PoV:
Gables (Let's see who our dancing frog is facing!)
Lori! (Unova trend setter!)
Pokemon Map I Loosely Use For Visual Aid: The distance between areas might be different; some cities are somewhat incorrect, a few routes have been mislabeled, and some cities aren't listed, but it's the best I've found.
Google Document (In-line Comments)
12:05 p.m., November 7th, Saturday, 106 PH (Post Hoopa Event). Day 151.
Events: Rhea and the girls are on a Badge Hunt, trying to get all the Kanto Encrusted Badges before time runs out! Our girl started her journey on the 9th of June, and the registration deadline for the Winter Indigo Cup is December 5th (27 days away).
Gables let a string of Bubbles escape from his mouth, as Zyra took to the air.
The Palpitoad cartwheeled behind a nearby spike, Bubbles flying out to meet his.
Yet, Gretel languidly, almost lazily, swayed around them, her thin legs dragging their tips across the stone as green luminescence began to pulse from the contact points. It was slow. Deliberate. And he had to admit, she made the show look gorgeous.
“Watch this, handsome,” she hummed, cap tilting upward as the emerald light spread from her feet into the platform, hairline cracks of green spider-webbing outward through the stone. “I’ve been told I have a green thumb.”
Zyra mirrored Gables, a strained laugh passing between them with their Trainer.
Mukin’ Grassy Terrain. She’s not playing!
The cracks hit the nearest cluster of platforms and erupted—a garden.
Small violet flowers bloomed between the blades, delicate vines curling around platform edges in spiraling patterns, moss spreading across hard surfaces in a carpet of luminous emerald. The air thickened with humid, greenhouse warmth, and the lower third of the arena transformed into something that belonged in a botanical exhibit.
“Careful, Gabs,” Lori mused, “Gio gave us a Water and Grass challenge. Let’s feed into that.”
Already ahead of you. Zyra?
“Got ya!”
A smile lifted Gables’ mouth, vision narrowing as he kept track of the toad. His primary focus was on the advancing Toedscool, vine-like white energy reaching to Wrap and bind him in place.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, lady.”
A Tailwind erupted across the field, sweeping up the green lights, pressing against his back from above.
Speed doubled, he weaved around the vines and flipped over Bubbles.
“Aren’t you nimble?” Gretel whispered, one leg extending to caress a blooming vine as he backflipped away. “Best be careful, the ground can swallow you whole.”
Gables’ chuckle shook his illuminating frame. Eyes glowing, aqua-blue energy leaking out, dark clouds gathered as the ground rumbled from her projected force.
“If you want to play with the field, let’s turn it up!”
Mud exploded into a fountain from behind a spike toward Gables.
He didn’t move.
Zyra cawed, and slicing air arcs intercepted, carving the projectile apart mid-flight.
George roared something shocking, “Gretel shows her might with an astonishingly large Grassy Terrain for Silver—Gables isn’t slacking for style, though, folks!”
Jerry followed. “Rainy Day!”
“We’ve got ourselves a Field Battle, ladies and gentlemen!”
Gables’s gleaming eyes didn’t leave Gretel, wind whipping up as dark clouds fed the grassy zone. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the first raindrops hit soil.
Zyra and Cobalt were engaged in their own battle in the worsening weather.
“What’s it going to be beautiful?”
“Consequences for stepping on my deadly territory,” she snickered, green light brightening around her small mouth.
Gables smirked, feeling a suction-like force latch onto his chest, threatening to pull out his energy. “Only if you see me.”
Smiling, he jumped from his spike, letting Camouflage take over his body, even as the emerald balls started to leave his skin. In no time at all, Gables melded into the background amidst the rain and smoke.
He moved around the various spikes.
His rain was picking up.
Gables moved with it.
From above, Zyra’s Tailwind still pressed against his spine, and he felt her split attention: half on him, half on Cobalt, who’d given her exactly one appreciative look before the bumps started pulsing something dangerous.
Zyra, we should probably swap, as much as I want to face—
“Would if I could, G, but the toad has some focus. I can’t tell if he’s focusing on just me or the whole arena, though… What the—”
The ground dropped.
Not collapsed—opened.
A low, subsonic pulse from Cobalt’s bumps hit the stone beneath the garden like a detonator, and the arena floor flooded in a wave of churning brown water that swallowed the lower platforms whole.
Gables jumped onto a spike—stone pillars grinding upward through the flood, becoming the only solid ground.
Gretel’s vines rode the surge, extending, anchoring into the rising spikes as the terrain shifted.
Three seconds, and the arena floor was gone.
“No way!” Zyra gasped.
Lori’s laughter came to them in disbelief. “Are we sure this is a Ground-Type Gym… He just turned it into a dirtier version of Cerulean Gym!”
Gables shook off the muddy liquid, rain falling around them as he caught Cobalt in the churning water. He gave a grinning, squinty-eyed salute to Zyra, flying overhead.
Well, you told him our goal is Misty, so…
What replaced it was a flooded basin with jutting stone columns above the waterline, Gretel’s garden clinging to every surface above the flood, and Cobalt—
Cobalt was already moving.
Swift Swim turning the surge into a racetrack, his bumps cycling at combat frequency as he cut through the flood between spikes, water spraying from his wake, and he erupted from the surface directly beneath Zyra’s flight path with a pressurized lance of fluorescent green acid.
She banked. Hard.
The acid sizzled past her tailfeathers and hit a spike with a hiss.
Nice dodge!
“This is crazy! I love it—oh, let me try this!”
She spun low, aiming right at the Palpitoad.
“Hey, handsome, where are you looking!”
“Not away from you, gorgeous!”
“Muddy Water transforms the arena!” Jerry shouted, voice cracking with it. “Giovanni’s Palpitoad isn’t waiting—he’s rewriting the battlefield!”
“Those spikes are the only solid ground, Jerry—this just became a combat climbing wall!”
Gables caught a spike edge, hauling himself upward as the flood lapped at his ankles. The Camouflage dissolved, and he surfaced onto the column’s narrow crest, balanced, the rain driving down.
Gretel was already rooted to an adjacent spike, vines threading between them, her eyes finding him through the downpour with that patient half-lid.
“Look at that. Our friends seem to be on a date on their own… Just us, up here.” She tilted her cap. “Cozy.”
Fine yellow particles erupted from beneath her cap, making Gables tense.
Stun Spore?! How, Lori?
“I’m looking online! Zyra, watch out!”
“Hmm?”
The cloud flew into the sky, sparkling with the rain in a blanket that fell like powder.
Sliding along the stone, mud formed from the brownish energy that surrounded him, and he threw it into the air to intercept. From above, a blast of wind cycloned from Zyra—
As if a Ghost, the powder didn’t so much as waver.
George gave him the answer.
“Mycelium Might at work, folks! Paldea special—Status Moves cannot be interrupted. It may take a bit longer to charge, but you aren’t getting rid of these spores!”
That’s broken!
Gables threw himself sideways off the spike, catching her smirk.
The spore arc caught his left shoulder mid-fall, particles biting into his skin before the flood swallowed him.
The static hit immediately. Not full Paralysis—left arm, locking up on every third movement, the joint seizing with a crackling hitch.
Okay. That’s trouble.
Legs kicking, he surfaced with a shower of water on a different spike with Lori in his mind.
“Muk! I think it’s a Toedscool exclusive… I got an idea.”
I’m listening.
“First, Zyra. Gretel. Now—you’re her hard counter, get in.”
“I’ve got Cobalt wrapped around my little claw—”
Cobalt erupted from the flood again, his fist, blazing blue-white, aimed at Zyra’s chest—
“Hello, beautiful! Oof—”
She folded her wings and dropped beneath it, the fist grazing her crest, and raked her talons down his forearm in passing before climbing hard.
“He’s faster than the Tailwind—I swear!” Zyra snapped, the indignation bleeding through. “He knew where I’d pull up! It’s like—Foresight or Mind Reader.”
“George, Cobalt is reading their angles before they make them! And that Swift Speed swimming Ability really doing work. What do you make of that?”
“That’s the bumps, Jerry—he feels the air displacement through vibration. The bird’s got nowhere to maneuver that he can’t predict! It’s straight raw biology—no Ability needed!”
The swap isn’t happening, Gables sent to his Trainer, hauling himself from spike to spike across the flood, left arm hitching. They’re experienced in choosing who to attack. I’ll take Gretel fast.
“Wait, you don’t want to—I get you’re confident. But can you?” Lori’s voice was steady but honest. “Your arm—”
Torrent’s fine. Let me dance.
He found the spike below Gretel’s position and launched—orange light blazing around his good fist, the flood water spraying from his feet, closing the gap before she could fully read his approach.
The strike landed—Attack went up.
Gretel’s frayed flaps snapped backward. She held the spike, roots digging, cap wobbling.
I just need to get her into the water!
Her eyes found him.
Not pained. Appraising.
“Oh. You’re aggressive when it matters. I like that.” Her voice was low, even through the impact. “But there’s something missing behind those eyes, isn’t there? You fight beautifully.” She tilted. “Where is your heart really?”
A pulse of greenish light latched onto his chest from point-blank range, sapping through his skin.
Muk!
His matrix dipped. Hers climbed.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A second Stun Spore erupted—same range, same direction, though it was slow. Apparently, that was a drawback from Mycelium Might’s guaranteed hit. It was slow enough that it only found his right leg this time. The static spread, locking the knee joint on every fourth step.
The flood was rising.
Is he using Muddy Water again?!
The spike crests were getting smaller.
Wait, this could be in our favor…
✧⸻✧⸻✧
Zyra’s sky was gone.
That was the honest answer.
What had been open airspace was now a maze of spike columns, dark clouds, and flood spray. Cobalt was using Swift Swim to explode from the water at unpredictable angles, his bumps reading her wing displacement before she committed to any direction.
She’d Screeched him twice, but the lower Defense didn’t seem to phase his bold attacks.
He hadn’t slowed down.
Wow! Every time I set up an angle he’s already underneath it. She banked hard, his scatter-shot bubbles going wide, further filling the air with his shiny mines, as if the sparkly Stun Powder wasn’t enough. “This is a nightmare!” she laughed to her team.
“I know,” Lori sighed, “they’re more trouble than we first thought. If anything, we’re helping them more than ourselves with the Rainy Day. Ugh… Can you get to Gretel?
She looked.
Gables was on the spike below the mushroom, trading hits in the downpour, his left arm hitching on every third swing, a yellow static crackle at his knee now too. The Stun Spore was slowing him degrees at a time.
And Gretel was healing off him—passive, quiet, watching him work harder for each hit while she replenished. If that wasn’t enough, Lori interrupted her thought with a curse.
“Shoot! Bad news, Gabs… From some of the forums I’m reading, Toedscool aren’t weak to Water. 4x to Ice, 2x to Fire, Bug, and…Flying, Zyra!”
Great. I don’t have time to build Sky Attack. But I’m working on it!
The opportunity came sideways: Cobalt overextended on a sweep, his icy fist catching air where she’d already pulled up, and the momentum carried him onto a spike growing out of the ceiling for one beat.
Zyra folded and dove, claws blazing white.
Light-blue energy built around her frame as she came through the flood spray, eating a Bubble burst across her chest—she hit Gretel.
The detonation of wind sent the Toedscool off the spike. White vines caught her mid-fall, one leg snagging, arresting the tumble. She hung there for a breath.
“Super Effective Wing Attack from Zyra with the Hone Claws stack! That’s gotta hurt!”
“Gretel’s matrix craters—below half!”
The woman looked up at her with an appraising smile as she swung herself back onto the spike, Zyra wincing as it felt like a hand gripped her heart—green energy leaked out of her.
Really! This is like Rhea’s stall battle all over. No, maybe not that bad!
“Now that,” Gretel said, voice warm even through the damage, “is a first impression, show bird.”
“Wait until the second impression!”
“Oh, I’m getting excited.” Her cap tilted. “Nothing personal, gorgeous. Eh—Cobalt!”
“Huh—”
Zyra’s sharp eyes caught a glint, not from below—above—and a cone of shimmering acid bloomed over her. Cobalt jumped from an inverted spike along the ceiling, and she felt the Ability flicker before she understood what she’d lost.
The arena blurred.
The spike edges softened.
The razor precision that let her find gaps in the spray, in the flood, in Cobalt’s unpredictable eruptions…was gone.
Yet, even through the hot itch behind her eyes, she saw the same liquid covering the indignant Toedscool.
“George, Gastro Acid strips Zyra’s Keen Eye! The coordination she lived on—stripped! And he hit his teammate at the same time? Was that an accident? Surely not, with Giovanni making plays!”
“Sorry,” Cobalt called, falling backward through the air to dive into the water as Gables recovered from his Paralysis. He genuinely sounded like he meant it. “Had to be done, Beautiful.”
She climbed.
Rain-heavy, vision swimming, the flood below an indistinct churning mass she could no longer read.
Her wing stuttered.
Shimmering yellow powder was falling around her, carried with the gust upward, right into her.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me! Now the elements work on you? Son of a—
She’d caught the edge of a cloud on the way down.
Left primary, sparking on every fifth beat.
“Z.” Gables’ voice. “I think I’m recovering. Oh, Muk…”
Just perfect… I’m figuring it out!
✧⸻✧⸻✧
Lori’s fingers were flat on the console.
Watching the chaos unfold—and it was chaos.
The flood had changed everything.
Her read on the terrain—the spike positions, the angles, the approach corridors she’d been mentally tracking—was recalculating with every wave.
Is this what Giovanni is warning me about with Misty? This is crazy. If she uses a Paldea Pokemon, too… I’m so lost with this Toedscool! She hasn’t even used that many Grass Moves. Only Mega Drain. Two Ground-Types not weak to water!? No, what am I supposed to learn from this?
Cobalt was running the flood like a second arena, erupting and vanishing, never giving a fixed position, while Gretel healed atop her spike and waited for Gables to exhaust himself against her. She seemed less sleepy now, more focused.
Her Fortitude was…not doing well.
Where is your heart, Lori?
She pressed her palm flat, looking up at Giovanni through the storm and ever-rising waves. The Gym Leader’s stoic expression and controlled posture hadn’t shifted—he was looking at her, not the battle.
Clean. Measured. Correctly timed. When I fought Misty, she wasn’t even trying. Amira’s battle was way more intense and tactical… Maybe I need to treat battles more like dancing?
Gables had Gretel near half, but he was burning his reserves for every hit and the Stun Spore was stacking up his body in small degrees—one arm, one leg, accumulating toward the moment he’d swing and nothing would respond.
And Zyra was blind above a flood now, half-paralyzed, chasing a toad whose bumps felt her coming before she moved.
They were compensating…for her lack of initiative.
That was it.
Lori’s mouth became a line.
Everything she’d gone through to get to this point came bubbling up as her Pokemon battled their hearts out—
Her painful childhood and early teenage years, trapped in flaming torment.
The fights she’d hear between her mom and dad.
The parents she never knew—that Shauntel never talked about.
The moment Jirachi’s Wish had given her life back.
All the joy she found in dancing, social media, and Len.
Kekoa’s continual support.
The ups and downs with her mess of a mother and little sister.
Everything Rhea had shown her in the last several months.
Miky.
Her victory against Sabrina.
The moment he unbonded to her and retired from battling.
Her part in all of that.
…Her glaring insecurities.
Lori felt a rare chill run down her back—typically, it was fire.
She smiled, looked down at her struggling Pokemon, seeing Terri cheering them on, and wiped away a tear.
I’m so immature. I’m reckless. I’m not ready for Misty…but I will be.
She held up her Poke Balls, and recalled Zyra and Gables amidst the storm.
“What is this?!” George shouted, all eyes and the cameras pointing to her.
Lori pressed the button Rhea had once done, feeling the confusion evaporate from her Pokemon. She took a leaf out of her Sunshine’s book.
“I surrender.”
Terri flipped around and looked at her as if she were crazy.
“Kub?”
The arena went quiet enough to hear the flood draining.
Then eighty thousand people made a sound she didn’t have a word for—not a roar, not a gasp. Something in between. The kind of sound that came from people watching something real happen in a competition that didn’t usually make room for real.
Cobalt surfaced in the receding water.
He looked at the platform where she stood.
Looked at the two capsules in her hands. His bumps pulsed once—slow, low—and he gave her a questioning croak before the red light claimed him home.
Giovanni’s platform descended.
Lori gulped.
He didn’t rush it.
The unseen arena crew was already pulling the flood back through the floor grates, stone grinding as the spikes retracted, the last brown vines of Gretel’s garden releasing their grip. Lori watched the garden die from her platform and let her shaking hands drop to her sides.
“Challenger Lori Medina surrenders the match.” The ref’s voice was neutral. Professional. “Victory to Gym Leader Giovanni.”
The applause started somewhere near the top and rolled down, uneven, mystified.
She didn’t look for the cameras.
Didn’t check her family’s section.
Just stood with both capsules warm in her palms and let the sound wash over her until it wasn’t about her anymore.
When Giovanni reached the arena floor, he glanced around, then up at the VIP box, where Lori’s parents were, before looking up at her.
Then, he took the field.
She hadn’t expected that reaction.
“There will be a ten-minute break. Step down, Ms. Medina.”
She gulped a second time as the platform descended.
This didn’t happen to Rhea… Muk.
Did I screw up that bad?
She waited nervously as her platform descended.
Terri had her cheeks puffed up, harmlessly punching her tight belly.
Gables and Roxie were soothing her restless Pokemon.
Lori felt like there were a few rubber bands around her chest when she finally left the platform, Terri by her side.
The arena floor was wet beneath her sneakers.
Giovanni stood a few feet away, hands behind his back, Persian at his side. The crowd noise was still present but muffled—reduced to a hum by distance and the curve of the arena walls. Despite the declaration of a break, no one moved, and all ears were listening.
He studied her.
Then he reached for the interface at his holographic platform and turned off the public feed. The hum of eighty thousand people became something she felt rather than heard.
“That,” Giovanni whispered, “took more than fighting to the end would have.”
Lori looked at the capsules in her hands.
“I don’t know if I should cry or laugh, to be honest… I didn’t respect you or what your Gym represents. I…don’t know what else to say.”
There was a pause.
Persian’s tail curled and uncurled.
She pressed her wrist against her other arm, unable to meet his gaze as the wind blew her dress against her legs.
When Giovanni spoke, his voice was measured, unhurried.
“You showed me something honest, Lori. I do not assume to know every part of your soul. Aura can only show you so much, even at my level of perception. And though you have not won my badge, you have earned my respect…because I once faced the same trial.”
Lori’s eyes came up, Terri looking uncertain beside her as she tried to read her emotions through their Buddy Bond.
“…I don’t know what to say. It sucks… I know I disappointed a lot of people.” She looked across the tens of thousands of people, then saw her parents, unable to see their expressions from this far. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
Giovanni didn’t respond immediately, spiking her nerves and making her fidget.
But when he did speak, it quieted the quakes, pulling her violet eyes to his.
“Doubt kills. Questions open doors. Truth is a double-edged sword. And swords are weapons of battle. You’ve chosen your battlefield. You found your way to that sword on your own. How you use it will define you.”
He held her gaze. “Use your week wisely, Ms. Medina. I am in a particularly unusual mood this day. Shed the weight of what clouds that Aura of yours I see, because Misty will not give you leniency I have.”
Her scar prickled with the hair on the back of her neck.
Her Pokemon were now listening closely.
“I know Misty isn’t—”
“You know her reputation,” Giovanni clipped, his voice not rising.
It didn’t need to.
“You know pieces of her history with Ash. Dawn, your teacher, perhaps gifted you with a few minor insights… You do not know what she is right now.”
The word landed differently than she expected.
Right… Misty is pregnant.
His expression said he’d tell her what she needed to know, not what she wanted to.
And his tone was as cold as the Articuno cave.
“She is not going to evaluate you, Ms. Medina. She is not going to assess your potential and measure your progress with any patience.”
Lori’s gut cramped. “What do you mean?”
Something shifted behind his eyes—not warmth exactly, but a warning.
“There is a reason female Gym Leaders are discouraged to act in their duties when pregnant, and it is not merely due to arbitrary reasons. It’s biological. It’s Aura instability. Why do you suppose Diantha took time away recently from operating as a Champion?”
Okay, now I’m getting a little scared…
“She is going to want to enjoy herself. She is going to come at you with the intent to test your resolve, because right now, everything she carries makes her sharper and more volatile than I am on my best day.” He let that sit. “You are from Unova. Think of Misty right now as…Iris, when she’s feeling hot-blooded.”
Lori’s throat tightened.
Okay, make me wet myself! C’mon… Misty can’t be Iris crazy. Right?
She took a deep breath and let it out, reflecting on everything he’d shown her—shutting down her Abilities, showing Pokemon she’d never seen, and flipping the entire script of a Ground-Type Gym.
Bending down, she picked up Terri, holding her close to her chest.
“…She’s one of the Gym Leaders not on Rhea or our team’s side, isn’t she? That’s kind of surprising, considering Ash and everything. But…I get it. I need to focus on myself. On my team. I need to find the rhythm in my soul.”
She looked up at him with a small smile—even with her height, he was a bit taller.
“You’re a lot softer than you come off, Gym Leader Giovanni. Maybe it’s just because Amira and I are friends, but I get it.”
“That is half the reason,” Giovanni stated bluntly, making her chuckle inside. “My granddaughter still has much to learn… Much to learn. And much like her,” his dark eyes drilled into hers, “You need to find where your center is… Rhea already has.”
The words went somewhere deep.
Not because they were cruel.
Of course, our Sunshine has… It isn’t like she found it easily, though. I guess I’m more like my mom and sister than I thought. Ugh. I’m a mess.
Her chest ached.
Because those words were true, and she’d known they were true for a long time, and nobody had said it to her face until this man in this arena with the flood drying on the stone around them.
Her voice came out quieter than intended. “Thank you. You gave me exactly what I needed.”
Giovanni’s lips actually curved up a tad.
“You are talented.” The way he said it made it sound less like a compliment and more like a complicating factor. “You have moved through this journey on instinct and ability and the warmth of those around you. That has served you, for a time. Now, step up. Make no excuses.”
The flood had fully drained now.
The arena floor was bare, wet stone under amber light, the last dead leaves of Gretel’s garden dissolving into the seams.
Lori looked down at the Poke Balls in her hands.
She thought about how hard her Pokemon had tried in this battle.
I’m sorry for taking this from you guys… I know this is hard… Embarrassing. I’m not the best Trainer out of our group. Total facts… But I want to do better. I have to do better.
She almost laughed.
Almost.
Lori’s gaze left her little fighter, held against her chest, to smile at Amira’s grandfather.
“I will beat Misty.”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth—not a smile exactly, but the architecture of one.
“Retain that fire at your back, and I am sure you will.”
A shiver ran along her spine at those words—it almost felt like a coded message.
Then, he reengaged the speakers.
His voice carried through the arena again, public cadence restored. “You are welcome back to Viridian whenever you wish, Ms. Medina. Next time, come with the expectation of beating Kanto’s best Gym Leader.”
With that, he turned.
Persian rose and followed.
The platform ascended.
And Lori stood alone on the wet arena floor with eighty thousand people beginning to filter toward the exits on their quick bathroom or snack break, and the last amber light picking out the ghost of a garden in the stone.
She breathed.
Placed both capsules in the Center recovery device.
Wiped her face with the back of her hand.
Thanked her Pokemon.
And walked into the hallway.
We lost today… But really, we won.
I know what I need to do…
Two friends popped into her mind—a blonde and redheaded.
I need to be honest.
I need to be vulnerable.
…I need to trust.