“So, the name’s Zach,” the dark skinned man said, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “I graduated from the same course as you guys about 7 years ago now. Got offered a partnership with Bruce over in Cianwood Gym and I’ve been working for him ever since.”

“Now surely you’re saying to yourself ‘Zach, Cianwood is halfway across the country, how are we going to get there in one day?’” Zach continued on, perfectly content to monologue with himself. “Well don’t you worry kiddos, we’re flying of course. The school has got plenty of strong Pokémon it’s trained up over the years for occasions such as these. All you need to do is get yourself here bright and early at 8 am.”

“Now I won’t be spoiling all of the things we’re doing when we get there,” he grinned, revealing two rows of gleaming white teeth. “But I’ll be working you all to the bone that’s for sure. I’ll be with you guys every step of the way, and I’ll pull you out if it gets dangerous, but you’ll be in groups of three and I won’t intervene unless I absolutely have to, since you’ll be expelled if I do.”

“I’ve got a list of things you should bring,” he continued as he began to touch the screen on his PokéNav, syncing it to the students in his group. A moment later the gear on Tommy’s wrist buzzed and he looked down at the list of items while Zach continued to speak. “You should bring all of the normal things you would take on an excursion, like your tent, sleeping bag, fire starter, and so on, but there are a few extra things on there you want to bring since we’ll be heading out to sea. You’ll want to bring a swimsuit, rain poncho, towel, and a few other things. Make sure you look through the list before we leave on Friday; if there are items you don’t have then you’ll want to speak with the school to get them.”

“Now, for our last task,” Zach told them, “let’s split up into our groups of three. There’s 24 of you kiddos so it should work out nice and even. You’re free to pick who you want to work with; you’ll be working closely with these people this weekend so pick someone who you can trust to watch your back out in the field.”

Tommy turned to find Nessa and was pleased to see she was already smiling at him. “We can work together right?”

“Of course,” she laughed. “You don’t even have to ask.”

Tommy nodded his head and smiled, feeling good knowing that there was no one better that he could be partnered up with. Nessa was incredibly strong and ranked 5th in the entire class, plus maybe he would get to learn a little more about her. Spending a weekend together with her without his three friends constantly heckling him would be a nice change of pace; the two of them would get to grow closer together.

Now who should we get to be our third? Tommy wondered.

“Hey, let me join your group,” Tommy heard a girl speak from behind him. “I’m not working with any of these other kids when the number 5 student is still available to work with.”

Tommy turned to face the speaker and widened his eyes when he saw a breathtakingly beautiful girl with strawberry blonde hair and brilliant green eyes walking towards him and Nessa. Her lips were full and plump but she wasn't smiling as she lazily strolled towards the two of them - in fact, she had a bored expression on her face that said she would rather be anywhere else at the moment.

“Name’s Ashley,” the girl said as she casually extended her hand towards Nessa. A nasty grin found its way onto her face, the kind that reminded Tommy of a predator who was sizing up its prey, licking its lips patiently while waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. “You’ve probably seen me fight in a few matches already.”

“Nessa,” replied Nessa coolly as an equally forced smile found its way to the corners of her mouth.

Tommy was witnessing the second ranked student shaking hands with the fifth ranked student and could hardly believe that he was about to be in a group with both of them. He swallowed and hoped he wouldn’t be a burden to either of these two women as their forearms still remained clasped together, each girl refusing to be the one to back down from the other.

“Now, come on,” Ashley started as she relinquished Nessa’s grip and began to stride away. “I think I saw a kid ranked around 20 or something over here. It’s not ideal, but he’s probably ranked the next highest after you, Nessa.”

Ashley stopped walking after a few paces when she realized Nessa wasn’t following her. She turned around to face the unmoving girl who was now standing right beside Tommy with her arms folded across her chest. Tommy kept his face neutral and tried to not look embarrassed.

“If you want to work with me,” Nessa began when Ashley had turned around, “Tommy here will be our third. He and I have been friends since I transferred in at the beginning of the month.”

“Your boyfriend?” Ashley asked coolly. “I remember now, you made a big deal about him in class on the first day. You could do much better than him, I'm sure.”

Tommy’s face flushed and his ears turned bright red but he refused to look away from Ashley.

“We aren’t dating,” Tommy said, finally finding the courage to speak, just so he could deny he was dating a beautiful girl that he found attractive. “I was just her first friend when she moved here. We met at a gym match before the first day of school.”

Ashley looked at Tommy, acknowledging him for the first time since she had walked over to them. The bored, indifferent expression had returned to her face as she regarded him, like she was being spoken to by something less than human and she couldn't even bother herself with him.

“What’s your rank?” Ashley curtly asked as she began to thumb through the PokéNav on her wrist.

“Eighty-Eight,” Tommy replied, not bothering to lie since she could just look him up in her PokéNav anyway. “I’m also using a rental Pokémon too since I have the feeling that’s going to be your next question.”

“A rental?” Ashley said, sounding horrified. “Nessa come on, ditch this kid. He doesn’t even have his own Pokémon yet. There has to be literally anyone better than him that we can team up with.”

Nessa didn’t speak, contenting herself to simply stand beside Tommy with her arms still folded across her chest. After an uncomfortable five second stand-off where everyone just looked at each other, Ashley sighed and dropped her head.

“Dammit!” she screamed loudly, causing Tommy and Nessa to flinch and half the class to turn around and look at their group. Ashley looked up at Tommy with narrowed eyes. “I swear if we have to do some dumb team challenge or battle and you cause us to lose I’m drowning you in the ocean myself.”

Tommy just sort of nodded his head stupidly, agreeing to be drowned, because he wasn’t sure what else to say to the girl. Ashley walked back over to stand next to Tommy and Nessa as the talking and chattering of students began to die down.

“Alright!” Zach boomed. “It looks like we’ve got our groups! That should be everything that I needed to go over, so plan on seeing me again Friday morning. Don’t be late!”

Zach winked and then waved goodbye, hustling off towards the exit archway to return back to his other duties. The rest of the students in group four began to amble towards the exit after their chaperone but Tommy checked his watch and saw that it was only 3.

“You want to go walk around the park for a bit?” Tommy suggested to Nessa, hoping she would be interested in going with him. “We can go down to the beach?”

“Sounds fun, let’s go,” Ashley replied from Tommy’s other side before Nessa had the chance to answer. She smiled viciously at Tommy, “We can work on our team chemistry.”

Tommy sighed, chastising himself for not letting the new girl walk away first. Trying to psych himself up, he started towards the lake with the two girls in tow behind him; It couldn’t be all that bad, he needed to know more about Ashley for the trip this weekend anyway. He hoped they could at least get along a little bit this afternoon.

The three of them made their way down to the beach by the lake and Nessa let Shellder out of his Pokéball to play in the water like she did the last time they were here. He swam over to Tommy and playfully shot little arcs of water that Tommy deftly blocked with his palms.

“How did you get him to like you so fast?” Nessa laughed. She was sitting at the edge of the water, letting the small waves lapping against the beach wash over her toes. “He’s normally pretty shy around strangers and we’ve only been down here a couple of other times.”

Tommy just looked over at her and grinned; he shrugged his shoulders not really knowing the answer to that himself. The momentary lapse in his concentration allowed Shellder to hit him in the face with a small jet of water. Tommy faked a burst of outrage and charged into the water after Shellder, who simply dove underwater and scurried away. Tommy knew he would never catch the slippery mollusk in the water so he headed back towards the beach and sat down next to Nessa, putting his feet in the water next to hers.

Ashley had been standing further along the beach, splashing her Totodile as he swam back and forth through the shallow water. When Tommy sat down next to Nessa, Ashley made her way over to join them, Totodile trailing in the sand behind her. To Tommy’s surprise she sat next to him instead of Nessa.

“Can I say hi to your Totodile?” Tommy asked apprehensively. The little blue crocodile was waddling over, Ashley having outpaced him with her long legs.

She scoffed and started to say, “Sure, if you can get him to…”

She stopped mid sentence as Totodile sat in the water right in between Tommy and her. Tommy glanced at Ashley out of the corner of his eye and leaned forward, extending his left hand towards Totodile while keeping it turned upwards; he started wiggling his fingers and the little blue crocodile began to bat at them with his stubby little hands. Tommy laughed and pulled an Oran Berry from his backpack that was on the beach behind him.

“I swiped it from the greenhouse earlier this morning,” he grinned. “Would you mind if I gave it to him?”

He glanced over at Ashley who was sitting there with a stunned look on her face; she shook her head back and forth but otherwise didn’t speak a word. Tommy tore the berry in half using both of his hands and slowly extended his left out to Totodile who tried to snatch the berry away from Tommy’s grip.

He made sure to keep the food tightly gripped in his hand, he wanted Totodile to have to eat it from out of his hand. The crocodile let a low growl sound from his throat but Tommy didn’t budge, he kept eye contact until Totodile lowered his head in submission. The little guy took a small bite from the end of the berry and Tommy smiled in relief, attempting to pass the other half of the berry over to Nessa who was still sitting on his other side.

“Here, let Shellder have the other half,” Tommy told her, not taking his eyes off Totodile who had his sharp teeth dangerously close to the tips of Tommy’s fingers. When she didn’t move to take the berry from his hand though he quickly glanced over at her and saw that she was also giving him a funny look.

“What?” He asked her. “Can Shellder not have it?”

“No, of course he can have it,” she said to him. “It’s not that, just…”

“Just what?” He asked when she trailed off and didn’t finish her sentence.

“What you’re doing is weird,” Ashley was scowling on Tommy’s other side, deep in thought.

“Oh, sorry. I guess it is weird that I’m feeding your Pokémon,” Tommy said. He extended the hand that Totodile was eating from over to Ashley. “ I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, sorry. Here you take the rest of the berry so he can finish it.”

“No. Tommy, it’s not that,” Nessa started to say. Shellder had ambled over to sit next to Totodile after smelling the berry. Nessa pushed Tommy’s hand towards Shellder who enveloped the uneaten half of the berry with his long tongue and brought it into his shell; Totodile finished eating the other half out of Tommy’s left hand.

“How did you get two different Pokémon that aren’t even yours to trust you so quickly?” Ashley asked him, finally expressing interest in Tommy for the first time all day.

Tommy frowned at her. “Well they’re trained aren’t they? It’s not like they’re wild Pokémon or anything, you both are going to graduate and become excellent trainers so your Pokémon are well-behaved.”

“I mean sure, they’re well behaved in the sense that they won’t randomly attack some passerby,” Ashley retorted. “That doesn’t mean that they aren’t still dangerous or are over the top friendly. Even after I caught Totodile it took me weeks to get him to trust me. He wouldn’t eat from my hand for months.”

“Okay, so you’ve trained him up well?” Tommy reiterated. “Like I said, you trained him to behave and he ate from my hand.”

“No, the only reason I agreed to let you feed him was because I expected him to bite your hand,” Ashley said to him, totally straight faced. “I thought it would be funny.”

Tommy stared at her expecting her to laugh and say she was joking but she remained totally serious.

“Tommy,” Nessa began to say as she frowned at Ashley. “Seriously, what you just did there was pretty unique.”

“I honestly didn’t know I was doing anything special,” Tommy replied. “I mean I grew up on the ranch around Pokémon, of course. Dad showed me some tricks and different things I could do to handle the more docile Pokémon around the ranch. I haven’t encountered any wild Pokémon yet but when I eventually do it’s not like I have a death wish or anything. I doubt I could just walk up to a wild Pokémon and feed them like I did with your two Pokémon.”

“How have you not caught a Pokémon yet?” Ashley asked him. “You clearly know how to handle them.”

“Mom didn’t want me to be a trainer,” he said, exhaling heavily. He pulled the empty Pokéball his mother had gifted him out of his bag and held it in his hand. “She finally gave in, she gave this to me a few weeks ago so I could catch my first Pokémon. Sorry for not telling you and everyone else yet Nessa.”

Nessa smiled brightly at him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Congratulations,” she said simply. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Well maybe you can catch your first Pokémon this weekend then,” Ashley told him. “Nessa and I will be with you so we can weaken something easily and then you can capture it.”

“If the time is right,” was all Tommy said.

“What better chance could you possibly have?” Ashley spoke slowly like she was talking to an infant. “It’s the perfect opportunity.”

Tommy didn’t elaborate any further, he was sure Ashley wouldn’t understand what he was thinking, and for that matter, he wasn’t even sure Nessa would either.

The day was beautiful and Tommy closed his eyes so he could feel the warmth of the sun. A few minutes of silence passed between the three of them but Tommy didn’t feel uncomfortable. Shellder and Totodile were splashing in the shallows in front of the three of them, not a care in the world.

The school day was nearing its end, so Tommy stood up and offered his arms to help the girls up. Nessa gladly accepted his hand but Ashley brushed Tommy’s other hand aside and stood up on her own.

“Hey, who is your third Pokémon?” Tommy asked Ashley as everyone busied themselves brushing sand off of their backsides. “I’ve seen you battle with Totodile and Litwick, but you’ve never needed to call out your final Pokémon.”

“Why should I tell you?” Ashley said, narrowing her eyes. She tilted her chin in the direction of Nessa, “I’m not too keen to reveal my final card in front of a potential rival anyway.”

“Rival?” Nessa asked. “I’m no match for you with only one battle ready Pokémon.”

Ashley tossed her head back and laughed. “Yeah, I’m not buying that for even one second. Your other Pokémon must be strong, just from seeing your Shellder. And even if it isn't, I've watched Shellder win loads of battles this month, virtually unscathed through all of them. I don’t know why you haven’t issued a challenge to number 3 or number 4 yet. You would easily beat either of those buffoons and rank third in the class with only your Shellder.”

“But not second?” Nessa asked coyly.

“Try it and find out.” Ashley gave a vicious grin.

“How about this,” Tommy said, trying desperately to play peacemaker. “You both call out your remaining Pokémon at the same time. This is for the sake of our team chemistry. Please? You both already know my life story at this point while I know almost nothing about either of you. Plus if you both call your Pokémon at the same time then both of you will know the other person’s trump card.”

Nessa unclipped one of the two dive balls from her belt and extended her hand towards Tommy. “I’ll agree only on the condition that you call out both of our Pokémon, Tommy. I don’t trust her to throw her Pokéball at the same time that I do.”

Ashley sneered but followed suit, mirroring Nessa. Tommy now held two different Pokémon in his hands, he was excited to see what they both were, his mind racing through all of the different possibilities.

Nessa placed her hand on Tommy’s shoulder again as he readied to toss the two Pokéballs. “I wasn’t lying when I said she isn’t battle ready. Please call her into the water, she can’t survive long on land.”

Tommy looked into Nessa’s eyes and saw the worry there. He smiled at her and threw Nessa’s Pokéball into the water while he tossed Ashley’s on the beach.

From Ashley’s Pokéball, a Gible emerged. The little purple dragon looked up at Tommy with its head tilted to the side and an inquisitive look on its face, no doubt wondering who the strange man was that called it from it’s Pokéball. Ashley roughly shoved Tommy out of the way causing him to stumble awkwardly into Nessa.

“If either of you breathes a word about Gible to anyone, the rest of your year here will be a living hell.” Ashley promised. Her voice was thin and she knelt down in the sand to pat Gible affectionately on her head. “I plan to challenge Max for the number one spot just as soon as some kid forces him to reveal one of his other two Pokémon or he gets bored fighting with his Nidorino all of the time and reveals one himself.”

She straightened up and dusted the sand from her knees and legs again. Gible had started digging through the loose sand happily and was diving in and out of the holes she was making. Ashley extended her hand and Tommy handed the empty Pokéball back to her. Ashley glanced into the water and held a hand up to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“I guess you really were serious when you said you only had one usable Pokémon,” Ashley said, trying unsuccessfully to pass her laughing off as a coughing fit. Nessa had been crouched in the shallow water but stood up and glared furiously at Ashley. Tommy stepped between them again, trying to diffuse the tension and hoping that he wasn’t about to get clobbered by one of the two girls.

“Don’t speak poorly about my Pokémon or I swear you’ll regret it,” Nessa spoke through gritted teeth. Her eyes were narrowed in pure hatred as she squared off against Ashley; Tommy had never seen her this angry before.

Ashley held her hands up and took a step back. “Sorry, I was just caught off guard is all. I really was expecting something magnificent like a Lapras or something. Anyway, if you can evolve her she’ll be an absolute force but until then, rank 3 is as high as you’ll get.”

Nessa said nothing, remaining in an aggressive stance; Tommy was holding his arm out and trying his best to restrain her.

“If you can evolve her you’ll be like what? One of the few people who have ever successfully trained one? That would be impressive.” Ashley continued on when Nessa didn’t bother to respond. She held her hands up in front of her again, trying to placate the infuriated girl. “Anyway I really am sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh, I’m looking forward to working with you this weekend Nessa, it should be fun. And I really do wish I could say the same to you Tommy, try not to hold us back too hard. See you both on Friday then.”

Ashley recalled her Gible and Totodile and left the lake without turning back.

“Thanks for not laughing Tommy,” Nessa spoke. Now that Ashley had left, Tommy noticed that Nessa was shaking in anger and wiping at her eyes. “I’m not embarrassed to call her out of her Pokéball, but everyone reacts just as Ashley did when they first see her. I don’t care if she never evolves, I’ll still love her just the same.”

Tommy gave Nessa the most genuine smile he could and wrapped her in a hug. He was certain she could feel his heart hammering in his chest as her head lay directly on top of it. She wrapped her arms around his back and squeezed tightly so he started to gently rub her back. She was wearing a tank top, and he realized his hands were brushing her bare back, causing his mind to begin to wander. He quickly let go before he did or said anything stupid.

“Can I say hello?” Tommy asked, clearing his throat and looking away from Nessa into the water.

“Sure,” Nessa cleared her throat as well and nodded with a hidden smile. Tommy could still hear the apprehension in her voice.

He nodded at Nessa and smiled appreciatively as he sat in the water, not caring at all that his shorts were going to be soaking wet or that he had no change of clothes. He wanted Feebas to be as comfortable as possible when he first introduced himself to her.