Chapter 174

Sam was on his final Pokémon, but Victor still had two. This entire battle had been a slog of back-to-back knock-outs, with one Pokémon tiring itself to knock out another just to be knocked out in return by whatever healthy Pokémon was sent out next.

Victor had come out of the gate swinging, catching Sam off guard by proving that Ghost Types could still be trapped. As a Fire Type, his Houndoom was immune to burns, and its Flash Fire meant all Fire Type moves would only ever be absorbed. It locked Typhlosion in place due to a Dark Type Crunch that held her down. She then fainted to a Pursuit when Sam decided to risk bringing her back to her Pokéball, and then it was all quick exchanges there.

Gengar knocked out the Houndoom by confusing it into taking a Shadow Ball. In return, an Umbreon had chased him down and taken him out with an overwhelming Dark Pulse. That Umbreon then fell to Trevenant’s immense sustain, but then Trevenant fell to a Toxic from a Vileplume, and that Vileplume fell to Annihilape’s constant assault.

However, Annihilape was poisoned just the same, and that removed the energy he needed to fight back against a Weavile. Finally, Dragapult practically shattered the Weavile with a powerful blow from Dreepy, but the Weavile’s ice slowed her just enough for a Crobat to secure a faint.

Now, Sam only had Mismagius left, and she was facing that Crobat, which unfortunately outmatched her speed.

The problem with her opponent was the Crobat’s flight and maneuverability. It flew circles around her—literally—and it battered her with its winds. For all the energy she had over it, she needed to break this ongoing pattern. She needed to take out this Crobat and whatever was sent out next. Otherwise, Sam was going to lose.

“Mean Look, Night Shade!” he shouted, the exhaustion getting to him. “Defend, and keep boosting with Nasty Plot!”

The constant back-and-forth wasn’t even the worst part of this match—that was Victor himself. It wasn’t that the Dark Type trainer was sending Sam any taunts; it was that he was remaining completely and utterly silent and never responded to anything Sam said.

“Aerial Ace,” Victor ordered, speaking with a neutral, straightforward confidence.

His Crobat had been circling Mismagius, but upon hearing its orders, all four of its wings snapped downward to rocket it into the sky. Upon reaching the peak of that launch, it allowed itself to fall, and then it accelerated to impossible speeds with the intention of bringing all of that straight into Mismagius.

Sam held his breath; Aerial Ace’s speed meant it was impossible to dodge. But, all of this build-up was giving Mismagius more and more time to enhance herself with Nasty Plot. If she could get a quick knockout here, then she could get a quick knockout against her next foe.

That was the way forward, and that was the way they could still win. But, right before the Crobat hit the floor, it pulled upwards, and all of its downwards momentum shifted into a horizontal launch that pierced straight into Mismagius’s Night Shade.

She let out a horrible cry, but her darkness did not fall.

Just like Typhlosion and Annihilape before her, Mismagius refused to fall here.

“YES!” Sam roared. “NOW, GRAB IT AND USE PSYCHIC!”

Victor called for another Aerial Ace—he clearly did not want to deal with any nonsense of Mismagius being able to dodge. This time around, the Crobat tried to open a path by sending out blades of wind. With every flap of its wings, an Air Cutter rushed her, but Mismagius tore all of them apart with a thunderous Psybeam.

Crobat tried to slip in under that attack.

Given that she was responding with a defense, this should have opened her up to a move, but Mismagius was prepared. Her Night Shade exploded outwards, briefly blinding Crobat, and right before it reached her, the Crobat abruptly stopped.

Her Psychic grabbed it in place, inches away, freezing it mid-air.

“There,” Sam breathed. “That’s it.”

The Crobat screeched out of both frustration and pain. Its Poison Type made it vulnerable to this use of Psychic, and Mismagius’s Nasty Plot let her lean into that. Dark Type energy did swirl around Crobat’s teeth in an attempt to break out and use Crunch for a final lunge, but Mismagius never let that happen.

She squeezed, and that was it. The Crobat crumpled to the ground.

“Only one Pokémon left, and Mismagius has Nasty Plot up,” Sam said. “We only need to land one, solid attack to win.”

But, as Sam watched his opponent, he saw the worst reaction possible:

For all Victor had been staying serious across this whole fight, a smile had crept onto his face.

“Murkrow,” he named.

This was not an evolved Pokémon, but its presence meant the battle’s end.

Sam had taken notes on every Pokémon Victor had, and while he had been hoping for a different Dark Type of his, he knew what this Murkrow could do.

“Mystical Fire,” Sam ordered quickly.

In response, Victor’s Murkrow conjured a Tailwind that doubled its speed.

Flames washed out. Murkrow avoided them all. Its eyes flashed for a Detect, and it banked to avoid a wave of fire that rushed it from below.

“Keep it up,” Sam called out, “and keep an eye on the shadows.”

When Mismagius caught on to his meaning, she sent him a look over her shoulder. When they made eye contact, he sent her a nod.

And to that, a cackle echoed through the air.

The exchange continued. Mismagius maintained her Mystical Fire, but Victor seemed content to wait. His Murkrow focused on defense and defense alone, and its small size was letting it avoid all parts of Mismagius’s attack.

But at a certain point, Victor saw it: a small opening that’d safely bring his Murkrow straight to Sam’s Pokémon.

“Sucker Punch!” he shouted.

For the briefest of moments, his smile widened. Mismagius didn’t stop her Mystical Fire, and she looked tired.

From his perspective, he had just won.

Murkrow dove straight through that opening through the flood of fire to reach Mismagius, managing to slip in right under her defense. In the momentary build-up of her next attack, it was in the perfect position to jab with its beak before she could set up her guard.

But what neither it nor Victor noticed was Sam’s trick: both the Murkrow’s and Mismagius’s shadows had connected.

Sam let out a sigh. He had predicted this outcome. But at least with this strategy, Mismagius would not fall on her own.

“Murkrow knows Taunt,” Sam spoke as Mismagius’s cackles echoed, and she threw out her arms. “If we focused on using status moves, you would have called for that, and then Mismagius would be forced to use attacks that’d just give Murkrow the freedom for a Sucker Punch.

“Alternatively, if we only used attacks, we could avoid that Taunt, but then we’d just be skipping straight to the end,” Sam continued. “Murkrow could slip in and use Sucker Punch anyway. But if you didn’t use Taunt—”

“You’d get one last chance to use a status move,” Victor said for him.

Mismagius’s flames made it look as though she was on fire, and she leaned into the darkened jab to her chest. As the Sucker Punch attack pierced right through her guard, she threw herself into it, and she embraced the Murkrow before she fell.

With Destiny Bond, the Murkrow fainted alongside her.

Truthfully, Sam didn’t have any other answers to this. No matter what, Murkrow’s Sucker Punch meant it would always faint Mismagius here. Sucker Punch would always let it move before any of her attacks, and as Sam had trained Mismagius as a special attacker, she didn’t have any useful status moves to shut down whatever the Murkrow used.

Thus, the only answer: Destiny Bond. It was the only way to ensure this Murkrow fell.

But the rules of the League had already established the outcome for this kind of match. Though both trainers had lost their final Pokémon, this was not a tie.

“Both Mismagius and Murkrow are unable to battle!” the referee called out. “But we do have a victor! As Trainer Samuel has secured this knock-out by fainting his own Pokémon, his Pokémon is considered to have fainted first. Thus, according to the rules of the Pokémon League, Trainer Samuel is out of usable Pokémon first. Trainer Victor is the winner!”

To that, cheers. This was an upset. No one expected Victor to win.

The audience clapped, but so did Sam.

As much as it stung, it was a good battle. He had at least fainted every one of his opponent’s Pokémon.

But his time in the Conference was over.

_______________________________________________________________________

It wasn’t just Sam’s presence in the Conference that had ended. The Conference itself reached its end. Somehow, Victor didn’t just win against Sam. He and his team of Dark Types pulled off a victory in the semifinals, and then, in an incredible turn, he managed to win against an aspiring Ace Trainer and their very scary Electivire.

When Sam watched that final battle, he was silent the whole time. Seeing the threat that Victor’s final opponent posed, he had no idea how his team could have won in Victor’s place.

In the end, only a third of the competing trainers were still around to stand in rows during the concluding ceremony, and the audience was thrown into an ecstatic uproar at that dark horse victory. The Conference concluded with Victor at the top platform, clutching a trophy while tears poured out of his eyes. When given a microphone, he was practically inconsolable. So filled with joy, he could barely speak, but he managed to say the one thing that practically tore all attention off of him.

“Th-this all thanks to Miss Karen!” he shouted through his tears.

And then, everyone wanted to know who this “Karen” was. Everyone wanted to know about the mysterious person who had tutored a newbie trainer so well that the newbie had won the Conference overall. Victor had his share of focus, but all conversations shifted in an instant.

Although Sam, Redi, and so many others had had their time in the limelight, with this unexpected finish, no one was talking about them, their Pokémon, or any of their team’s reveals.

Days passed. Sam said his goodbyes. Redi gave him an open invitation to visit her home in Kanto, and Xavier disappeared to spend the break between seasons over in Sinnoh. Silver Town became empty of its guests and visitors, but Sam chose to remain.

“This place?” he asked as he approached one building at the end of a street, and Typhlosion stared at the ramshackle building before slowly nodding her head.

Sam checked the paths around them, but no one was nearby. Though Silver Town was a populated city, it was quiet. With the Conference being over, the hustle and bustle had all but faded away.

“Head in,” Sam said to her. “I’ll keep watch. I believe in you. I’ll make sure you aren’t bothered, and I’m just going to... stay out here and think.”

Sending him a soft smile, she pressed her head against his chest. He laughed, and he hugged her back.

Then, she tore away the boards that sealed the front door, and she stepped inside.

So far, this was the third place Typhlosion had found. Now that the city was no longer so overpopulated with life, it was easier to sense wayward spirits. As much as Sam had the potential to return home, he didn’t, and he stayed here with Typhlosion to let her search for and help any long-forgotten ghosts.

And doing so was giving him the chance to think.

“Top eight,” Sam mumbled to himself. Honestly, he wasn’t really keeping watch. He hadn’t seen any patrolling Ace Trainers since the end of the Conference, and even if someone called him out, he could point to the little ghost-mark on his Trainer ID as proof of his team’s role.

So he just became lost in thought, instead. He thought about everything that had happened and what his team had managed to achieve. Anything past the first round was impressive for a first-year trainer, and getting to the top eight alone was impressive for anyone. This was a victory for Sam.

But losing still hurt.

Watching every successive battle, Sam had seen no way forward. Any other opponent would have been just as tough as Victor, and his team had already started to flag. Even if Sam had made it to the next round, his team would have been too tired to continue, and then they would have been stuck in two back-to-back matches. He would have lost once, and then he would have been forced into another battle the next day, fighting on the Conference’s final day to see who would place third.

He could take a slight bit of comfort here, at least. Losing had helped his reputation. He had lost to the one person who had won overall, and he had still managed to knock out Victor’s entire team.

For that, he had his reward.

Not wanting to dwell on negative thoughts, Sam reached into his backpack to pull out a certain packet for what felt like the thousandth time in the past few days. It was heavy in his hands, and there were enough pages within it to be bound into an entire book.

“Now, what do I do now?” Sam whispered.

It felt as though every organization in Indigo had sent him an offer, and he had even received offers from people outside of both Johto and Kanto. He had requests to meet him, offers for sponsorships, proposed deals for advertisements in all forms, and he even had a decent number of researchers reaching out to him with requests to meet his “newly discovered” Pokémon.

Even Mr. Pokémon had sent him a letter. The man had offered him a very generous proposal, likely inspired by his current deal with Redi. Not just him—Agatha had once again presented Sam with an apprenticeship offer, and even Morty was trying to recruit him as a member of his Gym.

The League itself wanted to hire Sam as an Ace Trainer, and though they paid less than other offers, their deal offered the most overall benefits. But even that wasn’t an easy choice; Sam received four different offers from the League. He could choose to be an Ace Trainer in any of the four nearby regions.

He was even surprised to see that Professor Carolina had reached out to him. She wanted to temporarily bring him on as a research assistant over in Sinnoh. Similarly, Spencer Hale had reached out with an offer, but given that man’s obsession with Unown, Sam had a feeling that the offer was more of just a way to pay respects. And then, there was also... one other offer contained in this packet.

It was just a letter.

There was no deal. No money. No benefits. Just a personal message containing an invitation, an address, and a chance to talk.

So overwhelmed, Sam didn’t know what to do. This was everything he wanted, and even more past that. As much as he had wanted to win overall, his true goal was to secure his team the support they deserved, and that was something he was getting the chance to decide by his choice.

But he just didn’t know what to choose.

“Sam.”

Hearing that voice, Sam snapped his head up from the papers and tried to scramble to close the packet. However, he froze when he saw just who was standing there, and he could barely stop his mouth from dropping open.

“Mom?” he said. “But we said goodbye! I thought you already went home!”

She replied with a kind smile.

“And leave you here? Alone? Abandon you while you’re stuck like this? I had to head to the airport to cancel my flight, but I came back here to find you,” she said. “Don’t take me for a fool, sweetie. I was never going to force you to do this on your own.”

“I’m not on my own. I’m with my team.”

“Yes, but I suppose you wouldn’t mind some help from someone familiar with this kind of work, hm?”

He felt the heat rush to his face, and his mother tittered before joining him on the stairs. Though the house was silent behind him, he could feel a soft, comfortable cold that told him that Typhlosion was succeeding with what she set out to do.

“So,” his mother started. “Which have you been considering?”

“All of them,” Sam answered with a grumble. “I don’t know what to choose.”

“Do you have any preferences for what you want?” she asked.

“Money. Ranching options for the Mankey. Maybe some new ways to meet Ghost Types.”

“Then take out all of the offers that don’t offer those to you.”

Sam tried to think of what he’d take out, but he still felt frozen. Honestly, he couldn’t think of even a single offer he’d want to eliminate.

“I see,” his mother said, nodding. “Choice paralysis. You don’t want to give up what might turn out to be the best deal.”

“Yeah, and it also feels... I don’t know. Am I even in a place to turn any of these offers down? And do I even want to accept any of these offers? I’d be tying myself to them, but I’d be getting everything I wanted. It feels weird to make a choice, and it also feels weird to accept any of them since...”

Since I lost.

He stared at the closed packet, and his hands crinkled its sides. His mother watched him, and after a few short seconds, she let out a brief laugh.

When Sam brought his head up at the noise, he found that she was smiling.

“Ah,” she said. “You’re in a funk.”

She spoke as if happy to have recognized that.

“Am not,” Sam countered.

“Are too,” she replied.

He glared at her, but his glare only lasted until she poked him on the nose, leaving him reeling back and stuttering.

“Okay, Sam. I want you to remember that no matter what you choose, you aren’t alone. Nothing is going to change between you and your friends, and nothing is going to change between you and anyone you turn down. What matters right now is selecting the option that’ll make you the most well-off and happy. And, your loss isn’t important. The only thing people are focusing on is your incredible success.”

“So?” he grumbled.

“So, be proud of yourself!” his mother said. “You deserve this. Accept your achievements, and look through the packet with that approach. Think positively while choosing what you want, and narrow down which best fits with your success.”

“But I—”

“Still need to get your mind off of it,” his mother said more softly, finishing the statement for him. “Then... Hm. I wanted to wait until we got home, but I do have an offer of my own for you.”

Watching her suspiciously, he saw a glint enter her eyes. It felt as though his mother didn’t have an offer in the classic sense, but she seemed excited for what she had to say.

There was an energy to her, and that energy saw her practically hop off the steps.

She shifted her stance, and she no longer looked like a bookstore owner. Noticing a pair of Pokéballs at her waist, Sam realized she looked like a proper Pokémon trainer.

“I know it hurts to lose,” his mother said. “I know it hurts to have something you so desperately desire only for it to be taken away. I know that hurts to have something so suddenly snatched from you—

“But I also know that not everything deserves that kind of attention, and this is not one of those situations,” she said. “You’ve achieved something incredible, so let’s break you out of your current mindset.”

“What are you planning?” he asked her.

She just smiled.

“Samuel Greyson!” his mother shouted, her voice booming, the sound echoing. “Right now, don’t think of me as your mother! Think of me as an opponent! I have Delcatty! I have Sableye! I have experience! So, I have all of the requirements needed to present you with this:”

She paused dramatically.

“I, Amanda Greyson, challenge you to a Pokémon battle!” 

And, before Sam realized what he was doing, the words had already left his mouth.

“I accept.”

=======================================================================
Author Note:

There are a few places in this chapter I want to touch up. Otherwise, this hits everything I want it to hit. We have two and a half more chapters left from here.

Pokémon included in this chapter:
Crobat
Electivire
Houndoom

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