Jon was shaking his head, “No. Shellder protected against Growlithe and used Withdraw on Bellsprout.”

“I-I think he’s actually right...” Tommy stammered.

“Nessa stomped that girl so hard I still can’t even believe what I just saw,” Jon said to them. “All with a single Pokémon who had a type disadvantage for the second battle. Plus she didn’t go on the offensive once that entire match. That can’t even be half of what she’s got, how did she get to be so good at battling?”

“Well we can ask her when she comes back over here,” Aubrey said. “Maybe she’ll tell us.”

The second battle had passed and the third started by the time Nessa was making her way over to where Tommy and the others were sitting. She had changed out of her gym clothes and her hair was wet like she had just showered.

“Hey guys,” Nessa said cheerily. “How have the battles been going?”

“Well your battle has been the best so far,” Tommy told her. “You did an amazing job.”

She smiled at him, causing him to quickly look away.

“Yeah, uh, if you two could stop flirting for a second...” Jon started. “I have some questions for you, Nessa.”

She narrowed her eyes at Jon; it was the first time Tommy had seen her looking angry.

“What?” She snapped at him.

“Uh,” he started out a little less confidently. “I was just going to say that you battled really well.”

“Quit flattering me,” Nessa told him. “What do you want?”

“Well, how did you get to be so good at battling?” Jon asked her.

“I practiced,” she looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world for having just asked that. “How else do you think I got to be so good?”

“So you’ve been battling for a long time then?” Tommy asked her excitedly, glad that one of his friends had some experience.

“Shellder and I have been together ever since I was little,” she told all of them, grinning as she absently ran her hand along the Dive Ball clipped to her belt. “He’s my partner and he’s been with me through everything.”

“Wow you’ve had a Pokémon for that long? That’s incredible.” Tommy told her.

“Are your parents trainers?” Aubrey asked. “Jon said when he was watching your battle your Shellder didn’t take any damage. You must have gotten trained by someone amazing to be able to pull that off.”

“You caught that, Jon?” Nessa smiled at him again, some of the anger leaving her voice. “That’s impressive that you were able to tell that, you must watch a lot of battles.”

“What’s impressive is what you did in that battle,” Jon said while looking at her seriously. “I’ve been watching battles for a long time and there’s only a handful of trainers I’ve seen pull that off, mostly gym leaders.”

“It’s impressive when a gym leader does it in an official battle, sure,” Nessa shrugged. “I did it against a student who has probably only been battling for a few weeks or months.”

“It was still incredible to watch nonetheless,” Jon was laying it on thick. “Are your parents good trainers?”

“My dad was a great trainer,” she said as she looked away. “He taught me a lot.”

“Was? Did something happen?” Darius asked.

“Yeah, you could say that.” She quietly replied. “Sorry, I don’t want to say more than that.”

“Sorry for asking,” Darius winced.

“It’s fine, you didn’t know,” She said to him.

“Will you help us practice battling?” Tommy asked her. “I think we could learn a lot from you. Especially since none of us have ever battled before.”

“Sure, but we’ll have to ask for permission to use the stadium or one of the practice rooms. If not, we’ll have to find some other place around town where we can practice.” Nessa told them. “It would also probably be better practice for you if you caught your own Pokémon, so the sooner you three can get on that the better.”

“You say it like it’s so easy,” Jon griped. “How can we catch a Pokémon in the wild if we don’t already have one of our own to battle with? Aubrey was lucky she had her dad to help her out.”

“The first field experience will be your best opportunity,” Aubrey said. “You’ll have a rental Pokémon with you that you can use to hopefully catch something.”

“No word on where we’re going yet, right?” Tommy asked.

Darius just shook his head. “I bet they don’t tell us anything until the week leading up to the expedition itself.”

By now the third match had finished and the fourth one was getting started. Professor Larkspur was still calling all of the matches but, as Tommy looked around, it was pretty evident not all of the students were paying much attention anymore. Around the stadium, handfuls of students were chatting and laughing with one another while the remainder of the matches played out. Nessa’s fight had been the best match of the day and the rest were boring to watch as most kids didn’t know what they were doing. Professor Larkspur dismissed everyone with a final reminder to be on time for their matches or it would be a forfeit.

Jonathan’s match was also scheduled early in the afternoon, at 1:30 tomorrow, so Tommy and his friends made plans to watch Jon’s match and then go check out the park after it was over.

The end of the day came and went with nothing more happening. Tommy was just glad he finally had a restful night after not sleeping well for the previous two.

————————————————————————

The next day Tommy completed his chores and got to school early. Professor Hemlock rattled off another 2 hour review lecture that Tommy took detailed notes through so he could study over the weekend.

That morning a student had knocked on the classroom door at 9:32 but Professor Hemlock simply ignored him.

“Well some kid just got a free win,” Jon whispered to them as the late student rattled the doorknob futilely. “Hopefully that was the kid I was supposed to fight against.”

After eating lunch everyone headed to the stadium to watch Jon battle; they wished him luck and then found some good seats in the stands. There was now just a small scattering of students in the stadium since it was no longer a requirement to be here. It ended up being a close fight that Jon almost was able to win, but unfortunately he couldn’t put his opponent down. Jon’s rented Tympole got matched up against a Petilil and, although Tympole fought admirably, he was too slow on land to avoid Absorb which ended up negating all of the damage that Jon and Tympole dealt in the first half of the match.

Tommy and his friends were waiting out front of the stadium for Jon when he walked out through the doors looking dejected. They gathered around him to try to cheer him up.

“It was a good battle,” Darius clapped him on the back. “You were close, it was just a bad matchup for you.”

Jon just kept looking at the ground. “It’s not fair, I should have won. Absorb is a stupid move. Now my ranking is going to be low.”

“Well maybe not,” Nessa said to him. “Maybe Larkspur thought you were a great trainer so he put you in a disadvantaged situation to see if you could pull out a win.”

“Yeah it’s not all about winning and losing,” Tommy agreed. “I’m sure Larkspur saw that you put up a great fight in the first part of the battle.”

“Yeah, maybe you guys are right.” He said glumly. He looked up at Aubrey and smiled foolishly. “Maybe I would feel better if Aubrey told me all about how I did an amazing job too.”

Everyone looked over at Aubrey who was frowning at Jon.

“Ugh fine,” she said. “You did okay. Just be glad you didn’t have to fight me or you wouldn’t have gotten a single attack in.”

“Way to be encouraging,” Darius laughed. “Come on, let’s go check out the park. It’s only 2 so we have a couple of hours.”

The five of them followed the sidewalk and walked around to the backside of the school stadium where they saw a massive stone arch in the middle of a towering stone fence. The barrier of white rock extended to the left as far as the eye could see and underneath the entrance arch were gleaming silver turnstiles. Tommy approached one and saw a slider for him to swipe his student ID through. Once he did he was able to walk through the turnstile and enter into the park.

As the rest of his friends walked through the gate Tommy looked ahead and saw a statue of an Arcanine that was chasing his tail in the middle of a small square plaza. The plaza itself housed some restrooms and a few vending machines and there was a map of the park sitting in front of the statue of Arcanine. The map showed the park and in the bottom corner was a scannable code that would copy the map to their PokéNavs. Each of them did so and Tommy looked at his PokéNav to see what the park held.

There were three paths one could take branching out from the statue. One path ran through the center of the plaza which bisected the circular shape formed by the other two paths, each of which snaked lazily along the left and right boundaries of the park. The left side of the park was a trek through hilly fields with tall bunching grass while the right side led the traveler through a small lush forest. The center path passed along a pristine lakefront and met the circular path at the far end of the park.

“You want to go check out the lake?” Darius suggested to everyone who were each staring down at the PokéNavs.

They all quickly agreed and left the plaza following the center path. The paved sidewalk immediately gave way to a natural path of stone and dirt that wound its way through a well manicured field. After a short 5 minute walk the path deposited them into a small valley with a lake at the bottom. The path wound it’s way around the left side of the lake while the forest butted up against the right side. There were already plenty of other people in the lake playing and swimming with water Pokémon as well as a handful of beachgoers lounging on the white sand, soaking up the sun. There looked to be more people than there were fourth year students and Tommy wondered if some of the people here were alumni of the school.

He and his friends headed down to the beach and spent the rest of the afternoon talking and laughing in the sand. Nessa let her Shellder out to play in the shallows but Aubrey still refused to let her Pokémon out of its Pokéball; she was adamant that she wanted it away from prying eyes and that it needed to be a surprise tomorrow in her first battle, even though she wasn’t fighting against Jon.

The rest of the week passed in the blink of an eye. On Thursday Aubrey won her battle while Darius lost his. Darius got a good matchup with his Tympole against a Vulpix but still couldn’t pull out the win. Aubrey finally revealed her Chikorita which dominated her opponent, though she did take a few hits in the fight.

By the time Friday came around Tommy was a nervous wreck. He could hardly focus in class Friday morning, even when Professor Hemlock was explicitly going over things that would be on Monday’s test. He kept thinking about his first ever battle that he was going to have to fight in just a couple of hours. Professor Hemlock reminded the students to read through their PokéNav manuals over the weekend, which Tommy hadn’t even opened yet, and to study over the weekend to be ready for Monday.

Tommy didn’t have much of an appetite at lunch and simply sat at the table and picked at his food.

“You should try to eat something,” Nessa told him. “If you have an empty stomach it might distract you in your battle this afternoon.”

“The thought of putting any food into my mouth makes me want to hurl,” he said while putting his head down on the table. “Did you guys feel this bad right before your fights?”

“Nah,” Aubrey waved her hand absentl-mindedly. “I knew I would win, the guy I went up against was a complete joke.”

“Aubrey, do you have a single empathetic bone in your body?” Jon asked. “Ignore her, Tommy. I was nervous, but once you get down there you’ll know what to do. We’ve been running simulations for a while now so just put it all together and you can bring home the win.”

“I’m not going to be able to eat anything so I’m just going to head over to the stadium,” Tommy told his friends. “You guys will be there at 2 to cheer me on right?”

“Yeah, we’ll be there,” Darius clapped him on the back. “You can do it man. At least take a granola bar or something in case you change your mind and get hungry.”

“See you guys there,” Tommy waved goodbye and headed out of the cafeteria.

He checked his PokéNav and saw that it was only 12:00 so he still had almost two hours to kill. Not knowing what to do with himself he started to wander around and found that his feet took him over to the greenhouse. He saw an assistant watering the berry bushes and walked up to him.

“Hi, are we allowed to take these and mix our own food?” He asked the assistant.

The man nodded. “Yes, as long as you’re in your fourth year and have access to your own Pokémon. We try to keep the younger students out so they don’t waste the food that we cultivate here.”

Tommy flashed his badge to the assistant who nodded absently and returned to what he was doing. “Help yourself to a few berries but you’ll need to log what you took once you head over to the kitchen. If you take too much at once you’ll be banned, though we’ve never really had that problem before. Just take in moderation and you’ll be fine.”

Tommy nodded, “Thanks.”

He walked around, admiring the plethora of eye-catching berries, not really sure why his feet had brought him here in the first place. After shambling around for a while he decided he wanted to make something to show his appreciation to the Pokémon he was fighting with today. Tommy read all of the name plates and descriptions of each of the berries as he passed by and he ended up picking a blue Oran Berry and a weird berry that looked like a circular cluster of grapes called a Bluk Berry. He read that the Bluk Berry had some sweet flavors in it so he figured it was good enough.

He headed over to the kitchen and quickly mixed up a small mixture of cooked vegetables and some green spinach. He mashed up the 2 berries using a mortar and pestle and drizzled their juices over the top. Shrugging to himself, having no real idea if the Pokémon he chose would like the food or not, he boxed it up inside of a small container and headed over to the stadium.

It was around 12:30 when Tommy got there. He was still early but he walked over to the locker rooms anyway to get changed and prepare for his first battle. The locker room was massive, containing a locker for each male student with their name taped to the front, and he found his and opened it to find a set of gym clothes neatly folded inside. After changing into his gym clothes that consisted of a white polo shirt with the school emblem on the left breast and a pair of black shorts he sat down on one of the benches not sure of what to do.

He heard footsteps approaching so he looked up to see an assistant approaching him with a bunch of Pokéballs clipped to his belt.

“Last name, First name, and match time?” The assistant asked lazily.

“Hartford, Thomas. My match is at 2:00,” Tommy replied.

“Very well. You’re checked in for your match at 2:00,” the attendant replied as he touched the screen of his PokéNav. “Do not attempt to leave the locker room with the rental Pokémon or you will face disciplinary action. All of the Pokémon's information has been transferred to your PokéNav, and I suggest you review it before your fight. Best of luck with your match.”

The attendant unclipped a Pokéball from his belt and tossed it to Tommy who barely caught it. Tommy heard footsteps receding but couldn’t be bothered to look up.

He finally held a Pokémon in his hand.