The New Normal - 10-2 - Interlude - Volkner

The New Normal – 10-2 – Interlude – Volkner

Despite being on the backfoot, he could feel his heart pumping in excitement as he stared down the newest Champion of Sinnoh.

Flint was always generous with his praises, so he had his doubts about how strong Cynthia truly was. Oh, he wasn’t blind; he knew well enough how strong someone needed to be if she managed to clear through all of the Elite Four the way she did.

However, he was not someone who liked to compare himself to others. He would only be able to know how strong someone was if he faced off against them personally. And now he was truly able to get Cynthia’s full measure.

Sufficed to say, she was kicking his ass.

Now that he was actually in a battle against her, he had a newfound respect for the Elite Four if they managed to hold on as well as they did against the monster that he was up currently up against. Cynthia had torn through his team; his Jolteon, Rotom, and Electabuzz had all already fallen in exchange for her Spiritomb and Lucario.

However, the 3-2 score in her favour was not indicative of the dominance that she had displayed. Nor did he feel that she was upset by her losses.

He really should have listened a little harder to Flint’s descriptions of battling against Cynthia, because his favoured tactic of setting up the Rain and blasting his foes down with powerful and speedy Electric Type moves was not working. Any attempt by him to set up the Rain was heavily punished, and her Pokémon was able to weather the storm.

Her Spiritomb had proven just a little too defensive to be taken out with his initial burst of attacks, and continued to be a supreme annoyance as it drained his team with Pain Splits and burned them with Will-O-Wisps. It was also surprisingly evasive for a haunted rock, and a slight mistake on his end costed him his Rotom as it fell to a Shadow Claw.

Lucario also managed to outspeed even his Jolteon with its Extreme Speeds, a feat that he didn’t think was possible, but a paralysis had allowed him to use his Electabuzz to return the favour and knockout the Fighting Type – only for his own Electabuzz to fall to an Earthquake from Garchomp.

He supposed he should be honoured that Cynthia thought him strong enough to use her starter against him. Yet, at the current moment, that was little more than cold comfort as he struggled to find a plan that would allow him to deal with this monster of a Ground type.

His remaining three Pokémon consisted of a Raichu, Lanturn, and his starter Luxray – all were weak to Ground. But with only 10 seconds left before he had to send out his next Pokémon, he knew that he just had to trust in his team to give off the best performance possible.

“It’s on you, Lanturn!”

His Lanturn was the only Pokémon that really had a chance to deal with this Garchomp, since it knew both Blizzard and Ice Beam. Yet, the moment he sent out his Lanturn, Cynthia just switched her Garchomp out.

“Roserade, deal with it.”

Lanturn immediately used the opportunity where Cynthia had swapped out to boost its speed with an Agility; he knew his Pokémon was going to require all the speed it could get to deal with the agile Roserade.

And that speed was instantly put to the test as a barrage of leaves shot its way, which Lanturn was fortunately able to freeze away with a sweeping Ice Beam. With Roserade being resistant to its usual barrage of moves, he was forced to rely on Ice Beams to try to bring down the nimble Grass Type.

But the Roserade had spun out of the way and blanketed the skies with a storm of leaves once again – far too many for Lanturn to cut down with just an Ice Beam.

“Blizzard, Lanturn!”

A howling tornado began to form in the middle of the battlefield, gradually turning into a swirling vortex of frost that would consume and freeze the Leaf Storm in its tracks. However, Roserade hadn’t been standing by idly, and had dashed up close to Lanturn while it was preoccupied.

The cracking of a whip could be heard as a painful Power Whip slammed into the side of his Lanturn, sending him spinning to the side and into a cloud of Spores that put his Lanturn fast to sleep.

“Sleep Talk, Lanturn!”

But falling asleep wasn’t the end of the world. As they had trained, Lanturn managed to instinctively fire off a Discharge even as it slept. Yet the surprise explosion of electricity proved to have little effect on the resistant Roserade, and a Giga Drain soon healed the Grass type back to full health until the Electric type was eventually completely drained of all of its health.

Even though it could hit back and had paralysed the Grass type, his sleeping Lanturn was still little more than a Magikarp in a barrel for the Roserade.

He let out a small sigh as his Lanturn fainted. Although he had expected it, it was almost disheartening to see how much weaker he was when he wasn’t able to make use of his Pokémon’s famed Electric attacks and natural speed. This battle was a great reminder that he really needed to diversify his Pokémon a bit more outside of just Electric Types.

Having no other choice, he sent out his Raichu next.

He had hoped to use Raichu’s superior speed to quickly burst down the Roserade, but Cynthia gave him no such chance.

“Switch out, Roserade. It’s back to you, Garchomp!”

His Raichu was immediately forced to pivot on the spot and dodge out of the way with a Quick Attack as a roaring Dragon came speeding out of her Pokéball and ferociously smashed into the ground right where his Raichu just was.

The resulting crater was an excellent demonstration for why his Raichu had to keep its distance.

Therefore, Raichu tried to dash away with another Quick Attack while it simultaneously fired off a Draining Kiss towards the Dragon. Yet the Garchomp merely burrowed into the ground and dodged out of the way.

“Into the air, now!”

Knowing what was coming, he desperately shouted for his Raichu to leap into the air just as the terrifying monster of a Garchomp erupted from the ground with incredible speed, blazing with draconic energies as she unleashed her signature Outrage.

Raichu was just able to clear enough distance to form a Protect shield in time to block the brutal Dragon Claw from eviscerating it. But the Protect shield quickly shattered in the face of Garchomp’s overwhelming strength, and just as Raichu tried to dash around and behind the Garchomp with another Quick Attack, a powerful Dragon Tail smashed into its face like a hammer, sending the Electric type tumbling to the ground.

“GARCHOMP!!” Letting out a roar of power, Garchomp immediately pounced onto her prey and smashed their heads together with an Iron Head that flinched his Raichu before unleashing an explosive, Outrage-boosted, Earthquake that savaged his Raichu.

Unfortunately, his Raichu didn’t manage to tank through that, and soon fainted.

It was sadly what he had expected.

He knew that with Cynthia doing these battles to prove her strength and dominance, she wouldn’t be holding too much back. Her Garchomp was an unbreakable wall for him.

Flint was lucky that Cynthia had decided to hold back her Garchomp for Lucian.

He only had his starter remaining, and there was no chance that his Luxray, strong as it might be, would be able to take down this frightening Garchomp. His defeat was inevitable.

Yet he was not frustrated at this. He recognised that, coming into this battle, he would lose. But he had come here to challenge himself once again, to feel the thrill of battle once more. He had come to remind himself that, though his usual duties as a Gym Leader required him to hold back in boring battles, there WERE strong trainers out there.

And those trainers were far stronger than him.

As he wiped the sweat from his forehead, he let out a wide smile as he stared at the calm figure of Sinnoh’s Champion. She was hardly winded, and she and her Garchomp stood there like a mountain he had to climb. A mountain that he was nowhere ready to conquer yet.

He seared that image of the Champion into his mind, feeling the motivation surge into him once again.

Yes, this was why he became a trainer. He wouldn’t forget that anytime soon.

A.N. This battle was as one-sided as most would have expected, but I didn’t want to completely skip over the battle. Instead, I tried to focus on what I thought it would be like to face off against someone as strong as Cynthia when she’s trying to make a demonstration of her strength. Needless to say, it’s very oppressive to fight against, especially considering how bad of a type disadvantage that Volkner’s team has.

I also wanted to provide a little insight into Volkner’s mental state. I know he’s lazy and demotivated in canon, and I kinda wanted to play around with that a little. Nothing like getting thrashed to give you the kick in the ass you need to stop being so bored all the time.