Addi and I took up position behind Kodra, while Claire and her opponent went at it for another round. This time, it was a battle between Twiggy, her Grotle, a Haunter, the evolution of Ghastly, the Pokémon that had given us such trouble in Eterna Forest. Luckily, there was no gloom around, nor tricky terrain that allowed it to hide its primary body and harass us with endless streams of poisoned mist, as the Ghastly had back them. No, it was a pretty straight-up fight, if a battle with an opponent that could briefly move into the ground to hide could ever be called ‘straight-up’. Amusingly, that move almost became the Haunter’s doom, when Twiggy began to control the very earth, using the Ground itself as a weapon. Unless I was completely wrong, Twiggy would soon evolve to his final form and gain a secondary Ground-typing. He certainly was developing his ability to manipulate the Ground quite nicely.

As they fought, Addi and I quietly chatted, discussing our previous battle.

“Honestly, I think both of us have been a little unlucky,” she admitted, as the Haunter delivered a nasty Shadow Claw to Twiggy, “I think it would have been a better fight if it had been Croaky against your Charmeleon and your Kirlia against Beefcake.”

“Probably, yes,” I admitted, managing to suppress the wince at the nickname she had given her Swampert, “A more difficult fight, certainly. How long have you trained your Croagunk?”

“She’s been with me for about two months, I caught her after I got my third badge. Crown has been my most recent catch, while Beefcake has been my original partner. Say, you said you had a fourth Pokémon that you only got recently…?” she fished, clearly curious.

“Yes, Aura, he’s a Riolu that only hatched four days ago and I’ve just started training him. He’s got immense potential, but he’s just too young at the moment,” I shrugged, not really bothered by the admission.

“Wow,” she enthused, “Someone must like you, to entrust their partner’s offspring to you,” she studied me as if she could see from that where I got the egg from. In turn, I only shrugged, not intending to tell her who actually gave it to me.

We continued chatting, until the battle between Claire and her opponent ended with a knocked-out Haunter, leaving Claire with a narrow victory. She had won, but from what I’d seen, none of her battles had been won decisively, while Nuts, her Nuzleaf, had lost quite badly against her opponent’s Breeloom. Regardless, she had won and from what little I had seen, she had battled quite well.

As Kodra asked the other two pairs to step forward, Claire and her foe joined us, too, and our chatting continued, while Cliff and Lucas were fighting. Their battles went in quite a similar fashion to ours, though I felt a brief twinge of sympathy when Cliff sent Iris, his Feebas, out first. While the poor fellow could move a little by using his fins to propel himself and attack with shots of water using Watergun, his agility on land was just pitiful.

His opponent, a Purugly, had little problem dealing with him, I even had a feeling that the fat cat enjoyed playing with the poor Feebas, like a cat with the… fish.

Meanwhile, Snuggles, Lucas Gligar, battled it out with a Lopunny, the bouncy rabbit trying to catch up with the agile, flying scorpion, making their battle quite amusing. Ultimately, the Lopunny managed to bounce on top of the Gligar, driving Snuggles to the ground and, quite brutally, stepping on him with well-trained legs. Even from afar, it looked rather painful.

The next round was between Buddy, Cliff’s Roselia, and a Hippotas on his opponent's side. That battle went about as one would expect, the Hippotas tried to weather a storm of razor-sharp leaves but ultimately, it was just overwhelmed. From what I could see, the Hippotas’ main tactic was to stand almost impervious to physical attacks, allowing it to withstand a brutal amount of punishment while using its sand to dampen most special attacks. Sadly, the endless stream of leaves from Roselia, alongside Buddy’s growing ability to absorb energy from sources all around him, including his opponent, meant that it was a battle of attrition that could only have one winner. Buddy.

On the field next to them, Gem, Lucas’ Onyx, had another bad run, simply by virtue of match-up. While Snuggles had a good chance to win against the bouncy bunny, what Gem was facing was just unlucky. Lucas’ opponent was using an Azumarril as his second Pokémon, the water-fairy quite adept at battling a rock-ground type like Gem. The egg-shaped fairy moved in a deceptively slow fashion but its attacks, especially those delivered with swipes of its tail, covered in azure water-type energy, struck with devastating force, quickly driving the disadvantaged Gem to the brink and beyond. Quite frankly, it was a horrible match-up and there had been little Lucas could do about it. He had tried, but ultimately he had failed.

For Lucas’ last match, Champ, his Monferno, had much better luck. He was facing a Mothim and while the flying moth tried to escape the furious attack of the angry monkey, even its ability to fly and release a wide variety of debilitating spores wasn’t enough to save it. From what I could see, Champ managed to catch it on their first exchange and was able to land a good enough blow to let his power keep burning the Mothim, so even as it escaped, trying to stall out the fight to give its spores more time to take effect, it was slowly losing power due to the burning energy Champ had struck it with. It was a surprisingly close fight, considering the bad match-up and it showed quite clearly that Lucas would have to work with Champ on some better means to attack from a distance, but Champ managed to pull through.

In the meantime, Lumi, Cliff’s Abra, was battling it out with the opponent’s Buizel, the match relatively tame. The Buizel was shooting blasts of water at Lumi, who agilely moved out of the way, occasionally striking back with blasts of psychic energy. Neither of the combatants tried to engage with physical attacks, turning it into a dance of dodging and blasting, with neither party gaining a decisive advantage. As time went on, the Buizel’s attack started to go wide, the psychic energy messing with its mind, to the point where it started occasionally blasting the ground right in front of itself, hurting itself with the backlash. At that point, Cliff’s opponent decided to forfeit the round, calling back his Buozel, leaving the panting Lumi on the field. In that moment, just as Cliff was about to call Lumi back into her Pokéball, a welcome surprise happened. Lumi was encased in bright, white light, her silhouette washing out until a few moments later, the taller, more bulky, form of Kadabra had replaced her previous, slender shape.

Cliff called out in jubilation, before returning Lumi to her Pokéball, so she could rest. It was quite the surprise, normally a battle between trainers increased the strength of the winning Pokémon only by a smidgen, but apparently, that smidgen had been what Lumi was lacking.

With Lucas done, Cliff’s last fight was also the last of this round of challenges. It was between Shelly, his Wartortle, and a Drapion, a large, quite vicious looking, purple scorpion, with large pincers and a massive, poisonous stinger on its back. From my memory, it was a Poison- and Dark-type Pokémon, so neither of them had any direct advantage, but both might have been trained with different coverage moves.

It turned out, there was little in the way of coverage but quite a bit in the way of tactics, with Shelly playing a game of keep-away, staying out of range from her opponent's pincers and stinger, blasting it with repeated shots of water, the attacks looking somewhat stronger than the water guns I had seen before. Maybe Cliff had managed to train Shelly, or maybe she was almost to the point of evolving into Blastoise. Either way, she never let the Drapion get its claws on her and while it took quite a while, she managed to whittle down her foe. With that, our challenge was won and all that was left was the critique.

For that, all eight of us were invited into the conference room by Kodra, the discussion I had with Addi essentially repeating itself as both sides of the challenges analysed the events under Kodra’s watchful eyes.

Once we were all done, hands were shaken and Kodra officially conferred the Oracle Badge on all four of us, wishing us well for our future travels.

Now, we just had to figure out where those travels would take us, either north, to Snowpoint, or further south and east. Either way, soon, we’d leave Celestic Town and for the first time, the idea of leaving a town behind didn’t fill me with giddy anticipation. The small town had managed to find a place within my heart.