The last of the clouds parted. The last raindrop fell. For a moment, there was silence on the beach, and then all hell broke loose.

Gyarados suddenly lunged his huge head forwards and snapped at me with his jaws, the Dark powered Bite — or possibly a Crunch — like an explosion in my ears. Slamming him in the teeth with an Irontail as his fangs met, the twin impacts flung me off to where I dive-bombed a kingler, fastening my teeth around one of its legs in my own Crunch. Putting some effort into it, I expelled Electric energy through my teeth, my gums sizzling, as I bore down on my foe and double-dipped the attack.

Lucky meanwhile just stormed his way through the krabbies and kinglers to fasten his own huge set of jaws on the gyarados, who roared in pain and anger at the insolent sneak-attack, flinging the croconaw into the water where swift tentacles wrapped the reptilian creature up and dragged him under. The wild thrashing that ensued told me his sparring partners didn’t have things all their own way, so I continued with my own foes, dodging the furious serpent as he continued to rage.

“Get offa me!” shouted the krabby that I was trying to gnaw my way through, slamming me in the head with a huge claw. It impacted less as a move and more as just a powerful, iron-hard attempt to hit a home run. I saw stars, unsure if something was broken or if I was just badly bruised. I was definitely going to feel it in the morning.

As I sailed through the air, I idly noticed how many of the beach-goers were shouting and running for cover. Those that had them had released their battle-capable pokemon, but a good deal were simply fleeing inland or heading for the nearby bleachers.

“I will not be beaten that easily!” roared Lucky, a veritable tide of tentacool being dragged out of the oceans behind him. He spun, swinging them like morning stars, even as krabbies descended upon him, snapping at his arms, legs and even tail. He roared and flailed, enjoying himself immensely as he punched, bit, kicked and swung.

Ziggy was fighting off a couple of corphish. Twin bubble beams caught him in the crossfire, sending him flying into the ocean, where a sudden eruption of light from the waters marked his shouting in pain as multiple lances of baleful yellow lightning seared his fur. The brightly lit, boiling explosions beneath the waves continued for a few moments before a roiling swell brought both Ziggy and his opponents — some chinchou — onto the previously dry sand, where Ziggy sunk his teeth into their sides, flinging them into the crowd, which exploded with more arcs of electricity as the water-electric types retaliated against their beaching.

Barb and Chompy were just watching the boys work off some steam, until a passing raichu tried to chat the pair up, at which point he was roundly slapped by Chompy’s tail and double-kicked into a bush by Barb’s hind paws.

“Rude,” she said, “we were discussing possible showcase strategies, you big oaf!”

“Hey, that was my boyfriend you skuntank! What do you think you’re doing?” A lithe looking zangoose shouted, rushing up angrily as the raichu groaned from the bushes.

“Taking out the trash, sister!” Barb swung her horn, menacingly.

“I’ll take you out!”

“Excuse me,” said Barb to her friend, “I think I need a minute.” Without wasting more breath, Barb immediately turned and galloped full-speed at the zangoose before the surprised cat-ferret pokemon could move. Roaring in a most unladlylike manner, Barb slammed her horn into the creature, furiously attacking her target. With another swift double kick, the zangoose too was sent sprawling into the bushes, where she was reunited with her boyfriend, both unwilling or unable to retaliate from the doses of poison they’d received. Said boyfriend was then the recipient of more than a few fury swipes himself as the zangoose educated him on what he’d done wrong a minute or so prior.

“I sssee that works on zangoossse as much as it does rattatta. We’ve got to find you a better classs of opponent, dear.”

It wasn’t so much a fight as a brawl; as Shadow electrocuted most of the remaining tentacool with barely a pause, Bart sucker punched kinglers and krabbies alike from below, the larger sandslash grabbing the crustaceans and beating with their own claws.

“Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Stop… OW!”

Bart was swarmed by four or five krabbies at once who threw him into a patch of lileep, which meant their bigger sibling cradilies weren’t at all impressed, the strangely elastic, long-necked tentacled rocky blobs yanking, biting and punching him until Tully dive-bombed in to help rescue the sandslash. A boomburst or two later and Bart was free, backed up by Shadow as he bit, growled and intimidated a path to his buddies.

“Haha, we really showed the-AARGH!” Tully hadn’t been paying enough attention to the battlefield, and Gyarados’ tail slammed into the swellow with a more than lucky cheapshot. There was an audible crack as the bird was flung through the air to dig a furrow through the sand. Already wounded from pecking with his beak at a plethora of armoured crustaceans, his feathers burned by acid splash from the tentacool and tentacruel, the tail finished him off. He landed poorly, crying out in pain as his wing bent in an unnatural direction. He fluttered weakly for a few seconds then stilled, sobbing quietly with small chirps as he tried to right himself.

“Why do you think you can get away with doing that to my friend!” roared Ziggy as he threw himself at the massive serpent, who caught the zigzagoon in his jaws and whipped the little body back and forth.

Shadow roared, sending bolts of lightning arcing across the creature’s scales, and Bart slashed more than a few of those pearly numbers free from Gyarados’ hide. As Ziggy was flung through the air, time seemed to slow. I couldn’t let this carry on, but I realised this wasn’t going to be easy if we played it the normal way. I’d have to get sneaky. I cast my gaze about for answers, and my eyes fell upon Lucky.

“Lucky!” I cried. “You’re a beautiful milotic! Swim, dance, show off!”

“What?” Lucky asked, head tilting in confusion for a few moments.

“Just do it! Listen to my voice, alright? We’re going to play make-believe, and you’re going to believe it as hard as you can! You’re the… the dragon of the sea! You can see another dragon in front of you, so this isn’t a pretty dance, this is a war dance, and you’re telling this other dragon just how much you’re gonna make it regret messing with your friends.”

I concentrated, hard. Mew had said he was using the move ‘teach another pokemon any move’, so if I could just convince myself he had been — and he must have been, because I’d puked lava — then maybe I could do the same thing for Lucky.

I watched and coached as the croconaw once more floated a foot or so off the ground. His newly slippery nature made him incredibly hard to hit for the gyarados, who was slamming his head, fins and tail all around trying futilely to stop the big-mouthed blur.

“Do you feel your energy rising? The power within your scales increasing with the tempo? Boiling up from within, a righteous anger threatening to spill out?”

“STOP SLITHERING ABOUT SO I CAN SWAT YOU, BUG!” The gyarados roared.

“I do! I do!”

“Well it’s too late!” the gyarados shouted, as he took a deep breath, a glow building up in his throat.

“Stop him!” I shouted, “Lucky’s not ready yet!”

“I’ll stop him!” shouted Ziggy, and the crazy fool leaped off of a slumped kingler, rebounded from one of the gyarados’ coils and fastened himself onto the serpent’s mouth, holding it shut, even as an explosion of light printed a barcode of pain onto the zigzagoon’s chest. Roaring in muted pain, the gyarados flung Ziggy to the ground, thrashing his own head about to clear it.

But this time, he was too late.

Spinning in place, Lucky twirled and gyrated into the air, ten or more feet up until he was higher than the gyarados’ head, took a deep breath, and…

“WAAARRRRRRRRGGHAAARRRBBLLLEEEE!”

A stream of semi-liquid blue-white energy spewed forth from the croconaw’s muzzle and slammed into the gyarados’ own mouth and face, sloughing off like glowing treacle. The stream went on and on for many seconds, even as the serpent folded back onto himself in a lump, before Lucky’s projectile stream of energy vomit faded and he dropped back to the sand.

I’m not sure which of us was the more surprised when a thrown pokeball lightly bounced off the sea serpent once and his entire bulk was swallowed whole by red light. The small red and white orb dropped to the suddenly empty sands. One shake, two, three, and it was still, coming to rest in the now-vacated hillock created by the serpent’s coils.

“That was quite the tale!” said Nurse Joy, as she listened intently. She’d come out from behind the desk to give the humans a once over as well. It may have been a pokecenter, but that didn’t mean potential injuries would go untreated, even if humans couldn’t be put in balls and run through her machine. She peered into their eyes with a small torch, made them open their mouths and peered down their throats and peeked in their ears. “That makes you two heroes!” Joy said, smiling. “Gyarados are notoriously grumpy sorts, for the most part. Are you sure you can handle him?”

“I… I think so,” said Becca, frowning slightly. “I didn’t really mean to capture him, it just kind of… happened.”

“It’s generally for the best. When local heavyweights like that one are beaten, if they’re not relocated or captured, then tend to go on a dominance spree to regain their lost position in the hierarchy. If you’re going to release him, do it far away from here and far away from humans.”

“Release him? That’d be cruel,” said Sly. He frowned full-on. “A beaten pokemon needs to know they’re worthy of the time and investment that it went into to beat them in the first place. If you don’t want him, I think I can find somebody who will.”

As Chancey finally came back with the two trays of pokeballs, Becca fixed her gaze on the red-haired boy. “You just want my catch for free. Well it’s not going to happen because not only will you not be getting him for free, but he’s not for sale! At any price!” She snatched the pokeball from the tray and cradled it in her arms. “You’re a big blue behemoth and you’re all mine.”

“It’s the teeth, isn’t it? And the endless rage. It matches her personality,” muttered Ed. “I should’ve seen it with the murder snake and the assassin fairy.”

“What was that?” Becca asked mildly.

“If that thing eats both your legs, don’t come running to me.”

Becca snorted, and Sly rolled his eyes.

“You know I’m kidding,” Becca replied, sticking her tongue out. “He is mine though. All our ‘mon fought him, but I caught him, and I’m going to teach him to be a good part of the team, I promise.”

“You can have the squirt bottle back,” Ed said sagely, nodding his head at his bag.

“Actually that’s a good idea,” replied Becca, her eyebrows rising.

“You’re going to squirt Gyarados if he’s naughty? You remember what I said about the legs, right?”

“Pfft, stupid. He’s a water pokemon, so I’ll want to be able to keep his scales moist if needed. I’ll probably have to look into some oils and whatnot. We both should, Lucky’s going to need it if we head inland a lot. Oh we should really think about going to one of those pokemon classes…”

Nurse Joy watched the young trainers go, shaking her head. Then she stepped back behind the counter, pulled out a video phone and dialled a number.

“Cousin? Yeah, they were here. Yeah, they got themselves in trouble already. No, no, nothing serious. Just a gyarado… yes a gyarados. No, they weren’t hurt. Their pokemon were a bit banged up but…” Joy held the phone away from her ear for a moment, before slowly bringing it closer. “Honestly they handled themselves well. A sprained wing, black eyes, bruises… nothing serious. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes I’ll keep an eye out. Okay I’m going now. Seriously going now. Buh-bye.”

Joy put the phone down as the squawking continued on the other side, chuckling quietly to herself. Some of her cousins could be so excitable. She picked up a datapad and flicked through it, nodding and murmuring to herself as she did so. These kids were turning out fine. She’d just have to help make sure that continued.