Guy poked his head out of the darkness at the edge of the clearing, eyes glowing red. He showed his large, pointy teeth and lunged for Wattson’s manectric, his mean visage flinching the powered-up pup. Snarling a haunting laugh, the gengar’s eyes bulged wide, glowing brighter as beams of energy pulsed forth. Manectric howled in pain as Nightshade made its mark, but then he retaliated with a barrage of electricity. The powerful Discharge leapt from leaf to leaf and tree to tree in a storm of lightning that enveloped Guy, the ghost twitching and wailing in agony.

Guy surged skywards, seemingly taking a deep breath, and spat a glob of darkness at the manectric. The pup dodged, lightning quick, then flickered across the field quick as a flash. His teeth sunk into Guy’s ethereal hide, sparking brightly as his Thunder Fang took hold.

Guy wailed loudly, the unearthly sound setting teeth on edge and raising hackles, as he half sank into the ground, spent. Wattson’s manectric staggered as if punched in the gut, shaking his shaggy head, as the red recall beam sucked the ghost back into his ball.

Tully emerged in a flutter of wings and vigor, a swift Boomburst finishing off the manectric, though not before a swift burst of lightning singed his wing feathers.

“Wahahaa! This is exciting! I’m down a pokemon, but so are you… do you think you can outlast my three?” Wattson put both hands on his belly and leaned back, letting out his trademarked guffaw.

“I don’t want to just win by having more pokemon,” grumbled Ed. “I want skill, or at least strength, to be a part of it!”

“Have no fear, young one, my team doesn’t lack punch. Come on out, Ampharos, show this young whippersnapper how it’s done!”

As Wattson’s ampharos appeared on the field, the gym leader ordered him to protect himself. “My boys know how to fight, it’s a bit unfair maybe sending Ampharos out against your swellow.” The gym leader leaned towards his pokemon, “Take the bird out if he thinks he can stay at range.”

Tully found himself twisting and diving through a barrage of Electroballs, flung from the ampharos’ forepaws and tail, seemingly effortlessly. More, a dazzling array of lights flared up around the ovine pokemon every time Tully sent a Boomburst or a Wing Attack his way. It was a harsh battle of attrition, the bird versus the sheep, as the one slashed, pecked and dived at the other, and the latter peppered the former with lightning bolt after lightning bolt.

“Tully, come back. Lux, take him on! Keep yourself grounded!”

***

I burst onto the battlefield in a blaze of light, moving even before I fully materialised. I was using the weird stretchy switchover from luxury ball to reality to the max, but Watton’s ampharos was powerful, very powerful. He nailed me dead on with an electroball, the burst of light and power arcing over my nose, through my ears and down my back to earth itself through my tail. I sucked it back up from where it was dissipating, pulling it back up through my paws, to spit it back out through my mouth in a flash that set my teeth sparking. Then I did it three more times as the ampharos rapid-fired. I was hurting him, but it was hurting me too, and I wasn’t an electric type. Tully had laid the groundwork, but whilst I was doing as much as I could, I was losing headway.

“Lux, Dig! Get under him, he can’t hurt you then!”

Ed’s order sent me surging into the sod beneath the field. I tunnelled towards the ampharos using electrosense, I could feel that crazy amount of power being generated as it tingled down my spine, it was impossible to miss. Even so, the pokemon tried to evade, but I was a fast digger. It didn’t matter though, as a burst of infinity energy was quickly turned by the ampharos into a Protect. I didn’t recognize the move until I realised what he’d done, it’d be a useful one if I could copy it, but didn’t have a chance seeing as I was too busy trying to fight lightning with lightning. I bit him, time and again, electricity surging through my teeth, but every time I laid a hit he would blast me back and every time I didn’t it was because he Protected himself.

Digging deep into that well of power within me, I brought forth some of it and forced it into my teeth. If I couldn’t blast him, I’d straight up chomp him! With one last lunge, I grabbed him. I felt him bring up Protect, but was determined not to let him shake me off this time. I bit harder, he Protected harder, so I bit deeper, so he pushed back, and back, and back… until… my jaws suddenly locked onto his body, and in retaliation… lights. And then darkness.

***

“Wahahahaa! Amazing! Electabuzz, it’s your time to shine! Ampharos, come back, you’ve done well.”

After that, the battle went more or less as Wattson and everyone expected. Lucky was powerful, but was a poor matchup against any of Wattson’s team, and whilst ampharos was tired, took the croconaw out after being switched in post the electabuzz’s fight with Ziggy, who was pummelled into submission by multiple Focus Punches. Barb poisoned the electabuzz, and if the order had been switched may have turned the whole battle, but she wasn’t much of a battler yet against such high level foes. In the end, Wattson stood victorious, with most of his pokemon still standing, though it was clear they had felt the blows they’d taken.

“Wahahaa,” chuckled Wattson quietly, rolling two badges across his knuckles as the defeated trainers slumped before him on a handy log. “That was an amusing challenge! You fought well but ultimately…” he shook his head and put the badges away. “Ultimately you were beaten!”

Then, to the children’s confusion, he leaned down and presented each with a little badge, a golden button with a bar through it.

“The… the dynamo badge?” Ed asked, looking up in confusion.

“Wahahahahaa! Of course! You may have been defeated by me, and quite handily, but you each managed to faint at least one of my personal team members. If you thought that wasn’t worthy of recognition, then you’ve misunderstood all of this!”

“Wha’? Well… I, I, I don’t understand! We lost!”

“You did! But that means you do not qualify for these badges, young trainers.” Wattson pulled out one of the two badges he’d held previously, before secreting them away again.

Before they were hidden once more, Ed took a look at them, his eyes widening with surprise. They were subtly different to the one he held, the colouring and even the design, if not the material, not identical.

“These badges are ace trainer badges,” said Wattson, patting his pockets. “They represent a different class of challenge than the norm. The kind of challenge you went through, and came up short against, was not the norm. I do not merely hand out badges based on whether you beat my pokemon. You think I come up against youngsters like you with this team? Wahahaa! If you’d come up against my starter badge pokemon in a normal gym challenge you would have taken me with ease. And for that level of mastery, you have both very much earned those tokens of my respect.”

Wattson put his fists on his hips and glared, until the two children sat up straighter.

“Indeed! That’s more like it! So, young trainers, now you know what you’re aiming for! Lance was right when he said he saw something in you, but right now it’s naught but a flicker, and ember! The merest glimmer of greatness, but should you work at it, you could reach the very top! Now, I suggest you all get some rest. Head back to town for a day of rest, then get back out here and challenge some Alphas. As for me, I’m going to make the most of my holiday! Wahahaa! Magneton, get it set up!”

“Holiday?” Becca asked, tilting her head at the enthusiastic gym leader.

“Of course! It may be mid-circuit but even so I’m an old man, I deserve a spot of ‘R ‘n R’ now and again! My daughter’s more than capable of holding down the fort.”

“Oh, so… do you want to stay out here, w-with us, maybe? Teach us a little?”

Wattson snorted, clapping his hands as he smiled wide in mirth. “You don’t need me! You don’t need to be a Wattson! You need to learn your own way, and I can see it’s working. Think outside the box, the more tricks you can pull out, the more you’ll confound your opponents. That’s where greatness comes, not in mastering powerful pokemon with powerful attacks, but by teaching them how to use their abilities in ways people don’t expect. I can see you’ve both started doing that, so you don’t need little old me in the way. Besides, it wouldn’t be a vacation if I were stuck babysitting! Wahaa!”

Ed and Becca both scowled, but Wattson ignored them as he picked up his travelling pack and rummaged through it as his magneton rose into the air, humming and spitting with energy. The magneton started to spin on its own centre point, waves of power beginning to emanate from its metallic body. Becca’s hair started to frizz out and stand on end.

“Come on you two, time to get busy!” the gym leader called, causing both the trainers and Sly to turn their heads away from the gathering light show, only to be shocked as two more magnetons were flung into the clearing. The two floated up next to the first, the three floating through a geometric dance before ultimately rotating about a new central point exactly in the middle of the three.

“Magneton! Magneton! Magneton!”

“Alright, begin dialling. You remember the nine glyphs?”

“Magneton!” all three said, as they changed how they were moving. Their motion became… complicated, deceiving the eye in how they moved, almost seeming to move through each other, until suddenly they stopped in place and there was a bright flash.

“That’s it, first glyph locked… second… third…”

Flash after flash lit the clearing until, with the ninth, there was a sudden palpable surge of energy and the three magneton settled into a rapid circular motion that was so fast it almost seemed as if the three magneton were once more nine magnemite, circling a whirlpool of glowing energy some eight feet in the air, out of which had lunged a spout of molten liquid light.

Out of the whirlpool appeared a sudden host of… strange pokemon, shaped like writing, with singular huge eyeballs.

“Unown! Unown!” they chanted

“Wahahaa! Welcome along for the ride, my friends! Help hold it stable, would you?”

“Unown!”

“Ah, found it!” Wattson pulled out a bulky, green handset of some sort, impractically large and angular, nothing like the sleek designs of standard rotomphones or other similar technologies. As Ed and Becca shared double takes, the gym leader turned the rugged device on and jiggled a few of the knobs. “Stargate command? Is the iris open? Wahahaa! I’m coming for a visit! Goa’uld problems? Of course I can help!”

Wattson then turned off the handset, secreted it back into his backpack, then withdrew a small, round device. He patted it gently. “Wake up, sleepyhead! We’re gating in!”

“Ro… rotom? Rotom Rotom?”

“Samantha? Yes, I expect she’s there. Come on everyone, return for the trip!” Flashes of light swallowed the majority of Wattson’s team as Wattson stood up straighter, packed his gear away and hefted his pack.

“Rotom!” said the rotoomba, enthusiastically.

“That’s right! Up we go!” Wattson put the migratory robotic hoover down, then stepped almost daintily onto it as it rose up into the air, the hum of motors barely audible over the crackling of the ten foot tall energy whirlpool that hung in space. The rotoomba rose up until it was level with the massive whirlpool, then floated gently forwards until the strangely metallic energy field swallowed both it and the man on top of it. Then the magnetons slowed and almost fell into the energy vortex, followed swiftly by the unown swarm, before the vortex swallowed itself with a final “Wahahaa!” of the distant Wattson and an implosion of air, almost as an afterthought.

In the silence that followed, the three humans and those of their pokemon that were conscious shared a mutually shocked glance. Finally Ed spoke up.

“Umm, should… I-I-I mean this should be kept quiet, right?” The boy pointed to the thin air, into which Wattson had so recently disappeared.

“Honestly, I don’t know if anybody would believe us if we tried to tell them. That was… what was that?”

“I… I don’t think that was an ultrawormhole, but it was something similar. Maybe. At least in terms of result. I wonder where he went?”

“I was talking about the unown!” sputtered Becca.

“Oh, them,” said Sly. He shrugged. “They turn up every so often. Honestly that’s why I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an ultrawormhole, not enough nihilegos.”

Becca threw her hands up in the air and stomped off in disgust as she set about readying the camp for the night, complaining under her breath about unreasonable amounts of craziness.