We caught sight of our next destination far earlier that the others, due to the fact that the island was very large. Cliffs rose up all around it, and a mountain of brown rock covered with trees stuck out above the horizon. As exotic as it looked, only a small part of this island could support a settlement, and this was the beach, where several houses stood in a bay, surrounded by cliffs. This was Cianwood City.

After all those hours sitting on Marina’s back to surf the way here, I was relieved when she came to a stop on the beach and I was able to get down. Of course, by then, my legs were out of practice, and I fell head first into the sand.

‘Come on now,’ said Gary, making a perfect jump from Marina’s shell down onto the beach, ‘Don’t be giving up that easily.’

I scowled, made an effort to get the sand off my face, and just remembered to recall my Lapras before jogging off after him.

Since the Pokémon Gym was usually our first (and sometimes only) port of call, I thought we would be heading towards it, but Gary surprised me by walking into the Pokémon Centre as soon as we found it. I ran to catch up with him as he walked through the double sliding doors into the warm, bright light of the centre.

‘Hey, why are we here? Don’t you want to get over to the Gym?’

‘I’m going to call Grandpa and have him send someone over for me… I’ve got to keep up rotation,’ replied Gary. ‘Why don’t you get your pokémon healed or something… I’ll be right back.’

I watched him walk around the corner and approached the front desk. There was Nurse Joy – same bright red hair, same cheerful disposition, as always.

‘Hi there, trainer! What can I do for you?’

I reached down and unclipped six pokéballs from my belt. ‘Umm… could you just do a check-up on these? Make sure they’re all well… and stuff.’

‘Sure thing!’ grinned the Nurse, accepting my pokéballs and heading off to examine them. I waited for a couple of minutes, then she returned, still beaming.

‘I checked them over and they’re all ready to go, but all your pokémon seem to be well taken care of to begin with!’

I thanked her and moved away from the counter while reattaching the pokémon. The only reason my pokémon were currently in good shape was that, having done nothing but surf on Lapras for a while, we hadn’t come across many trainers or wild pokémon for battles. I didn’t bother mentioning that if it were up to me, I would have battled a lot more.

A second later, Gary came back from the videophones.

‘What took you so long?’ I asked.

‘Nothing… just a bit of preparation.’

‘Right… shall we be off then?’

We left the centre and began exploring the town for the location of the Gym, which took a little longer than I expected, even though the town was quite small, because the Gym was hidden away behind a cliff. After finally locating it, we ran in.

The inside of this Gym looked different somehow… almost… untidy. Here and there, large jagged boulders could be seen, most with shattered chunks taken out of them. It looked like they had been used for target practice.

‘Aha!’ I heard a voice yell. ‘Challengers, is it!’

From behind one of the rocks, a man emerged. He was large and burly, not to mention loud, and shirtless. He seemed to only be wearing the smallest amount of clothing to allow for free movement.

‘Come on then,’ he said jauntily, ‘the arena’s this way…’

Looking a bit bemused, Gary and I followed. Out of sight behind a couple of rocks was the battle field he mentioned, a rocky and uneven surface with the required white field lines painted sloppily on. I got the feeling that the uneven field was the result of a particular fighting tactic, rather than just negligence.

‘By the way,’ said the man, turning to us after we reached the arena, ‘my name’s Chuck, I’m the Gym Leader. Right, which of you will be going first?’

I turned to Gary, who gave a shrug.

‘Ladies first,’ he grinned. I shot him an amused sort of glare for implying that I was a lady, then walked out to face Chuck.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Chuck said as I walked to the challenger’s box, ‘where are my junior trainers?’ He turned to a nearby doorway and yelled, ‘Hey, boys!’

All of a sudden, about a dozen young men poured out into the main hall of the Gym, all wearing martial arts style clothing in a variety of colours. They went to take seats on a side bench in order to watch the match, for what I assumed was experience, while Gary went to sit on the other side of the hall.

‘Kaden, you can referee this one,’ Chuck ordered. A teen boy from the group, who I assume was Kaden, wandered over to talk his place at the side, by the centre line.

I watched across the field as Chuck selected a pokéball from his pocket and threw it quite forcefully onto the ground in front of him. It burst open and out of the light came a blue pokémon, one whose pre-evolution I had seen before. It was blue, with white covered hands, and a patch on its front with a large black spiral. I had read somewhere that the spiral was actually the pokémon’s inner organs showing through translucent skin, but that wasn’t going to help me battle it, so I brought out my pokédex.

‘Poliwrath,’ it droned, ‘The tadpole pokémon. This pokémon has incredible muscle power, making it an expert swimmer.’

‘Great,’ I wondered aloud, ‘I don’t have anything that would work well on a fighting type…’

‘Poliwrath is both a fighting and water type,’ added the pokédex helpfully.

‘Oh. All right…,’ I closed the ‘dex and exchanged it for a pokéball. ‘Let’s see a water type handle this.’

I called the ball’s occupant out and Flo the Chinchou appeared on the field. Her small blue form didn’t seem like much of a match for Poliwrath’s, but I was planning to try using that to my advantage.

‘Challengers ready?’ said Kaden. ‘This Gym battle is conducted under standard Pokémon League rules for one-on-one matches.’

‘One-on-one?’ I questioned.

‘Right you are!’ exclaimed Chuck, ‘I don’t like to hold back in my battles – we just hit them hard and fast using our muscles.’

Kaden made sure we were both ready, then proclaimed, ‘begin!’

Knowing that this was a one-on-one match just made me more nervous. I only had one chance.

Unfortunately, Chuck was able to take the lead. ‘Go, Poliwrath, hypnosis attack!’

‘Flo, fight back with supersonic!’

Poliwrath tried to use psychic waves to interfere with Flo’s mind, but by using supersonic she mixed up the waves and both attacks cancelled out.

‘Flo, use thunder wave!’ I tried, hoping to gain the upper hand somehow. Chinchou shot electricity at Poliwrath, but her opponent jumped almost effortlessly into the air to avoid it.

‘Use doubleslap!’ cried Chuck, and Poliwrath made another huge jump over to Flo. Before we could react he slapped her repeatedly with his big white hands. Flo seemed powerless, but managed to dodge a few slaps. Finally, after 2 or 3 misses, Chinchou was able to duck free.

‘Flo, use spark!’ I hoped this would be able to do some damage. She charged her bulbous antennae and fired a blast at Poliwrath. It managed to hit before he could dodge, but when the lightning died down he didn’t appear to be particularly damaged.

‘You’ll need to do better than that!’ Chuck taunted. ‘Use a submission attack!’

‘Aah! Dodge-it-dodge-it-dodge-it-dodge-it!’ I chanted, as if repeating the words would make it more likely.

Poliwrath braced itself and used its strong legs to spring forward in Chinchou’s direction. Flo rolled to one side and Poliwrath’s attack missed – he collided with a rock instead. The boulder he hit cracked and shattered, shards flying in all directions. I gaped at how much damage the attack had dealt to the solid rock – if Flo was hit by something like that it would all be over.

‘Come on Poliwrath, another doubleslap!’

Poliwrath didn’t need much time to recover, and again jumped over to Flo to attack at close range. But Flo was more prepared now, and more accustomed to Poliwrath’s attack. Poliwrath struck out with his hands over and over, but Flo managed to jump and duck to avoid every one.

‘That’s enough, Poliwrath!’ I could tell Chuck was growing impatient. ‘Use dynamicpunch, now!’

Poliwhirl stopped and pulled back his arm. For a moment I was scared that this would be the end, but when the punch came Flo leapt to the side to dodge it. Poliwrath tried again, taking a while to channel his energy into the blow, but again, Flo was able to avoid the attack.

And I realised what Poliwrath’s weakness was.

‘Your Poliwrath may have an immense attack power,’ I called across the field, ‘but he doesn’t take the time to aim! All that attack is wasted because he just can’t land a hit!’ I almost felt like laughing, now that I could see a way to win.

‘Argh!’ Chuck growled, ‘A lax pokémon doesn’t make a lousy strategy! Keep using dynamicpunch, Poliwrath, and do it right!’

But I could tell Poliwrath wasn’t going to land a single punch. Flo’s small body was perfectly able to slip between his attacks and not get caught, even though one hit was likely to know her out.

Even so, I didn’t want to wait until Flo was too exhausted to win this match.

‘Start using spark again in between punches!’

Flo charged up, dodged another punch, and let her electricity loose on Poliwrath. After all that punching and jumping, he was too worn out to resist the super effective hit and slowly fell to the ground.

‘Poliwrath has fainted!’ said Kaden, raising one arm. ‘The challenger is the winner!’

I jumped for joy. Flo bounced her way over to me and I gave her a hug.

‘We’ll go for a nice swim later, all right?’

Flo cheeped in glee, and I returned her before the fatigue from the battle set in.

Leaving my spot on the arena, I walked around to meet Chuck at the side of the field.

‘Well done,’ he said with a smile, ‘It’s not often I’ve seen someone with the talent to exploit their opponent’s weaknesses so thoroughly. You earned this.’

I felt a little worried – I didn’t want to rely on tactics so heavily, so maybe I could so with strengthening my pokémon… but that small thought didn’t stop me feeling accomplished as I took the Storm badge from Chuck’s hand. It was brown and in the shape of a fist. How very fitting.

‘Right, my turn now,’ said Gary walking forward.

‘Oh? You’re here to challenge me too?’ asked Chuck. ‘And who might you be?’

‘I’m Gary Oak, from Pallet Town,’ Gary crowed, ‘and you’d better prepare yourself for another defeat!’

While opening my backpack to clip my new badge into my badge case, I walked over to where Gary had been sitting to watch them. They took their positions on the field, and I saw Gary give me a funny look I didn’t understand when he saw I was going to watch. Then he seemed to forget it and concentrated on the match at hand.

To start off, Chuck released an energetic Primeape onto his half of the arena. Gary didn’t seem to need to think, and tossed out a pokéball of his own, revealing his Scyther. I recognised the green, insect-like pokémon from when he had caught it in the Pokémon Park near Goldenrod – but I had only seen it a couple of times since then. I didn’t get much chance to bond with any of Gary’s pokémon (except for Umbreon) because he liked to rotate them so frequently. Even so, something looked odd about Gary’s Scyther… it almost looked… shinier.

The match started off with Primeape trying to use fury swipes, but even as fast as Primeape could attack towards his foe, Scyther was much faster. Whenever Primeape seemed about to land a hit, Scyther would simply use double team, and suddenly the field would be full of false images of him. Primeape didn’t know which one to hit.

Anything Primeape tried to do – rage, karate chop, seismic toss – didn’t even come close to touching Scyther. A combination of double team and agility made sure he was always out of harm’s way. This wasn’t just a case of Chuck’s pokémon being sluggish and not properly aiming his attacks – Scyther just streaked like a blur from one end of the field to another. It seemed so easy for Scyther to dodge his opponent’s attacks, sometimes it almost looked like he was toying with his foe; waiting until the very last moment before getting hit to suddenly disappear, making Primeape think he was about to turn the tide, but angering him further when he missed yet again.

Finally Scyther started integrating attacks into his evasion tactics. Just before disappearing, Scyther would slash Primeape hard across the face and the poor angry ball of fur would scream its head off. A few more rounds and Primeape looked like he couldn’t take much more of a beating, and was also missing a few chunks of hair.

At last, when Primeape’s moves were slow and his enthusiasm broken, Scyther flickered into view above him and dealt two more slashes, followed by a spinning wing attack. Primeape fell to the ground, injured and beaten.

Scyther finally stopped disappearing from view every 2 seconds and knelt on the battlefield, holding himself up with one scythe and panting hard. He hadn’t let any tiredness show during the match, but now it was over, the exhaustion showed clearly on his face.

Gary was walking over to accept his badge from Chuck, but suddenly, something else happened on the arena. There was a flash of bright light, and within seconds, everyone was watching.

Scyther was glowing. While the intense light nearly blinded everyone, Gary’s pokémon started changing form. Still kneeling, Scyther grew much taller, his body became thicker and his scythes changed shape.

When the light finally died down and we could see, everybody gasped.

In Scyther’s place was a large, red pokémon. His head shape had altered to form three large spikes, his scythes were now pincers with vicious looking edges, and his entire body was coated in a hard casing.

Scizor rose up from the ground and looked at his new form. I got my pokédex out again.

‘Scizor, the pincer pokémon. Its metallic body is as hard as steel. Its wings are used to regulate its body temperature rather then flying.’

‘All right!’ Gary cheered, although he seemed genuinely surprised. He ran up to poke his newly evolved pokémon and almost forgot to take his badge.

‘Did you say you were from Pallet Town?’ Chuck asked as we were about to leave.

‘Yeah…’ Gary replied hesitantly.

‘What a coincidence! I battled (and lost) to another trainer from there just a few days ago. He was about your age, too.’

Gary’s eyebrow made some sort of involuntary twitch. ‘…Which trainer?’

‘Ash, I think his name was. Beat me with a Bayleef. Nice kid.’

Suddenly we were back out and dashing towards the pokémon centre. I could barely even keep up with Gary, and I didn’t know what had got into him.

When we reached the centre Gary thrust Scizor’s pokéball into my hand and disappeared. I took both that and Flo’s pokéball to Nurse Joy to fix them up, and once she gave them back, I went around the corner to find Gary by the videophones.

‘Your Scizor evolved!’ Professor Oak’s face on the screen exclaimed. ‘That’s great news! Would you send it to me so I could spend some time studying it and how your Scyther managed to evolve?’

‘Sure,’ Gary mumbled, obviously wanting to move on to something else. ‘In exchange, I need you to send Fearow. It’s an emergency.’

‘Is it now?’ the Professor seemed perfectly calm. ‘All right, I’ll set it up…’

A few moments later, Gary’s Scizor had been exchanged for a new pokéball. He rushed a goodbye to his grandfather and ran outside, pokéball in hand.

When I got out there, Gary’s Fearow had already been released. It was an enormous brown bird, with highlighted plumage. It wasn’t exactly a pretty pokémon (I’d always thought there was something wrong about that crooked neck) but it did have a certain kind of grace. Gary was already clambering onto its back.

‘Hang on a minute!’ I yelled, running over. ‘We’re going to ride on your Fearow?’

‘Yes, if you ever get up here!’ he said impatiently, already in a sitting position on Fearow’s back. It didn’t look as easy as Gary had made it seem, climbing onto the back of a feathered beast, but Gary held his hand out and pulled me up. Once I was sitting, he patted Fearow’s neck twice and suddenly the bird lurched forward. It hurtled towards the beach, gaining speed, and after a few seconds it flapped its wings. All of a sudden we had lifted into the air, climbing higher above the town, rocking back and forth as Fearow’s wings flapped every so often, before settling into a glide.

I looked down and saw we were over the sea. I almost expected to feel dizzy or sick, but somehow, it wasn’t like that. I’d been flown on the back of one of Gary’s birds once before, but this was different. I didn’t feel particularly nervous of afraid of falling. I just felt excited to be up in the air.

Then a gust of wind blew into us and jerked Fearow a bit to the left. I gasped and grabbed the back of Gary, sitting in front of me, for support, before I felt ready to sit unaided again. There isn’t much to hold onto on a bird.

‘Tell me, Gary,’ I had to nearly shout over the wind, ‘why is it we’re going by air instead of by sea?’

It seemed to Gary that this was the right time to explain. ‘Chuck said he fought Ash and lost to him a few days ago.’

‘…And?’

‘And that means – Ash is ahead of us! The Whirl Cup might keep them held up for a little while, but we’ve got to hurry up and regain the lead!’

‘Oh. So you thought you’d just bring me up here without asking so we could compete with Ash?!’

‘Erm… yeah.’

‘Right.’

I rolled my eyes, which was a bit pointless because Gary couldn’t see.

‘By the way,’ I continued, ‘how come your Scyther suddenly evolved? Do you know what it was that triggered the change?’

‘…I don’t know. Although…’

‘What?’

‘I had this stuff in my backpack… it was some sort of metal plating cream. It’s supposed to increase your pokémon’s defence.’

‘So you put that on before the match?’

‘Yeah, right after I got Scyther from Grandpa. I had an inkling this Gym might rely on physical attacks, so I thought a defence boost might come in handy.’

‘…Are you sure that’s not considered cheating?’ I asked, concerned. ‘Using something to help your pokémon gain the edge in a battle?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Gary shrugged it off. ‘Besides, how can it have been cheating? Primeape never even got a hit in.’

I didn’t think Gary was going to be dragged off to the police on the subject, so I left it at that. I noticed that, from this high up, you could just about see Olivine on the horizon, which was where we were heading. It was a pretty, picturesque scene, with the taller buildings making a pattern on the skyline. For the rest of the flight, I decided to just relax, take in the awesome sights, and enjoy the feeling of being hung above the rolling sea.

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This chapter marks 100 pages in my Microsoft Word document! Whooooo… *has a party*

Anyway, review. You know you want to.